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The failure in Afghanistan was a failure of understanding

American helicopters evacuating personnel from US embassy in Kabul.

I would love to blame the debacle in Afghanistan on President Joe Biden, I really would. And he, as the Commander-in-Chief, is certainly the one responsible for the extremely chaotic way in which we evacuated. The images of American helicopters over Kabul is terribly reminiscent of our copters trying to rescue personnel off the roof of the American embassy in Saigon in 1975.

But the sad fact is that this was more like Vietnam than anyone wants to say.

The younger President Bush had little choice: after the attacks which brought down the World Trade Center, we had to respond, and the only possible response was going after al Qaeda, holed up in Afghanistan. Devastating al Qaeda was a mission accomplished relatively quickly, as was smashing the Taliban government which sheltered them and would not turn the al Qaeda people over to us.

But President Bush, and so many other Americans, had seen to what the Taliban had reduced the Afghan people, with women reduced to little more than the property of men, and girls denied education, all to adhere to a fundamentalist form of Islam that I would like to say resembles the 9th century, but, in truth, isn’t that far away from present day Saudi Arabia or Iran.

President Bush, enamored as he was of the arguments of Natan Sharansky, the Israeli politician who wrote The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, believed that replacing the Afghan government with someone with a Western education and more Western outlook, could provide the experience with Western liberalism that Mr Sharansky believed would lead people who had lived under tyranny to so love the experience of freedom and democracy that they would just naturally take to it.

Didn’t work, did it?

It didn’t work in Iraq, either, because Western liberalism is more than just a political system, but a culture, something people need to feel naturally, something in which people need to be reared.

The experience in Iraq, and Afghanistan, was the experience of Islam, in a culture of tribalism. While Iraq’s somewhat more modern government had tamped down some tribalism, it soon became apparent, after Saddam Hussein was deposed, that the local culture of Tikrit, from which Mr Hussein had come, wanted to reassert itself. Remember; Iraq was not a ‘natural’ nation, born out of historical development, but a creation of the British Foreign Office.

We saw that not that long ago, when the plight of the Kurds, divided between Turkey, Iraq and Iran, came to public attention.

Afghanistan? Another faux nation, a collection of tribal regions called a nation-state by a Western system which sees only nation-states as the mechanism for governmental organization. And we have never been able to understand tribalism, understand relatively small groups governed by a leader, whether hereditary or a ‘strongman.’ What concepts we did have of ‘strongman’ government came as the result of political moves based frequently on socialism, on politics, rather than the extended family structures of the Middle East. ‘Strongman’ governments, in our conceptual framework, were governments of thugs like Fidel Castro, not tribal leadership.

What we also failed to understand was the concept of war. We have had many wars in our history, but have lost our way since 1945. Our Allies and we defeated Nazi Germany and Japan by killing and killing and killing some more, and by destroying their countries’ infrastructure and industry to the point where they simply could not fight anymore.

We killed and maimed their fighting aged men, but we did more than that. We killed and maimed civilians, including the younger boys who would eventually grow up to fighting age. Not only did we destroy their militaries, we devastated the next group of soldiers as well.

For awhile we tried to cloak that, targeting railways, transportation hubs, and the industries which produced war materiel, but let’s tell the truth here: many of those bombs fell on the residential areas surrounding those legitimate military targets, and fell on schools, hospitals, and churches as well. In the end, we gave up even pretending, as we launched firebombing raids on Dresden and Kobe and Tokyo.

Somehow, some way, those lessons were lost. We wanted to wage war more nicely, to target enemy soldiers but avoid non-combatant civilians, and we did that just as warfare stopped being nation against nation, but with one side being guerrilla fighters, fighters who not just blended in and hid among the civilian population, but who were fed and clothed and hidden by them. The guerrilla fighter depends upon the civilian population to provide him not with massive supplies, flown in on C-17s as the United States Army does, but on providing them with one or two meals at a time.

In effect, we emasculated the war-fighting ability of our Army, by changing the rules of engagement in a way which favored the guerrillas. Then, on top of that, we assigned the Army, an organization which is supposed to specialize in nation destroying, the mission of nation building.

We should have learned the lesson in Vietnam: that stuff does not work.

So, what had we in Afghanistan? A fool’s errand is what we had!

