Posted on August 10, 2022 by Dana Pico

When it comes to #VaccineMandates the maintenance of dictatorial power is far more important than the effectiveness of the vaccines!

On July 25^th, The Wall Street Journal reported that “most people” have been infected at some point with SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19.

Geneticists and immunologists are studying factors that might protect people from infection, and learning why some are predisposed to more severe Covid-19 disease.

For many, the explanation is likely that they have in fact been infected with the virus at some point without realizing it, said Susan Kline, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. About 40% of confirmed Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic, according to a meta-analysis published in December in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

More than two years into the pandemic, most people worldwide have likely been infected with the virus at least once, epidemiologists said. Some 58% of people in the U.S. had contracted Covid-19 through February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated. Since then, a persistent wave driven by offshoots of the infectious Omicron variant has kept daily known cases in the U.S. above 100,000 for weeks.

As we have previously noted, this past winter, acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.” This was during the BA.1 variant’s primacy, and two months later, the American Medical Association warned that the then-new BA.2 subvariant could be “30% to 60% more transmissible” than BA.1. While playing Blondie’s One Way of Another, we noted that BA.4 and BA.5 are gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya! Yale Medicine also said that BA.4 and BA.5 appear to be more transmissible.

But, as it has turned out, the latest variant — has there been one since BA.5? — hasn’t been leading to serious illnesses. Also from the Journal:

Colleges Scale Back Covid Precautions for Fall, Saying Pandemic Phase Over

Requirements for masking, testing, vaccinations and isolation decrease even as virus surges

By Isabelle Sarraf and Melissa Korn | Updated August 3, 2022 | 8:59 AM EDT

Colleges this fall are no longer treating Covid-19 as an emergency upending their operations, shifting to eliminate mask requirements and mandatory coronavirus testing and letting students who contract the virus isolate in their dorms with their roommates.

With easy access to vaccinations and low hospitalization rates among college-aged adults—even during the latest surge in BA.5 subvariant cases—administrators said it is time to lift or at least rethink restrictions and redefine the virus as endemic, not a pandemic. That means scaling back mass testing, removing bans on large indoor gatherings and preparing for a fall term that more closely resembles life before Covid.

Another issue driving the decisions is exhaustion, according to public-health experts and academics on several campuses. Students and staff have been subjected to two years of daily health checks, weekly trots to a testing center and a roller coaster of mask protocols.

“It really comes down to a change in mind-set,” said Ken Henderson, who was co-chair of Northeastern University’s Covid-management operations until the group disbanded in January. Citing clinical therapies and the reduced severity of current variants, he said, “We’ve pivoted significantly to more living with the virus.”

Simply put, the COVID panicdemic — and no, that’s not a typo; panic has been exactly the overreaction people have had! — is both something with which we will have to live, and is not as serious as the doomsayers have been crying. But that hasn’t led Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), who has presided over the City of Brotherly Love having already exceeded every single year’s homicide totals under his predecessor’s, Michael Nutter’s, two terms, and who is very vocally pro-choice when it comes to abortion, determination to enforce his choice when it comes to the COVID vaccines which neither prevent contraction of, nor the spreading of, the virus. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Nearly all city workers have complied with Mayor Jim Kenney’s vaccine policy, but 68 are getting fired

The 68 employees who are not in compliance with the policy and will be terminated soon include 39 who work in the Streets Department.

by Sean Collins Walsh | Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Seal of the City of Philadelphia: Public Domain
Eight months after Mayor Jim Kenney’s vaccine mandate for city workers was supposed to take effect, the administration announced Tuesday that all but 68 of the city’s 22,000 unionized employees are now in compliance with the policy.

That doesn’t mean that almost all city employees are vaccinated against the coronavirus. Roughly 3,000 employees have obtained religious or medical exemptions from the mandate, and are required to test regularly to go to work.

The 68 employees who are not in compliance with the policy will be terminated soon, but dates will vary due to differing levels of paid time off, Kenney’s office said.

Fifteen city employees had already been fired for failing to comply with a vaccine mandate that took effect for the city’s 3,200 non-unionized employees in December 2021.

The Democratic mayor obviously doesn’t care that 68 people will lose their jobs over refusing to take a vaccine which has had some negative side effects in some people and which, while it appears to make illness caused by the virus less serious, doesn’t prevent contraction or spreading of it. The city is already below authorized staffing levels and has been having real difficulties attracting applicants. Philly has had such a serious shortage of lifeguards that it was able to open only 50 of the 65 community swimming pools this year, and had such a serious behavioral problem at one pool in Kensington that it closed the McVeigh Recreation Center for the rest of the year. The news reports did not say that the staff refused to work there any longer, but I’d bet euros against eclairs — my version of the oft-used dollars to doughnuts expression — that that’s what happened.

Tuesday’s announcement brings to an end a chain of events that began in November 2021, when Kenney said city workers had to be vaccinated by Jan. 14, 2022. The mandate was delayed for months as the administration struggled through negotiations with each of the four major municipal unions, ending when an arbitration panel in May ruled that the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 22, the staunchest opponent of the policy, had to comply.

