Category Archives: Culture

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And these are the people the ‘Palestinian’ supporters admire?

We’ve seen so many demonstrations, by supposedly educated Americans and other Westerners, in support of the ‘Palestinians’, their Islamic culture, ‘settler colonialism,’ and fighting ‘Islamophobia’. Sensible people have mocked them, noting that those protesters are the beneficiaries of ‘settler colonialism,’ being privileged to live in the United States, and especially the “Queers for Palestine,” pointing out that being openly queer in any of the Islamic lands is an invitation to beating, torture, jail, or even execution.

Now we come to this, from, of all place, al Jazeera:

Five children among seven killed in attack on Pakistan polio vaccine drive

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemns attack near a girls’ school in the southwestern province of Balochistan.

All Saints’ Day, November 1, 2024

At least seven people, including five schoolchildren, have been killed and 23 injured in a bombing near a girls’ school in southwestern Pakistan, officials said.

Friday’s attack targeted police guarding a polio vaccination drive in Mastung, a town in Balochistan province.

“The target was a police van which was going to pick up a polio [vaccination] team,” Senior Superintendent of Police Rahmat Ullah told the Reuters news agency.

One police officer and a shopkeeper were also killed in the explosion, senior police officer Abdul Fatah told the AFP news agency.

The blast was believed to have been caused by an improvised device attached to a motorcycle parked near the school.

The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have frequently attacked polio vaccinators, claiming that they were distributing evil, Western medicine. Some believe that the vaccines are prohibited by Islam:

Another population study from Peshawar, Pakistan, reported that 79% of participants were not willing to vaccinate their children as they believe that vaccine was composed of ingredients that are prohibited in their religion.

These are the people the supporters of the ‘Palestinians’ admire!

Of course, the doctors who developed the two polio vaccines were Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, both of whom were Jews, so perhaps that has something to do with the radical Islamists not wanting people vaccinated.

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Who do you believe?

This site reported, on October 28th, about the efforts of collegiate officials to stop female athletes from complaining about male members on their teams or having to compete against males who claim to be female on other teams.

Well, no, complains the Athletic Director of the University of Nevada at Reno, that’s not what happened at all!

Nevada AD addresses allegations of pushing volleyball women to face trans athlete, says she apologized

A player alleges the university told them that the trans athlete opponent would be at a disadvantage

By Jackson Thompson, Fox News | Wednesday, October 30, 2024 | 7:35 AM EDT

The University of Nevada, Reno athletic director Stephanie Rempe addressed a recent national controversy surrounding her women’s volleyball program in a statement to Fox News Digital.

A dispute between volleyball players and the athletic department over whether to compete against a team with a trans athlete resulted in a last-minute forfeit due to not having enough players to participate on Friday. Players had told the university they did not want to play the match, but the program refused to forfeit until the day before it was scheduled.

Team captain Sia Liilii then alleged that the school told her and her teammates that “they didn’t understand the science” and to “reconsider their position,” at a press conference on Saturday.

On Sunday, Liilii alleged that she and her teammates were told the trans opponent “was at a disadvantage” due to the medication taken to transition from male to female, during the “Stand With Women” event in Philadelphia.

Why, how odd. A site search of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website for “Stand withe Women” didn’t have any story on that event.

Sophomore Masyn Navarro alleged her teammates had been told to “stay quiet” about the controversy during the Saturday press conference but did not specify who told them.

Athletic Director Remke denied it all:

“I did not tell, and am unaware of any member of the athletics administrative team telling members of our women’s volleyball team that they ‘weren’t educated enough,’ that they ‘didn’t understand the science,’ that they should reconsider their position or that they should ‘stay quiet’ regarding their participation in an Oct. 26 match that was scheduled against San Jose State University.”

Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she? But note how she expressed it: she stated that she never stated those things, and that she was unaware of anyone else saying so.

Absent an actual recording of the meeting, we have no evidence of who is telling the truth, but the “didn’t understand the science” remark had been reported a couple of weeks earlier.

It isn’t difficult to imagine the university trying to claim that Brayden ‘Blaire’ Fleming was somehow disadvantaged, or, as was previously reported, isn’t really that good, but whether those claims are accurate or not misses the point. It isn’t that males should be allowed to compete in women’s sports based on how good or poor they happen to be, but that they shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports period. If you are male, compete in men’s sports!

