Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Life is cheap in Lexington!

Axel Ndagijimana, photo via WKYT-TV.

On May 7, 2021, Axel Ndagijimana, then 21-years-old, was driving at nearly 80 MPH on West High Street, between Rupp Arena and Oliver Lewis Boulevard, when he lost control of his vehicle and ran off the right shoulder into a utility pole. There are warning signs in the area of an upcoming narrow bend to the left. Ralph Hirwa, aged 20 years, his passenger, never got the opportunity to turn 21.

Man charged in a deadly Lexington crash gets probation after pleading guilty

by Taylor Six | Monday, July 24, 2023 | 11:54 AM EDT | Updated: Tuesday, July 25, 2023 | 6:56 AM EDT

A man previously charged with second-degree manslaughter for his involvement in a deadly car crash has received three years of probation after pleading guilty to a lesser charge.

Axel Ndagijimana, 24, of Lexington, was arrested and charged in June 2021 after a passenger in his car died from injuries in a crash on West High Street. Ndagijimana’s was driving “at a high rate of speed” west on High Street before Oliver Lewis Way when he lost control and the vehicle ran off the right shoulder into a utility pole, police said. The crash killed 20-year-old Ralph Hirwa.

Ndagijimana was accused of driving more than 80 mph in a 25 mph zone at the time of the crash, and a blood test taken after the crash showed he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.159, a detective testified previously. The legal limit in Kentucky is 0.08.

His attorney, Bradley Clark, said his client made a “monumental error in judgment” by deciding to drive after drinking. Clark wrote that the death of Hirwa was a tragedy, and Ndagijimana had made amends to the victim’s family.

So, he was drunk as a skunk, with a BAC of twice the legal limit at however long after the accident the test was taken, yet driving anyway, in an area with narrow streets, at over 80 miles per hour. Sounds like an open-and-shut case to me!

Mr Ndagijimana was initially charged with KRS §507.040, manslaughter in the second degree, a Class C Felony. Under KRS §532.060(2)(c), a Class C Felony is punishable by “not less than five (5) years nor more than ten (10) years” in prison.

But Mr Ndagijimana was allowed to plead down to KRS §507.050, reckless homicide, which is a Class D Felony. Under KRS §532.060(2)(d), a Class D Felony is punishable by “not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years” behind bars.

In other words, Mr Ndagijimana was already given one break, a maximum sentence of five years.

Clark asked that Ndagijimana get probation. He said Ndagijimana had a low risk for reoffending and was in the United States on a student visa. If he were imprisoned, he’d be deported back to Rwanda, which he fled a decade ago amid civil war, Clark said in court documents.

Really? The Rwandan civil war ended in 1994, which is before Mr Ndagijimana was even born. From Wikipedia:

Within Rwanda, a period of reconciliation and justice began, with the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the reintroduction of Gacaca, a traditional village court system. Since 2000 Rwanda’s economy, tourist numbers, and Human Development Index have grown rapidly; between 2006 and 2011 the poverty rate reduced from 57% to 45%, while life expectancy rose from 46.6 years in 2000 to 65.4 years in 2021.

The United States Department of State Travel Advisory for Rwanda, dated October 22, 2022 and not subsequently updated, is set at Level One: Exercise Normal Precautions, noting only border area conflicts in the areas near Barundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Reporter Taylor Six’s report does not make it perfectly clear, but at least from the quoted paragraph, it would seem as though Mr Ndagijimana’s attorney, Bradley Clark, misrepresented the situation.

On Friday, Fayette Circuit Judge Kimberly Bunnell sentenced Ndagijimana to two and a half years in prison for an amended charge of reckless homicide, but probated the sentence for three years. He will be out of custody, but could be forced to serve the prison sentence if he violates his probation terms.

Ndagijimana was also convicted of driving under the influence, and was ordered to pay fines, according to the Fayette Commonwealth Attorney’s Office.

Not mentioned in the Lexington Herald-Leader’s story, but included in WKYT-TV’s version, Mr Ndagijimana will have to serve a whopping 30 days in jail.

And that’s it: 30 days behind bars for driving drunk and killing somebody.

But, of course, Mr Ndagijimana did say that he was very, very sorry!

“It is essential to emphasize that Axel has not shied away from his responsibility for the incident,” Clark wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “He stands before this court, acknowledging his error, not seeking to absolve himself of guilt, but pleading guilty to his charge. His acceptance of culpability is a testament to his remorse and personal integrity, even amidst the profound grief and regret that weigh heavily upon him.”

Does that make Mr Hirwa somehow less dead?

Is this justice?

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Killadelphia: Lies, damned lies, and statistics The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer gets the numbers wrong; are they trying to mislead readers?

We have previously noted that many of the credentialed media journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading have complained about Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News and his unsoftened coverage of crime in the city. Now, what I have previously referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. are combitching again, but they have been lying in their complaints.

In a main editorial supposedly written by the Inquirer’s Editorial Board, but reads like something composed by hard-left columnist Will Bunch, the newspaper complained:

Of course, no place is perfect. The record gun violence in Philadelphia is beyond distressing. But mainly Republican state and federal lawmakers — many of whom represent suburban districts — share responsibility for enabling and glorifying gun culture.