I did suggest, on July 14^th, that the firemen and emergency medical technicians should go on strike, at least for a day, to support their union brethren who were getting suspended for refusing the vaccine. The fireman’s union President, Mike Bresnan, stated that about 700 of the union’s 2,300 members had obtained exemptions, almost all of them religious. Roughly 15% of police union members also requested exemptions.

Kenney said Tuesday that “safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines remain the best way to protect Philadelphians and save lives.”

“We have reached nearly 100 percent compliance with our vaccination mandate for our represented workforce, and this success was possible because of the hard work and partnership between our City labor partners and our Administration team,” he said in a statement. “I am proud of our City’s workforce who, as public servants, bear a responsibility to mitigate the harm that would result from inadvertent transmission.”

I wonder how many of the city’s employees would have taken the vaccine voluntarily were their jobs not put at risk. How many would have freely chosen to get vaccinated, and how many simply yielded to force? And how many used the faked vaccination cards to keep their jobs to get around tyrannical dictates?

We were told that the vaccines would prevent contraction of the virus, but that has turned out not to be the case. We were told that the vaccines would stop the spread of the virus, but that didn’t happen either.

But refusal to take the vaccine does harm the mayor’s exercise of dictatorial power, and that’s what this is really all about.

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Dana Pico

Congratulations to Jim Kenney!

Congratulations to Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney! He has just achieved more murders in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year than any full year in which his predecessor, Michael Nutter, held the office. George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw certainly deserve credit as well!

Last night was a Monday night, not a weekend, but at a time in which you’d expect Philadelphia’s gang-bangers to slow down a bit, they haven’t. I’d point out that August 8^th was a Sunday, end of the weekend, in 2021, the 32^nd weekend of the year, and the same number of weekends have elapsed in 2022, so there’s no additional weekend bump in 2022.

Yes, math geeks like me notice things like that.

August 8^th was the 220^th day of the year. 337 ÷ 220 = 1.5318 homicides per day in Philly, which works out to a projected 559.107 killings in the city for the entire year. But wait: done another way, taking the percentage increase in homicides over last year, 4.0123, and multiplying that by last year’s 562 murders, we could also project 584.549 murders in Philly!

The difference? In 2021, the city actually saw a decrease in the rate of killings between July 9^th and September 6^th, the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend. That hasn’t happened so far this year, as July saw sixty homicides, while July of 2021 saw ‘only’ 48 murders.

The homicide rate picked up after the Labor Day weekend last year, from an average of 1.4578 per day — which projected out to 532 for the year — and the final 116 days of the year saw 199 homicides, an average of 1.7155 per day, which lifted the yearly average to 1.5397 per day for the year, and 562 murders. While last year’s mid- to late-summer lull hasn’t been seen so far this year, it has to be asked: will last year’s post Labor Day surge be repeated?

At least The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t ignore the most recent killings, or the surge:

Philly shootings leave 3 dead, including man slain in Popeye’s lot

No arrests have been made, and a motive remains under investigation.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Tuesday, August 9, 2022

One person was killed and two others were injured in a shooting late Monday night in the parking lot of a Popeye’s in Kensington.

Well, of course it was in Kensington!

Just after 11:15 p.m. Monday, officers responded to a call for a person with a gun on the 300 block of West Lehigh Avenue. When officers arrived, they found multiple people with gunshot wounds inside a red sedan. The victims had been shot in the parking lot of the nearby Popeye’s, 6ABC reported.

Police said that three suspects, all armed, came up to the sedan and fired 47 bullets into the car, 6ABC reported. After the shooting, the suspects took off on foot.

One victim, a man, had multiple gunshot wounds to his head and was pronounced dead shortly after at Temple University Hospital. Another victim, a woman, had several gunshot wounds to her body, and the third victim, a man, had multiple gunshot wounds to his back. They were taken to Temple University Hospital in stable condition.

North Orianna Street, via Google Maps, May 2022. Click to enlarge.

The Popeye’s Chicken restaurant is at the corner of West Lehigh Avenue and North Orianna Street. North Orianna Street in the blocks around West Lehigh Avenue is a neighborhood of older row homes, some with porches barred in to keep out the bad guys, vacant lots with concertina wire topping fences, and a generally poverty-stricken look.

One of the wounded, but not killed, victims, was an employee of the Popeye’s restaurant.

The Inquirer report stated that 47 shots had been fired, but that the police had no motive as of yet, but one thing is obvious: this was a targeted assassination. The newspaper also censored the fact, gleaned from the city’s shootings database, that all of the dead were black males.

Further down:

As of Sunday night, the city was ahead of last year’s pace for what ended in a record high number of 562 homicides for the year. By Sunday night, police reported that 333 people have been killed in Philadelphia so far this year.

There were 324 homicides by the same date last year.

Perhaps it’s a bit unfair for a math geek like me to point this out, but the Inky really needs to start looking at the numbers. I’d like to think that a former Pennsylvanian, now 635 miles away in eastern Kentucky, isn’t the only person actually running, and publicizing, the statistics.

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Dana Pico

How can anyone expect government action on the economy to work when so many politicians are economically ignorant?

As I have previously noted in Welfare for the well-to-do, the economics proposals of the Democrats in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act are those of people who understand virtually nothing about economics. Well, now even The New York Times is noticing what I said ten days ago.

