I have been checking the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Kentucky Kernel, the UK student newspaper for which I used to write back during the days of quill pens and inkwells, every day, and I have yet to see any reports of pro-Hamas, or pro-Israel, protests of demonstrations on campus or in the city. Yes, that shows that Kentucky students are just plain smarter than those elite and effete Ivy Leaguers, but then it occurred to me: there are very few Jewish students at UK, with Jews being a very small minority in the Bluegrass State as a whole, while the reports of demonstrations at Penn and Hahvahd and Columbia are occurring at schools with significant Jewish populations, and it leads me to think that these demonstrations really are just as much anti-Semitic as they are pro-Palestinian.
Category Archives: Freedom of Speech and of the Press
Crazy people are dangerous #Transgender girl shows some toxic masculinity
Sometimes I worry that I am stepping on the toes of former Washington Times reporter and editor Robert Stacy McCain and his series entitled Crazy People Are Dangerous by using the title myself, but sometimes the crazy becomes too blatant to ignore. This site previously reported on the brutal assault by a 13-year-old boy claiming to be a girl on a 12-year-old girl at Pennbrook Middle School, and how the credentialed media are mostly keeping the fact that the alleged assailant is nuttier than a fruitcakesuffers from gender dysphoria. Continue reading
Crazy people are dangerous Always note what the media are telling you, and what they are not
The in-school assault was serious enough that several credentialed media sources reported on it, and how the school was warned, in advance, that the attack would occur, and did nothing.
But you know what all of the media sources I linked did not mention? It has been reported by the Daily Mail that the assailant was not a real girl, but a boy self-identifying as a girl: Continue reading
Why does The Philadelphia Inquirer, which won’t publish mugshots of real criminals, make deliberate exceptions for police officers convicted of crimes?
We have previously covered the death of 12-year-old Thomas “TJ” Siderio, sent to his eternal reward after he shot at police. Naturally, then-Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw suspended and then fired Police Officer Edsaul Mendoza, and, despite the Commissioner declining to publicly name the officer, for his safety, The Philadelphia Inquirer ferreted out his name and published it. Naturally, the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, softer-than-Charmin-on-crime District Attorney Larry Krasner charged Officer Mendoza with among other things, first degree murder and third-degree murder. Now, two years later, Mr Mendoza has pleaded guilty of doing his job:
Former Philly cop who shot and killed 12-year-old T.J. Siderio pleads guilty to third-degree murder
The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer
We have frequently used the terms ‘journolism,’ or ‘journolist’, the spelling of which comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. And we have also mockingly referred to The Philadelphia Enquirer: 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.
Now here they go again! Continue reading
The credentialed media: Be just as aware of what you are not being told as what is presented
I’ve got to hand it to the people at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania! When the news came out that Dr Margaret Somerville, of that fine institution, allegedly had some sort of sexual contact with a student many years ago, they, or at least someone, very diligently scrubbed out any references to the accused in which her photo was available. But a Google search for margaret somerville friends central, for images, was still good!
A Friends’ Central Latin teacher accused of sexual misconduct has resigned after a school investigation
Margaret Somerville was accused earlier this year of having sexual contact with a student “some 20 years ago,” the school said Monday.
by Maddie Hanna | Monday, April Fool’s Day, 2024 | 4:25 PM EDT
A longtime Latin teacher at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood was accused earlier in the school year of having sexual contact with a student two decades ago, and an internal investigation found the allegations credible, school officials said Monday. Continue reading
Whenever there is a truth you cannot tell, that is a truth you must tell!
J K Rowling, the author of the brilliant Harry Potter books, is a stone liberal, one who decided to tell readers that Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, is homosexual. Miss Rowling never mentioned anything about her vision of Professor Dumbledore as being queer in the actual series of books, and the only mention of sexuality in the series is all about normal sexual interests. Her description of how nerdy teenaged boys felt about having to ask out girls to the Yule Ball in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when the main characters would have been 14-years-old, amazed me in how a middle-aged woman could so accurately portray a teenaged boy’s thinking and feelings and utter terrors at having to ask out a girl for the first time. But, even as liberal as she is, she understands that males cannot ‘transition’ into females, and vice-versa. Continue reading
You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Once again, The Philadelphia Inquirer censors part of the story.
