Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Danielle Outlaw isn’t just toast She's toast that has fallen on the floor, buttered side down

Even though I read The Philadelphia Inquirer every day, I don’t normally do so expecting something humorous. But this time reporters Anna Orso and Chris Palmer provided some really belly laughs!

Police commissioner Danielle Outlaw has unwittingly become a ‘political football.’ The mayor’s race could decide her future.

If history is a guide, the next mayor is likely to pick a new top cop — a decision that would shake up one of the nation’s largest police forces.

by Anna Orso and Chris Palmer | Wednesday, April 19, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Philadelphia’s mayoral candidates have faced repeated questions in recent months about the fate of one city employee: Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.Their answers have ranged from tepid support to accusations that Outlaw has “done a bad job” amid a gun violence crisis. Most have offered noncommittal responses on whether they’d stick with her if elected.

But if history is a guide, the next mayor is likely to pick a new top cop — a decision that would shake up one of the nation’s largest police forces and influence how its 6,000 officers and employees engage with city residents.

I’m not sure how Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw leaving her job would really “shake up one of the nation’s largest police forces,” considering she’s not actually at her desk all that much.

The last two mayors to be sworn into office have appointed new commissioners. And such turnover has also been common in other big cities: In Chicago last month, the police chief resigned the day after the mayor’s reelection bid fell apart. And New York City Mayor Eric Adams hired his own chief last year — and even considered Outlaw for the role.

An obvious point here that Mr Palmer and Miss Orso neglected to tell readers: Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown resigned after incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot missed out on the mayoral runoff election, coming in third with just 16%[1]Edited: I had misgoofed and typed 61%, and reader 370H55V I/me/mine caught it for me. of the vote, because not only did the two candidates who advanced to the runoff, Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, but all of Miss Lightfoot’s opponents “vowed to fire Brown on day one of becoming mayor.”

Interestingly enough, Mr Brown took the reins of the Chicago Police Department in April of 2020, just two months after Miss Outlaw became Police Commissioner of Philadelphia. And both have failed just as spectacularly.

Outlaw, who was appointed in 2020, has been out recently while recovering from a car accident. In an emailed statement, she said: “I do not think anyone particularly enjoys having their name positioned as a political football.”

Hey, you want to play in the big leagues, you have opened yourself up to criticism, but remember, Philly is the city in which Eagles’ fans booed Santa Claus and pelted him with snowballs. Rough crowd.

But, as we noted here, the Commissioner says that she has a back injury from an incident in which another driver struck her chauffeured vehicle, but a truly dedicated Police Commissioner, someone who has a desk job, would be working, even if it had to be from home and in a recliner, unless she was completely bed-ridden or seriously doped up on pain medication. Neither of those things has been reported to be the case.

When your city has been suffering from a 500+ a year homicide rate, a dedicated Police Commissioner wouldn’t take any days off.

While noting that ethics rules bar her from speaking to candidates about their plans, she said she’s focused on issues including crime prevention, improving clearance rates, and implementing policy reforms.

If those are the issues on which she has focused, she has clearly failed. Clearance rates have dropped. While the Philadelphia Police Department is the nation’s fourth largest, with an authorized strength of 6,500 officers and 800 civilian personnel, the department is seriously undermanned, and anticipated retirements significantly outnumber potential academy graduating classes.

In 2021, following criticism of her tenure, the Commissioner fought back:

“Am I enough? Absolutely, and some,” she said. “Do I deserve to be here? Absolutely, and some. Did I lead this department in the last year? Absolutely, and some. No police commissioner, chief, superintendent has ever had to deal with what we’ve dealt with in the past year.”

She just doesn’t get it. When your team isn’t winning, excuses don’t matter. When people are pointing out that you haven’t done your job well, then you haven’t done your job well. People who do their jobs well don’t have to tell people about it; everyone already knows.

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↑1 Edited: I had misgoofed and typed 61%, and reader 370H55V I/me/mine caught it for me.
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America’s disastrous Middle Eastern policies under Joe Biden.

Remember when the Democrats were telling us that the election of Joe Biden would usher in a new-found respect for the United States around the world? Remember when we were told by the credentialed media assured us that the end of Donald Trump’s wicked regime and ‘America First’ policies would bring foreign relations back to normalcy?