My older daughter spent the fall of 2017 at Bagram Air Base. She told us — after she got home; she was supposed to be in Kuwait, but knew she’d worry her mother to death if she told us she was in Afghanistan! — that she was startled the first couple of nights, as she heard stuff go boom. Apparently the Taliban was lobbing mortar shells, which the military called IDF — indirect fire — into the buffer zone surrounding the base. It never hurt anyone or anything. After a few days, she learned how to sleep through it.

But think about that: the fall of 2017 was after we had been in Afghanistan for sixteen years, and we couldn’t even secure the ground around the air base enough that the Taliban couldn’t get within mortar range of the buffer zone. Seven years under the younger President Bush, eight years under Barack Hussein Obama, and a year under President Trump, and we hadn’t secured even the area around Kabul.

By then we were training Afghan forces to defend their own country, but we never called it ‘Afghanization,’ because it was too close to ‘Vietnamization,’ and we all know how that worked out.

Afghanization was to turn the country back over to the Afghanis. Well, we’re doing just that, and they are getting back exactly what they had before we went in.

We can blame the chaos of the withdrawal on the current Commander-in-Chief, and he is responsible for the ineptness we see, but the truth is that we were never in a position to do anything but withdraw and leave the country to the Afghans. Other than the hunt for Osama bin Laden, that could have been done during the Bush Administration. President Obama did pull us out of Iraq, but not Afghanistan. President Trump campaigned on getting us out of Afghanistan, but even he delayed things with a scheduled departure date of May of 2021, which would have been, he had hoped, during his second term.

     Oops!

And so it fell to President Biden. Perhaps President Trump would have handled it a bit better, but there’s no way to know. But the failure of the Afghan mission was a failure of understanding, from the younger President Bush all the way down to today. Western civilization cannot be imposed on Muslims, and especially cannot be imposed on Muslims who want to live in the 7th century.

There is, of course, some fault to lay at the stinky feet of President Biden.

    This is Joe Biden’s Jimmy Carter moment

    By | August 15, 2021 | 9:58 PM EDT

    The utterly nauseating and unnecessary abandonment of Afghanistan to its fate recalls a similar humiliation at the hands of Islamist radicals in the Jimmy Carter administration.

    President Biden’s profligate spending policies are unleashing inflation that is sparking voter distrust so noticeable that even NPR is sounding the alarm.

    He is begging OPEC to come up with more oil while interfering with US production. He announced barely a month ago, with great confidence, “The Taliban is not the South — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability.

    “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

    Our president comes across as weak, meek, ineffectual, incompetent and confused. (Momentarily confusing South and North Vietnam doesn’t even make the list of the top 100 senior moments we’ve seen this year from this near-octogenarian, despite the fact that his staff is keeping him hidden to a degree with little if any precedent in the past half-century.)

Saigon evacuation, April 30, 1975.

There’s a little more at the link, but the title is a bit of a misnomer: while the author is attempting to link President Biden’s failures with Jimmy Carter’s, it should be remembered that Gerald Ford was President of the United States when we last had helicopters plucking people away from an embassy. Given that President Ford had been thoroughly hamstrung by a Congress full of Democratic hatred — and Joe Biden was part of that, in the United States Senate at the time — and could give virtually none of the aid that President Richard Nixon had promised should North Vietnam violate the Paris Peace Accords, it’s pretty difficult to blame Mr Ford, but the images are still there.

Vietnam was not a Middle Eastern Islamic state, but, in a way, it wasn’t that different: the Vietnamese people were not Westerners, and the notion that we could convert them to Western democratic thought, and they would come to love it, was ludicrous. South Vietnam had a succession of corrupt leadership in Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. While the Vietnamese people might not have loved the Communists, at least they didn’t see Ho Chi Minh as corrupt or the puppet of foreigners.

In the end, this is the real failure of Mr Sharansky’s, and President Bush’s thinking. No matter how much the prospect of democracy might appeal to some people not used to it, they don’t like being governed by those they see as foreign puppets. No matter how nice a guy George Bush was, or how magnanimous Richard Nixon tried to be, they were still foreign white men. Throw in cultures completely different from Western democracy — dare I say white Western democracy? — and the situation becomes virtually impossible.

We were seduced by the fact that Japan and the Republic of Korea became democracies familiar to us, but it has to be remembered: they were devastated by World War II, and the latter by the Communist invasion of 1950, and had lost not only their entire leadership class, but much of the next generation of young men to grow up. We were never willing to subject Vietnam, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, to the level of destruction which was rained down on Japan.