Can someone tell me why I am paying $285.48 per year for a newspaper which censors the news?
When I first saw this photo in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday, I immediately asked myself, “Self, is that really a girl?” So, I read a story I might normally have skipped.
Bensalem teen faces 15 to 40 years in prison for killing a 12-year-old girl and showing her corpse on Instagram
Ash Cooper admitted her guilt Thursday and was sentenced to prison.
by Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, March 21, 2024 | 3:41 PM EDT | Updated: 6:02 PM EDT
A Bensalem teen who shot and killed a 12-year-old girl, then displayed her corpse in an Instagram video call as she sought help in hiding her crime will spend 15 to 40 years in prison after admitting her guilt Thursday.
Ash Cooper, 18, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and related crimes in the shooting death of Morgan Connors in the trailer Cooper shared with her father in the Top of the Ridge Trailer Park in November 2022.
In accepting the guilty plea, Bucks County Court Judge Jeffrey L. Finley decried Cooper’s actions and lamented Morgan’s death.
“It’s a horrible tragedy,” he said. “A tragedy no family should ever have to undergo.”
It turns out that “Ash” Cooper is actually Joshua Cooper, as reported by London’s Daily Mail. The Inquirer did leave a clue, in that the hyperlinks in the newspaper’s story took us to stories noting that the killer was named Joshua Cooper at the time those stories were published, but if you read reporter Rodrigo Torrejón’s story, there isn’t the first indication that the murderer is actually a male.
The Daily Mail also told us things that the Inky decided to omit:
Cooper, who was 16 at the time of the murder, also allegedly told police she and Connors were in a sexual relationship. . . .
During the investigation, officials discovered Cooper was accused of sexual assault in a previous unrelated case. She was found guilty in juvenile court.
The victim was in court on Thursday as Cooper received his sentence.
So, not only was young Mr Cooper, 16 at the time, having sex with a 12-year-old, but he was previously convicted of a sexual assault on a different person. How is it that the Daily Mail, from 3,500 miles away had this, but the Inquirer couldn’t get that information from a bordering county?
Well, of course the reporters at the Inky knew. The first story on the murder appeared on November 26, 2022, and the second on March 6, 2023, at which point he was still identified as Joshua Cooper. Now, after that time, we find out that young Mr Cooper is ‘transitioning’, trying to become a girl, and no one asks, “Is he really transgendered and ‘transitioning,’ or is he just doing this to stay out of adult men’s prison?” As you can see from the Daily Mail’s photo, Mr Cooper is not exactly a big guy, and perhaps he had watched NCIS, and saw the scene in which Leroy Jethro Gibbs tells a couple of young college kids, “Believe me, son, you will not do well in prison.”
Were I to ask the editors of the newspaper why they concealed the fact that young Mr Cooper is ‘transgender,’ and referred to him in exclusively feminine terms, they might tell me that hey, that has nothing to do with the murder. I would reject that argument, since it’s obvious that the previously convicted sex criminal was also f(ornicating) young Miss Connors — the London newspaper noted that court records stated that the victim’s body “was found laying facedown with her pants around her ankles” — and that the victim’s state of undress indicated that something sexual had occurred. More, the fact that Mr Cooper is claiming to be a girl will have a huge impact on to which prison he will be sent for hopefully the full forty years. One of us wonders on how the newspaper will cover that story.
When a reporter has more of an agenda than an understanding of economics and business.
We have twice reported on the decisions of Wawa to close down some stores in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia. The late Josh Kruger complained bitterly about such.