That, of course, is not what “mainly Republican state and federal lawmakers” did. Rather, they recognized that gun control laws do not and have not stopped criminals from obtaining firearms, and removed some impediments on law-abiding citizens from purchasing weapons. As we have previously reported, Philadelphians themselves have been seeking concealed carry permits in unprecedented numbers because of the chaos in the city.

Local TV news shares some blame as well for disproportionately covering gun crimes in the city. That negative narrative shapes the views of many who act as if bullets are flying everywhere in Philadelphia when nearly all of the more than 1.5 million residents manage to go about their routines each day.

Really? Let’s check that! The hyperlink embedded in the newspaper’s own editorial does not say what the Editorial Board claimed!

Kaufman and her fellow researchers drew on police reports and information kept by the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit research group, to monitor media reporting during 2017 in three different cities: Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Rochester, NY. Of the 1,801 victims of intentional shootings (outside of self-inflicted shootings), the researchers saw that almost exactly half, 900, were covered in the news.

Of these victims, roughly 83 percent were Black, but just 49 percent of them made the news. Moreover, if the victim was a man, he was about 40 percent less likely to be covered on the news than a woman.

How many times have we reported that for The Philadelphia Inquirer, unless a shooting or murder victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of note, or a cute little white girl, the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is simply not news. We have often noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer, the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, doesn’t like to tell its readers the unvarnished truth, likes to censor what its readers see. The Inquirer only rarely reports on homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. The paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s four separate stories; how many do the mostly black victims get?

The Editorial Board are complaining about disproportionate coverage, when that is exactly what their newspaper has given us!

Disparities in news coverage continued when the deadliness of the shootings was examined. Although 16 percent of the victims from the analyzed shootings died, these fatal shootings accounted for 83 percent of the cases covered by the news.

So, both the cited research and the Editorial Board are complaining that non-fatal shootings get less news coverage than fatal ones? Is that somehow a surprise? As Mark Fusetti just pointed out, the City of Brotherly Love passed the 1,000 mark for fatal and non-fatal shootings this year. On how many has the Inky reported?

“A vast majority of the victims of gun violence survive, but I don’t think the public knows much about people whose lives have been disrupted in so many ways by their injuries, and who need all our support to recover,” Kaufman said. “I like to think that more public awareness of the impact of gun violence on survivors would lead to broader support for the services and programs that they need.”

The Inquirer actually has reported on shooting victims who have survived, but I cannot recall such a story on a surviving gang-banger; the newspaper seems to tell us only about the innocent victims of shootings. Then again, as we have previously reported, the newspaper tried to make an innocent victim out of a homicide victim who was clearly not so innocent a victim.

And, of course, we have noted the apparent editorial decision to stop using the word “gang”, and replace it with “street group”

Statistics have shown that one in four Americans perceive mass shootings to be the greatest gun violence threat facing their communities, but the study showed that shootings with multiple victims occurred just 22 percent of the time. However, mass shootings were almost six times as likely to make the news.

Could that be because the Inquirer itself plays up the ‘mass shootings,’ especially when the victims are not black, and downplays the killings of black ‘street group’ members?

But here comes the biggest lie of all:

In fact, rural counties have a higher rate of gun deaths than cities — contrary to country singer Jason Aldean’s recent paean to small town life. Not to mention, most mass shootings occur in small towns, studies show, while a separate report found Center City, at least, remained “remarkably safe.”

We previously reported that in 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

It got worse in 2021: with 562 homicides in Philly, out of 1027 total for Pennsylvania, 54.72% of all homicides in the Keystone State occurred in Philadelphia. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, was second, with 123 killings, 11.98% of the state’s total, but only 9.52% of Pennsylvania’s population.

The other 65 counties, with 78.11% of the state’s total population, had 33.30% of total murders. It should also be noted that in comparing 2018 with 2021, the homicide rate for the 65 counties which are not Philadelphia and Allegheny (where Pittsburgh is), barely increased, from 3.38 per 100,000 population, to 3.42, a 1.12% rise, in Philadelphia it jumped from 22.31 to 35.53 per 100,000 population, a 59.21% increase.

Things got slightly better in the City of Brotherly Love in 2022, with 516 homicides officially reported in the Philadelphia, out of 1,015 total homicides for the Commonwealth. That’s still 50.84% of the killings in the Commonwealth!

The Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population estimates for Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia specifically, were 12,972,008 and 1,567,258 respectively, meaning that Philly had just 12.08% of the state’s population. The homicide rate for the rest of the Keystone State was 4.38 per 100,000 population, while for Philly it works out to 32.92 per 100,000, 7½ times the rest of the Commonwealth.

Strip out the 138 homicides in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, and the 65 other counties in the Commonwealth had 361 homicides for 10,171,497 people, for a murder rate of 3.55 per 100,000.

The same source lists 418 murders and non-negligent homicides so far in 2023; the Philadelphia Police Department reported that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, July 23rd, 239 of those murders occurred in Philadelphia. That’s 57.18% of the total, in a city with 12.08% of the Commonwealth’s population, and that’s in a year in which homicides are down!

