Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Two more Capitol kerfufflers plead guilty to misdemeanors

The seriousness of the Capitol kerfuffle is revealed in the fact that the feds are charging most with just misdemeanors. The bias of the Lexington Herald-Leader is revealed in how they played up the story.

Fired Kentucky nurse, husband plead guilty in Capitol riot case. Sentencing next.

By Jeremy Chisenhall | July 28, 2021 | 01:46 PM | Updated 1:52 PM EDT

A Kentucky couple who were at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in Washington, D.C., have pleaded guilty to participating and face a maximum punishment of six months in prison, according to federal court records filed Tuesday.

Thomas and Lori Vinson, who were arrested on Feb. 23 and charged with participating in the riot and other related crimes, have each pleaded guilty to one count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol Building, according to plea agreements filed in federal court. In addition to a maximum prison time of six months, the two defendants could also face a fine of up to $5,000. Continue reading →

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More discrimination against Asians by the left

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” — Chief Justice John Roberts, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1

We have previously noted the apparently acceptable racial discrimination against Asians in the United States, and how white liberals not think that black and Hispanic students “have what it takes to compete on merit,” but they dismiss the achievements of students of Asian ethnicity as “white adjacent.”

From The Wall Street Journal:

    The Revolt of the Unwoke

    Three progressive San Francisco school board members are targeted for a recall.

    By William McGurn | July 26, 2021 | 6:26 PM EDT

    If the land of woke has a capital, it’s San Francisco. Which makes it all the more extraordinary that the City by the Bay has now become ground zero for a revolt by unwoke moms and dads.

Continue reading →

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Street justice The kind of justice you seek when you are boneheadedly stupid

Michael Lemond. Photo: Fayette County Detention Center.

We have previously noted the shooting, and blinding, of then-five year old Malakai Roberts; Michael Lemond and Teyo Waite, both 18, have been charged.

So why did they do it? It was a f(ornicating) mistake! They were shooting at the wrong house!

    Detective: Shooters accused of blinding Lexington boy ‘simply got the wrong house.’

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | July 27, 2021 | 10:49 AM | Updated: 12:05 PM EDT

    The young men accused of blinding a 5-year-old Lexington child shot into the wrong house, a Lexington detective testified Tuesday.

    Detective Jordan Tyree said Tuesday that the suspects in the Dec. 21 shooting intended to target the home of another person with whom 18-year-old Michael Lemond had gotten into an argument on social media. The intended target allegedly disrespected the victim of a 2019 homicide. But the suspects had the wrong address.

Teyo Waite. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center.

I understand that ‘disrespect’ used as a verb is a part of street language, but it seems to me that Jeremy Chisenhall, the article author, and Peter Baniak, the Lexington Herald-Leader’s editor, showed great disrespect for the English language by doing the same thing.

So, Messrs Lemond and Waite, the alleged shooters, were doubly stupid: they were ‘beefing’ with some other guy, looked up his address, and got the wrong one. They had to show him good, but didn’t even have the courage to face him. Instead they fired into a house, from the street, and blinded a child for life.

Young Mr Roberts has also lost his senses of smell and taste.

Detective Tyree said, “There were numerous bullet holes all through the upstairs and downstairs of the house.” In other words, spray and pray, the mark of a poor shooter. Young Mr Roberts mother, Cacy Roberts, was also struck by a bullet, which entered and exited her arm.

    Lemond also allegedly texted someone else about an hour before the shooting and told them “I love you … but I can’t let this s**t slide,” Tyree said.

    The intended target, who lived near where the shooting happened, allegedly “disrespected” Bryant Gaston, the victim in a fatal 2019 shooting. A 15-year-old was charged with murder in Gaston’s death.

Well, at least Mr Chisenhall put “disrespected” in quotation marks this time, indicating that it was slang.

Mr Lemond, again allegedly, got into an argument on social media with someone, so, again allegedly, he went after them with a gun. Street justice!

The detective revealed that Mr Lemond confessed, and gave up Mr Waite on the shooting as well.

So, over an argument on social media, Messrs Lemond and Waite decided that it would be a wise idea to show up at someone’s house and spray it with bullets. They got the wrong house, had no idea at whom they were shooting, and even if they had gotten the right house, had no way to tell if they were actually going to hit their target.