Democracy and freedom have to develop as natural parts of the culture, and one thing is certain: it will never develop to anything close to what Westerners would call real democracy in Islamic cultures.

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The Department of Fatherland Security thinks I’m a potential domestic terrorist

Remember when dissent was patriotic? It wasn’t even five years ago, and persisted until just six months ago. But now, according to the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security — perhaps it would sound better as Abteilung für Vaterlandssicherheit — I am a potential domestic terrorist!

    DHS Issues New Terrorism Threat Alert as 9/11 Anniversary Approaches

    Foreign groups are upping their attempts to inspire homegrown terrorists, and racially and ethnically motivated extremists continue to pose a threat as the 9/11 anniversary looms.

    By Claire Hansen | August 13, 2021 | 4:58 PM EDT

    The Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a new National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin warning of the threat of extremist violence as the coronavirus spreads widely again and the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks approaches.

    “The Homeland continues to face a diverse and challenging threat environment leading up to and following the 20th Anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks as well religious holidays we assess could serve as a catalyst for acts of targeted violence,” the bulletin says. “These threats include those posed by domestic terrorists, individuals and groups engaged in grievance-based violence, and those inspired or motivated by foreign terrorists and other malign foreign influences.”

    The threats are “exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions,” DHS said. . . . .

    “These extremists may seek to exploit the emergence of COVID-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks. Pandemic-related stressors have contributed to increased societal strains and tensions, driving several plots by domestic violent extremists, and they may contribute to more violence this year,” the bulletin says.

I have stated previously that yes, I took the vaccine. I have stated that I think everyone should. But I have been adamant in my belief that the government should have no authority to force people to accept vaccination, to punish them is they don’t, or require some form of ‘vaccine passports’ — Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen! — to engage in normal life or occupations.

Philadelphia has imposed new mask mandates, then tweaked them some because the vaccines haven’t been approved for children under 12, and teh city is trying to push “Ve need to see your papers”:

    Businesses seeking to avoid the mask mandate should have clear signage at their entrances indicating they will be verifying customers’ vaccination status, (Acting Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole) said. Those found out of compliance will first be warned and given time to correct, then could be forced to close and pay a $315 fine for re-inspection.

We have, of course, noted how the government are using fear to break the resistance of the people to draconian measures, mostly imposed by an authoritarian executive, that no free people should ever accept.

So, naturally, the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security want to oppose any resistance! Resistance is futile!

Two weeks, we were told, two weeks to flatten the curve, and so very many people accepted it, because, after all, it was necessary, don’t you know, and hey, sure it was a pain, but it was for only two weeks!

Two weeks metastasized into fourteen months, and now the authoritarians want to impose restrictions again, for our own good, of course!

Well, not just no, but Hell no! The virus is serious, but the threat to our freedom, to our liberty, to our constitutional rights is far, far worse. If the Abteilung für Vaterlandssicherheit — or would that be the Reichssicherheitshauptamt? — wants to call me a potential domestic terrorist, let them. But at least they’ll never be able to call me a sheep!

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The left blame evil reich wing Republicans for lower vaccination rates, but black Americans are the least vaccine compliant

It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter photo was taken in a bar.

Whenever I need a good chuckle, I will go to see what new articles Amanda Marcotte has posted on Salon. She wrote, at 1:07 PM EDT on Thursday, August 12th, It’s OK to blame the unvaccinated — they are robbing the rest of us of our freedoms. As usual, Miss Marcotte has blamed the evil reich-wing Trump supporters as the problem:

    I really wanted to get back to my spin class. And for a couple of months, I did just that. Exercising at home for the past year was fine, but nothing beats a 45-minute spin class for leaving one red-faced and sopping wet with sweat. But it’s that “sopping wet” part that became a problem this week when the gym sent out a memo bringing back their indoor mask mandate. This isn’t a 5-minute jaunt in a grocery store with a mask. Exercising with a sweat-soaked mask is like being waterboarded. So I canceled my class and sent a polite but angry note to my gym. Philadelphia’s new regulations allow businesses to choose between mask and vaccine mandates, and they chose poorly, penalizing those who did the right thing to coddle those who refuse. Masking the already vaccinated to protect the unvaccinated helps a little, but is a little like trying to cover someone in a rainstorm by holding an index card over their head.

