Category Archives: Culture

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Killadelphia: Did Teryn Johnson ever have a chance?

Even though I no longer live in the Keystone State, The Philadelphia Inquirer is my favorite newspaper — the Lexington Herald-Leader is the closest thing I have to a local newspaper, but it’s absolutely pathetic — because the Inky has a lot more news coverage, but also reports on the culture of America’s poorest big city in a way that the editors might not realize that it does. I have reported, several times, on the newspaper deliberately concealing facts.

This story doesn’t conceal any facts of which I am aware, but when I read it, I saw the unreported on culture that underlies it.

Halim Evans, mugshot via Philly’s Most Wanted.

A teen wouldn’t get an abortion. So her boyfriend hired his cousin to kill her, prosecutors say.

It’s a case that even the accused killer’s defense attorney said was “just about as bad as we see in Philadelphia, and we see a lot of horrific things.”

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, October 10, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

Halim Evans didn’t want any more children.

So when the then-20-year-old learned that his girlfriend was pregnant, he told her there was only one option.

“We gotta get the abortion jawn,” Evans texted Teryn Johnson, 17, in July 2022. “I ain’t ready for no more kids.”

Johnson made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy, and later told him she was no longer pregnant. But she didn’t go through with it, and when Evans found out, prosecutors say, he hired his cousin to kill her.

Qasim Pointer, mugshot via Philly’s Most Wanted.

There’s a lot more at the original, but no, of course the Inquirer didn’t include the mugshots of the alleged perpetrators, but it didn’t take much effort to find them.

When Mr Evans found out that Miss Johnson was out of the house, walking her dog, he allegedly called his cousin, Qasim Pointer, and told him where to find her. Mr Pointer and Mr Evans other cousin then — again allegedly — drove a stolen Dodge Challenger to Frankford, and spotted the victim. They trailed the victim, and Mr Pointer then jumped out and shot Miss Johnson twice in the back, killing her and her unborn child. I have omitted direct quotes of how the Philadelphia Police put together the evidence, but this part is important:

In a series of recorded conversations, Pointer and his brother, who is serving a 70-year sentence for murder in Maryland, laid out the motive for the crime, (Homicide Detective Robert)Daly said.

“Bro, our cuz … he been dropping babies like motherf— flies bro,” Pointer said on Sept. 7. “He dropping babies like flies but one of them he trying to trim up so I … I mean, I don’t condone this … but like, for that paper I would do it bro.”

“(P)aper” means cash in this instance.

Here is the underlying culture part: the distinguished Mr Evans had “been dropping babies like motherf— flies,” which means that he had been f(ornicating) and knocking up other women, women being plural, and that was part of the street culture in which he lived. Though the newspaper article does not specify it, he didn’t want Miss Johnson to have her baby, I assume because he didn’t want to pay child support. He had a cousin who was willing to commit murder for “paper,” and another who is a convicted murderer in Maryland.

Life meant nothing to these people!

Of course, these guys were all as dumb as a box of rocks, because they were making calls to a man in prison, and everyone knows that those calls can be recorded.

It took more than a year for Pointer’s preliminary hearing to go forward because he was in custody in Delaware for committing a separate shooting. He pleaded guilty to assault and illegal gun possession in that case, Pope said, and was sentenced to 12 years.

Yeah, these guys aren’t exactly models of classy citizenship! And here’s more of the cultural problem:

Johnson’s grandmother agonizes over a hope for justice for her baby, whom she raised from the age of 3. Johnson’s mother struggled with addiction before dying of a fentanyl overdose in October 2021, Waters said, and her father spent most of her childhood in prison.

Despite years of therapy, those traumas affected Johnson’s decisions and personal relationships, Waters said. She struggled with school, and often found herself surrounded by friends and boyfriends who weren’t always looking out for her best interests, her grandmother said.

Did young Miss Johnson ever have a chance in life? Her mother was a long-term junkie — I refuse to use reporter Ellie Rushing’s mealy-mouthed “struggled with addiction” — and her father is a criminal. At age 17, and possibly younger — the age of consent is 16 in Pennsylvania — she was running with a bad crowd; that’s what she “often found herself surrounded by friends and boyfriends who weren’t always looking out for her best interests” means.

The final paragraphs of Miss Rushing’s story tell readers that young Miss Johnson was a good, strong-willed, and independent girl. She was described in glowing terms by the grandmother who was responsible for rearing her. But she was also running with a bad crowd, and had been f(ornicating) a bad guy from a bad family. It would take an absolute [insert slang term for the anus here] to say that she was at least in part responsible for her own killing, but I can live with that epithet; sometimes you have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here] to tell the unvarnished truth, and the unvarnished truth here is that there is a terrible culture in some parts of the City of Brotherly Love, and Miss Johnson participated in it.

Would Miss Johnson be alive and happy today if she had grown up with two decent parents in Chestnut Hill or University City . . . or Jim Thorpe? That’s something only God can answer, and he didn’t tell me what that answer is. But the truth is that the rotten culture where she grew up, and which she at least partly embraced, greatly decreased the probabilities that she’d grow up healthy and happy and a credit to society. And that’s a truth which has to be told.

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October 6, 2023: a day of peace. The next morning in Israel would be a red dawn.