The Herald-Leader stated that each man male faced two counts of assault and two counts of wanton endangerment.

508.010 Assault in the first degree.

(1) A person is guilty of assault in the first degree when:
(a) He intentionally causes serious physical injury to another person by means of
a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument; or
(b) Under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human
life he wantonly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to
another and thereby causes serious physical injury to another person.
(2) Assault in the first degree is a Class B felony.

508.060 Wanton endangerment in the first degree.
(1) A person is guilty of wanton endangerment in the first degree when, under
circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life, he
wantonly engages in conduct which creates a substantial danger of death or serious
physical injury to another person.
(2) Wanton endangerment in the first degree is a Class D felony.

A Class B felony is punishable by 10 to 20 years in a Kentucky state prison, while a Class D felony is punishable by at least one year and no more than five years in state prison. In theory, if convicted on all charges, the offenses are all charged in the first degree, and sentenced to the maximum with sentences to run consecutively, each suspect could get fifty years (20 + 20 + 5 + 5 = 50) in the state penitentiary. Fifty years could keep them locked up until they are 68 years old. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that, if convicted, the judge would set sentencing in that fashion. Sadly, the attorneys and prosecutors will probably work out some sort of plea bargain arrangement which will let the defendants out of jail while they are still relatively young men males. If the prosecution really does have the goods on the defendants, they should not agree to any plea bargain which does not sentence the defendants to the maximum.

Young Mr Roberts will never see anything again, never smell or taste anything again, for the rest of his life; the defendants, if convicted, should spend the rest of their miserable lives behind bars.

I urge you to donate to young Mr Roberts.

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It’s getting closer and closer! School districts . . . should require all students and all adults to wear a mask while in the classroom and other indoor settings, Andy Beshear said

It was just last Friday that the Fayette County public schools, the Commonwealth’s second largest,, announced that most COVID-19 restrictions were going to be lifted for when school begins again next month:

    Many COVID restrictions are lifted in Fayette school cafeterias. And all kids eat free.

    By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | July 23, 2021 | 10:29 AM | Updated: July 23, 2021 | 10:38 AM

    Many COVID restrictions will be lifted in Fayette school cafeterias in 2021-2022, a year in which all kids will eat free regardless of family income.

    Breakfast and lunch meal service will resume normal operations that were in effect prior to the COVID pandemic. Meals will not be delivered to the classrooms. High Schools will resume a la carte lines.

    Students may eat in the cafeteria, classroom, and other designated areas, a letter to families said.

Of course, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) waxed wroth!

    Beshear says Kentucky schools should consider requiring all students to wear masks

    By Alex Acquisto and Valarie Honeycutt Spears | July 26, 2021 | 3:13 PM | Updated: 5:38 PM EDT

    Gov. Andy Beshear on Monday sent a clear message to schools on when Kentucky students should wear masks in the fall, though he stopped short of issuing an order.

    Beshear said all unvaccinated students and adults should wear masks in classrooms and other indoor school settings. He said schools should require all students under the age of 12 to wear masks in classrooms. Those students are not yet eligible for vaccines.

    School districts wishing to optimize safety and minimize risks of educational and athletic, disruptions should require all students and all adults to wear a mask while in the classroom and other indoor settings, Beshear said.

    “There’s only one right answer that protects the kids,” Beshear.

    Beshear said a mandate is “not off the table.” Be he said he thought school districts would do the right thing before that was necessary.

I’ve said it before: Mr Beshear loves him some dictatorial powers, and while he hasn’t reissued his illegal and unconstitutional mask mandate yet, it seems like he’s getting closer to doing that, every day.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer proves my point

We have said, umpteen times, that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t really care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an innocent, a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl.

    Two young athletes were fatally shot this week, leaving West Philadelphia school communities shattered: ‘This can’t be normal’

    “This can’t be normal, this can’t be accepted,” a Boys’ Latin football coach said he told his players. “You have a victim, but you also have a family behind them that are left to pick up the pieces.”

    By Anna Orso | Friday, July 23, 2021

    It had been just a few weeks since K.J. Johnson got his driver’s license. He picked up friends, including his childhood pal Tommie Frazier, and headed to play basketball on Wednesday, a sunny afternoon in West Philly.