Miss Marcotte is just hopping mad that her rights are being violated! Of course, she wants other people’s rights, their privacy rights — something, as an abortion-up-until-the-final-contraction supporter she otherwise strongly supports — to take a back seat to her being able to go to her spin class. When it comes to other people’s rights, she’s kind of like Dirty Harry. Continue reading →

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Killadelphia Looks like the bad guys found some more ammo

I noted, just two days ago, that the homicide rate in Philadelphia had declined recently:

    As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, July 22nd, the bad guys, thugs and gang bangers of the City of Brotherly Love had killed 314 people. At the end of Tuesday, August 9, 2021, “only” 325 people had been murdered. That’s “only” 11 dead bodies in 18 days! We noted, on July 9th, that there had been 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. If I recall correctly, that 562 number was my highest projection for the year.

    Now, as of the 221st day of the year, 325 homicides have been recorded. 325 ÷ 221 days in the year, = 1.4706 homicides per day, for a projected 537 for the year. Yeah, that’s still a record-setting number — there were 500 homicides recorded in 1990, and 499 last year — but it’s a significant decrease in the past few weeks.

Well, it looks like that was taken as a personal challenge, as there were two homicides on Tuesday and two more on Wednesday. Now, as of the 223st day of the year, 329 homicides have been recorded. 329 ÷ 223 days in the year, = 1.4753 homicides per day, for a projected 538 for the year.

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Coincidence? I wonder . . . .

On Wednesday, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Lextran had to scale back Lexington bus service on several routes due to a shortage of drivers:

    Jill Barnett, general manager of Lextran, said all public transit agencies, including transit agencies in Louisville and Northern Kentucky, are struggling to find enough drivers.

Further down, the article noted that all drivers and passengers must wear a face mask on the buses and inside waiting areas at the Downtown Transit Center.

And now we have this early morning story:

    Fayette school bus driver shortage cancels routes. Families asked to have a back up.

    By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | August 12, 2021 | 06:44 AM EDT

    After several bus drivers called in sick Thursday morning with the district already shorthanded, Fayette Superintendent Demetrus Liggins said he “took the extraordinary step” of canceling four bus routes.

    In a late-night message to families on the first day of school Wednesday, Liggins said the routes canceled were Bus 313 with service to Brenda Cowan Elementary School and service to Frederick Douglass High School, Bus 17 with service to Henry Clay High School and Bus 217 with service to Dixie Elementary School.

    “This is certainly not an ideal situation and we deeply apologize that we have had to inconvenience our families,” said Liggins, who is starting his first year.

There’s more at the original, but Mrs Spears noted that a shortage of bus drivers has been an “ongoing challenge” for the Fayette County public schools.

Neither story says, of course, that the mask mandate ordered by Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) might be having an impact, but it’s an obvious question: would you want to be a bus driver and face possibly being accosted by angry students and their parents over such. Given the very liberal unemployment eligibility and the government paying people not to work, why sign up to take such abuse?

Mrs Spears, of course, could not include such a point in her article, given that the Herald-Leader’s Editorial Board supported Mr Beshear on his mask mandate. Then again, as we have pointed out previously, the newspaper’s Editorial Board aren’t exactly in tune with the voters in the Commonwealth.

In their editorial, the Board wrote, “Gov. Andy Beshear may have just signed away his chance to win re-election . . . .” From their keyboard to God’s monitor screen!

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

The Lexington Police Department apprehended a young man who stole a vehicle, and then, after the vehicle owners tracked down the car, shot one of the owners.

Oh, come on now, the paper could have given whatever low-level staffer wrote this a byline, anyway! It might be his first, something he can cut out, frame, and put on the wall!

    Javon McMullen. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center. Click to enlarge.

    Lexington police have arrested and charged a suspect who allegedly shot one of two brothers who were hunting for a stolen vehicle in the city late last month.

    Javon McMullen, 19, was arrested about 9:20 a.m. Wednesday in the 1600 block of Claywood Court, Sgt. Donnell Gordon said.

    McMullen is accused of shooting when confronted by a man who had located and followed his stolen vehicle, Gordon said. The shooting happened about 1:35 a.m. on July 26. Police previously said the victim had been accompanied by his brother.

    The 31-year-old victim’s injuries reportedly weren’t life-threatening. He was taken to University of Kentucky Hospital in a passenger car following the shooting, police said.

    The stolen vehicle had crashed in the area of Buckhorn and Alumni drives.

    Police said immediately after the shooting that they would advise against people trying to track down their stolen vehicles themselves.

There’s a bit more at the original. But while the Herald-Leader does not publish mugshots, The First Street Journal does. The suspect’s name, birthdate, height, weight and the charges are all public records.