Yet, as we have previously reported, things have not quite gone as well as we might like. Now, from The Wall Street Journal:

Saudi Officials, Hamas Leaders Set to Meet in Jeddah to Discuss Re-Establishing Ties

A reset would mark a setback for U.S. and Israeli efforts to counter Iranian influence in the Middle East

By Summer Said, Dov Lieber, and Aaron Boxerman | Updated Sundy, April 16, 2023 | 12:55 PM EDT

Senior Saudi officials were planning to meet with leaders of the Palestinian militant and political group Hamas on Sunday to discuss renewing diplomatic ties which have been cool since 2007, part of a diplomacy spree led by Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman that has seen Riyadh move closer to Iran.

In other words, diplomacy at least partly aided by the younger President Bush helped to push the terrorist organization Hamas away from Saudi Arabia, while American diplomacy under President Biden has undone that, and a lot more. Mr Biden took a politically risky trip to visit the Crown Prince in October of 2022, and through either planning or simple ineptitude, managed to insult the Prime Minister in private, and later call him a liar, in public. As the de facto authoritarian ruler of Saudi Arabia, perhaps that wasn’t the wisest idea. A brief description from Wikipedia:

Mohammed rules an authoritarian government. There are no democratic institutions in Saudi Arabia, and elements of repression are evident. Islamic scholars, human rights activists, women’s rights activists, journalists, former insiders, Islamists, and other political dissidents are systematically repressed through tactics including torture and jailing, and some reports have alleged that Mohammed uses a group known as the Tiger Squad to carry out extrajudicial killings. He was personally linked to the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian Washington Post columnist who had criticised the Saudi government, but he has denied involvement in the killing. Mohammed was the architect of Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen which has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis and famine there. His government was also involved in the escalation of the Qatar diplomatic crisis, the 2017 detention of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, a 2018 diplomatic spat with Canada, the arrest of Saudi princes and billionaires in 2017, the 2018–2019 Saudi crackdown on feminists, an alleged phone hack against Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos in 2019, and treason charges against his cousin and rival Muhammad bin Nayef in 2020. Saudi Arabia’s relations with the Biden administration have been strained, especially after Mohammed’s refusal to increase oil production in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman on arriving at Al Yamamah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on December 8. Photo: Saudi Press Agency via AP

Prince Mohammed was hardly well disposed to the United States, and the ideas of Western classical liberalism even prior to being insulted by President Biden, despite a couple of ‘liberalizing’ changes regarding the religious police and restrictions on women. But now the Crown Prince is moving in a direction which directly endangers the fragile not-exactly-peace-but-not-outright-war in the Middle East.

Re-establishing ties between Iran-backed Hamas, which is a U.S. designated terrorist group, and the Saudi kingdom would mark a setback for efforts by the U.S. and Israel to establish a military alliance between Israel and other Sunni-majority countries against Iran and its allies. They also complicate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of normalizing relations with Riyadh, with opposition to Iran as their primary shared interest.

Hamas exists, of course, solely to destroy Israel. While Hamas are also the de facto government in the Gaza Strip area of the Palestinians, an area that Israel completely evacuated under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, their policies have been nothing but resistance and war. When Israel pulled out, in 2005, the Palestinians were given control of the area and the ability to make it into whatever they could. With fabulous beaches, the Palestinians could have turned the area into a warm-water beach resort which would have drawn Europeans, and euros, by the hundreds of thousands.

Instead, they turned it into just another Palestinian base from which to attack Israel, and Israel retains some external control over the 141 mi² territory.

Hamas was invited to the kingdom by Saudi leaders, Hamas officials said. Senior officials are expected to land in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, late Sunday, the officials said. The effort to re-establish ties is being pushed by Iran and Syria, said Saudi officials.

As part of the talks, Hamas officials hope to free scores of Palestinian prisoners held in Saudi Arabia who were imprisoned when the two sides were at odds, according to Saudi officials and a diplomat familiar with the matter.

“We seek relations with all forces in the region and the world, and we have no enmity toward anyone, except for the Zionist enemy,” tweeted Mousa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas official who will be attending the meeting on Sunday.

Jewish voters in the United States normally give around three-quarters of their votes to Democrats; this is what they’ve achieved with that.

