It really wasn’t an unsafe prediction. I wrote, at 10:53 AM on Saturday morning, “There were nine total paragraphs about (Tiffany) Fletcher in (Robert) Moran’s story, and I would not be surprised if there’s another about her later today in the newspaper.” And here it is:
One of the dead was a mother of three, shot while sweeping outside the Mill Creek Recreation Center, where she worked. The other was believed to be a husband and father carrying home groceries.
Tiffany Fletcher (center, yellow tank top) was photographed with lifeguard Robin Borlandoe (left) and assistant recreation leader Charles McKnight (top) at the Mill Creek Recreation Center pool in West Philadelphia on Aug. 14. Elizabeth Robertson | Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.
On the job at a recreation center. Out getting groceries. Everyday activities turned fatal for two Philadelphians who lost their lives in senseless shootings on back-to-back days this past week.
Tiffany Fletcher was killed by a stray bullet Friday afternoon while working for the city at the Mill Creek Recreation Center, in the 4700 block of Brown Street in West Philadelphia, police said. The 41-year-old mother of three was sweeping outside the center when a gun battle erupted and she was struck in the stomach, police said.
She was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead Friday evening.
When I opened the story, at around 10:10 PM EDT, all it said was that the story was “published an hour ago,” because The Philadelphia Inquirer somehow sees that as new wave, or cool, or edgy. Why not just tell us the time?
The Inky included a photo of Miss Fletcher, and some tributes to her, but there wasn’t actually a lot more information about her.
Rather, the story started to tell us about another Philadelphian gunned down for seemingly no reason:
On Thursday night in Overbrook, police said that a man identified on social media as Quenzell Bradley, or Quenzell Bradley Brown, described as being in his mid-30s, was shot in the head multiple times just before 9 p.m. on the 6200 block of Lebanon Avenue, where he was believed to have lived. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Those who knew him said in an Instagram post that he was carrying groceries home to his wife and kids at the time. Police provided no motive for the killing.
While police had not released the man’s name as of late Saturday, saying they had not yet notified his next of kin, relatives appear to be posting about his shooting on a Facebook page belonging to “Quenzell Bradleybrown.” A flier was posted on the page Saturday afternoon, identifying him as Quenzell Bradley Brown, aka “QQQQ.”
A Friday post on the Facebook page read: “… let it be known my brother was a innocent man was not n the streets was a family man married man with four kids just started his new job ln and was bringing in groceries unfortunately he was gunned down before he could even make it to the steps of his home died over senseless gun violence that had nothing to do with him mistaken identity I love you quenzell n we won’t rest until u get JUSTICE NO JUSTICE NO PEACE.”
A vigil will be held at 6 p.m. Sunday for the victim at 1101 N. 63rd St., according to a flier on the Facebook page. Attendees are encouraged to bring blue balloons in his honor.
Once again, we get to hear about the “innocents” who get killed in the City of Brotherly Love, but there are never any stories about the vast majority of people murdered in Philly. The police and the media tally up the numbers — at least 380 through mid-afternoon on Saturday — but, in the end, that’s all they are: numbers.
I’ve said it dozens of times before: The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl.
Well, an “innocent” was killed on Friday, so yeah, we’re getting a lot more about her from 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.
A 41-year-old woman was killed by a stray bullet Friday afternoon while working for the city at a recreation center in the Mill Creek section of West Philadelphia, police said.
Just before 1:30 p.m., the woman — identifed late Friday night by the city as Tiffany Fletcher — was sweeping outside the Mill Creek Recreation Center on the 4700 block of Brown Street when a gun battle erupted and she was struck in the stomach, police said.
She was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead Friday evening.
Police Capt. John Walker said a 14-year-old boy — who allegedly was seen dropping a gun near the shooting scene — was in custody as part of the investigation. The gun was recovered by police.
Mayor Jim Kenney and Parks and Recreation Kathryn Ott Lovell issued statements praising Fletcher and decrying the gun violence.
Perhaps Mr Kenney shouldn’t have linked the city’s Parks and Recreation Twitter site, because, at least as of 8:30 AM EDT on Saturday, all it has are nice, positive tweets showing, and nothing on Miss Fletcher.
For Inquirer reporter Robert Moran, the 482 words in his story constitutes a long one. A reporter who covers “breaking news at night,” his stories are very frequently of the three or four paragraph variety, noting that the Philadelphia Police Department have reported an unknown male was shot and killed in one of the neighborhoods in the city’s combat zones. This time, he had more to work with, because the victim was an innocent, not just another gang-banger or wannabe.
There were nine total paragraphs about Miss Fletcher in Mr Moran’s story, and I would not be surprised if there’s another about her later today in the newspaper. Much further down, I saw this:
Later Friday night in the city’s Fairhill section, an unidentified man was fatally wounded in a shooting on the 3100 block of North Front Street. He was transported by private vehicle to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:34 p.m. Police reported no arrests in that case.
The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.
Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.
By the time you read this, there will only be more.
Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.
At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:
“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”
That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.
Since Miss Ubiñas published her column, the Inky has changed its editorial policies, and now readers will no longer be told that the victim was “a 21-year-old black male,” but just a 21-year-old male.” And in Mr Moran’s story, this victim was reduced to even less than Miss Ubiñas wrote, to “an unidentified man”, though Mr Moran normally adds more information if he’d has it.
