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Once again, Will Bunch defends the bad guys.

If Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran had just enough weapons-grade uranium to put together an atomic bomb, and then shipped it out on a boat to pull into New York harbor, to do what they could to destroy our largest city, Will Bunch would scream bloody murder if the CIA found out about it, and President Trump ordered the boat sunk in international waters. “Why,” he would yell, “didn’t we arrest them when they pulled into New York harbor?”

Trump won’t get to heaven if he keeps murdering people on boats

There was no legal or moral justification for the Trump-ordered boat bombing that killed 11 Venezuelans. It could be just the start.

by Will Bunch | Thursday, September 4, 2025 | 1:16 PM EDT

If Donald Trump is serious about wanting to get to heaven, he has a very odd strategy.

Several paragraphs deleted, in that they are just Philadelphia Inquirer columnist bloviating on what it takes to get to Heaven. Given Mr Bunch’s vocal support for pre-natal infanticide, homosexuality, and transgenderism, I have some difficulty believing the notion that the columnist has any idea what it takes to get to the Heaven he probably doubts exists in the first place.

Just hours after Trump’s plea for everlasting life, he ordered, then celebrated, the mass killing of 11 human beings on a boat in the southern Caribbean Sea, somewhere off Venezuela. This was kind of like scribbling down your 2025 New Year’s resolution to lose weight while sitting in the drive-thru line at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The U.S. military missile strike Tuesday that obliterated the power boat — which the Trump regime alleged, with zero evidence, was manned by Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members bringing a shipment of narcotics to the United States — was such a shocking event that it took a day or so for the America media to even wrap their arms about what the heck just happened here.

Some of that, to be fair, stems from a complete lack of transparency by the White House and the Defense Department. Trump and his minions were eager to boast to the world about their ability to kill people, as the president quickly posted the 28-second South American “snuff video” of the boat’s annihilation to the White House social-media accounts.

In 1941, before the United States was officially at war with Germany, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued his “shoot-on-sight” order, directing the Navy to attack any ship threatening U.S. shipping or foreign shipping under escort. President Trump’s order to sink a drug-running boat when it could be sunk is pretty much the same thing: the drug runners were, in effect, attacking the United States directly, and individual American citizens. Mr Bunch, a journolist[1]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 in our nation’s sixth largest city, is very much aware of the devastation drugs have wrought on the Kensington section of the city, and, less famously, much of the rest of Philly.

The Trump regime offered no legal justification — let alone a moral one — for blowing up in international waters a ship carrying civilians from a nation with which the United States is not at war. Or why the standard practice of warning and then interdicting a ship believed to be involved in drug trafficking — and arresting any suspects and bringing them to trial — wasn’t followed in this case.

My far too expensive Philadelphia Inquirer subscription. I could use a senior citizen’s discount right about now.

“(W)arning and then interdicting”, huh? In other words, give the crew a chance to dump the drugs and destroying the evidence, as well as giving them a chance to open fire and perhaps wound or kill an American sailor or Coast Guardsman? Or perhaps failing to interdict the boat at all before it beached itself to unload its cargo on the Outer Banks or Rehoboth Beach or somewhere else along out hundreds of miles of coastline?

Mr Bunch sure does like to root for the bad guys. This afternoon he expressed the wish to give eleven drug traffickers a fighting chance, while, as we noted last June, he was cheering on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, even while admitting that he did “find quite troubling the allegations of domestic abuse that caused Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, to briefly seek a protective order.” He complained about universities taking steps, at President Trump’s direction, to fight anti-Semitism on campus. Mr Bunch complained that no one should be above the law when it came to pardoned police officers and the January 6 Capitol protesters — even though most of the J6 defendants had already been railroaded convicted and served their sentences — but he defends those who have broken our immigration laws.

If it weren’t for double standards, Mr Bunch would have no standards at all!

There are times I actually wonder if Mr Trump is playing some secret four-dimensional chess. He has managed to get the American left defending transgenderism even when trans killers have murdered children in school and when some of them are invading minor girls locker rooms and beating them in girls’ sports, illegal immigrants even when some of them are trafficking in drugs and raping 7-year-old girls, and urban criminals in general. The President has managed to push the left so far around the bend on issues important to the American people that it’s amazing

References

References
↑1 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 objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Our defenders of democracy really don’t like it when the people take democratic choices of which they disapprove

Sometimes an author spends a lot of time, finely crafting his OpEd for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and winds up telling us exactly what he didn’t really mean to convey.