Electric Cars Too Costly for Many, Even With Aid in Climate Bill

Battery-powered vehicles are considered essential to the fight against climate change, but most models are aimed at the affluent.

by Jack Ewing | Monday, August 8, 2022

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.

Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate, the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit.

But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars more affordable and to get enough of them on the road to put a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, most car buyers aren’t buying new cars anyway. In 2021, there were 58.4 million personal cars and light-duty trucks purchased in the United States, and 43.1 million of them, 73.8%, were purchases of used cars; only 15.3 million were new cars. In 2019, before the COVID panicdemic,^[1]No, that isn’t a typographical error; the ‘panic’ part of panicdemic is entirely accurate. the numbers were 59.1 million total sales, with 42.4 million, 71.7%, being used cars. The vast majority of Americans cannot afford to buy new cars, plug-in electric or otherwise.

High prices are caused by shortages of batteries, of raw materials like lithium and of components like semiconductors. Strong demand for electric vehicles from affluent buyers means that carmakers have little incentive to sell cheaper models. For low- and middle-income people who don’t have their own garages or driveways, another obstacle is the lack of enough public facilities to recharge.

Haven’t I said that before? And haven’t we noted General Motors suggestion that people not charge their electric vehicles too close to other cars?

One would think that a New York Times writer would know that, in densely populated cities, it isn’t just “low- and middle-income people” who might not have private garages and/or driveways. Private garages and driveways are, for the greater part, luxuries of suburban and rural areas, where people have enough space on their property for such things. Alas! So many small town and rural areas, where people do have the room for driveways and garages are also areas of lower income. People may live just as well as in wealthier cities, because the costs of living are so much lower, primarily due to housing costs, but costs-of-living differences don’t affect new car prices; a 2022 Tesla Model 3 costs just much in Mt Sterling, Kentucky as it does in Rochester, New York.

There are, naturally, other costs. As it happens, I have the private garage, complete with separate electric service, and the Knowledge, tools and skill to install an electric vehicle charging unit, but how many other people do? If someone has to hire an electrician to install that device, it could easily cost $2,000. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis noted that, just prior to the catastrophic economic response to the COVID panicdemic, 36% of Americans would have difficulty paying an unexpected $400 expense, while another 11% wouldn’t be able to pay it at all. Where are such people going to be able to pay $2,000 for an electrician to install a 220 volt, 50 amp circuit to run an electric car charger?

The bottlenecks will take years to unclog. Carmakers and suppliers of batteries and chips must build and equip new factories. Commodity suppliers have to open new mines and build refineries. Charging companies are struggling to install stations fast enough. In the meantime, electric vehicles remain largely the province of the rich.

Also see: William Teach: NY Times: Say, These EVs Are Rather Expensive For The Middle And Lower Classes, Eh?

I will admit it: I am somewhat shocked that the Times would even tell the truth about the economics of the Inflation Enhancement Reduction Act.

Only a few years ago analysts were predicting that electric vehicles would soon be as cheap to buy as gasoline cars. Given the savings on fuel and maintenance, going electric would be a no-brainer.

Instead, soaring prices of commodities like lithium, an essential ingredient in batteries, helped raise the average sticker price of an electric vehicle 14 percent last year to $66,000, $20,000 more than the average for all new cars, according to Kelley Blue Book.

And there you have it: the “analysts” had gotten it wrong . . . again.

This has been the problem all along with economic legislation in Congress and from the Administration, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans were in charge: they never get it right! The economy isn’t a monolith, but 270 million economic actors taking literally billions of economic decisions every day, and those decisions are not always based on the things the professional economists believe they should be. Before I retired, I used to stop at a small bagel shop on my way to work, selected not because its prices were lower than the Dunkin’ Donuts a bit further down the street — they weren’t — but because it was on the right-hand side of the road and had an easy-in, easy-out parking lot, rather than Dunkin’, which was on the left-hand side, and in a somewhat more congested area.^[2]Alas! That independent bagel shop is gone now, possibly due to the panicdemic, but I also attribute its closing to losing me as a customer. Economically, it was a bad decision — by a whopping 20¢ a day — but convenience-wise, it was the correct one.

This new legislation, which the left are cheering — even as many say it doesn’t go far enough — will fail to live up to its promises, because such legislation always fails to live up to the rosy promises made to pass it. The government simply cannot control the economy, and when it’s led by so many economic dummies, so many people who, despite their claims, have no flaming idea how most Americans live, there simply isn’t a prayer that the government will get it right. We don’t know how badly the Inflation ~~Enhancement~~ Reduction Act will fail, but we do know that it will.

References[+]

References
↑1	No, that isn’t a typographical error; the ‘panic’ part of panicdemic is entirely accurate.
↑2	Alas! That independent bagel shop is gone now, possibly due to the panicdemic, but I also attribute its closing to losing me as a customer.

Posted on August 6, 2022 by Dana Pico

No sense letting this guy plead down; he obviously likes jail!

When a guy has ten separate mugshots listed in the Fayette County Detention Center, all since July 28, 2015, I think it’s fair to say that he just plain likes jail!