Mr McMullen, if convicted, well, picture the stereotypical sheriff and his comical line, “You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!” Mr McMullen is charged with Assault, first degree, and Wanton Endangerment, first degree, along with leaving the scene of an accident and an automobile theft charge. Assault in the first degree is a Class B felony, punishable by no less than 10 and no more than 20 years in the state penitentiary, along with a fine of between $1,000 and $10,000. Wanton endangerment in the first degree is a Class D felony, which is punishable by between 1 and 5 years in prison.

There are potential sentence enhancements for persistent felons, but the Herald-Leader made no mention of that. Given that he is charged with shooting someone, but not charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, he may have no previous adult felony record, and if he has a juvenile record, that would almost certainly be sealed.

Of course, the greater probability is that his public defender and the Commonwealth Attorney will work out some kind of idiotic plea bargain, sentencing him to far less time in prison. 🙁

Rudy Giuliani showed New York City, and America, what can happen when criminals, even at the lowest levels, are treated seriously, and harshly: crime goes down. Now, with all of the ‘defund the police’ idiocy, crime is skyrocketing. If Mr McMullen is found guilty, he should be locked up for the maximum time allowable under the law. The problem isn’t, as the left claim, “mass incarceration,” but that not enough people are incarcerated, for not enough time.

We can’t know that, if Mr McMullen is convicted but treated leniently, that he will commit another crime or three during the time he could have been locked up under a maximum sentence, but we do know that, for as long as he is locked up, he won’t be committing crimes against law-abiding citizens in the Bluegrass State.

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What is taking so long?

As we have frequently noted, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) has been trying to run out the clock with his ’emergency’ decrees under KRS 39A. The Kentucky state Supreme Court, on April 16th, decided to hold a hearing on the disagreement between courts in Franklin and Scott counties over the Governor’s executive orders, and then set June 10th, a date then eight weeks into the future, for a hearing.

On May 6th, Governor Beshear announced that he would loosen the restrictions, but not eliminate them entirely, effective just before the Memorial Day weekend. Then, on May 14th, the Governor announced that almost all restrictions would be lifted on Kentuckians, including the hated mask mandate, even for those who are not vaccinated against COVID-19. He had, the previous day, followed the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendations, and stated that “fully vaccinated” Kentuckians could dispense with face masks. We noted, on June 11th, on that court finally heard those arguments.

Several lawsuits were filed in state courts last year to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the  Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.

The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders. The General Assembly, dominated by Republicans, passed several bills, over the Governor’s veto, to limit his ’emergency’ powers. Republicans ran against the Governor’s authoritarian dictates in 2020, and the voters rewarded the GOP with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, and two additional seats in the state Senate. Clearly, the voters in the Commonwealth disagreed with the Governor’s actions.

Well, if you thought that the eight weeks the Justices delayed in issuing their ruling in 2020, you ain’t seen anything yet, because eight weeks since the oral arguments this year elapsed on Thursday, August 5th. That was six days ago, but there has still been no ruling issued. As we noted on Tuesday, several school districts decided against going along with Mr Beshear’s request that they impose mask mandates, so the Governor waxed wroth and issued an order that all public and private schools must be fully masked.

    Some KY Republicans call for defiance of K-12 mask mandate and question its legality

    By Alex Acquisto | August 11, 2021 | 1:36 PM EDT

    Less than a day after Gov. Andy Beshear signed an executive order mandating universal masking in all child care, pre-Kindergarten and K-12 settings, some state Republicans are bucking at the new rule, calling it an overreach.

    “Local school districts across the state have carefully considered mandatory face coverings and made decisions regarding their own policies,” House Speaker David Osborne said in a statement Monday morning. “The governor may not agree with their choices, but he must respect their authority. Instead, at the eleventh hour, he chose to politicize this issue and flout their decisions by issuing an executive order with extremely questionable legal standing.”

    The General Assembly “spoke clearly and indisputably” during its 2020 regular legislative session, Osborne said, when lawmakers passed a series of bills limiting the governor’s power to enact emergency measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, including Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 1.

There’s more at the original. But one thing is clear: if the state Supreme Court had done its job and issued its rulings on the previous cases expeditiously, there would be far less of a legal problem with the Governor’s executive orders.