On immigration, Trump doesn’t have a copyright on cruelty

On both sides of the Atlantic, migrants are regarded as a problem at best, a danger to national security at worst, writes German journalist Adrian Schulz.

by Adrian Schulz | Tuesday, September 2, 2025 | 6:00 AM EDT

Detention camps, violent rhetoric, physical harm, deportations to third-party countries under brutal regimes — Donald Trump did not invent the playbook on callousness toward immigrants.

The European Union, winner of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, got there ahead of him.

As I read the news about the U.S. government’s continuing assault on people whose sole fault is not having the right documents to legally live in a country that is otherwise happy to exploit their labor, I also follow the German debate around the 10th anniversary of the so-called refugee crisis. In 2015, more than a million people came to Germany seeking refuge, many of them fleeing from war-torn Syria.

“(N)ot having the right documents,” huh? Yet another euphemism for being in the country illegally!

I cannot speak to European law, but “not having the right documents” is not their “sole fault” in the United States, because to work in the United States you must be a citizen or be here legally, with the appropriate documents. This means that the illegals who work have either presented forged documents, or be working for a company which has knowingly hired them without documentation, or they are, like those apprehended at Home Depots while looking for day labor, working for cash, almost always unreported, and are thus evading our income and Social Security taxes.

Those things are all felonies!

What I see is not so different. On both sides of the Atlantic, migrants are regarded as a problem at best, a danger to national security at worst. Trump has no copyright on cruelty. Europeans just put on a friendlier face.

Is there ever a ‘friendly face’ on an arresting officer? Regardless of the crime, no one likes being arrested, but that’s what doing something really radical like enforcing the law requires. Our good friends on the left were saying all along that ‘no one is above the law,’ as they prosecuted and persecuted then former President Donald Trump, trying everything they could to throw him in jail and prohibit him from running for President again. They had no problem with the prosecution and persecution of the January 6 Capitol kerfufflers and screamed blood murder when the re-inaugurated President Trump pardoned them, even though most had already served their sentences. Philadelphia District Attorney, who routinely hands out lenient plea bargains to gang bangers, even said he’d try to prosecute the pardoned kerfufflers on state charges.

But somehow, some way, no one being above the law doesn’t seem to matter to them when it comes to people living in our country illegally. Given that they are committing felonies every day they go to work, I’d say that they are far worse criminals than the kerfufflers ever were.

The decision of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel not to close the borders in 2015 is seen today by many as a cardinal sin that fundamentally changed the German political landscape, leading to the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, known as the AfD. It came in second place in the recent federal elections.

AfD was founded in 2013, just before the immigration crisis in Germany, but started growing as Germans became more and more disillusioned by the unrestrained, mostly Muslim, immigration. Germany is a democratic republic, and when author Adrian Schulz tells us that the party came in second in recent elections, he is telling us that the German people are disillusioned with the huge number of immigrants in the country.

(Frau Merkel) chose the former. Her phrase, “Wir schaffen das,” or “We can make it,” endeared her to liberals and outraged conservatives, but for a short moment, most Germans celebrated a Willkommenskultur, a culture of welcoming. People brought truckloads of stuffed animals to train stations where the refugee families arrived.

The optimism soon vanished, though. As in other European countries, the debate started to focus on radically limiting the number of asylum-seekers. The rhetoric became hostile.

“As in other European countries . . . .” Herr Schulz has admitted to us that the movement to reject unregulated Muslim immigration is growing throughout the European democracies. The editors of the Inquirer certainly loved an article decrying President Trump’s immigration policies as “callousness” and “cruelty,” but in doing so, the newspaper concomitantly told readers that we were not alone among democracies in rejecting what is, in the end, an attack on our culture, on Western civilization.

This is what the editors of the Inky, and Herr Schulz just don’t quite get. In the democracies that they claim to cherish, sometimes the people may take democratic choices they just don’t like.

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NBC News apologizes for telling the truth Is it any wonder that Americans' trust of the credentialed media is so low?

We noted on Labor Day that the Minneapolis Catholic school killer was ‘transgender,’ a mentally ill male who thought that he was a girl. In accordance with our Stylebook, we referred to him properly, using his birth name and masculine pronouns in all references, though, as is our policy, we did not change the direct quotations of others. NBC News did the same, at first, but then fell right in line and simped right along with the rest of the #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

NBC Issues Correction After Using ‘the Wrong Pronoun’ for Mass Shooter: ‘She Used Female Pronouns’

by Charlie Nash | Tuesday, September 2, 2025 | 7:31 AM EDT

NBC News issued a correction on Friday after the news outlet used “the wrong pronoun” for Minneapolis mass shooter Robin Westman, who killed two children and left over a dozen others injured during a shooting at a church last week.