Lexington police find man dead while responding to a shooting call. Suspect later arrested

Sean Smith. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

by Christopher Leach | Friday, August 5, 2022 | 6:44 AM EDT | Updated: 11:02 AM EDTLexington police have arrested a suspect in connection to an overnight fatal shooting.

Police said Sean Smith, 53, has been charged with murder and wanton endangerment. Fayette County Detention Center records say Smith was booked in at 8:43 a.m. Friday and is being held without a bond.

The shooting happened around 1:50 a.m. Friday in the 1800 block of Augusta Drive, according to Lt. Joe Anderson with the Lexington Police Department. Officers were responding to a report of a subject down and found a dead male with a gunshot wound on scene, according to Anderson.

Anderson said Friday morning that police were still investigating the shooting and working to determine what led up to the incident.

It’s the city’s 28th homicide of 2022, which is nine short of the annual record set last year.

Sadly, this story is mostly unremarkable, except for the very last sentence. The article stated, “It’s the city’s 28^th homicide of 2022, which is nine short of the annual record set last year.” What was not mentioned is the fact that the 28^th homicide of 2021 occurred on October 5^th, two full months later in the year. 28 murders as of 216^th day of the year equals one homicide every 7.62 days, putting the city on track for 47 or 48 (47.31 actually) killings for 2022, in a city in which even the Herald-Leader has reported that Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has been “mediating” pleas and sentences in 19 out of 25 murder cases, allowing killers to receive sentences as light as ten years.

KRS §507.020 Murder is a capital offense, which, under KRS §532.030 carries possible sentences of:

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

KRS §508.060 Wanton endangerment in the first degree is a Class D felony, which, under KRS §532.060 carries a sentence of one (1) to five (5) years in the state penitentiary.

No need for Miss Red Corn to offer Mr Smith a sweetheart plea deal; since he obviously likes jail, might as well keep him in jail for the rest of his miserable life. At least that way he won’t be a menace to the innocent people in the city.

Posted on August 6, 2022 by Dana Pico

Telling the unvarnished truth about #Monkeypox verboten!

As we have previously noted, telling the people most at risk for contracting Monkeypox how to avoid it is just way, way, way too politically incorrect! Monkeypox, an infection that is being spread primarily, though not exclusively, by male homosexual sex, certainly worries the homosexual male community, but our public health officials are apparently very, very worried about not saying the wrong thing, lest they be deemed politically incorrect or, horrors! homophobic.

As Monkeypox Spreads, U.S. Declares a Health Emergency

The designation will free up emergency funds and lift some bureaucratic hurdles, but many experts fear containment may no longer be possible.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Apoorva Mandavilli | Thursday, August 4, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday declared the growing monkeypox outbreak a national health emergency, a rare designation signaling that the virus now represents a significant risk to Americans and setting in motion new measures aimed at containing the threat.

The declaration by Xavier Becerra, President Biden’s health secretary, marks just the fifth such national emergency since 2001, and comes as the country remains in a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak late last month.

Mr. Becerra’s announcement, at an afternoon news briefing where he was joined by a raft of other top health officials, gives federal agencies power to quickly direct money toward developing and evaluating vaccines and drugs, to gain access to emergency funding and to hire additional workers to help manage the outbreak, which began in May.

“We’re prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus,” Mr. Becerra said, adding that “we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously, and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus.”

Mr. Biden has faced intense pressure from public health experts and activists to move more aggressively to combat monkeypox, which has infected more than 6,600 people in the United States. Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, called Thursday’s declaration “a pivotal turning point in the monkeypox response, after a lackluster start.”

Let’s see: 6,600 cases, out of a population of roughly 330,000,000, means that a whopping 0.002% of Americans have been infected by a disease which, while very uncomfortable, has led to exactly zero fatalities in the United States.

More than 99 percent of people infected with monkeypox in this country are men who have sex with men, which has posed a delicate task for public health officials communicating with the public about the threat. They do not want to stigmatize gay people, as happened in the early days of the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic, but neither do they want to downplay their particular risk.

Translation: political correctness is far more important than disease prevention!

And now the CDC have released their guidelines, Safer Sex, Social Gatherings, and Monkeypox

While CDC works to contain the current monkeypox outbreak and learn more about the virus, this information can help you make informed choices when you are in situations or places where monkeypox could be spread. Monkeypox is not considered a sexually transmitted disease, but it is often transmitted through close, sustained physical contact, which can include sexual contact.

How can a person lower their risk during sex?

OK, stop right there! “A person” is singular, while “their” is plural. Why wouldn’t the officious bureaucrat who wrote this, knowing that monkeypox is spread not just primarily, but almost exclusively, by homosexual male sex, not use “His” rather than the grammatically incorrect “their”?

Vaccination is an important tool in preventing the spread of monkeypox. But given the current limited supply of vaccine, consider temporarily changing some behaviors that may increase your risk of being exposed. These temporary changes will help slow the spread of monkeypox until vaccine supply is adequate.

Reducing or avoiding behaviors that increase risk of monkeypox exposure is also important when you are between your first and second shots of vaccine. Your protection will be highest two weeks after your second dose of vaccine.

Make a habit of exchanging contact information with any new partner to allow for sexual health follow-up, if needed.