The university actually was put in a problematic legal position. Because the state constitution prohibits discrimination against a whole host of things, including “gender identity,” if the university refused to play SJSU due to the presence of Mr Fleming, on the UN-R campus, there could be legal problems. So UN-R and SJSU moved the contest to San José, and the forfeit wouldn’t occur in Nevada. More, when the UN-R players didn’t appear for the match, it was a forfeit:

On Thursday, (October 24th) the Nevada women’s volleyball team traveled to Fresno State to take on the Bulldogs. They lost, 3-2.

According to OutKick sources, Nevada provided two buses for players. One bus was destined for San Jose State, for players who wanted to play against the Spartans and Blaire Fleming.

The other bus was destined for Reno, to take the women home. The players elected to go back to Reno.

Because of that, the school officially announced on Friday that they would not play the match against San Jose State.

“Due to not having enough players to compete, the University of Nevada women’s volleyball team will not play its scheduled Mountain West Conference match at San José State on Saturday, Oct. 26,” the school said in a statement.

So, UN-R forfeited the match not because SJSU had a male player, but because not enough UN-R players were available to compete. Yup, that’s the lawyers being involved.

So, who do you believe? Do you believe the very professional Athletic Director, with the school’s lawyers telling her what to say and how to say it, or do you believe the athletes, in their late teens and early twenties, who don’t have professional public relations people behind and scripting them, who are going against the flow and political correctness, who are taking a team loss for the greater good?

I know who I believe!

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Once again, the left want opponents to just to just shut the heck up!

It all seems so familiar. We reported, in December of 2021, how the female members of the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team were told to keep their mouths shut about Will ‘Lia’ Thomas, the mentally ill man male who claimed he was female on the team:

‘It’s bringing people to tears’: SECOND UPenn swimmer speaks out against trans Lia Thomas competing for the women’s team and says the crowd was silent when she won most recent meet

  • An second anonymous female swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania has spoken out to say she and her teammates are upset by transgender teammate
  • Lia Thomas, 22, smashed three US swimming records at an Akron, Ohio contest last weekend 
  • Thomas also gave an interview to SwimSwam touting the fairness of inclusive but controversial IOC guidelines allowing transgender athletes to compete 
  • Thomas previously competed for the school’s men’s team for three years before joining the women’s team with her last men’s competition in November 2019 

By James Gordon | Published: 18:29 EST, 10 December 2021 | Updated: 21:33 EST, 10 December 2021

A second female swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania has aired her frustrations and fury as her transgender teammate Lia Thomas continues to smash records.

The entire team has been ‘strongly advised’ not to speak to the media and the second swimmer has been granted anonymity.

Nevertheless, the teammate stepped forward to tell how UPenn swimmers are ‘angry’ over what has been perceived as a ‘lack of fairness’ as Thomas smashes record after record in the pool.

The officials at the University of Pennsylvania told the women basically to shut their mouths and swim. Another female team member said that “she feared for her ability to find employment after graduating from college for sharing her honest opinion about a transgender teammate,” a fear that the university’s officials pushed. In a letter that sixteen of Mr Thomas’ teammates anonymously released, they stated that they “have been told that if we spoke out against her inclusion into women’s competitions, that we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer.”

Well, it’s happening again, this time in Nevada: Continue reading →

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Killadelphia: Gang-banger killed, two more gang-bangers arrested for it Not the worst result in the world

Two months ago, we noted the murder of Abdul Vicks, 25, a rapper going by the stage name of YBC Dul. Mr Vicks was a ringleader in a Philly gang calling themselves Young Bag Chasers, and I called it a “public service homicide,” because this gang was particularly violent.

Part of that public service was that the punks who targeted and shot Mr Vicks would themselves wind up off the streets, once the Philadelphia Police identified and arrested them: both killers and killed would be removed from society. And so arrests have finally been made:

Second teen arrested for killing West Philly rapper, gang member YBC Dul

Rashawn Williams, 18, has been charged with killing Abdul Vicks, aka YBC Dul.

by Ellie Rushing | Wednesday, October 23, 2024 | 9:46 AM EDT

An 18-year-old has been charged with fatally shooting a local rapper and West Philadelphia gang leader — the second teen in two months to face charges in the high-profile killing.

Rashawn Williams, 18, was arrested Tuesday and charged with the murder of Abdul Vicks, the 25-year-old rapper affiliated with the West Philadelphia-based gang the Young Bag Chasers, or YBC.