Also see: William Teach: Yet Another Ally, Israel, Turns To China

Israel is the only real democracy in the entire area, the only one with a Western civilization culture, one which, though officially Jewish, tolerates Islam and Christianity. Yet we have previously had fairly strong and respectful relations with Saudi Arabia . . . and President Biden has managed to help torpedo that. American policy has been, for decades, the isolation of Iran, but with the Iranian nuclear deal under President Obama, and Mr Biden’s current diplomacy, American Democrats have managed to not just weaken that isolation, but help Iran to gain allies. More, in our attempts to fight Russia in Ukraine, it has pushed Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China into closer ties with Russia.

With Joe Biden as President, you can count on it: things will only get worse.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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The Amazoning of our lives

Having spent my professional career in the ready-mixed concrete industry, working Sundays was extremely rare, but it wasn’t completely unheard of. There was one year in which a company doing some serious work at the Ford assembly plant in Norfolk, while the plant was closed from Christmas through New Year’s Day, wanted concrete every day during that period, including Christmas and New Year’s Day. Being the man who always got the strange work assignments, I was the first plant manager asked to do the work. And yes, despite being salaried, I was paid extra for the Christmas and New Year’s Day shifts.

‘Wolf in sheep’s clothing’? How a USPS worker’s fight over Sunday shifts could change your workplace.

Story by John Fritze, USA TODAY • Saturday, April 15, 2023 • 10:56 PM

Washington — Gerald Groff wanted to spend his Sundays at church. His employer, the U.S. Postal Service, wanted him delivering packages.

That simple dispute between an employee and his managers sparked one of the most significant religious cases to reach the Supreme Court in years – with the potential to shift the balance of power between employees and employers over weekend schedules, dress codes and how workers conduct themselves around colleagues.

Mr Groff, the article states further down, sought work with the USPS precisely because, as Vernon Dursley happily said in Harry Potter: The Sorcerer’s Stone, there’s “No post on Sundays.”

This one is a bit personal for us, because our younger daughter worked for the USPS in Versailles, Kentucky, as a temporary worker; she hadn’t gotten the actual civil service job yet. And yes, as she told me while I am writing this post, Sundays were required because the regular USPS workers refused to do them, but the Amazon contract required Sunday deliveries.

Now, why would USPS workers be working on Sundays? Because the Postal Service signed a contract to deliver packages for Amazon in 2013, and Amazon wanted packages delivered on Sundays. While USPS tried to give workers off at least one day a week, our daughter had to work 23 days straight for the Christmas rush in December if 2017.

The appeal raises a basic question with potentially sweeping consequences: How far must large employers go to accommodate the religious needs of their workers? For Groff, an Evangelical Christian who told his boss in 2017 that he wouldn’t cover Sunday shifts because of his faith, the answer became a personal and painful one.

“I lived under a cloud of thinking any day I could report to work…and then be told that I was terminated,” said Groff, a 45-year-old Pennsylvanian who resigned from the Postal Service in 2019. “Two years of just pretty much every day was tough.”

While his supervisors attempted to accommodate Mr Groff’s needs, they couldn’t always do so, and he wound up having missed 24 scheduled Sundays, and disciplinary actions against him started to mount.

For nearly five decades, similar disputes have been guided by a 1977 Supreme Court decision that allows employers to deny religious requests if they present more than a trivial cost. That standard, Groff’s attorneys say, means companies could decline to alter schedules to account for a sabbath or allow an employee’s religious dress in too many circumstances.

In practice, the government argues, the standard is often read by courts to require employers to accommodate such requests.

So, the feds are arguing that the standard does not need to be changed, because it is often read improperly, as requiring employers to do things which would have met Mr Groff’s religious needs. That’s one strange argument!

Groff is asking the Supreme Court to toss that standard. But his critics fear what the court’s conservative majority might come up with as a replacement. And they’re concerned that new standard could lead to workplace discrimination.

“There’s a huge can of worms that this opens up,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Letting people shift the cost of exercising their religion onto their co-workers in a way that harms their co-workers is the opposite of equality.”

Whenever you hear something from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, you can count on it: their message will be hostile to the free exercise of religion. Taking Rachel Laser’s statement at face value, one can easily make the argument that other accommodations, such as those for pregnant women, or for handicapped employees which require other employees to work harder or longer, would also be “the opposite of equality.” Would Miss Laser and Americans United state that a company could force a black employee to work on Martin Luther King Day, Juneteenth, or Kwanzaa, because not to do so could burden other employees?

The court will hear arguments in Groff v. DeJoy on Tuesday.