The Fairhill neighborhood is one of those listed prominently as part of the “Philadelphia Badlands.” Of course, once the Google Maps designation of “Philadelphia Badlands” was spotted, the Inky waxed wroth:
by Patricia Madej | Updated: May 2, 2019A label for the “Philadelphia Badlands” on Google Maps drew ire online this week, adding another layer to the long-standing conversation over neighborhood names and boundaries, and their uses in technology.
A Twitter account, @RITTSQU, shared an image Tuesday that showed the name labeled near the Fairhill neighborhood in North Philadelphia, calling it “a racist new twist.” The post quickly garnered attention, and by Thursday, the name did not appear to be on the map, though a search for “Philadelphia Badlands” still brought results.
Using “Philadelphia Badlands” in Google Maps’ directions feature will take users to Sixth Street and Allegheny Avenue, while also suggesting Fairhill, North Philadelphia, and Kensington. It’s unclear how long the name had existed on Google Maps, when or why it was removed, or how it was added. Google did not respond to requests for comment.
Note that North Front Street is shown on that Google Maps photo of the Badlands. The 3100 block extends for three blocks south of East Allegheny Avenue, also shown on the map. You don’t get any more Badlands than that!
I’m not sure why calling a murderous neighborhood the Badlands is racist; it’s a designation spawned by the numbers, not color.
West Philly, where Miss Fletcher was killed, is not in the Badlands, but, if we do something really radical like tell the truth, West Philly has its own serious crime problem.
There’s a question not often asked these days: was Miss Fletcher’s life somehow more important than the unknown man killed on North Front Street? Being where the shooting happened, there’s a decent chance he was another gang banger, killed by a banger from a rival gang, but we don’t know that; he could easily have been a completely innocent man, perhaps an intended robbery victim, or could he have been someone’s boyfriend shot by a jealous, spurned suitor? Perhaps he was a buyer in a drug deal gone bad.
This is the problem with the journolists[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading of the Inquirer: they don’t do very much actual journalism when it comes to city homicides. We get to read the stories about the innocents and the cute white girls killed, but most of the homicide stories are simply not pursued.
This is really the job of the Inquirer,our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, because the other important news medium in Philly, the television news stations, are in the business of presenting stories which happen right away, stories which have a strong visual component. Only newspapers have the capacity to dig more deeply, to present more information than people can get from a thirty-second story on WPVI-TV; that’s just the nature of the different media forms. And with the switch to a mostly digital format, newspapers are no longer stuck with assigned story length, save in the actual print editions.
Who was the unidentified 21-year-old man killed in Fairhill? Why was he killed? What family were left to mourn his passing? The Inky may, may! delve into the story of the 14-year-old (alleged) shooter in the Mill Creek Rec Center gun battle, perhaps telling us about the other (alleged) members of the gangs which fought it out, though that story might just be too politically incorrect for publication.
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.
We have previously noted the apparent discrepancies in the sentences that Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has sought for felons, discrepancies obvious when you look at the race of the offenders. Nathaniel Harper, who is white, was sentenced to 36 years in prison for killing a man he hit as he wrecked the car in which he was fleeing police, even though his attorneys had been trying to plead down to a manslaughter or another lesser offense. Miss Red Corn and her office allowed George Boulder IV, who was part of a deliberate, broad-daylight shooting which killed members of another gang, or Xavier Hardin, who deliberately shot an enemy in Fayette Mall, or Jemel Barber, who was allowed to plead down for one of two fatal shootings, or Malachi Jackson, who killed a 15-year-old rival, or James Ragland, who killed a woman outside a Lexington strip club, every single one of them, along with others, to plead down to manslaughter, for deliberately killing other people.
by Taylor Six | Thursday, September 8, 2022 | 2:19 PM EDT
Morgan Johnson, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.
A Lexington man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to murder for a teenager’s death in 2018.Morgan Johnson, 25, was sentenced on Thursday afternoon by Judge Lucy VanMeter for amended charges he pleaded guilty to as part of a deal in July. Johnson pleaded guilty to murder, second-degree burglary and first-degree unlawful imprisonment.
Johnson’s conviction comes after he was accused of killing 19-year-old Christopher Spencer at an apartment off Richmond Road Feb. 7, 2018. Spencer was found on the porch of the residence with multiple gunshot wounds.
Johnson, who was 21 at the time, is also accused of kidnapping a woman he knew and taking her to the Squires Woods Way home, where he sexually assaulted her, according to court records. Johnson, Spencer and the woman knew one another, former Lexington Police Sgt. Jervis Middleton said, according to court documents.
He was sentenced to 25 years for murder, five years for burglary and five years for unlawful imprisonment. Each sentence will run consecutively. He was also ordered to have a 10 year protection order against one of the victims in the case, and a restitution of $6,080.
Mr Johnson’s attorney noted that there had been questions as to whether he was mentally fit to stand trial, and he had been examined at Eastern State Hospital, though Taylor Six’s article notes that the mental hospital does not release any information on individual patients. None of that, of course, excuses Mr Johnson’s crimes. But my question is: why was Mr Johnson, who did plead guilty, not given treatment as lenient as Miss Red Corn has been “mediating” out to black murderers?
Oh, wait, I’m sorry, black manslaughterers, the charges to which they were allowed to plead down.