Vicks, also known as YBC Dul or “Mr. Disrespectful,” was shot multiple times in a drive-by-style shooting in Olney on Aug. 23. Vicks had just picked up a friend, and was driving down the 100 block of West Olney Avenue when a white car pulled up alongside him at a stoplight. At least two people fired multiple shots into Vicks’ car, before speeding off, police said.

Vicks was struck multiple times in the chest and hand. In a panic, his friend drove back to his house on North Sixth Street, and then, with the help of his uncle, rushed Vicks to Einstein Medical Center, where he died just before 4 p.m.

16-year-old Aiden Waters had been arrested for the same crime in early September. Messrs Williams and Waters were both members of “Fastbreak, a previously little-known gang affiliated with the area around Fourth Street, Nedro Avenue, and Spencer Street in Olney.”

In our previous article on the subject, we noted the violence of Mr Vicks’ gang. The Philadelphia Inquirer described Mr Water’ (alleged) activities:

This dude is just 16! With any luck, the two (alleged) shooters hadn’t knocked up anyone, and will be locked up long enough that they will have Darwin Awarded themselves.

Gang-bangers killing other gang-bangers isn’t really that bad a thing. The biggest problem is that they are so often such rotten shots that they kill or wound innocent bystanders.

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Real women have to sacrifice their games to protest men males trying to horn in on their sports If Brayden Fleming wasn't such an [insert slang term for the anus here], this wouldn't be necessary.

UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

There are two competing and unreconcilable positions when it comes to ‘transgender women,’ the word salad used to denote males who believe that they are female, and ‘identify’ as women. The left take the position that ‘transwomen’ real women, while sensible people understand that there are only two sexes, and they cannot be changed. If ‘transwomen’ were effectively keeping quiet about it, and not trying to compete athletically against real women, like Will Thomas did, no one would really care, because Mr Thomas calling himself “Lia” would not have trampled upon anyone else’s rights.

Alas! Mr Thomas did insist on competing on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team, and, as John Lohn, Editor-in-Chief of Swimming World, noted, Mr Thomas went from a mid-500 ranking as a male swimmer — he did compete on Penn’s men’s team before his ‘transition,’ to top ranks in women’s swimming. While he had been taking medication to get his testosterone levels down, he had already gone through puberty as a male.

The San José State University women’s volleyball team has a ‘transwoman’ playing. Apparently Brayden Fleming, who now goes by the name “Blaire”, hid the fact that he is male, well enough that he was able to compete on the girls’ volleyball team at John Champe High School in Virginia, and a year on the women’s volleyball team at Coastal Carolina University, before transferring to SJSU. Whether team members, or the athletics department, at SJSU knew that Mr Fleming is male has not been disclosed, yet if they were aware, it was kept hidden, but one team member, Brooke Slusser, has joined a lawsuit against the NCAA for allowing ‘transwomen’ to compete on women’s athletic teams.

This has come to a head, now that collegiate volleyball season has begun — Mr Fleming’s status as being ‘transgender’ was not made public until last spring, after volleyball season was over — several teams have decided to forfeit matches with SJSU rather than go along with the idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls. So far, Southern Utah, Boise State, Wyoming, Utah State, and Nevada-Reno have refursed to compete, but now comes the kicker:

A volleyball team balked at playing against trans woman. The university wasn’t having it.

The players voted to forfeit because there’s allegedly a trans woman on San Jose State’s team

By Mira Lazine | Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Individual players with the University of Nevada’s women’s volleyball team will be allowed to opt out of their upcoming match against the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team.

Nevada’s team had initially voted to forfeit the October 26 match due to San Jose State University allegedly having a transgender woman, making Nevada’s university the fifth recent one to forfeit. However, the University of Nevada, citing the Nevada Constitution and state laws, said it will have its team compete as originally agreed.

Note that the article, from the very much transgender supporting LGBTQ Nation, states that the player is “allegedly” a male claiming to be a female. SJSU has not confirmed that Mr Fleming is ‘transgender,’ but the university has not denied it, either. While it could be considered a violation of privacy for the university to confirm that he’s male without his consent, if Brayden was actually Blaire, she would have said so publicly.

In a statement explaining its decision, the University of Nevada wrote that a majority of the women’s volleyball team voted on October 13 to forfeit the match.

“The players’ decision and statement were made independently, and without consultation with the University or the athletic department,” the statement said, adding that the players’ decision didn’t represent the position of the university.