“CORRECTION (Aug. 29, 2025, 8:05 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article used the wrong pronoun for the shooter. She used female pronouns,” read the correction notice added to an article written by four reporters for the outlet.

The article had previously referred to Westman – who identified as a transgender woman – with male pronouns.

There’s a bit more at the original.

In other words, NBC News originally told the truth, but had to issue a correction of it!

One of those four reporters, Erik Ortiz, is listed in the ending biography as “a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.” No wonder that there are elements of being ‘woke’ in it!

Robert Westman — and we dislike using his name at all, as it gives the now-deceased cretin publicity — had gone to court, supported by his mother, to change his name to “Robin,” saying that he then identified as a female. The New York Post reported that Mr Westman regretted a lot:

In a twisted handwritten journal he shared on YouTube before the massacre — much of which is encrypted in a homespun code of Russian Cyrillic script and English words — Westman groaned about his long hair and his decision to transition.

“I only keep [the long hair] because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself,” he wrote, according to a translation by The Post.

“I can’t cut my hair now as it would be an embarrassing defeat, and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack.” . . . .

“I regret being trans.. I wish I was a girl I just know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we have today. I also can’t afford that,” he said. . . . .

“I like feeling sexy and cute but my face never matches how I feel. I hate my face… maybe that’s why I like furries so much. You can give yourself a new body and face. I want to be that black face mask on Beyonce’s body lmao!”

Somehow, some way, even the very mentally ill Mr Westman realized that he really wasn’t a girl and could never be a girl. He realized that, at best, he could be a simulacrum of a woman, but an ugly one. Few real women have Beyonce’s figure — or Sydney Sweeney’s, to note last month’s fixation that has so many on the left outraged — and the best that most of the ‘transgender women’ can achieve with facial feminization surgery is a clownlike appearance.

Mr Westman “wish(ed he) was a girl”, but realized that he wasn’t. How many of these guys who really, really wish they were girls picture themselves as girls who look like Sophie Cunningham, picture themselves like that, without realizing that most real girls would like to look like Miss Cunningham as well, that most girls are simply average.

Yet NBC News, ostensibly populated by sane and sensible people, can’t realize what the very insane Mr Westman finally did, that wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’ Plannin’ and dreamin’ he was a girl didn’t make him a girl. Is it any wonder that Americans’ trust in the credentialed media is at its lowest point in five decades?

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.
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Whenever there is a truth you cannot tell that is a truth you must tell!

Rational people want rational explanations for everything. The worst mass murder event in the United States was on October 1, 2017, as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on a music festival crowd from the Mandalay Hotel, killing 60 people and wounding 413 others. Coupled with the ensuing panic, a total of 867 people were injured. Unlike other mass murder events, the killer did not leave any explanation or ‘manifesto,’ and even years later, there has been no ‘official’ explanation.

And so it is with the latest mass murder attempt, the shooting by disturbed man male who thought he was a girl. From The New York Times:

What Motivated the Minneapolis Church Shooter? We May Never Know.

Investigators combing through piles of evidence from an attack on a Minneapolis church cautioned that these kinds of shooters often leave more questions than answers.

by Ernesto Londoño | Sunday, August 31, 2025 | 5:02 AM EDT

It has become a hauntingly routine paradox in the aftermath of horrific shootings.

An assailant leaves piles of evidence that investigators scrutinize. But law enforcement officials are often left with more questions than answers as they seek to determine a motive.

Officials in Minneapolis were bracing for that outcome as they examined the writings and social media posts of the person they say opened fire through the window of a church packed with schoolchildren on Wednesday, killing two.

“We will follow all of the evidence to its logical conclusion,” Brian O’Hara, the Minneapolis police chief, told reporters on Thursday. “This may not ultimately provide the answers that our public is looking for.”

We were told the same thing following the killing of six people at the Covenant School outside of Nashville, Tennessee, by Audrey Hale, the 28-year-old white woman who was so mentally ill that she thought she was a male named ‘Aiden.’ The authorities scrutinized Miss Hale’s writings, and then kept them hidden away. When conservative — the media called him “right-wing” — podcaster Stephen Crowder managed to obtain photocopies of three pages from her notebook, and published them, the authorities were far angrier that the information was leaked than they were about the killings.