Actually, I expect a narrower ruling, because Mr Groff, who was employed by the United States Postal Service, was being required to work for Amazon as well. More, it will depend on what he was told during his pre-employment interview. Was he told about Sunday deliveries for Amazon, and, if he was, was he told that the USPS would work around his religious faith? Did Mr Groff inform the USPS prior to being hired that he could not work on Sundays?

I’m old enough to remember Sunday “Blue Laws,” or Sunday closing laws, which kept many businesses closed. Things which were deemed essential, such as grocery stores and pharmacies and, of course, hospitals, were exempted. Ira P Robbins argued, in 2022, that Sunday closing laws, while held constitutional by the Supreme Court in McGowan v Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961), they have effectively become obsolete, as exceptions to closing laws increased, some states repealed them, and the public wanted to shop on Sundays. Since McGowan turned on the states wanting to provide a day of rest as a societal good independent of religion, with so much of the public declining to take Sunday as anything other than go, go, go, that argument would fail today.

But perhaps it shouldn’t fail. Does Amazon really need to have things delivered on Sunday, and do people really need to have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer or a bird feeder or a new pair of shoes on Sunday? Did we not find out, during the COVID-19 panicdemic, that certain businesses were not only non-essential on Sundays, but for the rest of the week as well?

I thought that the blue laws were kind of silly when I was a teenager. Now, maybe not so much; we can use a day to slow down.

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Did Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth really not know about the Dylan Mulvaney boondoggle?

When your company does something just boneheadedly stupid, always blame a low-level staffer, even if that low-level staffer holds the title Vice President of Marketing.

My good friend, and occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach noted how Anheuser-Busch is trying to backtrack away from the idiocy of using ‘transgender activist’ Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesthing:

Anheuser-Busch CEO Realizes They Really Messed Up, Issues Statement Which Pleased No One

By William Teach | Saturday, April 15, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT

Brendan Whitworth must have taken a look at the plummeting stock, and, more importantly, the plummeting sales, and decided to do a little damage control:

Anheuser-Busch CEO Issues Statement After Dylan Mulvaney Beer Can Scandal: ‘We Never Intended to Be Part of a Discussion that Divides People’

Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a mea culpa Friday in the wake of the company’s partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, a former gay man who now claims to be a woman.

The move sparked backlash across the nation as the company became the latest to focus on woke social issues — namely, the radical left’s attempts to promote woke gender ideology into society by injecting it into schools and placing it on the forefront of favorite brands in corporate America. According to reports, Anheuser-Busch lost more than $6 billion in market value following its promotional campaign with the transgender TikTok star as tensions rose and boycotts ensued.

On Friday, Whitworth issued a statement, contending that the company “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.”

Translation: “We were f(ornicating) clueless!”

Anheuser-Busch is headquartered in St Louis, and the Missouri state legislature has been fighting over proposed legislation to prohibit ‘transition’ quackery for minors; did no one there read the St Louis Post-Dispatch? Does no one there pay any attention to the local news broadcasts?

The St Louis Dispatch, rescued from bankruptcy by Joseph Pulitzer in 1878, and merged with John Dillon’s St Louis Post, to become the Post and Dispatch, soon the Post-Dispatch quickly became the city’s most important newspaper, and eventually the largest in the region. It’s a regional newspaper that no one can ignore, and if the paper’s editorial position appears to support ‘gender affirming care,’ the newspaper publishes a fair amount of coverage of the political fight over it. Local television stations also cover the topic.

The leadership of Anheuser-Busch can’t not have known that this is a controversial topic, even if some, or all, of them come down on the side of transgenderism stupidity, even if some, or all, of them swallow the whole idea not just hook, line, and sinker, but all the way up to deep throat the rod-and-reel. But someone in the company decided to make Mr Mulvaney the face of Bud Light advertising.

So far, that decision has been attributed to Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, who said she had a mandate to keep America’s best-selling beer from losing customers, to expand its customer base.

I’m a businesswoman, I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand there will be no future for Bud Light.

Advertisers have been doing that for decades. We began to see ads including minorities in the 1970s, and many, many ads these days show groups of people who are racially integrated, in an attempt to appeal to all races and ethnicities and show growing friendship. The New York Times was reporting on an increase in interracial couples being shown in advertising five years ago.