How did the Editorial Board’s citation get it so wrong?

The findings are based on an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors attributed the trend to a rise in gun suicides, which outnumbered gun homicides in 2021 by more than 5,300 and are more likely to occur in rural counties.

The Editorial Board conflated suicides with murders. News flash: people haven’t been arming themselves in tremendous numbers to protect themselves from suicides!

I do not claim to be a super-genius like Wile E Coyote, but am pretty good with numbers. Being good with numbers, it’s pretty easy for me to spot bovine feces when people misuse statistics and references as citations, as I did in this article. Who knows? Perhaps the Editorial Board simply assume that they are smarter than their readers, or believe that readers won’t check their source citations. Well, perhaps most won’t, but out of all of the newspaper’s subscribers, surely they ought to guess that a few people will.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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I point at the moon; they stare at my finger How The Washington Post misdirects your attention on an important subject

It’s always amusing when today’s left try to minimize an important point, brought up by conservatives, one with which they cannot disagree, but also one with which they don’t want conservatives to gain any credit. Kathleen Parker Cleveland[1]Though the columnist is married to Sherwood M. “Woody” Cleveland, she hasn’t shown him enough respect to have taken his name. While she may not have shown him such respect, The … Continue reading, of The Washington Post, knows that no decent person can support child sexual abuse and trafficking, but, gosh darn it, the movie Sound of Freedom just has too many supporters on the wrong side of the political divide.

‘Sound of Freedom’ puts the adrenaline hormone to work

By Kathleen Parker, Columnist | Friday, July 21, 2023 | 6:12 PM EDT

Leave it to gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson to drop an obscure theory about oxidized adrenaline’s alleged psychedelic properties that, 52 years later, is being connected by QAnon conspiracists to a blockbuster movie about child sex trafficking. Deep breath.

Thompson, who died in 2005 and arranged for his ashes to be shot into the sky from a tower at his Colorado home, doubtless would delight in these developments, which even his fertile, drug-enhanced imagination could not have foreseen. That said, based on my decades-ago reading of his 1971 masterpiece, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” he was surprised by nothing, especially regarding the human capacity for self-delusion and mass confusion.

So, we are told, in the first two paragraphs, that Hunter Thompson, a self-described gonzo journalist, who abused alcohol and narcotics, would have loved this stuff, two paragraphs which introduce a subject on which Mrs Cleveland somehow believed she had to write, but on which she wanted her readers to have something of a jaundiced eye.

The breakout indie movie “Sound of Freedom” is itself a curiosity. A low-budget film made five years ago, it sat on a shelf until it was recently picked up by Angel Studios. Since its release on July 4, this tale of child sex trafficking starring Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ,” has earned $100 million. Its crowdfunded popularity is based in part on a unique marketing campaign and on its embrace by QAnon and high-profile conspiracy theorists, including Stephen K. Bannon and former president Donald Trump.

Did you spot it? By mentioning that lead actor, Jim Caviezel, had played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, Mrs Cleveland lets non-Christian readers that hey, the lead actor is a right-wing Christianist nutball, so make of that what you will. Add to that QAnon, Steve Bannon, and, horrors!, Donald Trump.

At this point, the online version of the story has an ad, followed by a paragraph telling us about QAnon:

QAnon, a virtual “organization” with an extremist ideology led by the anonymous “Q” (purportedly a government agent who shares “scoops” for credulous followers), has advanced the idea that Hollywood and political elites traffic children so they can consume the children’s blood along with adrenochrome (oxidized adrenaline) for its “anti-aging properties.” Check.

Then a blurb for checking the rest of Mrs Cleveland’s columns, two more paragraphs telling us how nutsy QAnon is, including noting that Mr Caviezel has spoken before QAnon audiences, and yet another ad, before the author gets down to actually discussing the film, and noting that child sex trafficking was a huge business.

Even at that point, Mrs Cleveland starts telling us that the villains have been “extreme(ly) typecast” to “the point of caricature.” Yes, they’re really bad guys, but the author is telling us, in her own way, that they are like Snidely Whiplash, tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks, awaiting only Dudley DoRight to ride in to her rescue.

At that point, she went ahead and painted us a word picture of the audience, in terms which would not really appeal to most Washington Post readers:

It’s a hard movie to watch and is not for children. In the North Carolina cineplex where I saw it — midday and midweek — the audience was decidedly gray-haired. This might be generally true of the time slot, but most also seemed like folks who might own a MAGA hat, if I may indulge in a bit of typecasting of my own. I decided against interviewing any of my fellow moviegoers as I had intended. As they slowly left the theater, their drawn faces and hollow eyes told me this was not the time. I felt the same way.

“(F)olks who might own a MAGA hat,” huh? Has there ever been a paragraph more obviously aimed at telling liberals, “Don’t see this movie!”?

Mrs Cleveland does tell us that the movie has an important message, but she spent seven out of twelve paragraphs telling us how horrid the people who produced and supported the movie are.