“The University and its athletic programs are governed by the Nevada Constitution and Nevada law, which strictly protect equality of rights under the law, and that equality of rights shall not be denied or abridged by this state or any of its subdivisions on account of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin,” the statement continued. “The University is also governed by federal law as well as the rules and regulations of the NCAA and the Mountain West Conference, which include providing competition in an inclusive and supportive environment.”

“The University intends to move forward with the match as scheduled, and the players may choose not to participate in the match on the day of the contest,” the statement concluded. “No players will be subject to any team disciplinary action for their decision not to participate in the match.”

We have not been told how many of the 17 members of the UN-R team voted to forfeit the match, simply that a majority did, which means at least nine of the players. Volleyball matches are conducted with six players on the court, meaning that, if there were as few as 11 players choosing to forfeit, Nevada-Reno could still field the team. But if twelve voted for the BOYcott, and stick to their guns, Nevada-Reno would enter the match one player short, unless they recruited walk-ons.

I have mockingly suggested that the men’s volleyball players — and at UN-R, men’s volleyball is a club sport, not a varsity team — all claim that they identify as women for that night, and show up to play the match.

One thing is certain: the media will be there in force for the scheduled SJSU-UNR match, and if the players hold strong to their positions — and I will bet euros against eclairs[1]My version of dollars against doughnuts. I suppose pounds vs pretzels would also work. I had to buy a $2.50 item a couple of days ago, and it had a discount for cash, but all I had in my wallet were … Continue reading that the UN-R administration are lobbying the players hard to play the game — it will make great television.

It’s a shame that real women have to sacrifice their games to protest men males trying to horn in on their sports, but that’s apparently what it takes. If so many of the ‘transgendered’ weren’t just absolute [insert plural slang term for the anus here] about things, this wouldn’t be necessary, and Brayden Fleming is an [insert slang term for the anus here].

References

References
↑1 My version of dollars against doughnuts. I suppose pounds vs pretzels would also work.

I had to buy a $2.50 item a couple of days ago, and it had a discount for cash, but all I had in my wallet were two 5€ notes.
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Killadelphia: The weapon of choice now seems to be speeding cars

We noted, just yesterday, the third hit-and-run homicide in the City of Brotherly Love in recent days, and now there’s one again this morning.

Woman in wheelchair killed in fatal hit-and-run crash

The fatal hit-and-run crash Tuesday morning marks at least the third such incident in four days, according to police.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Tuesday, October 15, 2024 | 9:19 AM EDT

A woman in a wheelchair was killed in Fairmount Park early Tuesday morning in yet another hit-and-run, police said, the latest in a recent string of such crashes that have left several people dead and investigators searching for the drivers.

The woman, who police said was in her 40s, was hit by a person driving a silver car on the 2200 block of Reservoir Drive at 1:46 a.m., said Police Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore. The woman, whom police did not identify, suffered injuries to her head and other parts of her body, Chief Inspector Scott Small said at the scene.

She was pronounced dead minutes later, at 1:56 a.m., said Vanore.

The impact was so great that the woman was flung 100 feet, said Small. A medical boot she had been wearing was found that distance from her body, he said.

There’s more to reporter Rodrigo Torrejón’s story, but it’s just a rehash of previous incidents.

CBS News added that Chief Inspector Small stated that police believe that the vehicle was “going at a high speed,” judging by how far the victim and wheelchair were thrown.

The accident site, Reservoir Drive near West Diamond Street, is all parkland, and it’s not difficult to picture kids racing there, especially after midnight. But whether they were gang-bangers, as yesterday’s hit-and-run driver and passengers probably were, or ‘good kids’ who were just having fun and made a mistake, someone has still been killed.

Were they hardened thugs, or scared teenagers who’ve hidden the damaged vehicle in daddy’s garage? Who knows at this point, but if it is the latter — that’s the mental picture in my mind — we’ll see if mom and dad try to cover up the crime, or turn their son over to the police.

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Another killed in the Philadelphia Badlands Yet another hit-and-run homicide in the City of Brotherly Love

Am I the only one who wonders if Philadelphia’s “Driving While Black” ordinance has contributed to this? When the police cannot stop vehicles for obvious, if ‘minor’ violations, some people think that they can get away with anything.

Woman killed in hit-and-run crash in North Philly, the latest in string of incidents

The fatal crash is at least the third hit-and-run crash in a week, according to police.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, October 14, 2024 | 9:43 AM EDT

North Fifth Street and West Indiana Avenue, via Google Maps, April 2023.

A woman was killed in a hit-and-run crash in North Philadelphia Sunday night, the latest in a recent string of such incidents that have left several injured and others dead.