Robin Westman, 23, carried out the attack and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the authorities said. The attacker left behind a lengthy suicide note, journal entries and scribbling on the weapons used in the ambush at the Church of the Annunciation, which is affiliated with an adjacent Catholic school.

Note here that the Times used the killer’s fake name, rather than his real name of Robert, and the feminine pronouns to refer to him. The credentialed media do that pretty consistently, because they want to at least tacitly support the notion that girls can be boys and boys can be girls. Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer is right along with that, with an opinion piece in support of transgenderism, just a few days after a ‘transgender woman’ killed two kids, and wanted to kill more.

The content includes disparaging messages about President Trump, Christians, Black people, Hispanic people, Jews and Israel.

“The shooter expressed hate toward every group imaginable,” said Joseph H. Thompson, the acting United States attorney in Minnesota. “The shooter’s heart was full of hate.”

The sprawling nature of the assailant’s rantings and grievances led government officials and other observers to zero in on single pieces of information in the immediate aftermath of the attack, which also injured 15 children and three adult parishioners.

I cannot (legitimately) publish the entire Times article, but please, feel free to click on the title and read the rest yourself. The author points out that Mr Westman and Miss Hale were ‘transgender,’ but also tries to focus on other things, along with noting that some mass shooters taken alive and talk about their actions are often unable to provide coherent reasons.

But one thing I have noticed is that, while these shootings usually generate considerable talk about stricter gun control laws, that has been mostly missing in this case, because every proposal I have ever seen includes banning the mentally ill from purchasing firearms, and the last thing the left want to do is concede the obvious point, that the ‘transgendered’ are, by definition, mentally ill.

Colbert King of The Washington Post did raise that question .  .  . sort of:

Suppose Westman had undergone mental health screening to qualify for acquiring a lethal weapon. Would disqualifying mental health conditions have been identified? Would she have passed go?

Some psychological and psychiatric disorders render people ineligible for certain roles in life due to safety risks. Ought not the ability to own deadly weapons also be subjected to tests? And should that decision, with all due respect, be left to pawnbrokers?

Of course, Mr King didn’t write, probably didn’t dare write, that ‘gender dysphoria’ should be number one on the list of “psychological and psychiatric disorders render people ineligible for certain roles in life due to safety risks,” because acceptance of the delusions of the ‘transgendered’ is practically a cause célèbre among our friends on the left, and even a very liberal person on other things, like author J K Rowling is hated by those who support ‘transgenderism.’

Whether the editors of the Post would have spiked such an addition to Mr King’s column is unknown.

We previously reported, noting Robert Stacy McCain’s story on the Tennessee Star, one of those evil, reich-wing news and commentary sites, doing the actual journalism — not journolism — in investigating the parts of the story the FBI and Nashville authorities tried to keep secret concerning Miss Hale:

Thanks to The Tennessee Star, this week we learned a whole lot more about Audrey Hale, the deranged 28-year-old woman who wanted to be a man named “Aiden” and who killed six people at Covenant School in Nashville before being shot dead by police. Among the revelations this week, we learned that Hale had been a “patient of mental health professionals at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC)” since she was six years old! Heck of a job, “mental health professionals.”

At the time she perpetrated the Covenant School massacre, Hale was under treatment by both a psychiatrist and a therapist. The distinction is important — a psychiatrist is an M.D., who can write prescriptions, whereas a therapist is basically a counselor, someone with a degree in psychology, to whom the patient talks about their problems. So medication and conversation are, in such a case, handled by two separate “mental health professionals” who, we suppose, consult with each other.

The fact that Audrey/“Aiden” Hale was not healed by this treatment — to the contrary, she became a worst-case scenario of therapeutic effectiveness — is not unusual. Most people who are subjected to treatment by “mental health professionals” never really become healthy. With the assistance of anti-depressants or other medications, they may be able to get through life OK, but how can you say turning someone into a drug addict is “success”? Excuse me for speaking so bluntly, but if the goal is “mental health” and you require Prozac (Zoloft, Paxil, etc.) just to make it through the day? No, you haven’t achieved “mental health.”

Mr McCain is, of course, one of those evil Republicans, so you’re not supposed to pay attention to him either, but he noted that the Star actually did the journalistic legwork. I’m not going to go over the part in which he documented that Miss Hale was just plain crazy; you can read his original, which is not behind any kind of paywall.