More, as Farhad Manjoo noted on Slate, most online readers don’t make it much past the 50% point of an article on which they’ve clicked . . . and the 50% mark in Mrs Cleveland’s column, as measured by the first six paragraphs — and really, into the seventh — out of twelve, are all about QAnon and the horrible people who are involved in the movie.

Mrs Cleveland almost certainly knew that most people wouldn’t finish her column; students will be taught that in journalism school, and it’s simply common knowledge in newsrooms. Yet she frontloaded it with the stuff about QAnon, and that’s also something taught in journalism school: get the most important parts at the beginning, “above the fold,” in newspaper speak, so that readers who do not finish will get the most important parts read. And what she apparently wanted, to judge from her structure, most readers to see is QAnon, QAnon, QAnon . . . with a bit of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon thrown in for good measure.

Child sexual abuse and sex trafficking are important, horrible things, and even the left cannot deny that, but unless I assume that the columnist was completely ignorant of article structure in a journalistic setting, all I can conclude is that she understood that it was an important movie, but she really didn’t want readers to see it. Conservatives, horribly enough, just might be right when they focus on child sex trafficking, and we just can’t have that!

References

References
↑1 Though the columnist is married to Sherwood M. “Woody” Cleveland, she hasn’t shown him enough respect to have taken his name. While she may not have shown him such respect, The First Street Journal does not similarly show such disrespect.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us all about Barbie and gluten-free meals at the shore. Criminals on the streets? Not so much.

Rasheed Banks, Jr, via WVPI-TV.

The Philadelphia Inquirer was more than willing to tell readers about how heroic Michael Salerno intervened to try to stop a carjacking, and was killed for his efforts:

Police identify man killed in South Philly trying to stop a carjacking

Michael Salerno was trying to prevent three young men from stealing his car while a woman was still inside, police said.

by Rob Tornoe | Thursday, July 13, 2023 | 2:22 PM EDT

A Philadelphia man is dead after police say he tried to stop three young men from stealing his car Wednesday night.

Police said the victim, identified as Michael Salerno, 50, was attempting to prevent his car from being carjacked around 10:45 p.m. in South Philadelphia. A woman was in the car, but officials declined to identify her, citing the ongoing investigation.

“Preliminary information appears that the motive for this homicide began with a carjacking of a female, and when the owner intervened, he was shot and killed,” Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters Wednesday night.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Death in Killadelphia

The episode occurred on Porter Street near South 12th Street. Salerno had just arrived at the location but wasn’t in the car when the attempted carjacking occurred, according to police, who declined to say whether it was near his home.

There’s more at the original, but at the time, all that we were told was that the suspects were to be three “young men, appearing to be between the ages of 15 and early 20s, dressed in dark clothing.”

WPVI-TV, known locally as Channel 6, the ABC owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia, had more on Friday, as the Philadelphia Police Department identified one of the suspects, 15-year-old Rasheed Banks, Jr., and published his photograph. Young Mr Banks is still on the loose as I write this, but if WPVI is trying to help, showing Philadelphians for whom to be on the lookout, as of 9:12 PM, The Philadelphia Inquirer has nothing about this.

Then there was this from Fox 29 News. The Philadelphia Police Department released surveillance photos of the suspects in the shootings on which we have previously reported. The editors of the Inquirer were naturally horrified at the fact an 11-year-old girl, almost certainly simply an innocent struck by a stray bullet — out of around 30 fired in what may have been a gunfight between gangs — but, when the Police released photos of the suspects, in the hopes that someone would recognize them and give information to the police, the Inquirer has chosen not to publish either the story or the photos of the suspects.

Given that two of the suspects are shown wearing hooded sweatshirts, with the hoods pulled up, on a Philadelphia evening where it was above 70º F, it would seem obvious that this wasn’t a snap decision, but gang members, oops, sorry, ‘street group’ members out with intentions that were less than kindly.

That the Inquirer chose not to inform its readers, readers who are paying for the privilege[1]My unlimited digital subscription: $5.49/week, billed every 4 weeks; that’s $285.48 a year. of reading our nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper, because publisher Elizabeth Hughes forthrightly told us that the newspaper would censor the news if it was too politically incorrect.

Not that the Inquirer didn’t give us important news!

But warning readers about killers and gang bangers still on the city’s streets, and perhaps, just perhaps, getting them picked up a bit earlier? Nope, not the Inky!

References

References
↑1 My unlimited digital subscription: $5.49/week, billed every 4 weeks; that’s $285.48 a year.
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How wealthy New Englanders fight #ClimateChange A family which showed some sense.

West Roxbury project house, before remodel. Photo by Meg Reinhardt. Click to enlarge.

We have previously noted how the wealthy New England homeowners featured in the Public Broadcasting System’s famous, long-running This Old House series, from areas which gave the large majority of their votes to the Democrats, still love them some fossil fuels. and if the previous sentence seems familiar, it should, because I used it just eight days ago.

Now, yet another house in that show has caught my attention, the 1894 Victorian in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts project, in which architect Derek Rubinoff, his wife Robyn Marder, and their two teenagers, Zach and Aria, went for a full remodel after a call to a painter revealed that the “decades-old cedar clapboards had started to rot,” meaning that the entire exterior would need to be stripped and redone.