Talk with your partner about any monkeypox symptoms and be aware of any new or unexplained rash or lesion on either of your bodies, including the mouth, genitals (penis, testicles, vulva, or vagina), or anus (butthole). If you or your partner has or recently had monkeypox symptoms, or you have a new or unexplained rash anywhere on your body, do not have sex and see a healthcare provider. In some cases, symptoms may be mild, and some people may not even know they have monkeypox.

I noted that while the illustration in the CDC’s document shows two men males in bed, there is not one word in the document which says or suggests that sexual transmission of monkeypox is almost exclusively among male homosexuals.

If you or a partner has monkeypox or think you may have monkeypox, the best way to protect yourself and others is to avoid sex of any kind (oral, anal, vaginal) and kissing or touching each other’s bodies—while you are sick. Especially avoid touching any rash. Do not share things like towels, fetish gear, sex toys, and toothbrushes.

Even if you feel well, here are some ways to reduce your chances of being exposed to monkeypox if you are sexually active:

Take a temporary break from activities that increase exposure to monkeypox until you are two weeks after your second dose. This will greatly reduce your risk.
Limit your number of sex partners to reduce your likelihood of exposure.
Spaces like back rooms, saunas, sex clubs, or private and public sex parties, where intimate, often anonymous sexual contact with multiple partners occurs—are more likely to spread monkeypox.
Condoms (latex or polyurethane) may protect your anus (butthole), mouth, penis, or vagina from exposure to monkeypox. However, condoms alone may not prevent all exposures to monkeypox since the rash can occur on other parts of the body.
Gloves (latex, polyurethane, or nitrile) might also reduce the possibility of exposure if inserting fingers or hands into the vagina or the anus. The gloves must cover all exposed skin and be removed carefully to avoid touching the outer surface.
Avoid kissing or exchanging spit since monkeypox can spread this way.
Masturbate together at a distance without touching each other and without touching any rash.
Have virtual sex with no in-person contact.
Consider having sex with your clothes on or covering areas where rash is present, reducing as much skin-to-skin contact as possible. Leather or latex gear also provides a barrier to skin-to-skin contact; just be sure to change or clean clothes/gear between partners and after use.
Be aware that monkeypox can also spread through respiratory secretions with close, face-to-face contact.
Remember to wash your hands, fetish gear, sex toys, and any fabrics (bedding, towels, clothes) after having sex. Learn more about infection control.

There’s more at the original, but it’s all the same thing: it is written with the underlying assumption that the stereotype of homosexual males being extremely promiscuous is accurate. The document doesn’t say that directly, of course, but it’s basically a wink-and-a-nod, yeah, we know what you reprobates have been doing.

One thing that is never suggested is something really radical like, oh, monogamy.

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Dana Pico

How not to sell Philadelphia!

I almost ignored this one, but I just can’t: the photo is just too, too funny!

Philly transplants have over $150,000 more to spend on homes than locals — and it’s driving up home prices

The migration of home buyers from more expensive cities to Philadelphia helps drive up prices across the market.

by Michaelle Bond | Thursday, August 4, 2022

For-sale sign outside a home in the Frankford section of Philadelphia in December 2021. The average person moving into Philadelphia has more money to spend on a house than a Philadelphian does, according to a Redfin analysis. | Alejandro A Alverez, Philadelphia Inquirer staff photographer. Click to enlarge.

Philadelphia may be an affordable big city compared to others on the East Coast and across the country — a draw for new residents — but that’s little comfort to locals who have watched prices rise.In the first half of 2022, people looking to move into Philadelphia searched for houses with a maximum price of $588,000 on average, according to the online brokerage Redfin’s analysis of searches on its website. Locals capped their searches much lower at $422,000.

As home prices continue to climb, people moving largely from more expensive cities have an advantage with an average of 39% more to spend. That, in turn, helps push up prices across the market.

There’s much more at the original.

I do not normally reproduce photos from The Philadelphia Inquirer, but this one struck me as hysterically funny. A reasonably well-researched article about how prices in Philly are lower than in places like New York City and the left coast, the Inky illustrated it with a photo of a home for sale, in which the property owners had effectively put themselves in jail, installing metal bars and a door on the front porch of their rowhome in the Frankford neighborhood, to keep the bad guys out of their property. I have noted this in some bad Philadelphia areas several times.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 16, 2021. Click to enlarge.

In an article noting that there are 57 city blocks where 10 or more people have been shot since 2015, the Inquirer included a graph showing the Kensington area as the worst, Frankford is also included as a not-so-great place. I do not know if the article author, Michaelle Bond, “an urbanism writer covering how people live in their homes, how the market directs choices, and how policies shape communities,” is the one who selected the photo with the article, but whoever picked it could not have done a much better job of turning off people on the idea of moving to the City of Brotherly Love.

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Dana Pico

There is no cure for pedophilia If convicted, this fine gentleman should never see the outside of prison again

There is no cure for pedophilia, and any sentence less than life imprisonment simply means that a convicted pedophile will offend again.