    The ride ended in tragedy. Johnson, 16, and Frazier, 18, were fatally shot just after noon while seated in a car on the 200 block of North 56th Street in West Philadelphia, after unidentified gunmen fired into the vehicle. Another 16-year-old was wounded by the bullets fired in broad daylight near a day care and a bus stop.

    As of Friday, no one had been arrested and homicide investigators were still searching for video and witnesses. Police said they found 17 shell casings at the scene.

There’s plenty more at the original, but it all boils down to the same thing we’ve written about before: the victims were good high school athletes, the victims were somebodies.

A previous story noted that:

    The shooting happened at 12:10 p.m. on the 200 block of North 56th Street, when unidentified gunmen opened fire on the teens as they sat in a car, said Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Naish.

    Two males, ages 16 and 18 — whom police did not identify — were pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center after each was struck several times. The other teen, a 16-year-old boy, was taken to Lankenau Medical Center in stable condition, police said.

Seated in a car, each struck several times, and the police recovered 17 shell casings at the scene. This wasn’t random; these victims were deliberately targeted.

Was Mr McCain telling me that I’ve been too much of a broken record on Philadelphia murders? 🙂

Next came another story:

    He ‘didn’t deserve to die this way,’ says family of the 22-year-old killed outside Pat’s Steaks

    Police have charged a Reading man with murder in connection with the killing of David Padro Jr., a 22-year-old from Camden.

    by Anna Orso and Mensah M. Dean | Updated: July 23, 2021

    David Padro Sr. expected to spend this weekend like he did the last one: surrounded by family and hanging out by his pool in South Jersey with his 22-year-old son.

    Instead, he’s planning his son’s funeral.

    David Padro Jr., 22, was fatally shot early Thursday morning in South Philadelphia outside Pat’s King of Steaks, the famed cheesesteak joint where he had stopped for a bite. His father said Padro, of Camden, was in Philadelphia with his girlfriend to go to a nightclub when they stopped to eat and an argument broke out among patrons.

    Then, police say, Paul C. Burkert, a 36-year-old from Reading, pulled a gun. Padro was shot in the shoulder and abdomen and transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 1 a.m. Police said Burkert fled the scene and then turned himself in to National Park Police at Independence Mall.

Burkert faces murder and weapons charges. Court records show he pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge in Berks County in 2019 and was prohibited from possessing a firearm. No attorney for him was listed in court records Friday.

Gee, a convicted druggie, probably a drug dealer, carrying a handgun while out to buy a cheesesteak. He may have been from Reading, but that was real Philadelphia of him!

The Inquirer reported that, despite previous rumors that it was an altercation between Eagles and Giants fans, it was an altercation over a parking space. A photo accompanying the story shows just how crowded Philly’s narrow streets are in that area.

But both cases show what the Inquirer does. They pick some unusual aspect, high school basketball players, or out-or-towners who didn’t know each other, while the typical murders, one bad guy shooting another bad guy, get ignored, and they get mostly ignored because the city doesn’t want to face the real problem: it’s not guns, but a culture which says it’s perfectly reasonable to pull out your Glock and blast someone else.

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No jail term will ever be long enough

As we have noted so many times previously, the Lexington Herald-Leader follows the McClatchy Mugshot Policy and does not print the photos of accused criminals.

    Lexington teen accused of attacking his mom is charged in shooting that blinded child

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | July 22, 2021 | 11:19 AM | Updated: July 22, 2021 | 4:27 PM

    Michael Lemond. Photo: Fayette County Detention Center.

    A Lexington teenager accused of punching and shooting his mother has been linked to a 2020 shooting that left a 5-year-old boy blind, according to police and new court records.

    Michael Lemond, 18, was charged with two counts of first-degree assault Wednesday after police accused him of firing the shots that struck 5-year-old Malakai Roberts and Roberts’ mother, Cacy Roberts. Malakai was permanently blinded by the shooting after one of the shots went through his head.

    The shooting happened around 2 a.m. on Dec. 21, according to police. The shots were fired from outside the Roberts’ home on Catera Trace. Malakai’s injuries were initially considered life-threatening. Four other people were in the home when the shooting occurred, police said at the time.