While I couldn’t find the cost of the project, realtor.com informs us that, in June of 2023, the median home listing price was $727,000, while the median sales price was only slightly lower, at $720,000.

Noting as we have previously that the global warming climate change activists want to ban gas heating, gas ranges, gas water heaters, and all other gas appliances, to save Mother Gaia, when the series began to run on the Magnolia Network — which I like, but never should have been sold to Chip and Joanna Gaines — I paid close attention, to see if these wealthy New Englanders went along with the proposals for trashing gas appliances for electric.

And, at least in one respect, they tried a little bit. In Season 43, Episode 20 of This Old House, the show’s plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey showed us that the family added a heat pump for central air conditioning and heating when it wasn’t too cold outside, but they retained the original gas furnace for the depths of a Massachusetts winter. The kitchen tour, shown in Episode 25, appeared to show — the perspective I had was poor — that the family had opted for an electric, possibly induction, range top. The ovens, separate units on a different wall, could have been either gas or electric.

So, what did this family do? Well, they went at least half-way toward meeting the activists’ goals, by adding the heat pump to the system. But, like other New England families who could, they were smart enough to keep a newer, though still existing, natural gas furnace as at least a backup; they were not going suffer a too cold house during a New England winter!

Under Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, there are proposals for a new statewide building code in which the use of natural gas systems could — not immediately would — be banned in new construction by municipalities, and includes the interesting, and I believe smart, provision that new home construction should be pre-wired for conversion from natural gas to electric appliances should future homeowners want to make a change, without the need for expensive rewiring. It also mandates wiring be put in place for electric automobile charging units, though it does not require that those units be installed.

Mandates? I don’t like them at all. But I do believe that these are simple and relatively inexpensive things a builder should do to increase the value of a new home

When we replaced our already-failing electric water heater with a propane one, I left the wiring in place, just in case it was ever needed in the future, though I disconnected it from the electric panel. I have also said that, were I building homes, I would include the wiring for electric car chargers, because that’s far cheaper to do during construction when the walls are open, than to retrofit such into an existing structure. I have long planned to include such wiring in my garage before I fully enclose the walls, simply to add resale value, because the breaker, wiring, and NEMA 14-50 receptacle just aren’t that expensive.

I can’t complain about the Rubinoff family and how they spent their money. They did add features to the home that would make sense for those worried about global warmingclimate change, but they also showed that they have some actual sense, in maintaining a gas hookup and heating system capable of keeping the place warm when it gets bitterly cold. Considering that they are heating their home the same way we do, a heat pump — which was already in place when we moved here, though the unit had to be replaced after being destroyed in the 2021 flood — but with a propane fireplace for backup when the power fails or it gets too cold outside for the heat pump to keep up, yeah, I believe they have acted wisely. But in wintry New England, the government should never mandate electric-only heating systems.

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More bullets fly in Philly!

We have have previously noted that for The Philadelphia Inquirer, unless a shooting or murder victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of note, or a cute little white girl, the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news.

Well, another ‘innocent’ has been shot, though not killed, so the Inky is all over it.

11-year-old shot in West Philadelphia late Wednesday night

Police have yet to release a description of the shooter, who they believe fired 30 shoots along 52nd Street in West Philadelphia on Wednesday night.

by Beatrice Forman | Thursday, July 20, 2023 | 7:56 AM EDT

An 11-year-old girl and a man were struck during a shootout in West Philadelphia late Wednesday night.

Note that there were two victims in this case, an 11-year-old girl and a 32-year-old man, but only the child is mentioned in the headline.

Police said the shooting happened around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and spans several intersections along 52nd Street, where they found a trail of shell casings, 6ABC reported. The girl was struck in the hip while shopping while shopping with her mother, according to police.

“We of course believe that since she’s only 11 years old, she was struck by stray gunfire,” Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters.

Map of 52nd and Market Streets.

To briefly summarize, the Philadelphia Police found about 30 ejected shell casings, in “clusters,” near the 52nd and Market Streets SEPTA elevated train station, as well as nearby Ludlow Street. The Police are unsure whether the injured man was the intended target, or another bystander.

There is no description of the shooter at this time. Police are checking city-operated real-time crime cameras for footage.

The Police will have to get lucky! With a high of 82ºF and low of 70ºF in Philly yesterday, odds will still be high that the shooters were wearing hooded sweatshirts and masks!

These cameras, which have been installed near recreation centers and schools among other places, were first meant to be a crime deterrent, but have since become an important part of shooting investigations.

A deterrent? Thirty or so shell casings would seem to indicate a gang, oops, sorry, ‘street group,’ shoot-out.

As we noted yesterday, the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating defense attorney now serving as Philadelphia’s chief prosecutor, is asking for “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation,” so I have to ask: just what would the legislation Larry Krasner wants have done to stop this gun battle? He wants Pennsylvania to pass a “red flag” law, under which a complaint that a firearms owner was agitated or under some stress could have his firearms confiscated, supposedly temporarily, without him ever being charged with or convicted of any crime, and to restrict private sales of firearms between individuals to require that they, too, be subject to background checks.