On Friday, October 6, 2023, Israel was not in open warfare with Hamas or Hezbollah. On Friday, October 6, 2023, Israelis were going about their business. At sundown, on Friday, October 6, 2023, observant Jews were beginning their Sabbath celebrations.

On Sunday, October 6, 2024, Catholics around the world were listening to parts of Psalm 128:

5 – The Lord bless you from Zion: may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life;
6 – May you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, terrorists from Hamas broke through the gates between Gaza and Israel proper, and went on a rampage of rape, murder, kidnapping, and mayhem. It was still the Sabbath in Israel.

As a terrorist surprise attack, it was wildly successful. 1,195 Israelis were killed, 815 of whom were civilians, and 251 people were seized as hostages. Many Israelis were wounded, and the ‘Palestinians’ used rape and serial rape as instruments of torture and terror.

Yet, for the ‘Palestinians,’ October 7, 2023, was a massive failure. None of the bordering nations came to Hamas’ aid, though Iran, a thousand miles away, kept sending weapons, and Hezbollah, not a nation but a terrorist group of Iranian puppets, tried to join in. Much of Gaza is in ruins, thousands upon thousands of homes destroyed, dozens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, all due to a war Hamas started but couldn’t finish.

Israel is not done. Gaza is still being pounded, and the Israel Defense Force has now focused on Hezbollah in the north. Almost all of Hezbollah’s leaders have been sent to Jahannam, and many of their fighters killed or wounded. Parts of Hamas leadership have also been sent to their eternal rewards, while Yahya Sinwar, who planned the October 7th attack has been stuck in underground shelters in Gaza.

Hamas Leader Is Holding Out for a Bigger War, U.S. Officials Say

Yahya Sinwar is increasingly fatalistic, has blocked a cease-fire deal and, so far, been frustrated that Hezbollah and Iran have not come to his aid, officials said.

By Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman, and Edward Wong | October 4, 2024

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

The leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, has become fatalistic after nearly a year of war in Gaza and is determined to see Israel embroiled in a wider regional conflict, U.S. officials said.Mr. Sinwar has long believed he will not survive the war, a view that has hindered negotiations to secure the release of hostages seized by his group in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.

His attitude has hardened in recent weeks, U.S. officials say, and American negotiators now believe that Hamas has no intention of reaching a deal with Israel.

What “deal” could be reached? Hamas have only one point of strength, and that is the hostages. If they surrender the remaining hostages, many of whom are already dead, they have no leverage at all.

But Israel has learned from past wars: whenever they grant the Muslims a ceasefire before the terrorist groups, or, in some cases, actual Arab armies, have been fully destroyed, they slowly reconstitute themselves, and a next generation of boys grow into men and want to take up the fight. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows this, and that’s why he is determined to destroy Hamas once are for all.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has also rejected proposals in the negotiations and added positions that have complicated the talks. U.S. officials assess that he is mainly concerned about his political survival and might not think a cease-fire in Gaza is in his interests.

Well, yes, of course The New York Times and the liberals in the State Department are going to try to put the blame on Mr Netanyahu. But, as the Times previously reported:

As an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Sinwar masterminded a strategy that he knew would provoke a ferocious Israeli response. But in Hamas’s calculus, the deaths of many Palestinian civilians — who do not have access to Hamas’s subterranean tunnels — were the necessary cost of upending the status quo with Israel.

American and Israeli intelligence agencies have spent months assessing Mr. Sinwar’s motivations, according to people briefed on the intelligence. Analysts in both the United States and Israel believe that Mr. Sinwar is primarily motivated by a desire to take revenge on Israel and weaken it. The well-being of the Palestinian people or the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intelligence analysts say, appears to be secondary.

The distinguished Mr Sinwar is very much like Adolf Hitler in his Führerbunker, waiting for the last, and refusing to surrender to save Germany from near total destruction.

On 28 April, Hitler learned that Reichsführet-SS Heinrich Himmler was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies through Count Folke Bernadotte, and Hitler considered this treason.

How is that any different from what the crazy-eyed head of Hamas is doing? He knows that he’s a dead man, and that his dreams of the ‘frontline’ Arab nations attacking Israel are nothing but fantasy, but if he cared anything, anything at all, about the people for whose liberation he is supposedly fighting, he’d not only surrender himself, and Hamas, but should have done that months ago.

This is being published at 6:30 PM EDT in the United States, which is half-past midnight in Israel. At this time a year ago, innocent Israelis were mostly in bed, living in the peace that they had. When the morning sun arose on October 7th, it would be a red dawn.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer conceals a truth that everyone already knows Is the Inky actually perpetuating a stereotype it wishes to avoid?

This site has reported, many times, on how The Philadelphia Inquirer censors the news, at the direction of published Elizabeth “Lisa” Hughes. Miss Hughes told us that “racial justice” concerns will be considered in the newspaper’s “crime and criminal justice coverage.”

Teen critically wounded in shooting on SEPTA bus in North Philly

The shooting occurred on Allegheny Avenue near Third Street, police said. Some gunshots hit the engine area and disabled the bus.

by Robert Moran and Earl Hopkins | Friday, October 4, 2024 | 9:47 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, October 5, 2024 | 2:33 PM EDT

A 17-year-old was critically wounded in a shooting on a SEPTA bus Friday night in North Philadelphia, police said.