Mr McCain went into the efforts by the federal Department of Justice, specifically the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to keep the evidence about Miss Hale suppressed. It wasn’t as though evidence needed to be protected for her trial, since she was killed by the police when they responded to the attack.

It’s hardly a surprise, because the Biden Administration specifically and the left in general are all in on normalizing ‘transgenderism,’ and the last thing they want is documentary evidence that a transgender school shooter and mass murderer not only was crazy, but knew she was crazy, and was taking a drug store’s worth of medication to suppress the crazy, and it still didn’t work. They most certainly don’t want people associating ‘transgenderism’ with people being just plain nuts. And in the Minneapolis case, though we now have a sensible regime in the Department of Justice, you can bet your last euro that Minnesota officials will do whatever they can to keep this quiet. The New York Post, our nation’s second oldest continuously published newspaper, has a conservative editorial policy, and has been reporting on this case all along, reported that one of the Minneapolis killer’s former teachers revealed that he had been a troubled student all along.

Did being crazy make the school shooters transgender, or were the feelings of ‘gender dysphoria’ what led to them being crazy in other ways? Who can say, but we do know that most of the credentialed media have been soft-peddling the ‘transgender’ part about the killers, because they do not want the public believing that the ‘transgendered’ are just plain nuts. That is a truth that must be told.

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When judges assume executive authority What could possibly go wrong?

Conservatives have been gleeful that some out-of-control federal judges like James Boasberg have been frequently bitch slapped by higher courts in their attempts to stymie President Trump’s agenda, and those are the things about which we hear, but those are not the only instances of judges deciding that they know how to run executive agencies better than the people who are supposed to have the authority.

SEPTA fare increases and Regional Rail cuts can’t start next week, judge rules

Judge Sierra Thomas-Street issued her order from the bench, telling the attorney for the transit agency that “everything must stop.”

by Abraham Gutman and Andrew Seidman | Friday, August 29, 2025 | 5:39 PM EDT

A Philadelphia judge on Friday ordered SEPTA to halt planned service cuts to Regional Rail and fare increases due to begin next week, following a daylong hearing in a City Hall courtroom.

Judge Sierra Thomas-Street issued her order from the bench, telling the attorney for the transit agency that “everything must stop.”

“Status quo must be maintained,” Thomas-Street said.

The parties will meet again in court on Thursday, when Thomas-Street will consider whether to make the order permanent and expand it to include reversing cuts already in place.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportion Authority (SEPTA) has been taking steps to remain solvent since the hoped-for $213 million assistance from the state government has not yet been approved by the General Assembly. Democrats control the state House of Representatives by one vote, 102-101, and want to give SEPTA the money, but the state Senate, controlled by Republicans 27-23, hasn’t been willing to go along. The state budget was due July 1st, the beginning of the Commonwealth’s fiscal year but still hasn’t been passed by the legislature, and that $213 million remains in limbo.

So, SEPTA’s leadership had to deal with the fact that the anticipated aid hasn’t come yet. General Manager Scott Sauer didn’t want to make the cuts, didn’t want to cut service at all, but he still has to make SEPTA operate within its means.

The ruling came after attorney George Bochetto filed a lawsuit this week in Common Pleas Court on behalf of a consumer advocate and two riders who argued the transit agency’s actions were unlawful. They contended that the cuts — which started Sunday amid a state budget stalemate — would have a disproportionate impact on marginalized groups, violating their rights protected by the Pennsylvania Constitution.

“The judge is saying: No more further cuts,” Bochetto said after the ruling. “Enough double talk, enough triple talk. Do it.”

What? Does Her Honor believe that she can order the state Senate to pass the budget she wants?

We previously reported on Mr Bochetto’s lawsuit and his attempt to compel SEPTA to act as a welfare agency.

SEPTA maintains a Service Stabilization Fund of roughly $300 million, which the system uses “to pay bills and unexpected expenses, as well as a reserve for potential catastrophes.” Some $100 million from that fund had already been spent to fill the budget deficit. The plaintiffs want SEPTA to use that fund to avoid the fare increases and service cuts, which could be done, and here’s where Judge Thomas-Street’s order comes into play: SEPTA’s leadership took executive decisions, the decisions which are their responsibility and for which they are paid to take, but the judge is saying that no, their decisions were wrong, and those decisions must be taken a different way. Judge Thomas-Street has, in effect, arrogated SEPTA’s leadership to herself, dictating a decision to SEPTA’s managers.