But Dylan Mulvaney? He’s not just claiming to be a ‘transgender girl,’ but his shtick is actual mockery of the whole notion; rather than trying to fit in as a woman, his act is one which is a wholly over-the-top of every silly stereotype there is. Mrs Heinerscheid, who is a graduate of Harvard University, was either too clueless or too stupid to see that using Mr Mulvaney as a brand spokesthing would cause a backlash, or she just plain didn’t care, and wanted to use her position to push an agenda, when her job is to sell more beer.

I’ve got to ask: did Chief Executive Officer Whitworth really not know about Mrs Heinerscheid’s brilliant idea? It’s not as though a lot of other people didn’t know: television commercials had to be produced, cans with Mr Mulvaney’s picture were made, checks were cut, contracts signed, all of which involves people, a lot of people, people including attorneys.

We don’t know if Mrs Heinerscheid will be, as Mr Teach suggested, promoted to customer, but something like this would seem to fall well into the category of a Career Limiting Mistake. A corporate Vice President, coming up with an idea as controversial as this one, would normally protect himself by taking it up the ladder, crediting himself with the decision but getting feedback from his bosses.

Yet Mr Whitworth is distancing himself from Mrs Heinerscheid’s decisions. That’s kind of what some people would do when something like this blows up in their faces, leaving Mrs Heinerscheid twisting in the wind.

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If you’re scared, say you’re scared! But don't be afraid of stupid stuff.

That things get stupid following a mass shooting, such as the one in Louisville, or school shooting like the one in Nashville, is expected. But there’s a point at which stupidity gets squared. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Parents say Bala Cynwyd fifth graders texted about who should be shot in the next school shooting

“Everyday i think of school shootings and hope the most people die,” one student wrote, according to a screenshot of an exchange shared by two parents.

by Maddie Hanna | Friday, April 14, 2023

Three weeks ago, parents say fifth graders at Bala Cynwyd Middle School had a conversation over text about school shootings.

Bala Cynwyd is not exactly a depressed area. The mean household income is $128,94574.9% of residents 25 or older have at least a baccalaureate degree, 76.8% of homes are occupied by their owners with a median value of $568,200. 77.1% of the population are non-Hispanic whites.

These aren’t disadvantaged kids stuck in a rotten school. Unlike the disasters that Philadelphia Mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty champions, Bala Cynwyd Middle School ranks 8th best out of 877 middle schools in Pennsylvania, with 87% of students ranked as grade-level proficient in reading, and 71% in math.

“Everyday i think of school shootings and hope the most people die,” one student wrote, according to a screenshot of the exchange shared by two parents. The exchange continued: “I hope the following people will get shot,” before listing names that were blacked out.

The parents who provided the exchange to the Inquirer said they knew who the listed names were — because one was their child.

The Lower Merion School District has not informed most parents of the details of the incident — referring in a message to the community Thursday to “text messages that included threatening language.”

Lower Merion police assisted the district in investigating, “and concluded that no credible threat to the safety of the school community ever existed related to those text messages,” Acting Superintendent Megan Shafer said in the message Thursday.

I turn 70 in just a few more days, but I can still remember some of the [insert slang term for feces here] that my classmates and I said when we were middle school aged. Sixth, seventh, and eighth graders aren’t exactly the type for serious plotting.

To reach that conclusion, Shafer said the district followed its threat assessment process — using a model developed by University of Virginia researchers involving “multiple data points” and “various staff members and outside agencies, including law enforcement when indicated.”

That isn’t assurance enough, said the parents who spoke to the Inquirer, who asked not to be named to protect the anonymity of their child. They said other parents were similarly frustrated following a town hall Wednesday night with Shafer and Bala Cynwyd’s principal, Jeffrey Hunter, during which the parents said administrators disclosed that students involved in sending the messages would be allowed to return to school Monday.

“If you’re going to deem this to not be a credible threat …there still needs to be a little more transparency as to why parents should feel safe with these children being readmitted,” one of the parents said.

Paranoia much?

Look, I get it: with all of the sensationalized stories in the media, some parents are just panicked. But just a little bit of self-awareness, of remembering the [insert slang term for feces here] that they said when they were those ages, ought to bring them to the realization that middle schoolers just say stuff, silly stuff, and stupid stuff. Heck, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades are when kids are going through puberty, and that only increases the stupidity.