I have no problem at all with Mr Johnson’s sentence, other than it is too short; he should get out of jail on the same day that Mr Spencer comes back to life. My point is that the thankfully outgoing Commonwealth’s Attorney has been allowing very lenient plea bargain arrangements to killers who aren’t white. If you deliberately kill someone, there should be no plea bargains: you should go to jail for the rest of your life.
But that’s not what happens in Lexington, not if you’re black:
On January 19, 2022, Malachi Jackson, now 20 but 16 at the time of his crime, charged with the murder of 15-year-old Kevin Olmeda, was allowed by Miss Red Corn to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter, second-degree assault, and first-degree criminal attempt to commit robbery. With a recommended sentence of 15 years by the prosecution, time already served taken into account, and the state minimum of 85% of sentence required, Mr Jackson could be out of jail by the age of 31.
On March 11, 2022, Xavier Hardin, 21, was allowed by Miss Red Corn to plead guilty to manslaughter, assault and wanton endangerment charges in the killing of Kenneth Bottoms Jr., 17, and charges of murder were dropped. The shooting was caught on security tape in Fayette Mall, so it isn’t as though the prosecution would have a difficult time proving their case. Mr Hardin was eventually sentenced to 22 years in prison, but even if he serves the maximum sentence, he’ll be out when he’s just 41-years-old.
This is not justice, and this is not law enforcement. Thankfully, Miss Red Corn is leaving office in a few weeks, but we need to do what we can to push her successor to enforce the law, to the maximum extent of the law. Not doing so is why Lexington has already seen 34 homicides this year, one every 7.38 days, and is on pace for 49 or 50 murders for the year; the exact number works out to 49.44. The city’s record is ‘only’ 37 murders, set last year.
Lexington is drawing ever nearer to it’s record number of homicides.
Lexington set a record with 30 homicides in 2019. Not to be outdone, the gang-bangers knocked off 34 people in 2020. Well, it seems like the bad guys took only 34 as a personal challenge, and slew 37 people last year. Now, with 3½ months left in the year, 2022 has seen 34 homicides as of September 9th. Last year, murder number 34 didn’t occur until Thanksgiving Day.
Steven Smith, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.
by Christopher Leach | Friday, September 9, 2022 | 7:06 AM EDT
One man is dead and another has been arrested after a shooting on Devonia Avenue Thursday, Lexington police say.
The shooting took place just before 6 p.m. on the 100 block of Devonia Avenue, which is near North Broadway. Police said they were responding to a report of a disorder with a weapon and when they arrived, they found a 57-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound. He was declared dead on scene.
The Fayette County Coroner’s Office later identified the victim as Clarence Adams.
Police arrested Steven Smith, 32, and charged him with murder, fourth degree assault (domestic violence), two counts of wanton endangerment and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. He is being held at the Fayette County Detention Center without a bond.
During the investigation, detectives determined that Smith and Adams lived at the same residence. The assault charge stemmed from an assault of a third party, according to police.
The killing marks the 34th homicide in Lexington this year, putting the city closer to the annual homicide record of 37, which was set in 2021.
No, of course what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal didn’t publish the suspect’s mugshot; I looked it up on the Fayette County Detention Center’s website, where it is a public record. Also shown was a previous mugshot, dated May 6, 2015, so Mr Smith is not exactly unfamiliar with jail.
The jail website lists the charges Mr Smith is alleged to have committed. Two separate counts of possession of weapons by a convicted felon tells you that he has been a bad, bad boy.
Let’s look at those charges:
KRS §508.030 Assault 4th Degree is a Class A misdemeanor.
KRS §508.060 Wanton Endangerment, First Degree, a Class D felony
KRS §527.040 Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon is a Class D felony if it is not a handgun, and a Class C felony for a handgun.
Under KRS §532.060, the sentence for a Class B felony is not less than ten (10) years nor more than twenty (20) years imprisonment, and the sentence for a Class D felony is not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years imprisonment. Under KRS §532.090, the sentence for a Class A misdemeanor is imprisonment for a term not to exceed twelve (12) months.
Then there’s the big charge:
KRS §507.020, murder is a capital offense. Under KRS §532.030, the sentence for a capital offense is either:
death
imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole
imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole until he has served a minimum of twenty-five (25) years of his sentence
imprisonment for a term of not less than twenty (20) years nor more than fifty (50) years
As we have previously noted, Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn is retiring at the end of this month, so she won’t be able to “mediate” Mr Smith into a lenient plea deal, but if her hand-picked replacement is nominated by Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY), Mr Smith might well be the grateful recipient of leniency.
Mr Smith, if he is convicted, should get out of jail the same day that his victims comes back to life.
At 34 homicides in 251 days, Lexington is on pace for 49.44 murders for 2022.
I seem to remember a time, not so long ago, when the left were telling us that it was not just right, but mandatory, that people alter their desired behavior because a horrible virus was loose. Now some are demanding, demanding! that the government enable their ability to do exactly as they please, without any health consequences. From NBC News:
Queer men across the U.S. talked to NBC News about the dates they never went on, the sex they never had and the gatherings they avoided due to the viral outbreak.
by Benjamin Ryan | Friday, September 2, 2022 | 9:04 AM EDT
For many gay and bisexual men, the sprawling and chaotic monkeypox outbreak has upended a summer that was supposed to be a well-earned opportunity — following the peak of the Covid crisis — to finally have some fun and revel with their gay brothers without the threat of viral infection hanging over them.