The shooting occurred just after 6:15 p.m. on Allegheny Avenue near Third Street, police said. The teen was taken by private vehicle to Temple University Hospital, where he was listed in critical but stable condition with several gunshot wounds, including to the face, police said Saturday.

The suspected shooter, described as a male wearing all-black clothing, got off the bus and fled in a silver Kia, which was located and pursued by police until it crashed at Fifth Street and Glenwood Avenue, said Inspector D.F. Pace. One person in the Kia ran from the car and was apprehended, according to video of the chase, but another remained at large, police said.

Based on a preliminary investigation, police said an altercation between several males on the bus likely led to the shooting near Allegheny Avenue and Fifth Street. The bus had several bullet holes, and spent shell casings were found on the highway in the 300 block of West Allegheny Avenue, so investigators are looking into the possibility of some shots fired outside the bus, Pace said.

There’s more at the original.

I noticed as soon as I read it: the “suspected shooter” was “described as a male wearing all-black clothing”. He wasn’t described as a white male, or an Hispanic male, or an Asian male, but just a male. And I was 99.44% certain that meant that the “suspected shooter” is a black male. The victim was described only as a “17-year-old,” but the Inquirer does tell us that he was male, through the use of the masculine pronouns.[1]Since, in English grammar, the masculine subsumes the feminine, the masculine pronouns are used when the sex of the person to which they refer are unknown, so that does not tell us, technically … Continue reading

But the reporters knew: the Philadelphia Police Department released a crime notification to the media, which Fox 29 News reporter Steve Keeley duplicated at 7:18 PM Friday evening, 2½ hours before the newspaper’s original story, which stated that the victim is a black male. And NBC 10 News reported last night that the suspect was a black male.

Let’s tell the truth here: when violent crime is reported in the City of Brotherly Love, people who hear about it automatically assume that the perpetrators are black. And, in the majority of cases, they are.

But not all of the bad guys in Philly are black, and when the Inky deliberately conceals the race of suspects and victims, is the newspaper not contributing to the stereotype that they are all black?

The Inquirer is privately owned, by the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, and absolutely has the right to print what it wishes, and not publicize what it wants to keep quiet. But it ought to be asked just how much journalist respect we can have for a newspaper that censors the news for political purposes.

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↑1 Since, in English grammar, the masculine subsumes the feminine, the masculine pronouns are used when the sex of the person to which they refer are unknown, so that does not tell us, technically speaking, that the victim is male, but I also know that the newspaper’s reporters are too grammatically illiterate to realize that and use pronouns thus.
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When the Jew haters tell you who they are, believe them! "Students for Justice in Palestine" could have protested at Israeli consulate, but chose to protest at Jewish center

This poor site, along with literally hundreds of others, has covered the pro-‘Palestinian, really pro-Hamas ‘demonstrations’ on our college campuses last spring. I did note, with some pleasure, that at least at my alma mater, the University of Kentucky, the protests were carried out the way the First Amendment, which guarantees to all of us both the freedom of speech and the right of peaceable assembly, contemplated, peaceably.

Sadly, many of the pro-savages demonstrations at other schools were not entirely peaceable. But I did gloat report on those demonstrations fading away when school was out for the summer.

Well, it’s a new school year — though October seems like this article is a bit late — and the Usual Suspects have been up to their old tricks. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Temple suspends pro-Palestinian student group; Muslim advocates call to investigate police over alleged hijab removal during campus protest

CAIR is calling for an investigation after Temple University’s handling of a protest, where they say a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab.

by Max Marin and Robert Moran | Wednesday, October 2, 2024 | 2:02 PM EDT | Updated: 6:37 PM EDT

Temple University has temporarily banned Students for Justice in Palestine from operating on campus, the latest in a wave of suspensions against pro-Palestinian student groups amid sustained protests against the war in Gaza.

The move comes after police detained four SJP members, including a Temple student, during a demonstration that interrupted an on-campus career fair last week.

So, the “Students for Justice in Palestine” demonstration was not peaceable in nature, but interrupted a meeting to help more sensible students at Temple who were looking to begin their professional careers after graduation. You know, the sensible thing to do after spending a boatload of money for a university education.

Muslim community leaders are calling for an investigation into the university’s handling of that protest after a Philadelphia police officer allegedly removed a Muslim protester’s hijab and detained the woman without access to her religious head covering.

If that happened, and I will never believe claims by “Muslim community leaders” without outside corroboration, it would have been because the woman was resisting arrest.

While Temple did not cite that specific incident, a university spokesperson said in a statement that the interim suspension stemmed from “recent conduct,” and the student activist group is now forbidden from holding on-campus activities, including “meetings, social and philanthropic events.” The suspension was first reported by the Temple News.

The spokesperson pointed to the university’s on-campus demonstration guidelines that are “in place to ensure the safety and well-being of community members while also encouraging and preserving freedom of expression.” . . . .

This is not the group’s first brush with university leaders. Temple president Richard Englert denounced an SJP-led demonstration in August after protesters chanted outside a Jewish student center on campus.

In a statement, Englert threatened disciplinary action against students who participated in the rally, which he described as a form of “intimidation and harassment.” The pro-Palestinian student group pushed back against Englert’s comments, arguing in a post on social media that the president “distorted our message to serve the false narrative that Temple SJP is a threat to Temple.”