It is legitimate to argue with a decision taken by someone in authority to take those decisions; who hasn’t at times thought of his bosses as ‘those idiots up there’? But that does not and should not mean that a judge should have the authority to change those decisions and specify a new one. SEPTA’s decisions were not illegal; they just didn’t go the way that some people wanted them.

There is some wry humor in all of this. With Judge Thomas-Street’s decision, the pressure on Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman to cough up that asked-for $213 million is reduced. With slightly over $300 million in the Service Stabilization Fund, SEPTA could more than cover that $213 million deficit, the taxpayers of the Commonwealth don’t have to fund SEPTA at all! And next year is next year, so who cares, right?

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Now this I can support! Let the counties served by SEPTA pay for SEPTA

While there are all sorts of reports on movement in the Pennsylvania General Assembly on additional funding for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), at least as of this Friday morning writing, no funding agreement has been reached. Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins has paid forward some of the city’s $135 million subsidy, to keep city bus service for schools, but that’s only a stopgap for the system’s projected $213 deficit.

But this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer is at least a little bit better than the notion that the taxpayers throughout the Commonwealth should pay for SEPTA:

Philly’s collar counties are only authorized to tax property. Could SEPTA’s budget crisis change that?

County officials have long sought broader taxing authority. Some say the debate over transit funding could force the issue.

by Katie Bernard | Friday, August 29, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

Officials in Philadelphia’s collar counties are hopeful that the monthslong impasse over funding for SEPTA may push lawmakers to consider a change to state tax law they have sought for years.

With many of their residents dependent on SEPTA for daily work commutes and other trips into Philadelphia, officials across the suburban counties — Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester — say they are committed to its success, and they contributed more than $30 million to it last year. But the state’s laws, which allow counties to tax only property, prevent them from doing more to support the agency without raising property taxes.

Officials have long asked state lawmakers to grant them the authority to tax wages, sales, or property transfers. Some wonder if the current debate over the beleaguered transit authority may finally push the issue.

“They’re holding up public transit funding for the entire commonwealth,” said Monica Taylor, a Democrat who chairs the Delaware County Council. “All of these things are piling up and coming together, and they haven’t passed a budget. … This is hopefully pushing for the opportunity for people to come back to the table and start talking.”

There’s much more at the original, but you get the drift: the counties want to be able to wring more and more money out of their people.

My position is simple: the people who use SEPTA should be the ones who pay for SEPTA, through a reasonable fare increase of 75¢.[1]Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the … Continue reading

But, if the government leaders want to keep treating SEPTA not as a public transit system but a welfare agency, frequently welfare for the well-to-do, at least if Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester counties start taxing their own residents for a system that is available to them, then the people of Carbon, Cameron, and McKean counties, which do not have access to SEPTA, will not.

Chester, Bucks, Montgomery, and Delaware counties are, respectively, the four wealthiest counties in the Commonwealth.

If those heavily Democrat counties — Philadelphia, Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware counties all voted heavily for then Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, while President Trump carried Bucks County by the slimmest of margins, 291 votes out of 402,349 total votes cast — want to tax their people more heavily to pay for SEPTA, let them!

The fairest system is for SEPTA riders to pay for SEPTA, but what I have suggested is at least the second most fair system.

References

References
↑1 Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the largest portion of daily ridership, with 354,820 unlinked trips, or 50% of the total. With 768,291 unlinked passenger trips every day, and a projected operating deficit of $213 million, how much would fares have to increase to cover the deficit? 768,291 x 365 = 280,426,215 trips per year. A $213,000,000 deficit ÷ 280,426,215 daily trips = 75.96¢ per trip which would need to be collected to completely eliminate the projected deficit. Call it a 75¢ per trip added to the fares, just to male collections simpler, and the budget can be brought under control.
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Now this pisses me off!

We noted, in December of 2021, that my wife and I bought a house. No, we didn’t buy it for ourselves, but for my wife’s sister, as she was retiring back to the Bluegrass State, and couldn’t really afford to do it herself. When we croak, it’ll be inherited by our two daughters, and my sister-in-law’s son.

Fortunately, we bought it in a small town without the ridiculous prices in larger cities — it would probably have cost $100,000 more in Lexington — and before Bidenflation hit interest rates. Alas! we couldn’t just pay for it in cash, as we did for our present home, but had to get a mortgage. And during the negotiations for the mortgage loan, when I mentioned that it was a rental house, I was informed that the mortgage rate for a non-primary residence would be one percentage point higher, while I might have thought ‘darn’ and ‘heck’ and even ‘shoot!’ we nevertheless didn’t try to list it as a primary residence, because that would have been a lie.