Soon after Memorial Day, however, these men, as well as transgender individuals and other queer people — GBTQ for short, because lesbians’ monkeypox risk is remote — were met head-on with harrowing reports about monkeypox’s often devastating and disfiguring effects on the body. Next came anger and frustration over what queer activists characterize as the Biden administration’s fumbling initial response to the outbreak.
I guess that it’s OK now to call queers queer. After all, they seem to have embraced the term for themselves. It’s not how I choose to express myself, but whatever.
Lost amid the frantic media and public health reports about monkeypox epidemiology, the delayed vaccine deliveries and the squabbling over how best to communicate about the virus are the millions of GBTQ people whose happiness, well-being and connection to one another have in many cases been considerably compromised by the mere threat of monkeypox infection.
“Life has sort of halted,” said Guillermo Rojas, 29, a Mexican citizen and public administration graduate student in New York City. “This was supposed to be the great summer that everything went back and opened.”
Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, a psychiatrist at the LGBTQ-health-focused Fenway Institute in Boston, said the outbreak has “been extremely distressing for community members and is also triggering in that it harkens back to the early days of the AIDS epidemic. It has a chilling effect on people’s sense of community, cohesion and belonging.”
Let’s be truthful here: in the NBC article, “people’s sense of community, cohesion and belonging” means their ability to go out and seek anonymous, promiscuous sex.
The article continues to note that monkeypox, while quite painful, has been fatal in only one instance in the United States, in an already “severely immunocompromised person”, which would be extremely politically incorrect to read as a homosexual male who had AIDS. The vaccine is becoming much more readily available.
One very politically correct notion, that monkeypox is spread by skin-to-skin contact, is disabused, as the article cites a study which points out that Sex between men, not skin contact, is fueling monkeypox, new research suggests: The claim that skin-to-skin contact during sex between men, not intercourse itself, drives most monkeypox transmission is likely backward, a growing group of experts say.
Now, however, an expanding cadre of experts has come to believe that sex between men itself — both anal as well as oral intercourse — is likely the main driver of global monkeypox transmission. The skin contact that comes with sex, these experts say, is probably much less of a risk factor.
Over 100 gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people responded to an NBC News online survey seeking to learn about how monkeypox has affected their lives. What this diverse cross-section of the community most had in common were missed opportunities. They wrote about sex they never had, dates they never went on and gatherings with friends they avoided.
This was really the most important part of the 2,684-word long article, because it set the stage for the rest of it, and the rest of it was basically whining that so many homosexual males felt it unsafe to go to bathhouses and bars cruising for mostly anonymous sex. COVID-19 put a real crimp in that starting in 2020, and once the panicdemic — not a typo, but a word reflecting the fact that the worst symptom of the disease was panic — was over, and the license for promiscuous, anonymous sex was restored, it all got shut down again.
“Post-Covid,” said (Guillermo Rojas, 29, a Mexican citizen and public administration graduate student in New York City), recalling how he experienced the free-spirited bacchanalia into which monkeypox arrived in New York City this spring, “everybody went crazy, and there were sex parties all over town.”
Monkeypox swiftly pushed the contemporary safer-sex playbook out the window. Queer people have been left scrambling for answers about how to protect themselves and have expressed bewilderment as they’ve struggled to process mixed messaging from public health leaders and journalists about what poses a substantial risk of infection.
Rojas was one of the first U.S. residents to receive the prized monkeypox vaccine, in late June. But even with the benefit of his first jab of the two-dose vaccine, he has still sharply curtailed what he had hoped would be a long-awaited libertine summer.
“I’ve stopped going to sex parties,” he said, given that public health authorities identified such gatherings of men as major monkeypox risk factors. “I also stopped having sex with people who live off their OnlyFans. I additionally stopped cruising at the gym, I did not continue to go to Fire Island, and I stopped attending orgies.”
To misquote Dirty Harry, I’m just all broken up about Mr Rojas’ ability to go out to orgies.
Not everyone in the queer community has been on the same page regarding monkeypox precautions. Just as battles over mask mandates and school closures have turned neighbor against neighbor during the Covid pandemic, fierce internecine conflicts have arisen among GBTQ people this summer about the best ways to respond to and communicate about monkeypox.
Michael Weinstein, the president of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, dusted off his outspoken antipathy toward PrEP and published a scathing rebuke of the sexual liberties the HIV-prevention pill has facilitated in an op-ed titled “Monkeypox Reckoning” in the Los Angeles Blade on Monday. Notorious for an unapologetically strident, moralizing and fear-based approach to HIV-prevention communication, one that is far out of step with that of the vast majority of the public health community, Weinstein decried “a wholesale abandonment of safer sex promotion in favor of PrEP.”
“There has always been a sex radical group that has defined gay liberation as absolute sexual freedom,” Weinstein wrote, blaming monkeypox on (the loss of) those freedoms.
Let’s see, a disease spread primarily by sex, and some people see a highly promiscuous sex life as more probable to spread the disease? That’s pretty much logic, you know?
John Pachankis, a psychologist at the Yale School of Public Health, noted how for the past two decades, queer advocacy organizations have pushed “a narrative that gay people are just like everyone else” in a successful effort to secure many civil rights protections. He spoke to the conflict that members of this community now face when the particulars of gay sex lie at the heart of the monkeypox outbreak and, as during the AIDS crisis, have become fodder for intense public debate.