Our society has been permeated with fear, oftentimes unreasoning fear. Don’t give in to fear.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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More than a slap on the wrist, but not much more, for killing someone

We have twice previously reported on Eyvette Hunter, 52, a registered nurse accused of murdering 97-year-old James Morris. Well, she’s now pleaded guilty, but she’s not going to spend the rest of her miserable life behind bars.

Lexington nurse pleads guilty after death of a 97-year-old patient

by Taylor Six | Thursday, April 13, 2023 | 9:36 AM EDT | Updated: 408 PM EDT

Eyvette Hunter, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A Lexington nurse who was charged with killing a patient has pleaded guilty to manslaughter after she was initially charged with murder.

Eyvette Hunter, 52, pleaded guilty Wednesday after participating in court-ordered mediation. She was accused of killing 97-year-old patient James Morris, who police said died as a result of Hunter’s intentional medical maltreatment. Morris died May 5 after Hunter’s actions a few days prior.

Hunter faces five years in prison for the amended charge of manslaughter, according to court documents. She was originally expected to stand trial June 12. Her sentencing is scheduled at 9 a.m. June 8 with Fayette Circuit Judge Thomas Travis.

Hunter’s attorney, Daniel Whitley, said her case was troubling on multiple levels and said she was used as a “scapegoat” for negligence of the hospitals.

“What I have learned about the criminal justice system, prosecutors can make anyone a murderer,” Whitley said. “When you are facing 20 (years) to life in prison, you sometimes have no other choice but to resolve your case and take a lesser charge even though you are innocent.”

Read more here.

Naturally her attorney is going to claim that Miss Hunter is just an innocent victim in all of this, but he believed that his case was winnable, believed that the commonwealth didn’t have the evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, wouldn’t he have advised his client to go to trial instead?

But my question is: why was Miss Hunter allowed to plead down to KRS §507.040(1)(c) second degree manslaughter, a Class C felony, and apparently, allow the minimum sentence? Under KRS §532.060, the penalty for a Class C felony is “not less than five (5) years nor more than ten (10) years” in prison.

Let’s be clear about this: she killed someone! And she’s getting off with, if more than a slap on the wrist, not a lot more considering her crime.

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The left combitch about #gerrymandering, but Democrats have gerrymandered themselves into small areas

The New York Times usually does decent reporting, but on occasion, not so much. In what is touted as a straight news article, the Times veered off into editorializing:

If Tennessee’s Legislature Looks Broken, It’s Not Alone

State legislatures around the country — plagued by partisan division, uncompetitive races and gerrymandering — reflect the current pressures on democracy.

by Michael Wines | Thursday, April 13, 2023 | 3:54 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — There are 99 legislators in the Tennessee House of Representatives, the body that voted on Thursday to expel two of its Democratic members for leading an anti-gun protest in the chamber.

Sixty of them had no opponent in last November’s election.

Of the remaining House races, almost none were competitive. Not a single seat flipped from one party to the other.

“We’re just not in a normal political system,” said Kent Syler, a political science professor and expert on state politics at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. “In a normal two-party system, if one party goes too far, usually the other party stops them. They put the brakes on.”

In Tennessee, he said, “there’s nobody to put on the brakes.”

And not just in Tennessee.

Nationwide, candidates for roughly four of every 10 state legislative seats run unopposed in general elections.

And across the country, one-party control of state legislatures, compounded by hyperpartisan politics, widespread gerrymandering, an urban-rural divide and uncompetitive races, has made the dysfunction in Tennessee more the rule than the exception.

It took reporter Michael Wines eight paragraphs to get down to the word he wanted to use, ‘gerrymandering.’ Mr Wines wants readers to think that evil reich-wing Republicans are being just unfair!

But look at the county-by-county map of the Volunteer State in the 2020 presidential election. There are 95 counties in Tennessee, and Joe Biden carried exactly three of them. Mr Biden didn’t carry a single county in the eastern half of the state, regions 1 and 2 as defined by the state Department of Transportation. Even Knox County, where the University of Tennessee is located, was carried by President Trump, 124,540 (56.47%) to 91,422 (41.45%). Of the three counties carried by Mr Biden, one, Haywood, is relatively small, and is one of the two counties which have a majority of the population being black. The other two, Davidson (Nashville) and Shelby (Memphis) are large, urban areas. The last time a Republican won Davidson County was 1988, and even in 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, Davidson County was carried by the Democrat, with a whopping 59.08% of the vote.