Previous offender charged with dozens of sex crime offenses in Lexington, records show

by Christopher Leach | Thursday, August 4, 2022 | 8:24 AM EDT

William Wehking, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A registered sex offender in Lexington was booked into the Fayette County Detention Center Wednesday afternoon on dozens of charges related to sexual activity with a minor, according to court and jail records.William Wehking, 35, has been charged with 25 counts of possessing matter portraying a sexual performance by a minor and one count of distributing obscene matter to minors, use of a minor in a sexual performance and procuring or promoting the use of a minor in a sexual performance, according to jail records. He’s being held on a $50,000 bond.

Under the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal did not publish the suspect’s mugshot, but, at The First Street Journal we most certainly do. The suspect’s mugshot is a public record available from the Fayette County Detention Center, from which I obtained it.

According to his arrest citation, Wehking knowingly engaged in sexual conversations with a 12-year-old girl. The Lexington Police Department became aware of the activity after being tipped off by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois, where the victim resides.

Wehking and the victim communicated over Snapchat and text messaging, according to court documents. Investigators got a search warrant for his cell phone and found 25 images and/or videos of minors under the age of 12 engaging in sexual activity. Wehking admitted to the illegal behavior as well as exposing his genitals to the victim in a video chat, according court documents.

Killadelphia Black lives don't matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer

We noted, just yesterday, that Philadelphia, which as recently as June 30^th, had been 14 homicides short of the same-day number in 2021, 257 versus 271, the year the City of Brotherly Love set its all-time homicide record of 562, but had caught up and passed the daily number by one murder.

Of course, being just one above 2021’s numbers means that just a couple of bloodless days could allow the killing rate to, once again, drop below 2021. At least for now, that isn’t what happened.

July ended with this year’s numbers closing in on 2021’s, but not quite there, with 317 vs 319 homicides, just a 0.627% decline, not statistically significant, but at least significant in that two fewer Philadelphians had spilled their life’s blood out in the city’s mean streets.

We pointed out yesterday that the nation’s third oldest continuously published newspaper, which I will admit to having mockingly 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. had made no mention at all, at least not that I could find on the website’s main page or crime page, that the ‘trend lines’ had crossed, but that has changed now . . . sort of.

3 men killed, 2 others wounded in separate Philly shootings

The fatal shootings occurred in East Frankford, Germantown, and Kensington, police said.

by Robert Moran | Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Three men were killed and two others were wounded in separate shootings Wednesday night across Philadelphia, police said.

Shortly before 9:45 p.m. in East Frankford, an unidentified man was shot in the head while driving a Nissan sedan in the area of Josephine and Gillingham Streets, said Inspector D.F. Pace.

The Nissan crashed into a utility pole at a high rate of speed, Pace said. The victim, who appeared to be in his 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

The victim was still wearing his seat belt and the tires of the crashed Nissan were still spinning and eventually disintegrated, Pace said.

A witness told police a man stumbled out of the sedan after the crash and fled in an unknown direction, Pace said.

A spent shell casing was found inside the vehicle and a gun was found under the car, Pace said.

Just before 6:50 p.m. in Germantown, a 28-year-old man was on the 200 block of Zeralda Street when he was shot in the head and torso, said Chief Inspector Scott Small.

The man, who had previously lived on the block, was taken by police to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:04 p.m., Small said.

The reporter, Robert Moran, really needs to work on his writing; too many short, one or two sentence paragraphs! They need to be combined a bit, to look more polished. As usual, Mr Moran, following what I have inferred to be the Inquirer’s guidelines, deleted all references to race when it came to the victims, but, according to the city’s shooting victims database, all three were black males.

There’s more at the original, descriptions of the other killings, which you can read if you follow the link embedded in the cited article’s title. But Mr Moran’s concluding paragraph was all that I could find about the city’s homicide numbers surpassing 2021’s:

As of late Tuesday night, the city officially reported 322 homicides so far this year — one more than the same period in 2021, which ended with Philadelphia suffering an all-time record 562 homicides.

In other words, piffle! Nothing serious there at all.

The shootings victims database tells us that there have been twenty reported shootings in the city in just the first three days of August, with seven fatalities: five black males, one black female, and one Hispanic white male. Of the total of twenty shooting victims, one was a black female, three Hispanic white males, and sixteen black males. The Enquirer Inquirer, that proudly anti-racist news organization for which #BlackLivesMatter doesn’t believe that that is news which should be reported.

There are times in which I worry that I have reported on this subject too much, and this is the 46^th article on this website entitled Killadelphia; “broken recordism” really isn’t a good look. But when we have the city’s newspaper of record trying to hide the records, when the city’s mayor, James Kenney, a Democrat in an unbroken string of Democrats 70 years long and who is tried, worn out, and clueless, when the district attorney is a defense attorney rather than a prosecutor and won’t lock up the bad guys, and the police commissioner a left coast stooge who can’t attract recruits and has left the department seriously undermanned, I can’t help but to harp on this subject, because it is far-left #woke policy put into governing force, on what should be a national stage, and the results should be shouted to everyone: this is the result of liberal policies.

One thing Philly has accomplished is to make painfully clear that, despite their protestations, black lives don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter if telling the truth about how they are being wasted in the city’s streets daily might threaten leftist policies. The idea that conservative policies might make a positive difference is so appalling, is just plain anathema, to the left that they’d rather see blood, red blood mostly from black bodies, running in the city’s streets than to try something different.