“In the context of the real threat of those rights’ being taken away,” Pachankis said, referring to the recent rising tide of anti-LGBTQ sentiment and policies in the U.S., “the last thing that you want to do is disconfirm that narrative — even if the picture is a little more nuanced, even if gay people do live distinct lives from straight people, even if they express their sexuality more creatively, some might say more authentically.”
Brian Minalga, 36, who is gender nonbinary and works in the HIV field in Seattle, said: “There’s this idea that there are good people with good behaviors having the good type of sex. It’s moralistic and puritanical.”
It’s also practical.
Every human society of which we know has developed the concept of marriage, of restricting sexual activity to husbands and wives, and gradually eliminated legal polygamy, because that was what worked best for society. But let’s tell the truth here: the sexual drive for men is heavily skewed toward f(ornicating) anyone in a skirt, and it has always been the reluctance of women, who bear the far greater burden in reproduction, which has held men back.
But when the prospective copulation is between two men males? That restraining force just isn’t there, and that’s why homosexual males have such a promiscuous culture. If homosexual males were really like the propaganda put forward to normalize homosexuality, just people seeking only loving, coupled relationships, who deserve the benefits and stability of marriage, the tremendous spread of monkeypox wouldn’t have occurred.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and various state andlocal health departmentshavereported that monkeypox is indeed already disproportionately affecting Blacks and Latinos. And yet outsize shares of the vaccines have tended to go to whites — thanks, health advocates say, to structural factors that favor access to more privileged members of society.
Watching such patterns play out “is painful,” said Carlos E. Rodríguez-Díaz, an associate professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, “because it’s a reminder of the presence of systemic racism.”
(Jazmyn Henderson, an activist with ACT UP, an HIV and AIDS advocacy group), a trans Black woman, said Black men who have sex with men may still identify as heterosexual. “Identifying as gay, identifying as trans, all of that is very stigmatized,” she said. “I didn’t realize how stigmatized trans women are until I became one.”
Just as with COVID-19, the black community have been more resistant to taking the vaccine. The left have given us all sorts of reasons for this, most involving distrust of government, but whatever the reasons, the reluctance to take the COVID vaccines existed, and they were part of the community, whether the left wanted to blame that on racism or not. With monkeypox, that reluctance is a baseline, and the added stigma over homosexuality in the black community layers on top of that.
Simply put, the vaccine against monkeypox exists, and has existed for a long time; it’s not experimental the way the COVID vaccines were. There were some initial shortages, but those are being rapidly resolved, and if black homosexual males have been more reluctant to take the vaccine, that’s on them. The wryly amusing part is the view of the view of the left that black males and white males have exactly the same social concerns and should think exactly the same way.
There’s a lot more at the original, with much of the rest telling us how specific individuals have curtailed their promiscuity over fears of monkeypox. But, alas! sexual promiscuity has been curtailed in society because it has real, identifiable, and sometimes serious consequences.
A former friend of mine was fond of saying that the sexual revolution is over, and the men won. Well, in a lot of ways, that’s true. But it’s also true that the men lost, and when you get two, or more, males together interested in sex with each other, sometimes that will result in negative consequences for them. The homosexual activists want the government to subsidize and protect their right to screw indiscriminately, but once everyone is vaccinated against monkeypox, something else will come along.
There has been much mockery of the California’s announcement that, beginning in 2035, only zero-emissions personal new vehicles could be sold in the Pyrite State, followed just a couple of days later by pleas that owners of plug-in electric vehicles not be recharged at home during peak energy use hours, and that was followed by the threat of rolling blackouts, to avoid a major collapse of the state’s power grid. If the power couldn’t be kept on during a heat wave, and people couldn’t recharge their Chevy Dolt’s when there just aren’t that many of them on the roads, how could things be handled if only plug-in electric vehicles could be sold come 2035?
Somehow, in all of that, what Patterico used to call the Los Angeles Dog Trainer managed to use 2,351 words to actually document what all of this means.
It was the sort of bold, climate-focused initiative that California has developed a reputation for — an effective ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
Now, as officials seek to fundamentally change California’s automotive culture — thereby reducing its largest source of planet-warming carbon emissions and air pollution — experts say those past initiatives may shed light on whether California’s nation-leading auto plan can work.
In Los Angeles, the dense smog that once smothered the city is regarded today as folklore. At its worst, between the 1950s and 1980s, the caustic haze was so thick that people could see only as far as a city block. It irritated people’s throats and lungs, and gave them bloodshot eyes. Back then, there were more than 200 days with unhealthy air annually, according to the Air Resources Board.
Since that time, there has been tremendous progress toward reducing smog and air pollution, much of it due to cleaner cars. The amount of smog-forming nitrogen oxides has been slashed by more than 50% in the last two decades, substantially improving public health.
But California’s progress in fighting air pollution has stagnated in recent decades, and the state is still home to the worst air pollution in the nation. The South Coast air basin — Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and part of San Bernardino counties — has yet to meet any federal health standards for ozone levels, including the oldest measure enacted in 1979.
“If you’re looking back 70 years, we’ve done a wonderful job,” said Joe Lyou, president of the Coalition for Clean Air. “If you’re looking back over the last decade or two, not so good. And if you’re looking at the legal standards that demand that we provide healthy air for people to breathe, we’re not doing well at all.”