Lisa Cook is a well-connected former academic who currently serves on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors — currently serves perhaps being outdated, in that President Donald Trump is trying to fire her — with a guesstimated net worth if $1.1 million to $2.7 million. Dr Cook apparently declared both of her homes as her primary residence, supposedly to get the interest rate down. If Mrs Pico and I, who have a net worth of much less than Dr Cook and her husband, can tell the truth and bite the bullet on the higher interest rate, why can’t wealthier people?

But this is the part which really pisses me off. From The New York Times:

Trump Is Claiming Mortgage Fraud to Attack Enemies. Is Your Information Public?

After President Trump accused a Federal Reserve governor of mortgage fraud, everyday citizens are waking up to just how much information is out there.

by Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard | Thursday, August 28, 2025 | 10:00 AM EDT

Politicians are using mortgage data against their enemies, so it’s time to figure out how much of it is available and what law-abiding citizens can do to shield it from prying eyes.

On Monday, President Trump said he was removing Lisa Cook from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. He has accused her of declaring both of her homes as her primary residence, which can be a form of mortgage fraud given that interest rates are often higher for vacation homes or investment properties. . . . .

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who asked the Department of Justice last week to investigate Ms. Cook, suggested this week that she wouldn’t be the last person to face such charges.

“There is too much mortgage fraud in Chicago,” he said on social media, calling out the city where Mr. Trump has threatened to send troops. Mr. Pulte also asked for tips on fraud from the public.

Ms. Cook also wasn’t the first public figure to come in for this scrutiny. Other Trump adversaries, including Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, and Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, are facing similar inquiries. The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican, has also had to answer for his housing records.

Dr Cook is, of course, suing the President over her firing, saying that he’s a big meanie-hoonie, and it’s “illegal and unprecedented” for him to fire her “for cause“. Dr Cook listed two separate residences as her primary residence in 2021, before President Joe Biden appointed her to the Board of Governors in 2022.

Someone who looks a lot like me starting the bathroom renovation at the rental house.

The five quoted paragraphs, if the reader got only that far, leads the reader to believe that this is all political, all Mr Trump using the law to attack his political enemies. Given the multitude of ways that Democrats attempted to attack and even imprison him at the end of his first term, I don’t blame him one bit for returning the favor.

But if you read further, you’ll see that the meat of the article is telling people what information is publicly available at the county clerk’s office, in the property deed of trust or filed mortgage, and that it is public information; anyone can look it up.

The article notes things like primary residences, whether the home is a rental or second home, of, in my case, whether it has a property-tax-saving “homestead exemption”, something we have on our real residence but which we did not claim for the rental house, because that would also be illegal.

The thrust of the article is informing readers what they can do to restrict the publicly available information, or, simply put, how to better commit mortgage fraud.

My wife and I are retired, and we were working-class throughout our careers. A lot of working-class people have bought more than one home, primarily to use as rental income sources, which my wife and I are doing, though the entirety of the rental payments are used for paying off the mortgage; we’re not making a profit off of this. [1]Full disclosure: we bought our current home in 2014, as our retirement home, three years before we moved here, and we rented it out, making a small profit, but we didn’t have to make any … Continue reading

But the people like Dr Cook, who have two residences they use themselves? The people with the money for vacation homes or the hoitiest and the toitiest of summer homes aren’t working-class people. They are the people who have connections in government and can afford the extra interest percentage point, and I admit that I have very little sympathy for those committing fraud to save what, for them, are a few bucks. And that The New York Times is trying to help some of their readers commit mortgage fraud is just plain wrong.

References

References
↑1 Full disclosure: we bought our current home in 2014, as our retirement home, three years before we moved here, and we rented it out, making a small profit, but we didn’t have to make any “homestead exemption”, because we were a bit too young to qualify for it at the time, or “primary residence” claims, because we bought it for cash, and had no mortgage on it.
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From where will all of this money come?

The biggest issue in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia at the moment is more state funding for the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, the mass transit agency which run buses, trains, trollies, and subways in the metropolitan area. SEPTA has a projected $213 million deficit, and has instituted significant service cuts to try to keep the operating expenses in line with projected revenues without the aid from Harrisburg for which they’ve been begging. My good friend Daniel Pearson and the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer have been adamant that the Commonwealth must come through with money, or utter disaster will strike. Note how the elevated train comes to destroyed tracks in a tweet from the newspaper!