In 2020, President Trump won 1,852,475 votes, 60.66% of the total, from Tennesseans, compared to 1,143,711, or 37.45%, for Mr Biden. If Republicans have a super-majority in the Tennessee state legislature, it’s because Democrats have gerrymandered themselves, being heavily concentrated in three counties. There’s no way to apportion districts, other than some minor adjustments at the margin, to help Democrats very much.

The 2018 Senate election, 2018 gubernatorial election, 2020 Senate election, and 2022 gubernatorial election, all statewide races and thus not subject to gerrymandering by anybody, all showed the same thing: heavy Republican victories, with the same three counties being the only ones carried by the Democratic candidate. In the 2022 gubernatorial campaign, incumbent Republican even carried Haywood County, albeit by a small margin.

We have previously documented the same type of thing in Kentucky, where a liberal Lexington Herald-Leader columnist whined that “gerrymandered political districts do not represent the will of the people”, but the state legislative and congressional results fairly accurately represented the actual votes of Kentuckians.

Pennsylvania is a great example of the problem: in 2020, Joe Biden carried the Keystone State by 80,555 votes, 3,458,229 (50.01%) to 3,377674 (48.84%), but only because he carried Philadelphia 603,790 (81.44%) to 132,740 (17.90%), a margin of 471,050 votes. Without Philly, Mr Trump would have carried the Keystone State 3,244,935 (52.56%) to 2,854,439 (46.23%). The Democratic vote has effectively gerrymandered itself, concentrating in major cities, smaller geographical areas, while sensible people are more likely to live in more suburban and rural areas.

In the 2004 elections, President George W Bush got zero votes in five Philadelphia precincts; John Kerry won twenty congressional districts by greater percentages than Mr Bush’s best district, yet President Bush won nationwide 62,040,610 (50.73%) to 59,028,444 (48.27%). In 2008, John McCain got zero votes in a whopping 57 city precincts, and four years later, Mitt Romney was blanked in 59 precincts. The Philadelphia Inquirer, of course, could find no evidence of fraud in any of this, but it points out a fact that everyone knows, but the Democrats just don’t want to talk about: Democrats, and Democrat votes, are very heavily concentrated in our major cities. At 142.7 square miles, out of Pennsylvania’s 46,055 mi², 0.31% of the state’s total area, how would you redistrict Philadelphia to not gerrymander the state of Pennsylvania?

Oddly enough, we don’t seem to see the left whining about gerrymandering in states like New York and California, where Republicans don’t have much of a chance.

But it is Republican-run states, many experts say, that are taking extreme positions on limiting voting and bending or breaking other democratic norms, as Tennessee did in expelling two lawmakers last week.

Perhaps Mr Wines has forgotten that congressional Democrats wanted to expel Republican members who they claim supported the Capitol kerfuffle, and probably would have, if they had a strong enough majority. While I disapprove of the Tennessee House expelling the two Democrat members — both of whom have been reappointed by their local governments pending special elections — this is an example of what goes around, comes around.

It’s simple: with accepted rules for drawing legislative districts calling for as close as is reasonably practical in the number of residents and that districts should be contiguous and at least reasonably compact, and cities in which Democrats have huge percentage advantages, there aren’t that many ways to draw district boundaries reasonably which don’t pack Democrats into a smaller number of districts, unless a state is heavily Democratic as a whole.

So when you hear about the left combitching — yes, I created that word myself, and the etymology ought to be obvious 🙂 — about gerrymandering, remember: they did it to themselves.
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Shocking! Who could ever have predicted this? Get woke, go broke?

I have said before that I don’t see Dylan Mulvaney as an actual ‘transgender’ woman; his act, “Days of Girlhood,” is so much a parody, so different from how actual girls act, that it’s difficult to take him seriously. Of course, the dummkopf from Delaware did, as President Biden actually sat down for an interview with Mr Mulvaney. Is there any Catholic doctrine that our purportedly Catholic President won’t trash?

Nike hired Mr Mulvaney to sell sports bras when he has “nothing to put in the sports bra, when actually it’s really important women get proper support when they do sport,” 1980 women’s Olympic silver medalist Sharron Davis said.

Anheuser-Busch somehow thought that it would be an absolutely groovy cool idea to use Mr Mulvaney to sell Bud Light beer!