Naturally, I have to cut a lot of the text, to avoid plagiarism and copyright violations, but what follows next is a brief history of the state’s efforts to reduce smog produced by exhaust pipe emissions. It notes that California was the first state to require catalytic converters. Then, in 2006, the silly cap-and-trade system was introduced.
It was in 2002 that I was part of a meeting in which a cap-and-trade proposal was made at the ready-mixed concrete company for which I worked. Because the company used flyash as a pozzolan, or partial cement replacement, it would have carbon ‘credits’ for the Portland cement that was not used. Those credits could be sold to a company which was supposed to reduce its CO2 emissions, but found itself unable or unwilling to spend the money to do so. I saw it for what it was: not the reduction in CO2 emissions, but simply the moving around of money.
One of California’s landmark climate programs, cap-and-trade was initially launched in 2006 with the aim of reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It exceeded expectations, and in fact reached the target four years ahead of time.
In 2017, the program was reauthorized with a much more ambitious goal: Slashing greenhouse gas emissions to 40% of 1990 levels by 2030. To get there, the program uses a system of pollution credits that essentially lets large carbon emitters buy and sell unused credits with the aim of keeping everyone at or below a certain total.
Experts say it only sort of worked. While the program has remained a key element of California’s climate strategy, emissions were down about 11% in 2020 — far from the 40% goal. What’s more, that number likely accounts for emissions reductions tied to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was a point which covered only half the issue. Yes, the panicdemic — no, not a typo, but the word I intended to use, because the biggest effect of COVID-19 was panic — would up reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but only via the mechanism of throwing millions of people out of work.
Despite California’s green reputation, it remains the seventh-highest oil producing state in the nation, extracting about 358,000 barrels per day, according to state data.
However, oil production has been declining for decades, and the California Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, reported that “more permits have been issued to plug and permanently seal existing wells than to drill new ones since 2019.” The agency issued 564 new well permits in 2021, down from 1,917 in 2020 and 2,665 in 2019.
Some experts said that’s not aggressive enough.
“This transition can’t happen too slowly, because there is a climate crisis, and there are significant public health impacts on frontline communities,” said Bahram Fazeli, director of research and policy at Communities for a Better Environment.
Although there are ambitions to phase out California’s oil and gas production completely — most recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom set his sights on 2045 — there has yet to be an official deadline such as the one for the gas car ban.
Just like the panicdemic, reducing and eventually elimination petroleum production in California doesn’t mean that gasoline and diesel will not be used; it simply means that more of the state’s residents will be thrown out of work. Perhaps Governor Newsom thinks that all of the displaced workers will simply learn to code.
For example, reducing demand without supply could mean California ends up exporting its excess oil, Meng said, while reducing supply too quickly could leave communities that rely on the industry in bad shape. In Kern County, one of the state’s top producing regions, oil and gas extraction provide as much as 20% of the area’s property tax revenue.
A few silly paragraphs then follow concerning “equity,” or the notion that trying to meet the state’s goals must not disproportionately impact disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups.
Then comes the big part.
Although phasing out gas-powered cars is one of the state’s greatest priorities, that alone won’t be enough. Driving habits must change, too, if the state expects to achieve carbon neutrality.
The state climate plan depends on motorists driving at least 12% fewer miles by 2030, and no fewer than 22% by 2045.
How, I have to ask, can the state require people to drive less, when California is the poster child for suburban sprawl?
“Highway building and sprawl go hand in hand,” said Susan Handy, a researcher at UC Davis who has studied strategies to reduce automobile dependence. “That’s true in California, and it’s also true everywhere else. When we built highways, it made it possible to develop farther from city centers than ever before. And now we’re in a situation where we’ve got these sprawling development patterns and it makes it very hard to get around by means other than the car.”
As the state’s population has risen and more cars are on the road, state officials funded highway construction and expansion to ease congestion, which ironically fostered more driving.
The only major significant decreases in miles driven occur during economic downturns and, recently, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 as more people have worked remotely. However, driving has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
There you have it: even the very liberal Los Angeles Times has admitted that driving is necessary for the state’s economic health. You cannot reduce the transportation abilities of the people without making people poorer.
The article continues to talk about changing people’s behavior, but let’s face it: that means making them poorer. Public transportation is cited as a replacement, but public transportation is a burden and an inconvenience. You have to leave your home and walk to or drive to, depending upon the distance and weather, the bus or train or subway stop, ride in a smelly, dirty and sometimes unsafe public conveyance to the bus or train or subway stop, hoping that isn’t like the SEPTA station on Allegheny Avenue, and then walk or taxi from that station to where you work. Hope it isn’t raining!
Of course, the state will need multiple thousands and thousands of public car charging stations, and
plans to construct at least 250,000 public vehicle charging stations by the middle of the decade; 10,000 of which should be fast chargers, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.
Uhhh, the “middle of the decade” is almost here! 2025 is less than 2½ years away.
If 240,000 of those public charging stations are not 480-volt “fast chargers”, that means that people would need eight hours to recharge their vehicles. Even the fast charging stations require 45 to 75 minutes to recharge fully a vehicle that is down to 25% of battery capacity.
The state also plans to require landlords of multifamily housing units to provide residents with a means to charge electric cars, though those details are still being worked out.
Really? Great! Now, how can that be done?