Is anyone here really naïve enough to believe that either of these laws, had they been in place, would have stopped a gang ‘street group’ gunfight? The probability that, if the gang ‘street groups’ members are identified, the shooters are under 18, and legally barred from owning or possessing handguns is pretty high. But whether they are legally minors or otherwise, the fact that they were willing to engage in a gunfight in the first place tells us that obeying the law is not particularly high on their list of priorities.

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Philly District Attorney who doesn’t enforce existing gun laws wants “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation” He wants gun laws that impact law-abiding citizens, not the criminals

I have seen the image at the left used many times, though a site search on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website for “We do not believe that arresting people” yielded zero returns. However we did document something very similar:

District Attorney Larry Krasner, who has reduced prosecutions for illegal firearms possession when the police have made the arrests, said[1]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.:

The urgency of Philadelphia’s crisis of fatal and non-fatal shootings will not be met by looking away from shootings. As noted above, City Council has led a valuable “100 Shooter Review,” a title that makes clear what we already know: that shootings are the primary issue. Our efforts must be focused on preventing shootings and holding people who commit shootings accountable, and we should not accept arrests for gun possession as a substitute.

And:

This office believes that reform is necessary to focus on the most serious and most violent crime, so that people can be properly held accountable for doing things that are violent, that are vicious, and that tear apart society. We cannot continue to waste resources and time on things that matter less than the truly terrible crisis that we are facing.

And[2]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30-31 of the document, page 32-33 of the .pdf file.:

Gun possession arrests that involve no violent acts present a secondary and important frontier in curbing gun violence, but must be targeted to distinguish between drivers of gun violence who possess firearms illegally and otherwise law-abiding people who are not involved in gun violence. On the one hand, the cases of people charged with 6105[3]There are two main categories of illegal gun possession cases in Philadelphia: Possession of a firearm by a person who has been prohibited from carrying gun due to a past serious conviction or other … Continue reading (prohibited person in possession of a firearm) are carefully scrutinized to do individual justice, which will usually look like vigorous prosecution. On the other hand, another criminal charge that applies to people who have no felony conviction (carrying a gun in Philadelphia without having obtained a permit in Philadelphia) is only a felony in Philadelphia. The exact same offense in every other county in Pennsylvania (carrying a firearm without a permit to carry) is only a misdemeanor offense.

Why do I bring this up? The District Attorney was in Harrisburg today, shilling for “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation.” The obvious question arises: if Mr Krasner and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office is not going to prosecute the gun control laws already on the books, when the malefactors are already in custody, just what good would “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation” do?

Fortunately, the state Senate is controlled by Republicans, and the state House of Representatives, which had a bare 102-101 Democratic majority, is now down to a 101-101 tie, after a Democratic Representative resigned. Under House rules, the Democrats will retain parliamentary control, but they can’t run roughshod over the GOP as long as Republicans stay united.

The state House has begun its summer break, and is not scheduled to reconvene until September.

As I write this, The Philadelphia Inquirer has not yet reported the story, so whatever Philly’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, former defense lawyer now serving as chief prosecutor means by “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation” is unclear, but these things usually boil down to one thing: making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to buy firearms, while the criminals, who don’t obey the law in the first place, won’t be stymied by new legislation.

Mr Krasner and his office believe that the real problem isn’t bad people, but “systemic racism:”

shootings are far more associated with systemic racism and the disinvestment and poverty that it has caused in Philadelphia than they are any particular criminal profile of a person.[4]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, Appendix 7, page 137 of the document, page 139 of the .pdf file.

That, of course, is pure bovine feces: everybody knows, but no one will admit in public, what “particular criminal profile” the bad guys fit. But to admit that would mean, for the left, the complete invalidation of everything they’ve been pushing for the last several decades.

References

References
↑1 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.
↑2 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30-31 of the document, page 32-33 of the .pdf file.
↑3 There are two main categories of illegal gun possession cases in Philadelphia: Possession of a firearm by a person who has been prohibited from carrying gun due to a past serious conviction or other prohibition (18 Pa.C.S. § 6105), and possession of a firearm without a license (18 Pa.C.S. § 6106). The former is generally viewed as the more serious illegal gun possession statute, while the latter is generally viewed as less serious than possession by a prohibited person. Both are non-violent offenses only related to illegal possession of a gun.
↑4 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, Appendix 7, page 137 of the document, page 139 of the .pdf file.
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Odd question: will LGBTQ+ population decrease with end of Affirmative Action?

The Wall Street Journal is on top of the trends in business, as you’d expect, and reported that Chief Information Officers are worrying that employee ‘diversity’ — and how I’ve come to hate that word — will decrease following the Supreme Court’s  decision  in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, declaring what we all knew, that the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment prohibited Affirmative Action using racial preferences in collegiate admissions.

CIOs Say Affirmative Action Ruling Could Set Back Progress in Tech Diversity

Executives are questioning what a landmark Supreme Court decision on college admissions means for diversity hiring efforts

by Belle Lin | Monday, July 17, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT

Business technology leaders said that last month’s Supreme Court’s ruling that colleges can’t consider race in admissions policies could have a chilling effect on initiatives aimed at diversifying the information-technology workforce.