It seems that Mr Lemond is, allegedly, of course, not a very nice guy. He was already locked up at the time of these new charges, because he had (allegedly) punched and fired three shots at his own mother, on May 23rd. Police recovered three shell casings at the site.

Malakai Roberts was playing inside his own home, when a bullet came through from outside. The Herald-Leader doesn’t publish mugshots, because they might be harmful to the offenders, but, not to worry, young Mr Roberts will never see the mugshots of the men males responsible for shooting him, because he is permanently blind. When Mr Lemond gets out of jail, he will still be able to see.

    2nd Lexington teen charged in shooting that blinded a 5-year-old boy

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | July 23, 2021 | 7:13 AM

    Teyo Waite. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center.

    A second teenager has been charged with assault in a shooting that blinded a 5-year-old boy and injured his mother, according to Lexington police.

    Teyo Waite, 18, was arrested Thursday and charged with two counts of assault plus two counts of wanton endangerment, according to jail records. Police confirmed Waite was charged in connection a shooting on Catera Trace which blinded Malakai Roberts, who’s now 6. His mother, Cacy Roberts, was also shot. Other people were in the home at the time, according to arrest records.

    The shooting happened around 2 a.m. on Dec. 21, police said. It was one of several shootings that occurred. Malakai was blinded by a bullet that went through his temple and narrowly missed his brain, his family said.

    Malakai Roberts sat with his gifts on his 6th birthday. Roberts was permanently blinded when he was unexpectedly shot by someone outside his home on Dec. 21. Photo by Cacy Roberts.

    “You won’t find a more sweet kid than Malakai despite what he’s going through,” detective Cal Mattox previously told the Herald-Leader. Mattox, a Lexington police narcotics detective, wasn’t directly involved in the shooting investigation. But he helped launch a fundraiser for the family, which has raised more than $16,500.

    Police previously charged another 18-year-old, Michael Lemond, with the same crimes in the same shooting. Lemond was already in jail due to an unrelated arrest, which occurred in May.

If you can spare the money, I urge you to go ahead and make a donation to help young Mr Roberts. The GoFundMe site has, thus far, raised $16,890 for him, but it will never, ever, be able to replace what this young boy has lost. If Messrs Waite and Lemond are convicted for the blinding of Mr Roberts, I would suggest that they should get out of prison the day that Mr Roberts regains his sight.

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I’m surprised that the Usual Suspects aren’t already out protesting But, then again, the day is still young

An article not to be found on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page:

    Man fatally shot by police in Kensington after allegedly firing at officers

    The shooting occurred on the 3000 block of North Water Street.

    By Robert Moran | July 22, 2021

    An unidentified man was fatally shot by police after he allegedly fired shots at two officers during a large neighborhood fight in the city’s Kensington section Thursday evening.

    The man, described as in his late 40s or early 50s, was shot in the shoulder and abdomen just before 6:30 p.m. on the 3000 block of North Water Street near Clearfield Street, said Chief Inspector Scott Small. The man was transported by police to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:30.

    The officers were undercover as part of a long-term narcotics investigation and were sitting inside an unmarked Nissan when the fight broke out, Small said. Some of the people involved in the fight jostled up against the unmarked vehicle and then the officers saw the man allegedly pull out a gun.

    Small said the officers got out of the vehicle and identified themselves as police. The man then allegedly fired at least two shots into the crowd and in the direction of the officers, who then returned fire.

North Water Street near Clearfield Street, Google Maps streetview.

There’s more at the original. I hope that the entire exchange was caught on tape, and I’m surprised that the Usual Suspects aren’t already out protesting.

If you look at the Google Maps street view of North Water Street, with Clearfield Street the intersection visible, you’re going to see a crime-ridden neighborhood. How do I know that? Even in this streetview of a racially integrated neighborhood, you can see at least six homes in which the owners have put themselves in jail, adding bars to the fronts of their houses to keep the bad guys out. Follow the link, and toggle through, and you’ll see plenty of others.

This is the part the Inquirer never points out. Yes, I know: the reporter, Robert Moran, doesn’t have this kind of investigation as part of his job, so I can’t blame him, but somebody, somebody! at the Inquirer ought to be out there, taking pictures and doing interviews on streets like this, an obviously poorer neighborhood, in which people are spending their too-few dollars on drugs — that’s why the police were conducting an undercover investigation there — and metal bars to keep their meager possessions safe from theft.