References[+]

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

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Dana Pico

A Philadelphia Inquirer opinion editor wants sexualized books in school libraries, but would she allow Huckleberry Finn or Mein Kampf?

We have previously noted how the Central Bucks School District approved what The Philadelphia Inquirer called a “contentious” policy of not purchasing books with “sexualized content”. But the Inquirer’s Assistant Opinion Editor, Alison McCook, says that she wants her daughter to be able to read those books; does the Inky not pay her enough to buy them herself?

Why I want my kid to read banned books

Every school district — including Central Bucks — has LGBTQ students. Hiding books with positive LGBTQ messages won’t stop them from being gay, it will just stop them from feeling OK about it.

by Alison McCook | Monday, August 1, 2022

A few months ago, a long-awaited moment in my life arrived: My 8-year-old grudgingly let me read to her from my favorite childhood book, Harriet the Spy. As I opened my original copy, now faded, yellowed, and torn, and started reading about this judgy tomboy who is determined to be a writer, I had excited butterflies in my belly. But they stopped a few pages in, when Harriet’s nanny, Ole Golly, introduces Harriet to Ole Golly’s mother, who is obese. For several pages, Harriet keeps calling back to Mrs. Golly’s physique, describing her as a “mountain,” bursting out of her clothes, with “ham hands.” She has some sort of mental disability, perhaps dementia. “This fat lady wasn’t very bright,” Harriet thinks.

When I finished the chapter, I closed the book and reminded my daughter about how people come in all sizes and that it’s not nice to make a big deal out of the way someone looks. And I talked about her grandfather, my dad, who had dementia for her entire life — he had a problem with his brain, I said, which wasn’t his fault.

We have these conversations about older books a lot. The girl in The Secret Garden was born in India and is downright cruel to the local people who work for her family, calling them “pigs.” Stuart Little is kind of a sexist jerk. The Baby-sitters Club series has modern moments, but the books shouldn’t always call Claudia a “terrible student” when she struggles with math and reading, but clearly seems destined for a brilliant career in art or fashion. And as the only Asian character, she is consistently described in an exotic way, with “beautiful dark almond-shaped eyes” and “jet black hair.”

I didn’t ban any of these books; they’re still sitting on my kid’s bookshelf. But I would rather she read them with me so that we can talk about the many harsh asides they contain.

Perhaps Mrs McCook doesn’t realize it yet, but what she has just described is homeschooling her daughter, at least in part — and quite possibly a far greater part than most parents do — concerning the lessons she wishes her daughter to learn.

Not all children’s books should take place in some politically correct utopia where difference is celebrated and everyone is gentle and kind. There’s a reason schools teach Lord of the Flies and The Merchant of Venice, even though cruelty runs rampant through both. It’s important for kids to learn that life isn’t a PC utopia, and develop tools to think about and deal with that.

One wonders: would Mrs McCook approve of Tom Sawyer and, Heaven forfend! it uses that bad, bad word, Huckleberry Finn?

That said, I also believe it makes sense to revisit some of the books we consider classics and ask ourselves if the moments they depict are truly teachable, or just plain cruel. If the latter, perhaps they should be part of a classroom, not the library, so teachers can talk to kids about what they read and help them place it in a modern context.

Oh, so ‘Mark Twain’s’ classics should be revisited, though I’m having some trouble picturing today’s teachers having a classroom discussion of Samuel Clemens’ casual use of the “N” word. More, Mr Clemens writes the speech of black characters in a slave patois that modern readers would find offensive.

But we seem incapable of having rational conversations about books in school, mostly because of fear. On one side of the conversation, adults who want kids to have access to books with diverse authors and topics are afraid of being called “groomers” who seek to “turn” all kids gay or trans; on the other side, we have adults who are afraid of exposing kids to ugly parts of history or different kinds of people in a compassionate way. But these conversations are important, especially so since Central Bucks adopted a new ban on books with “sexualized content,” and Pennsylvania has the second-highest number of book bans of any state (after Texas).

So let me start. I believe we should revisit some older books that may make some kids feel hurt or unwelcome in the world. (That’s revisit, not ban.) But the books I suggest we revisit are not the books that will likely be banned by Central Bucks and other school districts across the state, which are targeting books that include LGBTQ characters, or address race or racism. I want my daughter to read the often-banned books The Bluest Eye and Gender Queer: A Memoir, even if she isn’t LGBTQ herself — I want to open her mind and heart to people who are different from her.

Here Mrs McCook shows us her agenda. With this paragraph, and with her entire column Why I take my kid to Philly Pride, the author tells us that she wants to normalize homosexuality and ‘transgenderism,’ to teach her daughter to accept those things as not being marginal, but something that ought to simply be expected. And that is precisely why some conservatives have called these things “grooming.” Some of us do not believe that those things are normal or acceptable, and that teaching that they are has harmed society. Given that the City of Brotherly Love has been setting new homicide records, but seems to see Monkeypox as a greater problem and the left want to change the name so it won’t hurt people’s feelings pretty much reinforced the idea that #woke^[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading politics is the real problem.