There are hundreds of thousands of apartment buildings which have no designated parking for residents; how can landlords get charging stations for such buildings? More, in those “multifamily housing units” which do have designated parking places, requiring landlords to provide electric car charging facilities costs money. The Pyrite State is already one of the most expensive places to live in the country, and half of the state’s 40 million people are renters. If landlords have to plow multiple thousands of dollars into car charging stations for their tenants, rents will have to be raised to cover that cost, and rents are already increasing significantly thanks to Joe’s Bidenflation.
So much of not just California’s, but the global warming activists’ plans nationwide show two very fundamental flaws: they don’t understand economics, and they don’t understand poor people and how they have to live. California has a huge homelessness problem, and major cities which can’t keep people from living and pooping in the streets are going to be impossibly pressed to provide the infrastructure to increase electricity supply and delivery by the amount needed to meet its goals. We have already noted how the Inflation Enhancement Reduction Act’s renewal of tax credit for electric car purchases has been met with electric vehicle prices rising, because economic forces trump the good intentions of liberal legislators. California’s legislators have already voted to keep Diablo Canyon, the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant, open several years longer, because as much as the left hate nuclear power, the state needs the sparktricity.
It doesn’t matter how good or noble or necessary the state’s liberal leaders believe their intentions to be; reality cannot be denied, and what they want California to become is simply not something which can be legislated into existence. Construction takes time, often lots of time, and it takes money, usually lots of money.
But more, they believe that they can change the culture of the state in ways people do not wish to change. Who wants to take the bus to the grocery store, and have to lug grocery bags back several blocks by hand?
California’s car culture emerged because that was what the people of the Pyrite State wanted. But, then again, the left have never really cared what other people want.
I have said it before: The Philadelphia Inquirer really isn’t all that concerned about murders unless the victim is an ‘innocent’, someone of some note, or a cute little white girl. This time it was five separate stories, albeit by the Associated Press, rather than Inky stories themselves, concerning the abduction and murder of Eliza Fletcher in Memphis, Tennessee.
A black woman was shot in the head at 4:11 AM on Saturday, September 3th in the Tacony section of the city, and all the Inquirer had was:
At 4:11 a.m., a 29-year-old woman was shot once in the face by someone she knew. No additional information was immediately available.
Police said the woman was in stable but critical condition at Jefferson Torresdale Hospital.
But, to be fair, the abduction of Mrs Fletcher was a national story; much of the credentialed media covered the story of the abduction of the pretty white woman.
The man charged with kidnapping a Tennessee woman jogging near the University of Memphis last week spent 20 years behind bars for a previous kidnapping
by Associated Press | Updated: Tuesday, September 6, 2022
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — The man charged with kidnapping a Tennessee woman jogging near the University of Memphis last week spent 20 years behind bars for a previous kidnapping.
U.S. Marshals arrested 38-year-old Cleotha Abston on Saturday after police detected his DNA on a pair of sandals found near to where Eliza Fletcher was last seen, according to an arrest affidavit. Police also linked the vehicle they believe was used in the kidnapping to a person at a residence where Abston was staying.
While Fletcher has not been found, Memphis police said in the affidavit they believe she was seriously injured in the abduction, which was caught on surveillance video. Authorities have said Fletcher, 34, was jogging around 4 a.m. on Friday when a man approached her and forced her into an SUV after a brief struggle. Fletcher was reported missing when she did not return home that morning.
Late Monday, police tweeted that a body had been found in a Memphis neighborhood but that the identity of that person and the cause of death was unconfirmed. The tweet made no reference to the Fletcher case, saying only that the investigation was ongoing. A large police presence was reported in the area where authorities reported finding the body just after 5 p.m., local news reports said.
It was later reported that the recovered body was indeed that of Mrs Fletcher.
Abston previously kidnapped a prominent Memphis attorney in 2000, the Commercial Appeal reported. When he was just 16 years old, Abston forced Kemper Durand into the trunk of his own car at gunpoint. After several hours, Abston took Durand out and forced him to drive to a Mapco gas station to withdraw money from an ATM. At the station, an armed Memphis Housing Authority guard walked in and Durand yelled for help. Abston ran away but was found and arrested. He pleaded guilty in 2001 to especially aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery, according to court records. He received a 24-year sentence. . . . .
Durand also detailed Abston’s lengthy history in the juvenile court system. In the years before the kidnapping, Abston had been charged with theft, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with a weapon, and rape, according to Durand’s statement.
Cleotha Abston
Mr Abston was sentenced to 24 years behind bars, but for some reason yet to be reported in the credentialed media, was released after just 20. We need to know: why was Mr Abston released early? Who took the decision to let him out, and did they have any choice under the law in the Volunteer State? And if there was a choice to keep him locked up, how can we hold the person or people who turned this guy loose early accountable for the consequences of their decision?
Remember: Mr Abston was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2001; had he been serving his full sentence, he would have still been in prison on the day he (allegedly) abducted Mrs Fletcher. If the parole officials in Tennessee had any discretion to keep him locked up, then they bear the responsibility for him being out on the streets and able to kidnap and murder Mrs Fletcher.
One of the major problems in our criminal justice system is that we have the state legislatures, the representatives of the people, passing laws which specify very punitive sentences for criminals, real criminals, and then we have lenient prosecutors offering sweetheart plea bargains, judges who too often sentence convicted criminals to light sentences, and state parole boards who, when they have the option, release hardened criminals back onto the streets before their maximum sentences have been completed. All of this ignores the will of the voters, the people who elect our representatives, and the people who want to see criminals locked up.