No, I suppose that the pro-barbarian students wouldn’t see accosting Jewish students outside of a known Jewish student gathering place as “intimidation and harassment,” but the Jews on campus certainly would have, and did:

Temple University says it is investigating a student pro-Palestinian demonstration held outside a Jewish center on campus

“Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated,” Temple’s president said.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, August 29, 2024 | 10:40 PM EDT

Temple University said it is investigating for possible disciplinary action a pro-Palestinian march by students and nonstudents who demonstrated outside a Jewish center on campus Thursday.

The protest march began at the Charles Library, said Temple University president Richard Englert in a statement, then some demonstrators went to the Rosen Center, which is the home at Temple of Hillel, an international organization for Jewish students.

“While there, the demonstrators used megaphones to chant directly at the occupants within the building,” Englert said.

Emphasis mine. Using megaphones to chant directly at the people in the Hillel Center, the majority of who could be assumed to be Jewish, would constitute targeted ethnic and religious harassment.

“We are deeply saddened and concerned by these events,” Englert said. “Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated.”

This was clearly a protest against Jews in general, not just Israeli policy, as the “Students for Justice in Palestine” have conflated the two. Not all Jews are Israelis, and at an American college 5,774 miles away from Israel, it’s virtually certain that most of the Jews on campus at Temple are not from Israel.

There is an Israeli consulate in Philadelphia, at 1880 John F. Kennedy Blvd, which is just 2.6 miles away from the Hillel Center, at 1441 West Norris Street, pretty much of a straight march down Broad Street, though, admittedly, marching that way takes you partly into the Philadelphia Badlands. If the SJP wanted to protest Israeli government policies specifically, they could have been protesting outside the consulate; instead they were harassing people they knew to be Jooooos.

Temple’s actions won’t stop the SJP from existing; all it does is ban them as a student organization and deny them use of Temple’s facilities.

Our First Amendment was written by civilized men, with civilized behavior in mind; they cited “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”. It does not protect some right to harass others, or gather in mobs, or riot.

But the pro-‘Palestinian’ people in this country, and around the world, are not truly civilized men. They might think that they are, but they are supporting the barbarism of Hamas, they are supporting the antithesis of the Western civilization, the benefits of which they enjoy.  The “Students for Justice in Palestine” have a right to exist, and to protest peacefully; it’s only when the break the code of civilization that they become subject to arrest.

The one thing they do not have is any right to the respect of decent people, and for them, I have none. When the anti-Semites tell you who they really are, you should believe them!

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Killadelphia Yes, homicide is significantly down, but still more than thrice that of the rest of the Commonwealth

It was March 16, 2022, when this poor site noted liberal Philadelphia magazine reporter Victor Fiorillo‘s story about how applications for concealed carry permits had skyrocketed. He had expected an increase, following the 562 officially reported murders in the City of Brotherly Love, but “wasn’t exactly ready for just how big this increase has been.”

Mr Fiorillo doesn’t like Fox 29 News reporter Steve Keeley’s reports on crime in the city, just as WHYY reporter Cherri Gregg, who said his reporting “definitely makes me cringe,” while Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong “wrote on Facebook: ‘His Twitter feed is also disturbing.'”

So, @phillyvictor, Mr Fiorillo’s Twitter handle, gleefully told us that homicides were down in the city, slamming Mr Keeley for not reporting on that:

Philadelphia Homicides on Pace for Historic Low. No, Really!

The news Steve Keeley won’t tell you.

By Victor Fiorillo | Tuesday, September 24, 202 | 3:29 PM EDT

If you’re addicted to local television news or Fox News or if you live your life based on 15-second blips on TikTok or whatever the awful Citizen crime app[1]Hyperlink not in Mr Fiorillo’s original, but added by me. I have assumed that this is the Twitter site to which he referred, but cannot say that I am certain. has to say, you are probably still convinced that Philadelphia is a desolate hellhole, the Wild Wild West of urban living, where anything goes and where crime is rampant and without consequence. The “car meetup” events from Saturday night into Sunday morning, which featured a ring of fire outside City Hall and at least one flamethrower, are probably all you can talk about. You’re living your best Steve Keeley life.

But here’s some news that Steve Keeley and his ilk can’t find the time to tell you: Philadelphia’s homicide count is on pace for a historic low. You read that right, and I’ll say it once again for those in the back: Philadelphia’s homicide count is on pace for a historic low.

Now, this isn’t fake news. This isn’t my opinion. This is real news based on, you know, facts. Data. Statistics.

According to the latest data provided by the Philadelphia Police Department, homicides in Philadelphia are down 40 percent in Philadelphia as of Tuesday morning compared to the same time period last year. If you think I’ve told you similar things in the not-too-distant past, you’re not wrong. Back in April, I cautiously reported that our homicide count was down 34 percent. I say cautiously because, well, anything can happen at any time, sending those numbers in the wrong direction. Also because we hadn’t yet hit summer, and generally speaking, summers are associated with more violent crime.