Bud Light Distributors Fear Unemployment After Beer Sales Plummet Over Dylan Mulvaney Partnership

Story by Haley Gunn • Tuesday, April 11, 2023 • 8:30 PM

Anheuser-Busch distributors have begun to fear for their jobs after Bud Light sales in the Midwest and South plummeted following the beer’s new sponsorship with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, RadarOnline.com has learned.

News of Mulvaney’s partnership with the popular beer sparked controversy online. Conservative celebrities like Kid Rock took to social media to post their outrage at the brand. Critics accused the brands partnering with the TikTok star of going “woke.”

Frenzy surrounding Bud Light, which is owned by Anheuser-Busch, reached new heights when a man, who claimed to be an affiliate distributor of the beer, posted his grievances on Twitter.

There’s more at the original.

Budweiser beers had already seen slumping sales, so perhaps this was a ‘Hail Mary’ pass attempt. Whatever it was, it seems to have fallen as flat as an open can of beer:

Also read: William Teach: What A Shame: Anheuser-Busch Sees $6 Billion Loss After Trans Stunt

Anheuser-Busch distributors in the South were “spooked” by the widespread backlash Bud Light received after teaming up with transgender social media star Dylan Mulvaney.

The intense opposition to Mulvaney promoting the beer has been alarming to Anheuser-Busch distributors, which placed fewer orders after the partnership sparked outrage from conservatives who argued the company is pushing “gender propaganda,” according to a Beer Business Daily report reviewed by Fox News.

“We reached out to a handful of A-B [Anheuser-Busch] distributors who were spooked, most particularly in the Heartland and the South, and even then in their more rural areas,” the popular beer industry trade publication wrote.

Beer Business Daily said it assessed the situation “purely from a marketing and sales perspective,” noting that current data are very limited but “it appears likely Bud Light took a volume hit in some markets over the holiday weekend” since rural customers are also most likely to celebrate Easter.

“Whether it lasts or whether the publicity sparks incremental off-setting demand from over the ideological divide in metro areas, remains to be seen,” the publication wrote, adding that it will be difficult for Bud Light to “appeal to the sensitivities of a new generation of drinkers” without offending some longtime customers.

It’s too early to know if the slump in sales will continue, but companies use celebrities and athletes to advertise their products because they are hoping for some form of audience identification with the celebrity or athlete. Nike’s sports bra is pretty much the same as any other manufacturer’s sports bra; will using a flat-chested male-in-drag. While Mr Mulvaney has ‘famously’ had ‘facial feminization surgery,’ at least as of a few months ago had not had been castrated or had ‘bottom’ surgery or breast augmentation done. How does that sell sports bras? Does making Mr Mulvaney the ‘face’ of Bud Light really appeal to the vast majority of beer drinkers as someone with whom they’d want to identify?

I cannot boycott Bud Light, or Budweiser beer, or any of Anheuser-Busch’s other products, because I never bought them in the first place, but Bud Light was the nation’s number one beer by sales. Perhaps other beers which taste great but are less filling, whatever the heck that means, will supplant Bud Light, or perhaps they won’t.

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“Claims she has a bad back”

Her job is riding a desk. Is she bed-ridden? Is she hospitalized? Is she too doped up on pain meds to work from her La-Z-Boy? Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is off of work with a back injury.

Police Commissioner Outlaw is out for a month with a back injury after a car crash

Outlaw suffered a back injury in a car accident on March 29. She’s been out of work since and hopes to return in about two weeks, officials said.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is expected to be out of work for about a month after suffering a back injury in a motor-vehicle crash two weeks ago, the department said Tuesday.

Outlaw was injured on the afternoon of March 29, after her police SUV collided with an Uber driver at 15th and Race Streets.

The commissioner suffered “injuries to her back” during the collision and has been out of work since, said department spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp.

“She is recovering and hopes to be back to work in approximately two weeks,” he said.

There’s more at the original.

Back injuries are no fun, to be sure, but can’t Miss Outlaw do some of her work from a recliner? If she can’t sit at her desk, is there no hospital-type desk that she could use? Are there no phones that she could use, no computers that she could access?

The cop-hating incoming Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, will have to select a new Police Superintendent now that David Brown has resigned; he was going to be fired anyway. May I suggest that Miss Outlaw get the job? Anything, just get her out of Philly!

The City of Brotherly Love is in the middle of a four-year-long crime wave, but the Commissioner, and perhaps you could read this with the same voice and inflection Tony Joe White did in Polk Salad Annie, “claims she has a bad back.”