No Philly experience is complete without snapping a photo in front of one of The City of Brotherly Love’s best-known landmarks: LOVE itself.
The famous Robert Indiana sculpture is in John F. Kennedy Plaza — better known as LOVE Park — just northwest of City Hall. Installed in 1976, LOVE was briefly removed in 1978, but popular demand brought it back where it belongs.
In conjunction with the renovation of John F. Kennedy Plaza, the sculpture was restored, repainted and reinstalled in its original location in 2018.
You can ignore that big 364 in the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page: while the past years’ numbers automatically update due to the software being used, as the page itself states, “statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday.” Thus, that 364 number is what was reported for Thursday, September the Oneth, and hasn’t been updated to reflect Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Given that this is Labor Day, the Police Department doesn’t have the person who does the admin work in the office today, either.
Philadelphia homicide hour after mass shooting. Gun on grass found by @PhillyPolice next to man found shot in head after 2am at 56th & Lancaster Avenue continuing violent Labor Day weekend 10 blocks from road rage drive-thru killing 46th & Lancaster Sunday.
According to my first-grade arithmetic skills, I count eight murders in the City of Brotherly Love, and the Labor Day holiday weekend still isn’t over! Philly’s homicide record-setting year of 2021 saw five people murdered Friday through Monday of the Labor Day holiday weekend; in 2021, the holiday weekend began one day later than this year.
If Labor Day ends with just those already reported as having been killed, and not counting the first reported incident, which may not have been a homicide, that’s 372 murders in 248 days, an even 1.500 homicides per day, which works out to 547.50 murders for the year, if that rate is maintained through December 31st.
However, murders spiked in Philly after the Labor Day weekend, with 199 more people killed in just 116 days, a rate of 1.7155 per day. As we reported on September 7, 2021, the city was seeing ‘just’ 1.4578 murders a day, which would yield 532 murders for the entire year, if that average was maintained.
It wasn’t maintained, and Philly wound up with a record-shattering 562 murders for 2021. That ‘surge’ resulted in thirty more Philadelphians being sent untimely to their eternal rewards. And if I figure in that surge for the rest of the year, instead of 547 or 548 murders, Philly is on track to see 579 murders! That’s more than I projected just last night!
As we have noted many times, Philadelphia has been seeing a huge surge in homicides, and Mayor Jim Kenney wants no part, no part at all, of accepting responsibility. District Attorney Larry Krasner is also famed for passing the buck, while Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the Mayor’s hand-picked stooge, is far more concerned about inclusion and diversity than enforcing the law. To be fair, with Let ’em Loose Larry not seriously prosecuting most crimes, Commissioner Outlaw is really kind of helpless.
First, the math. With at least five homicides reported on Saturday and Sunday, Philly is sitting at at least 369 homicides as of the 247th day of the year, for a killing rate of 1.4939 per day, which works out to a projected 545.28 killings for the year. However, an alternate way of projecting the numbers, using 2021’s record-setting pace, gives us 574.52 projected murders.
Let’s tell the truth here: the vast majority of homicides in the City of Brotherly Love are perpetrated on black victims by black killers. As bad as Philadelphia’s homicide problem is, it is very much a black problem, while white Philadelphians see themselves as much safer.
We have noted that the homicide rate in Philly came down under previous Mayor Michael Nutter, District Attorney Seth Williams, and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, and that, as of August 9th, Philly had seen more homicides this year than any full year under Mayor Nutter and his staff.
Mr Nutter, like Mayor Kenney, is a liberal Democrat. Mr Krasner is a hard-left Democrat, sponsored, to the tune of $1.45 million by George Soros, while the previously elected District Attorney, Seth Williams, was also a liberal Democrat, though maybe not quite as far left as Mr Krasner. Mr Williams had his own legal problems, and was forced to resign after a federal conviction, for which he spent 2½ years in federal prison.
Every elected official in the chart to the left is a Democrat; Democrats outnumber Republicans about 6 to 1 in registration in Philly, and the last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was still President.
But if they’re all Democrats, and mostly liberal ones in a chart which begins in 2007, there has been a clear and dramatic difference in how the city’s leadership has performed when it comes to homicides. Mr Nutter inherited 391 murders from his predecessor, John Street, and while the glide path was certainly uneven, the number of killings was reduced to under 300 in his last three years in office. There was a dip of three murders in Mr Kenney’s first year, but then the killings increased rapidly, over 300 in Mr Kenney’s second year, and by the third year were higher than in any of his predecessor’s eight years.
While Mr Krasner specifically campaigned on reducing sentences, not pursuing convictions for certain minor’ offenses, and investigating the Police Department, there had been some sentence reductions in Mr Williams’ last few years as well.
While pondering all of this, an uncomfortable thought popped into my head, and I will admit to not knowing the least offensive way to put it, but here it is: when dealing with a murder problem that is very heavily skewed toward Philadelphia’s black population, is it possible that Messrs Nutter, Williams and Ramsey, who are all black men, were simply paid more attention to by the city’s black community than Messrs Kenney and Krasner, who are both white, while Commissioner Outlaw is black, but is also a woman? Is it possible that the previous city leadership were simply more respected by the black community than the people currently in office?
I do not know the answer to the questions I just posed, nor do I know how one would go about researching them, but they are really questions which should be asked.
Those who knew him said in an Instagram post that he was carrying groceries home to his wife and kids at the time. Police provided no motive for the killing.