If Senate Bill 1 is judged constitutional, the Governor could still have issued his executive order, in exactly the form he did, but would require the consent of the state legislature to extend it beyond thirty days. The Governor’s own order states that “This Order is effective at 4 p.p. on August 10, 2021, for a period of thirty days, and is subject to renewal.” The only difference would be that the General Assembly would have to approve any extension.

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So much for Andy Beshear asking When people don't do what he asks, he responds by issuing orders

Two stories from the Lexington Herald-Leader, both dated today:

    Most Kentucky schools are making masks optional, even as COVID-19 surges. Here’s why.

    By Alex Acquisto | August 10, 2021 | 12:48 PM

    In a cramped room with members of the Harlan County Public Schools Board of Education, Darla Heflin steadied herself behind a microphone.

    “I’ll be very quick,” Heflin told the listening board and Superintendent Brent Roark on July 27. “We do believe that masks pose physical, mental and emotional distress on our students and on our children.”

    Heflin explained that her son, a rising eighth-grader, asked to be picked up from school twice last year because wearing a mask plagued him with headaches, dizziness and nausea. “He’s not used to wearing them,” she said. “We don’t make him wear them outside of school. I’m here believing that you all will vote to make them optional. We do not want masks to be mandatory for our students.” Continue reading →

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If it’s just those evil reich wing Trumpelstiltskins who are refusing to be vaccinated, why doesn’t Philadelphia have an 80% vaccination rate?

Our good friends on the left love to blame evil reich wing Republicans for lower COVID-19 vaccination rates than they believe are acceptable. Of course, only 100% vaccination compliance is acceptable to the left, because the needs of the state outweigh the rights of the individual.

Surprisingly enough, that “anti racist news organization,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, loath as they are to print anything which could be construed negatively on BIPOCs[1]Black, indigenous, people of color., included an interactive map of city vaccination rates by zip code:

Philadelphia’s least-vaccinated zip codes at the beginning of the summer remain its most undervaccinated now, despite door-to-door outreach, targeted clinics, a lottery, and advertising to encourage people to get COVID-19 inoculations.

As the delta variant spreads, and the threat of other variants looms, these parts of the city are the most vulnerable to serious illness and death.

Five of the city’s zip codes had less than 40% of their residents fully or partially vaccinated as of Aug. 9, according to city data — rates that are on par with Arkansas and Louisiana.

You can click on the image, which is a screen capture, to enlarge it, but it is not interactive on this site. I did, however, rather painstakingly create a Microsoft Excel file of the of the data contained in the interactive file, including percentage having received at least one dose of vaccine, the median household income, racial demographics,[2]In the Inquirer’s interactive map, “white” is not capitalized, but “black”, “Latino” and “Asian” are. and the neighborhood names, something traditionally important in Philadelphia.

You can click on the image to enlarge it.

Of the 15 most heavily vaccinated zip codes, white Philadelphians are the plurality in 14 of them, with over 50% of the population in 12 of them, and 49% and 47% in the other two. Only in zip code 19104 are whites not the plurality.

In only two of the fifteen zip codes with the lowest rates of vaccination, 19116 and 19135, do white Philadelphians compose the largest racial/ethnic group. In nine if the fifteen zip codes with the lowest vaccination rates, blacks make up 70% or more of the population, and over 90% in zip codes 19132 and 19138.

It’s true enough that it takes an [insert slang term for the rectum here] like me to notice the racial disparity in those statistics, but I’d bet I’m not the only one. One wonders: just whom publisher Elizabeth Hughes will fire for looking up and printing those racially disparate statistics.

In the 2020 elections, Philadelphians gave 603,790 (81.44%) of their votes to Joe Biden, and only 132,740 (17.90%) to President Trump; Mr Biden’s margin of 471,050 votes in the city was far larger than his 81,660 statewide margin; without Philadelphia, President Trump would have carried the Keystone State by 389,390 votes.[3]This is clearly evidence that Philly needs to be walled off, like Manhattan in Escape from New York, all the inhabitants therein considered convicted felons and not be allowed to vote. If the vaccination resistance is all among the evil reich wing Trumpelstiltskins, why aren’t over 80% of people in the City of Brotherly Love vaccinated?

References

References
↑1 Black, indigenous, people of color.
↑2 In the Inquirer’s interactive map, “white” is not capitalized, but “black”, “Latino” and “Asian” are.
↑3 This is clearly evidence that Philly needs to be walled off, like Manhattan in Escape from New York, all the inhabitants therein considered convicted felons and not be allowed to vote.