Well, friends, guess what? Summer is officially over. And we went from a 34 percent decrease in homicides as of April to a 40 percent decrease in homicides as of today. If we stay on that track, that would mean that we’d end the year with 246 homicides. And if we do that, 2024 would tie 2013 for the lowest number of homicides in Philadelphia for the last 56 years. To do better than that, we’d need to end the year with fewer than 234 homicides. That’s how many homicides the city saw in 1967. One can hope!

Perhaps so, but it comes back to the first story of Mr Fiorillo’s that I cited, concerning the surge in applications for concealed carry permits. And then this, from Thursday morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

One killed, one injured in gunfight during an attempted robbery that ended in SEPTA bus crash in West Philly

There were nine people — eight passengers and one driver — on the SEPTA bus, a SEPTA spokesperson said. Nobody was injured.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, October 3, 2024 | 9:44 AM EDT

A 36-year-old man was killed and a 17-year-old was injured when gunfire broke out during an attempted armed robbery in Mantua on Wednesday night, police said. After the teen and his accomplice fled the scene in a getaway car, the car crashed into a SEPTA bus a block away.

The 17-year-old was identified as Sage Black-Rivera.

Police responded to a report of a shooting at a candy store on the 800 block of North 40th Street at 10:11 p.m., police said. When officers arrived, they found the 36-year-old man on the floor of the store with multiple gunshot wounds, police said.

The man, who police did not identify, was pronounced dead at the scene minutes later.

The victim had been in the store when a 17-year-old boy and another male tried to rob him at gunpoint, said Police Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore. The 36-year-old man then took out a gun and fired at the two men, striking the teen.

The teen then shot the 36-year-old manm, said Vanore.

The two assailants then fled the store in what police believe is a Mazda, but only got a block away before the car crashed into a SEPTA bus near 41st and Brown Streets, said Vanore.

Miss Gregg complained that “it is not good reporting to simply repeat police accounts/narratives,” but that’s what Inky reporter Rodrigo Torrejón just did, as shown my Mr Keeley’s tweet with the image file of the police report.

There were nine people on board the Route 31 SEPTA bus, eight passengers and the driver, a SEPTA spokesperson said. No injuries were reported to anyone on the bus.

The two alleged robbers then fled on foot. Police later found the teen on the 700 block of Preston Street with gunshot wounds to his arm and chest. He was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was placed in stable condition.

Homicide detectives are continuing to investigate. The 17-year-old boy has been arrested, and police are looking for his accomplice.

Mr Fiorillo noted, in the first cited story about concealed carry permits:

Of course, just because you’re denied doesn’t mean you’re not carrying, and carrying without a license is generally a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to five years in prison. But that charge can be upgraded to a felony depending on the circumstances.

It seems sadly appropriate that I’m writing about another Philly murder while drinking my coffee from a blood-red mug.

We have not yet been told whether the 36-year-old victim had a license to carry his weapon, but we do know that the unnamed 17-year-old did not have one, because such permits are not issued to minors. I am waiting on someone to whine that the 36-year-old victim would not be dead had he not been carrying a weapon and tried to defend himself, not that anyone can know that, but if he had been unarmed and simply handed over his wallet, both armed juveniles would have gotten away, and would still be out on the streets, waiting to rob at gunpoint someone else. At least now the 17-year-old will spend — hopefully — the rest of his miserable life behind bars, at least he will if the George Soros-sponsored, criminal loving District Attorney, Larry Krasner, charges him as an adult with second-degree murder, Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502(b). Under Pennsylvania Title 18 §1102(1)(c)(1), “A person who at the time of the commission of the offense was 15 years of age or older shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment the minimum of which shall be at least 30 years to life.”

Yes, homicides are down and crime is down in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, but there is still a culture in the city, and in most of our major cities, that allows crime to continue. Let’s use Mr Fiorillo’s statistics, estimating that Philly will finish with 246 homicides. With an estimated population of 1.55 million in 2023, that would still leave the city with a homicide rate of 15.87 per 100,000 population, significantly higher that the state’s 8.9 homicides per 100,000. Using the 2022 numbers — and the fact that the full 2023 numbers are not yet available is just plain sinful — Philly saw 514 homicides out of the Commonwealth’s total of 1,068, 48.13% of the total, when the city has only 11.96% of the state’s population. The rest of the Commonwealth had a homicide rate of 4.85 per 100,000 population, less than a third of Philly’s.

What will the numbers look like once full figures are available? Well, who knows, but even if they’re better than 2021, that won’t mean that they are good.

So, yes, things aren’t as bad as they once were, but if you live in Philly, you have slightly more than thrice the chance of being murdered than anyplace outside the city. It’s a shame that Mr Fiorillo didn’t mention that part.

References

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↑1 Hyperlink not in Mr Fiorillo’s original, but added by me. I have assumed that this is the Twitter site to which he referred, but cannot say that I am certain.
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Karma comes to Taylor Lorenz!

The First Street Journal has previously reported on the very lovely Taylor Lorenz, who covers technology and online culture for The Washington Post. Miss Lorenz was most famous for her doxing of Chaya Raichik as the creator and proprietor of the Twitter site Libs of TikTok, along with her continual fretting about people not wearing face masks for all eternity.

But, I used the wrong tense above. Miss Lorenz does not cover anything for the Post, but covered her subjects, as in past tense.