It is with some amusement that I also note that she wants to get rid of Mothers’ Day, which I read completely, just to see if she was writing with tongue firmly planted in her cheek:

You know who else probably hates this holiday? The roughly 20% of adult women who never have children. Some childless women likely tried to have children and couldn’t; think how sad the day is for them, as storekeepers and strangers tell them, unbidden, “Happy Mother’s Day.” Think about the women whose children have died, or have experienced miscarriage (roughly 20% of all pregnancies), or gave up a baby for adoption.

Then there are people who have mothers but don’t get along, and are happier when they don’t spend time together. A 2015 study found that more than 1 in 10 mothers are estranged from at least one of their adult children. What a painful reminder this day is for them.

So let’s cancel Mother’s Day.

In other words, Mrs McCook would cancel Mothers’ Day because it might hurt the feelings of those adult women who, for whatever reasons, might not be, nor ever be birthing people mothers. Interestingly enough, she also argued for the reimposed indoor mask mandates that the city quickly canceled when public resistance mounted.

One of my favorite days of the year is Philly Pride, and I take my kid whenever I can. This year, the kids’ area included a book section with author signings, and she begged me to buy her a book called When Aidan Became a Brother, about a trans boy, and how he and his family learn from his experience when welcoming a new sibling. “You taught us how important it is to love someone for exactly who they are,” Aidan’s mother tells him.

My daughter loves this book, and so do I. It’s a beautiful story about family, acceptance, and a kid who is just trying to be himself. I hope that reading about Aidan helps give my daughter the courage to be herself, to know that she deserves to feel loved and accepted no matter what.

And I hope she always remembers the inscription the author Kyle Lukoff (who is also trans) included for her when we asked him to sign her copy. “Thank you for being part of this world,” he wrote.

Mrs McCook is absolutely free to teach her daughter anything she wants; that is her right, protected under the Constitution via the First Amendment.

But what she also wants is for the public schools to teach other people’s children that homosexuality, ‘transgenderism,’ abortion, and heck, probably all of the woke mindset are good things, never realizing — or, if realizing, being perfectly willing to subvert — that other people might not want their children taught that such things are good, noble or acceptable.

Mrs McCook is very able to buy the books she wants her daughter to read all and learn by herself; she has a decent job, and books are cheap. Other people have the right to buy their kids the books they want them to read, whether Huckleberry Finn, The Communist Manifesto, or even the dreaded Mein Kampf.^[2]I’ve read all three, which ought to tell you exactly nothing about my political philosophy. I will confess that Mein Kampf is a dreadfully dreary reading, at least in English, because, written … Continue reading

I wonder if Mrs McCook would consider Mein Kampf acceptable in the school library?

References[+]

References
↑1	From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement. I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
↑2	I’ve read all three, which ought to tell you exactly nothing about my political philosophy. I will confess that Mein Kampf is a dreadfully dreary reading, at least in English, because, written down by Rudolf Hess from Adolf Hitler’s verbal rants while in prison, Herr Hitler’s German is both atrocious and not really meant for a literary publication. My copy was translated by Ralph Manheim in 1943. Ich lese kein Deutsch.

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THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." — George Orwell, 1984

When it comes to #VaccineMandates the maintenance of dictatorial power is far more important than the effectiveness of the vaccines!

Colleges Scale Back Covid Precautions for Fall, Saying Pandemic Phase Over

Requirements for masking, testing, vaccinations and isolation decrease even as virus surges

Nearly all city workers have complied with Mayor Jim Kenney’s vaccine policy, but 68 are getting fired

The 68 employees who are not in compliance with the policy and will be terminated soon include 39 who work in the Streets Department.

Congratulations to Jim Kenney!

Philly shootings leave 3 dead, including man slain in Popeye’s lot

No arrests have been made, and a motive remains under investigation.

How can anyone expect government action on the economy to work when so many politicians are economically ignorant?

Electric Cars Too Costly for Many, Even With Aid in Climate Bill

Battery-powered vehicles are considered essential to the fight against climate change, but most models are aimed at the affluent.

No sense letting this guy plead down; he obviously likes jail!

Lexington police find man dead while responding to a shooting call. Suspect later arrested

Telling the unvarnished truth about #Monkeypox verboten!

As Monkeypox Spreads, U.S. Declares a Health Emergency

The designation will free up emergency funds and lift some bureaucratic hurdles, but many experts fear containment may no longer be possible.

How can a person lower their risk during sex?

How not to sell Philadelphia!

Philly transplants have over $150,000 more to spend on homes than locals — and it’s driving up home prices

The migration of home buyers from more expensive cities to Philadelphia helps drive up prices across the market.

There is no cure for pedophilia If convicted, this fine gentleman should never see the outside of prison again

Previous offender charged with dozens of sex crime offenses in Lexington, records show

From murder to manslaughter: How felony mediation works to reduce backlogged caseload

Killadelphia Black lives don't matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer

3 men killed, 2 others wounded in separate Philly shootings

The fatal shootings occurred in East Frankford, Germantown, and Kensington, police said.

A Philadelphia Inquirer opinion editor wants sexualized books in school libraries, but would she allow Huckleberry Finn or Mein Kampf?

Why I want my kid to read banned books

Every school district — including Central Bucks — has LGBTQ students. Hiding books with positive LGBTQ messages won’t stop them from being gay, it will just stop them from feeling OK about it.