The court’s decision is likely to alter the pipeline of diverse graduates entering the job market, they said, and may introduce challenges to companies’ existing hiring and promotion practices.

By removing race from college admission considerations, the pool of tech talent entering the workforce may not only be less diverse, it could also be smaller if underrepresented minorities don’t see the field as a welcoming or viable option, those executive say.

There’s more at the original.

The Court’s decision applied to universities, public and private, that accept federal money, including in the form of student financial aid. However, as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in the Court’s opinion, roughly 60% of colleges and universities admit all applicants. If the pool of graduates from certain technical specialties from Ivy League colleges becomes less diverse — there’s that word again! — then corporations might look at graduates from Middle Tennessee State (Acceptance rate = 87.1%) or Eastern Kentucky (Acceptance rate = 98.3%) or Jacksonville State University of Alabama (Acceptance rate = 76.3%), Robert Stacy McCain’s alma mater. After all, Alissa Heinerscheid proved that being a Hahvahd graduate was no guarantee that stupid decisions wouldn’t be taken!

Then I saw these interesting paragraphs in another Journal article:

The elevation of victimhood over achievement has led many to misrepresent their racial and gender identities in pursuit of advantages in professional and academic positions. Students at selective colleges are identifying as non-heterosexual at rates several times higher than historic or national averages, though University of London political scientist Eric Kaufmann noted that there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in sexual behavior tied to those identities. I’ve heard of parents at elite private high schools using genetic testing services hoping to identify any ethnic heritage that would boost their children’s college applications and of young professionals falsely identifying as bisexual for a career boost.

Racial and gender quotas result in liberals’ willful hypocrisy and convoluted rationalizations when they are confronted with the reality that aptitudes, interests and effort aren’t always evenly distributed among their superficial and shifting politicized racial categories. Liberals have translated their calls for increased diversity into demands that colleges admit and employers hire black and Hispanic applicants in proportion to their group’s share of the U.S. population.

Wait, what? “Students at selective colleges are identifying as non-heterosexual at rates several times higher than historic or national averages” but “there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in sexual behavior tied to those identities”? From the linked report:

  • When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification. Men and women under 30 who reported a sexual partner in the last five years dropped from around 96% exclusively heterosexual in the 1990s to 92% exclusively heterosexual in 2021. Whereas in 2008 attitudes and behavior were similar, by 2021 LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior.
  • The author provides a high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30. Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior. The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves.
  • Very liberal ideology is associated with identifying as LGBT among those with heterosexual behavior, especially women. It seems that an underlying psychological disposition is inclining people with heterosexual behavior to identify both as LGBT and very liberal. The most liberal respondents have moved from 10-15% non-heterosexual identification in 2016 to 33% in 2021. Other ideological groups are more stable.

So, what do we have here? A significant increase in the number of younger people who are also mostly self-identified liberals? Does this mean that these people might be more open to take a walk on the wild side, but mostly haven’t yet, or is it some sort of ‘siding with the oppressed’ help, or could it possibly, just possibly, going the Elizabeth Warren/Rachel Dolezal route of ‘identifying’ with a particular minority for some real or perceived Affirmative Action benefit?

  • Very liberal ideology and LGBT identification are associated with anxiety and depression in young people. Very liberal young Americans are twice as likely as others to experience these problems. 27% of young Americans with anxiety or depression were LGBT in 2021. This relationship appears to have strengthened since 2010.
  • Among young people, mental health problems, liberal ideology, and LGBT identity are strongly correlated. Using factor analysis in two different studies shows that assuming one common variable between all three traits explains 40-50% of the variation.

LOL! I have long believed that “very liberal ideology” is indicative of some sort of mental problem, because, especially with the new #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading left, to be that far left requires a delusional mindset, ignoring the reality that is all around us. As we have previously reported, the areas in Philadelphia which were most seriously impacted by violent crime recently voted for a tougher-on-crime candidate, while the more ‘progressive’ candidates had far greater support in the wealthier, whiter — Philly is very internally segregated — areas.

You can’t pay attention to the news in Philadelphia without realizing that crime is a serious problem, but the anti-police, anti-incarceration leftist candidate won her votes in the areas experiencing far less crime.

There is, at least at the margins, some socialization concerning what is and is not acceptable when it comes to sex. For boys growing up, the idea of fellating another boy, or receiving anal intercourse from such, is strongly reinforced as something which is humiliating, completely unmanly, and just about every other negative connotation that can be put on it. It is at least arguable that forces pushing acceptance of male homosexuality can lessen the effects of the normal socialization, and perhaps some teenaged and twenty-something males might not be quite so averse to trying something, if the right situation arose. Porn has lessened the stigma against female homosexual liaisons.

But if actual homosexual activity is being reported at significantly lower rates than abnormal sexual identification — and let me be explicit here: anything other than strictly heterosexual identification is considered abnormal by me — then there must be some other incentive for people to identify as something other than normal.