Taylor Lorenz leaves Washington Post following her Biden ‘war criminal’ post controversy

Columnist had gone weeks without anything published by the paper, suggesting she was benched over the Instagram post</h4
By Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Fox News | Tuesday, October 1, 2024 | 12:18 PM EDT

Reporter Taylor Lorenz announced she left The Washington Post on Tuesday after being absent for weeks following a viral controversy involving her calling President Biden a “war criminal.”

Lorenz went viral in August after a screenshot obtained by the New York Post’s Jon Levine appeared to show her calling President Biden a “war criminal” in an Instagram post while attending a White House event. Lorenz initially implied the caption was edited by someone else before admitting that she shared the post herself.

Translation: Miss Lorenz knew that she had f(ornicated) up badly, and lied to try to save her job. She knew that the newspaper was supporting Democrats editorially, and she had just posted something which hurt the Democrats chances in the November election. We don’t know that was the concern of the editors, but the credentialed media cannot go around calling the President of the United States a “war criminal” unless it’s in a specific opinion column, or he’s a Republican.

As part of the launch of her User Magazine Substack, she explained “why I’m leaving legacy media,” saying her type of reporting “has become increasingly difficult to do in corporate media.”

Yup!

Further down:

In the viral image shared by Levine, a masked Lorenz was seen taking a selfie with Biden speaking in the background. Included was a caption that read “War criminal” with a frowny face.

Fox News Digital learned the post was made in an Instagram story specifically using the “close friends” feature as indicated by the green star icon, meaning it was not posted publicly and could only have been seen by a select group of Instagram users of her choosing.

Perhaps Miss Lorenz wasn’t quite as good an “online culture” reporter as she believed. Anyone even a quarter-way internet savvy knows that anything you post on the internet has left your control, and can be ferreted out and used by someone else. That she sent it out only to “close friends” tells us that she knew it could be problematic for her, but wasn’t quite smart enough to not send it in the first place.

Miss Lorenz was trying to get Miss Raichik fired from her previous job with her doxing article. I don’t think she’s still doing real estate, but her net worth is now estimated to be $10 million, so being doxed doesn’t seem to have hurt her.

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Midnight oil blogging There was a tremendous amount of anti-Semitic propaganda on Twitter while my electricity was out

Burning the midnight oil

I suppose it’s my own fault, because I sometimes can’t resist opening up tweets in which the anti-Semites tell us how the Jooooos really rule the world, that I keep getting more of their bovine feces. The United States is controlled by the Jews, the United Kingdom is controlled by the Jews, all of the Western world is controlled by Jews.

With the 3¼ day power outage, I wound up rereading Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War on my Kindle reader. With its internal light, it was about the only thing I could read in a dark house, unless it was by my single oil lamp.

The Winds of War is a historical fiction novel, with Navy Captain Victor “Pug” Henry serving in various roles, at the time of the subsequent page, from Chapter 22, American Naval attaché to Nazi Germany:

“There’s the live nerve,” (Wolf) Stöller said. “And that’s what I’ve found difficult to convey even to the air marshal, who’s usually so hardheaded. Germans who haven’t been across the water are impossibly provincial about America. I’m sorry to say this goes for the Führer himself. I don’t believe he yet truly grasps the vast power of the American Jews. It’s a vital factor in the war picture.”

“Don’t exaggerate that factor,” (Victor) Henry said. “You fellows tend to, and it’s a form of kidding yourselves.”

“My dear Victor, I’ve been in the United States nine times and I lived for a year in San Francisco. Who’s your Minister of the Treasury? The Jew Morgenthau. Who sits on your highest court, wielding the most influence? The Jew Frankfurter.”

He proceeded to reel off a list of Jewish officials in Washington, stale and boring to Pug from endless repetition in Nazi propaganda; and he made the usual assertion that the Jews had American finance, communications, justice, and even the Presidency in their pockets. Stöller delivered all this calmly and pleasantly. He kept repeating “der Jude, der Jude” without a sneer. There was no glare in his eye, such as Pug had now and then observed when Thoda challenged some vocal anti-Semite. The banker presented his statements as though they were the day’s stock market report.

“To begin with,” Pug replied, a bit wearily, “the Treasury post in our country has little power. It’s a minor political reward. Christians hold all the other cabinet posts. Financial power lies with the banks, the insurance companies, the oil, rail, lumber, shipping, steel, and auto industries, and such. They’re wholly in Christian hands. Always have been.

“Lehman is a banker,” said Dr Knopfmann.

“Yes \, he is. The famous exception.” Pug went on eith his stock answers to anti-Semitism: the all but solid Christian ownership of newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses, the Christian composition of Congress, the cabinet, and the executive branch, the eight Christian judges out of nine on the Supreme Court, the paramount White House influence of a Christian, Harry Hopkins, and all the rest. On the faces of his hearers appeared the curious universal smirk of Germans when discussing Jews: condescending, facetious, and cold, with superior awareness of a very private inside joke.

Stöller said in a kindly tone, “That’s always the Jewish line, you know, how unimportant they are.”

That’s a rather long quote, but I think it important. After six years — at the time set in the novel — of Nazi propaganda, overlaid on Europe’s traditional anti-Semitism. Mr Wouk’s characters very believably accepted what they were being told.