Perhaps the Inquirer might be asking, ‘Why, in a city in which jobs are going unfilled, are so many in this neighborhood poor?’ Perhaps the Inquirer might ask, ‘Why, in a neighborhood in which people are so obviously poor, are they wasting what money they do have on drugs?’

But the Inquirer won’t ask those questions, because the #woke editors and reporters already know the answers, and sure don’t want those answers made public.

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The Lexington Herald-Leader does not know how to win friends and influence people

In October of 1936, Dale Carnegie published the self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People. In 2011, it was number 19 on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential books. It is a book that Dr David Shafran has apparently not read.

    ‘Selfish or stupid.’ Rejecting COVID vaccine puts healthcare workers in real danger.

    By David Safran[1]At least as of 2:36 PM, the Herald-Leader spelled the author’s name ‘Safran’ at the beginning of the article, and ‘Shafran’ at the end. | July 21, 2021 | 10:42 AM | Updated: 11:04 AM EDT

    “If you can get the vaccine, and decide not to, then you’ve made your choice: Don’t ask for sympathy or money when you get sick”. Conservative columnist Bret Stephens offered that comment in the NY Times on July 19 as an alternative when referring to President Biden’s ill-received comment about people “killing America” by not getting the vaccine.

    Sounds great, and I agree to a point. But unfortunately, thanks to a federal regulation with the acronym EMTALA, which stands for Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, the comment, like our president’s, is empty. The law was passed in 1986 with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Reagan. It basically states if the hospital receives payments from Medicare, a person had a right to be seen, or from the other point of view, a doctor is forced to see and take care of a patient, whether or not they could pay the bills. Physicians learned to call EMTALA the Anti-Patient Dumping Act, as they could no longer refuse to see uninsured patients, or more likely “dump them” on a bigger hospital. Private hospitals got around the law by closing their emergency rooms.

    Now, with the environment of healthcare completely different, I would like to rename EMTALA the People’s Inherent right to Selfishness and Stupidity Act. As we are seeing in this country, when it comes to Covid, unvaccinated Americans are either for the most part selfish or stupid.

There’s more at the original, and even more in the last paragraph, but I ended my copying at the most important point. Dr Shafran specifically, and the Lexington Herald-Leader editorially, and Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) generally speaking, are all trying to persuade Kentuckians who have not yet chosen to be vaccinated to go ahead and take one of the freely available COVID-19 vaccines. But perhaps, just perhaps, calling the people they are (purportedly) trying to persuade “stupid or selfish” might not be a method of which Mr Carnegie would have approved.

Of course, while Dr Shafran was very explicit in expressing his beliefs, Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford couldn’t contain her snarkiness:

    The political divide is no help, of course. Tuesday morning, (Louisville Courier-Journal) reporter Olivia Kraus noted that House Education Chair Regina Huff had deleted a tweet in which she compared Dr. Anthony Fauci’s vaccine advocacy to the Jonestown massacre. We used to be a nation of science. Now (as the world burns down around us) we let conservative news shows convince us that the vaccine is depositing microchips into our arms so Google can figure out what you had for breakfast, as though it didn’t already know this from your phone. One in five Americans believe the microchips, according to a new poll by The Economist and YouGov.com.

Mr Carnegie could sell ice water to Eskimos; I have my doubts that Dr Shafran or Mrs Blackford could sell ice water in Hell.

If you want to influence people, to persuade people to your position, the first thing you need to do is not be an [insert slang term for the rectum here.] You don’t need to be Max Boot, saying that the President should order people to get vaccinated, and that those who refuse should be cut off from all social life. You don’t need to be Jen Psaki, saying that the Biden Administration is working with Facebook to censor “misinformation,” or that if you are banned from one social media site, you should be banned from all. The American people don’t take well to censorship.

What you need to do is identify with people, to show them your concern and your respect for their thoughts, feelings and beliefs. You need to demonstrate an attitude that they’ve won if they bought what you are selling, not that you’ve won if they do. And you must show that you respect their choices, and their right to take those choices, even if you disagree with their decisions.

References

References
↑1 At least as of 2:36 PM, the Herald-Leader spelled the author’s name ‘Safran’ at the beginning of the article, and ‘Shafran’ at the end.