This crime is not new, and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Headhouse Square Wawa “will become the sixth Center City Wawa to shutter since 2020.”
So, you would think that an article in the newspaper on food ‘deserts’ in some Philly neighborhoods would at least mention crime. But, if you did think that, you would be wrong.
About 40 million people in the United States don’t have access to a full-service grocery store
The 2023 update of the Limited Supermarket Access Study examines the lack convenient access to health food options across the nation — and in Philadelphia.
by Lynette Hazleton | Thursday, March 21, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST
What food is available has everything to do with the food stores that are available.
When the food store is a full-service supermarket, like the ShopRite in Parkside, it usually means you will have the access to a wider variety, higher-quality and lower-cost food, explained Michelle Schmitt, a senior policy analyst at The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) as she walked around the bustling 15-year-old supermarket.
As you can see, the article wasn’t produced by the regular Inquirer staff, but the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the non-profit which owns the newspaper. I have previously noted that, as a subscriber, I sometimes receive begging for donations letters from the Leftist Lenfest Institute.
When you don’t have the same access to high quality food as you do to chips, fast food and soda, it can contribute to an unhealthy eating pattern that can ultimately lead to chronic disease.
How is it that Lynette Hazelton, the Philly native who reported this story, couldn’t bring herself to note that the densely-populated rowhouse neighborhoods which make up a significant part of the city’s neighborhoods don’t really have room for a huge Giant Food Mart? Yes, there are corner bodegas in most of the neighborhoods, where you can get those chips, fast foods, soda, beer, lottery tickets, and the occasional bullet in your chest. But the kinds of supermarkets that Miss Hazelton envisions take up around ten acres when parking lots are included.
Schmitt is the main author of the 2023 update to the Limited Supermarket Access (LSA) study which determines who is and is not well served by their grocery store. The official definition for limited supermarket access is 500 people in a low income tract where urban members are more than a mile and rural shoppers are more than 10 miles to a full service store. It is the fourth update since 2010 and the first to include Alaska and Hawaii.
The big take away: about 40 million Americans live without easy access to healthy food options.
Take Parkside, Belmont and Mantua neighborhoods of West Philadelphia. Together they are home to roughly 48,755 residents. Virtually all the blocks are very densely populated, 66% Black and almost half the people had an annual income of $25,000 in 2021, the latest data available.
This was some sloppy writing. Did Miss Hazeltom mean that $25,000 was the median income?
While this is the neighborhood many traditional stores would overlook, it is the type of neighborhood that the LSA study showed was in desperate need of a supermarket.
OK, why would “many traditional stores” overlook those neighborhoods? The author noted that “Virtually all the blocks are very densely populated,” which means less available area to put in a ten-acre supermarket. The neighborhoods are mostly poor, and grocery stores “operate on razor-thin profit margins. The industry average is between one and three percent, far below other retail sectors. With such lean margins, grocery stores rely on high sales volume and inventory turnover to thrive.” Then you throw in Philly’s crime rate, and the obvious question is easy to determine: how could a supermarket make a profit there?
Supermarkets were once associated with suburbs, and by the 1970s seven out of every ten food dollars were spent there. But also supermarkets did not place their businesses in low-income communities which lead to real consequences.
This paragraph alone tells you just how poor Miss Hazelton’s article was. The source she hyperlinked told her that grocery stores in Philly were mostly the ‘corner grocery store’ type, operating in the rowhouse neighborhoods, yet somehow, she couldn’t figure out that those neighborhood structures dictated the kinds of grocery stores that were there. In more rural areas, we had “general stores” before supermarkets were developed, and many lament that so few of those old general stores exist. Alas! The old general store that was near where I now live went out of business, became someone’s auto repair shop for a while, and is now a small volunteer fire station. Kroger and Giant and Aldi forced those old country general stores out of business, but in the suburbs and rural areas, there was the physical room for supermarkets.
Perhaps it’s as simple as the reporter having more of an agenda than an understanding of economics and business.