And that’s what I’m seeing from today’s anti-Semitic social media postings. Like Alice, they can believe six impossible things before breakfast.

There’s an old trope that somehow, some way, Jews control everything in the world. If you follow that link, you’ll see plenty of sources on that silliness, and, interestingly enough, many of them predate the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who is not Jewish, reported how that myth at least partially motivated an attack on Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.

My copy of Mein Kampf. I don’t own it because I support it, but because I read it.

Adolf Hitler wrote dictated in Mein Kampf:

To what extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, so infinitely hated by the Jews. They are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung[1]The Frankfurter Zeitung was a Jewish-owned newspaper founded in 1856. It survived until 1943, as Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels found it useful, after the Jewish writers, editors, and … Continue reading moans and screams once every week: the best proof that they are authentic. What many Jews may do unconsciously is here consciously exposed. And that is what matters. It is completely indifferent from what Jewish brains these disclosures originate; the important thing is that with positively terrifying certainty they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims.[2]Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 307–308.

While even the Nazis did not believe that the Protocols were anything but a fake, they used them extensively in their propaganda.

But now we’ve come full circle. The apologists for Hamas and Hezbollah, and the supporters of the ‘Palestinians’, have once again been spewing the line that the evil Jews control everything, manipulating President Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and pretty much all of the world’s leaders who are not attacking Israel.

How much of this is being swallowed by the pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah, pro-‘Palestinian’ supporters? I honestly don’t know, but I see this stuff all the time by accused groomer Richard Medhurst, a Syrian-British pro-Palestinian propagandist, and several Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — accounts, many of which are probably bots — and though some try to differentiate between Zionists and Jews in general, a lot of the protesters just use the word Jew instead.

One final point, paraphrased from The Winds of War, and I cannot remember where in the book I saw it, but it’s in there: while the Nazis and other anti-Semites[3]The Nazis had tremendous help from ordinary Europeans, not just Germans, but the public in all of the lands they conquered, in finding and rounding up the Jews for shipment to the concentration … Continue reading claimed that the Jews secretly ruled the world, when it came to the Holocaust, the Jews didn’t have enough power to even save themselves.

References

References
↑1 The Frankfurter Zeitung was a Jewish-owned newspaper founded in 1856. It survived until 1943, as Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels found it useful, after the Jewish writers, editors, and publisher were forced out.
↑2 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 307–308.
↑3 The Nazis had tremendous help from ordinary Europeans, not just Germans, but the public in all of the lands they conquered, in finding and rounding up the Jews for shipment to the concentration camps. The Nazis could do it al by themselves.
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Democrats talk a good game, but when they have had the power, their policies have not worked! 3½ years of President Biden have produced record homelessness

Philadelphia’s last Republican Mayor, Bernard Samuel, left office on January 7, 1952, when Harry Truman was still President of the United States, and George VI was still King of England. In the 21½ years since January 3, 2003, Republicans have been Governors of Pennsylvania for just four years, with Tom Corbett leaving office on January 20, 2015. And since January 20, 2009, a Republican has held the White House for only four years. So, if homelessness is rising in the City of Brotherly Love, it isn’t exactly the GOP’s fault.

Homelessness in Philadelphia increases for third consecutive year

The number of homeless Philadelphians exceeded 5,000 for the first time since 2020.

by Layla A. Jones | Monday, September 23, 2024 | 3:09 PM EDT

The number of homeless Philadelphians increased for the third consecutive year, according to the annual point-in-time homelessness count conducted by the Office of Homeless Services.

The count was conducted in January and includes unsheltered people and those living in emergency shelters, safe haven and transitional housing. In 2024, the total number of homeless people reached 5,191, up from 4,725 the previous year — a 10% increase.

Mandated by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, the annual point-in-time count is a snapshot of homelessness on one day in January.

Philadelphia’s count calls on volunteers, armed with clipboards, socks, and gloves, to spread across the city interviewing and cataloging people who are homeless.

How is it, if Democratic Party policies work, that homelessness is increasing in Philly? The Keystone State has had Democrats as Governors, and the city is a one-party, Democratic town. Mr Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes in 2020, 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. That’s how Democratic Philadelphia is![1]Without Philly, President Trump would have carried the Keystone State 3,244,935 (52.56%) to 2,854,439 (46.23%). Whatever the Democrats wanted to do in Philadelphia, they had the votes and the officeholders to do.

High – but declining – poverty, the opioid epidemic and a lack of affordable housing are to blame for the rising numbers of unsheltered people, according to a summary of the city’s winter count.

“Poverty remains a factor, irrespective of poverty trends/trajectories,” said Sherylle Linton Jones, spokesperson for the Office of Homeless Services.

More than 20% of homeless people had either been evicted or displaced for another reason in the preceding 90 days, showing how impactful an issue affordable housing is in Philadelphia.

If poverty is declining, why would homelessness increase?

The drug crisis is certainly a factor, as former Mayor Jim Kenney concentrated on hugely important things, like an additional tax on Big Gulps from Seven/Eleven, but, other than that, had pretty much checked out of doing his job, and the Kensington section of the city had become not just a local laughing stock, but a nationally and even internationally known drug wasteland.

Let’s tell the truth here: Democrats talk a good game, but when they have power, their policies have not worked!