  • College students majoring in the social sciences and humanities are about 10 points more LGBT than those in STEM. Meanwhile, 52% of students taking highly political majors such as race or gender studies identify as LGBT, compared to 25% among students overall.

Realistically, what can the incentive be other than politics or some perceived advantage to be gained? And if the perceived advantage would be the shortcuts offered by Affirmative Action, shouldn’t the elimination of Affirmative Action in collegiate admissions reduce the percentage of those claiming abnormal sexual orientations and identities?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Another story you won’t find in The Philadelphia Inquirer (Alleged) criminal out on bail (allegedly) rapes 13-year-old girl, and the professional media are mostly quiet

We have previously noted that many people in the Philadelphia news media just don’t like Fox 29 News and reporter Steve Keeley. But when I found the story below thanks to a tweet from Fox 29, my natural inclination was to search The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website database for “Herbert Morrison”, I found exactly nothing on his current offense, though I was able to find a story on his prior offense.

Man out on bail for 2021 beating charged for rape of 13-year-old girl

Published July 13, 2023 6:29PM | Crime & Public Safety | FOX 29 Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA – A Philadelphia man is back behind bars after authorities say he raped a teenage girl while he was out on bail for allegedly beating a man two years ago in Queen Village.

The Inquirer’s story on that is dated Sunday, August 22, 2021, and stated that the assault took place the previous Tuesday, the 17th. The obvious question becomes: why wasn’t Mr Morrison’s case tried or otherwise settled in the 23 months, almost two years, since his (alleged) offense?

Herbert Morrison turned himself in last Friday for the alleged sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl whom investigators say he met on Instagram.

Court documents show the sexual assault happened a month after the pair met while Morrison was out on bail for beating 40-year-old Zach Lean so severely he was in monthlong coma.

“One of them punched him in the head, knocked him to the ground, he hit his head on the curb and started having a seizure,” said his Zach’s wife Christine.

Mr Morrison was not some irresponsible 13-year-old punk, but legally an adult at 19, and the crimes with which he was charged, and the injuries he (allegedly) helped deal out to an innocent victim, were serious. Yet, after he made bail, there is no information in the Fox 29 story, or anywhere else I could find, telling us why Mr Morrison’s case hasn’t been tried yet. Mr Morrison had been charged with a violent crime, yet no one seemed to care that he had been left out on the streets.

Morrison, with the help of the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, posted 10% of his $75k bail which released him back out into the public in August 2021. When reached for comment, the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund shared the following statement:

The mission of the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund is to end cash bail and pretrial detention in our city. Until that day, we post bail for our neighbors who cannot afford to pay. In addition to posting bail, we offer support to those we bail out to help them rebuild their lives and successfully return to court. We also value trauma support for victims and those who cause harm so everyone can heal by providing connections to practitioners of victim support, restorative justice, and counseling. We envision a justice system built around restorative justice practices that support and prioritize victims’ needs while holding those who have caused harm accountable and providing them opportunities to take responsibility for their actions. We do not comment on individual decisions to post bail, and we are unaware of the facts of the current incident involving Mr. Morrison. However, we are troubled that a young person was harmed, and we hope they and their family can find the healing and support they deserve.

Every time I see the phrase “restorative justice,” I know that I bovine feces is about to follow. Holding those who have caused harm accountable is done by putting them in jail!

The Philadelphia Community Bail Fund “hope” that the 13-year-old rape victim and her family “can find the healing and support they deserve”?

“I feel like he killed my daughter, and she’s not the same,” the victim’s mother said. “She has her happy days, but it’s something that won’t leave her, it’s something that will stay with her for the rest of her life.”

The victim has been injured in ways that go far beyond the physical trauma, ways which might stay with her for decades, perhaps for as long as she lives. What “restorative justice” can heal that? Is the victim supposed to sit down with the punk who raped her — that’s supposed to be a part of “restorative justice” — and listen as he makes a (supposedly) heartfelt apology?

Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §3122.1(a), the alleged crime is a second-degree felony. Under Title 30 §923(a)(9), the penalty is “a fine of not less than $5,000 nor more than $25,000, or imprisonment not exceeding ten years, or both.” For the sexual assault of a 13-year-old, that penalty seems insufficient. If it could be upgraded to a first-degree felony, the sentence could be twenty years. With his previous charges, perhaps he could be locked up even longer, which would be great, because let’s tell the truth here: this man person is irredeemable and irretrievably lost.

The Inquirer? The Fox 29 story was dated last Thursday; if the Inky was going to cover it, it would already have been done. If you only got your news from the Inquirer, you’d never have known that Mr Morrison was charged with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old at all. The professional media in the City of Brotherly Love don’t like Fox 29 News, but at least Fox 29 actually reports the news, and doesn’t try to hide it.

Mr Morrison is, of course, innocent until proven guilty, but if he is proven guilty, the Commonwealth needs to throw the book at him. “Restorative justice”? One can only hope that news that her assailant will be going to jail for a long, long time will help heal the 13-year-old rape victim, but who can know if that will actually happen? But the longer the assailant is behind bars, the safer the people of Philadelphia will be.