Police responded to a report of a fatal crash at the intersection of North Fifth Street and West Indiana Avenue shortly after 7:30 p.m.

Investigators learned a person driving a silver Hyundai Sonata northbound on North Fifth Street struck a 42-year-old pedestrian as the driver made a left turn onto West Indiana Avenue, police said. The woman, whom police did not identify, was taken to Temple University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 8:05 p.m.

The passengers in the Sonata fled the scene on foot, police said. No arrests have been made, and police continue to investigate.

Philadelphia Badlands. Photo via Philadelphia Inquirer Click to enlarge.

The intersection of North Fifth Street and West Indiana Avenue is in the Fairhill neighborhood, squarely in the Philadelphia Badlands, a name The Philadelphia Inquirer truly hates.

The story doesn’t tell us what most people would suspect: the “silver Hyundai Sonata” was possibly stolen and/or the driver was intoxicated, and/or the vehicle was involved in a crime, and that’s why the driver and passengers fled the scene.

WPVI-TV reported more than did the Inky, and did so earlier in the day, so reporter Rodrigo Torrejón knew the information, but chose not to include it, instead telling subscribers old news:

Police say the driver of a silver Hyundai Sonata was speeding and driving recklessly before hitting the 42-year-old woman. . . . .

Investigators believe the driver attempted to swerve around the victim but struck her instead. The driver then reportedly continued down the sidewalk, where the car hit a pillar and several parked cars. . . . .

Officers recovered the badly damaged Hyundai at the scene.

Police and several witnesses said two to three men jumped out of the car and fled the area on foot after the crash.

Officers did try to pursue the suspects but they got away, police said.

Authorities also said a gun and drugs were found inside the car, which is registered out of Lancaster County. Police also said the car has not been reported stolen.

Yup! Reckless driving, speeding, transporting drugs, and a possibly illegal gun and stolen car. Lancaster County is over sixty miles from Philly.

We don’t yet know who the driver and passengers are, but the odds are that, when we do find out, we’ll read that they have been in trouble with the law before.

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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?

As the husband of a nurse, though not an Emergency Room nurse, the idea that people can careen into ER entrances, dump a shooting victim on the ground, and speed off, endangering hospital personnel outside the entrance, pisses me off royally. But, as usual, what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. once again refuses to tell readers the full story.

Three nurses were injured in a hit-and-run as they tried to help a shooting victim outside a Philly hospital, police say

Police said the collision left a 36-year-old nurse in critical condition, with facial injuries and internal bleeding.

by Michelle Myers | Saturday, October 12, 2024 | 11:58 AM EDT

Three nurses were seriously injured after being struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run as they tried to help a shooting victim outside Penn Presbyterian Hospital early Saturday morning, police said.

Around 4:20 a.m., police said a driver in a silver Jeep Cherokee arrived at Penn Presbyterian’s ambulance bay area to drop off a 28-year-old man with multiple gunshot wounds. As the nurses gathered to provide first aid, the driver struck the nurses and the shooting victim, police said, then fled the scene.

Police said a 36-year-old nurse was in critical condition, with facial injuries and internal bleeding. A 37-year-old nurse suffered injuries to his legs, and a 51-year-old nurse suffered injuries to his head and back. They are both listed in stable condition, according to police.

The shooting victim — who police said was wounded on the 1300 block of Belmont Avenue — may have suffered an additional head injury as the driver fled the scene, police said. His condition was unknown, police said.

There’s more at the original, though not really a lot. Naturally, the Important Spokescritters all decried “gun violence”, but if they said a single negative word about the driver, who was “possibly in his early 20s,” The Enquirer Inquirer story didn’t mention it. We were not told whether the shooting victim is white, black, Hispanic, or something else, which means that most people will assume that he is black. Fox 29 News reporter Steve Keeley posted the Philadelphia Police press release which specified that the driver was a black male, at 9:54 AM EDT, two hours and four minutes before reporter Michelle Myers published her story, so she knew that the driver was black, but scrubbed that from her story.

Also unmentioned is anything about the shooting, but let’s tell the truth here: if a Jeep Cherokee rolls up to the Emergency Room, dumps off a shooting victim, and then the driver hauls ass fast and carelessly enough that he runs down three nurses and the victim he dumped, all at around 4:20 in the morning, the odds that the shooting was not gang-related are vanishingly small. “(M)ultiple gunshot wounds” means that this was no accident.

But the Inky won’t tell you that.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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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.