Philadelphia’s rising homelessness comes after the office overspent its budget by almost $15 million, pressured by a mandate to keep people sheltered.

The Democrats tell you that they are going to do something, but even with having overspent their budgets, they don’t get the job done!

Philadelphia’s numbers are in lockstep with a nationwide trend of rising homelessness. In 2023, homelessness grew 12% to the highest level ever recorded. More than an estimated 650,000 people are homeless in the United States, the largest number since the country started tracking the annual point-in-time survey in 2007. The rising homelessness crisis led the conservative-leaning Supreme Court to rule that municipalities could ban sleeping in public places, effectively outlawing unsheltered homelessness.

It hasn’t been just Philly. Under President Joe Biden, and the Administration’s oh-so-sympathetic attitude, homelessness nationwide has still soared to record levels. Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff has been telling us that she’s going to solve the problem by building 3,000,000 new, ‘affordable’ homes, but whatever her ideas to do that are, she never presented it or persuaded President Biden to do it. Once again, the Democrats are talking a big game, but they’ll fail miserably.

Mrs Emhoff is, as the Democrats always say they are, big on labor unions, but if her ‘plan’ includes pushing union labor on building those three million new homes, then she will have automatically made them more expensive, and less ‘affordable.’

Millions of people will vote Democratic this November, but those people will be voting for promises that cannot and will not be kept.

References

References
↑1 Without Philly, President Trump would have carried the Keystone State 3,244,935 (52.56%) to 2,854,439 (46.23%).
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USA Today sports columnist is incredibly butthurt that two top athletes didn’t speak out the way she wanted

For whom Patrick Mahomes and Caitlyn Clark intend to vote has absolutely no bearing on for whom I intend to vote, but sports columnist Nancy Armour apparently believes that it’s their duty to open their secret ballots to me.

Caitlin Clark, Patrick Mahomes’ bland answers evoke Michael Jordan era of athlete activism

by Nancy Armour | September 13, 2024

Not every athlete can be LeBron James or Megan Rapinoe.

Remember Michael Jordan’s comment about Republicans buying shoes? There’s a long history of athletes putting as much space as possible between themselves and controversy, and what Caitlin Clark and Patrick Mahomes did this week was no different.

Asked about the upcoming presidential election Wednesday and who they might be supporting, both Clark and Mahomes dodged the question and instead found a safe space in encouraging people to register and to vote.

“It’s more than nothing, but it doesn’t put them on the front lines of the discussion,” said David Niven, an associate professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati who teaches a course on sports and politics.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Mr Mahomes and Miss Clark were not thinking about Mr James or Miss Rapinoe; perhaps they were thinking about Colin Kaepernick, and the activism that persuaded NFL owners not to sign him.

Mr James did himself no favors with his political statements, which only exacerbated people looking at him as an opportunist and a flop artist in the NBA. Miss Rapinoe’s political activism didn’t serve her or women’s soccer very well, either. The fact that Mr Mahomes plays in deeply conservative Missouri, and Miss Clark in very red Indiana might have contributed to their decisions, and Miss Clark, who has led the WNBA from near-obscurity to sold-out arenas when and where she plays, makes her hugely valuable to the league. Miss Armour was saying that it’s a shame the athletes weren’t openly supporting Kamala Harris Emhoff.

Clark’s Instagram account is now flooded with nasty comments from supposed fans who are upset she liked Taylor Swift’s post endorsing Kamala Harris. Mahomes is getting backlash both from people who want him to disassociate himself from his wife’s (presumed) political beliefs and people angry he didn’t defend them.

Perhaps Mr Mahomes disagrees with Mrs Mahomes, who ‘liked’ an Instagram post from former President Trump, and perhaps he doesn’t. That’s really kind of a ‘who cares’ thing as far as I am concerned.

We have a long tradition of a secret ballot in the United States, and while a lot of people, including me, are willing to tell others how they will vote — I will vote the straight sensible ticket, meaning Republican, over the blithering idiots, the Democrats — a lot of other people are not.

The Democrats have even tried to exploit the secret ballot, with comments that women do not have to tell their husbands or boyfriends how they voted, and that they can even lie and support Mrs Emhoff, when the men in their lives vote more sensibly. And when it comes to the presidential contest, it almost doesn’t matter: President Trump will carry the states in which Mr Mahomes and Miss Clark live, and it will not be close.

Outkick noted that Miss Armour did not support Tom Brady speaking out on politics, because Mr Brady supported Mr Trump. It seems as though Miss Armour is really only interested in athletes speaking out on politics if they happen to support the politicians she likes. Miss Armour was similarly upset when Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker spoke in favor of conventional, Catholic morals at a Catholic college. She just retweeted a post in which Mr Butker missed a kick, which said, “Harrison Butker is, once again, a little too far right.”

And she has taken the far-left position that ‘transgender women’ — meaning males who have deluded themselves into thinking that they are girls — should be able to compete in women’s sports. Neither her Wikipedia profile nor her Twitter bio say anything about her ever having played sports.

Miss Armour has, as we all do, the absolute freedom of speech and of the press, and she can say whatever she wishes. But the freedom of speech and of the press carries with it the freedom not to say something, and the columnist is just wholly upset that a couple of well-known athletes didn’t say what she wanted them to say.