We noted here that the solution is actually simple: a 75¢ fare hike completely closes SEPTA’s projected deficit.[1]Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the … Continue reading The newspaper in general, and Mr Pearson specifically, are opposed to further fare increases, pointing out that the base fare has jumped from $2.00 to just under $3.00 since 2018.

But, as the city is desperately looking for money from SEPTA, what else is the Inquirer presenting to readers?

Everywhere you look in the newspaper you’ll find stories of more and more money being spent, and more and more money being demanded, and no one seems willing to ask: from where will all of this money come?

The Transportation Workers Union Local 234 approved a new contract in November of 2024, which included “a 5% pay raise and safety improvements including bulletproof enclosures on buses to protect Bus Operators, upgrades to radios, and fixes to allow uninterrupted communication in tunnels.” That contract expires on November 7th of this year, which means the union will be going back to ask for more money again. From where will this money come?

I get it: the inflation of the Biden economy hit everyone hard, and though inflation started coming down during Mr Biden’s final year in office, the inflated prices never went away. As much as President Trump tries, inflation could come under control, but prices almost never go back down. Everyone is still trying to catch up, but when it’s government spending that is trying to catch up, the taxpayers are the ones who have to shell out. Pennsylvania’s state income tax rate is fairly low, just 3.07%, but the Commonwealth and the localities make up for that by trying to nickel-and-dime people to death on everything else.

Would you believe that the Borough of Jim Thorpe actually requires people to buy a permit, for the price of $5.00, to move into or out of any place in the borough, and that no public or private moving company shall enable such without verifying the moving permit? Violation of such can bring a fine of $600 and possible jail time. $5.00 might not seem like much, but this is an example of the petty ways in which the governments keep trying to stick their grubby hands into people’s pockets.

Philadelphia doesn’t require a move in permit, but charges $25.00 — $50.00 in Center City and University City — for a permit to occupy two street parking spaces for your moving truck.

Someone who looks a lot like me snowblowing in my old neighborhood, December 29, 2012. Does my neighborhood look wealthy to you? Click to enlarge.

Is it any wonder that the Republicans who control the state Senate are reticent to just give and give and give the taxpayers’ dollars to SEPTA and to Philly? Every dollar they give just means the more dollars that will be demanded in the next budget, and while Republicans are reasonably strong throughout the Commonwealth, Philly is as close to a “No Republican” zone as it can get. Do my former neighbors in relatively low-cost, conservative Jim Thorpe[2]Voters in Carbon County gave 66.90% of their votes to Donald Trump, while the voters in Philadelphia and Delaware counties gave 78.57% and 61.15% of their votes, respectively, to Kamala Harris … Continue reading really want to send more of their hard-earned tax dollars to subsidize wealthy inhabitants of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Lower Merion to take the train to Center City?

When Mr Pearson wrote “Harrisburg can’t let regional factionalism keep them from finding common ground on SEPTA: The stalemate over the state budget has entered a new, fractious phase, pitting lawmakers who represent predominantly rural areas against their counterparts from the commonwealth’s larger cities,” he was noting just how different Philly is from the “predominantly rural areas,” as though that’s a surprise, but his goal was a victory for SEPTA and the “commonwealth’s larger cities” over the rural areas. The people of those predominantly rural areas have expressed their differences at the voting booth, and they expect their elected representatives to vote their interests, not Philadelphia’s, yet the stories listed above show us, show the people of those predominantly rural areas how the commonwealth’s larger cities want to spend and spend and spend. Is it really any surprise that the Republican-controlled state Senate is reluctant to throw more and more and more money to Philly?

References

References
↑1 Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the largest portion of daily ridership, with 354,820 unlinked trips, or 50% of the total. With 768,291 unlinked passenger trips every day, and a projected operating deficit of $213 million, how much would fares have to increase to cover the deficit? 768,291 x 365 = 280,426,215 trips per year. A $213,000,000 deficit ÷ 280,426,215 daily trips = 75.96¢ per trip which would need to be collected to completely eliminate the projected deficit. Call it a 75¢ per trip added to the fares, just to male collections simpler, and the budget can be brought under control.
↑2 Voters in Carbon County gave 66.90% of their votes to Donald Trump, while the voters in Philadelphia and Delaware counties gave 78.57% and 61.15% of their votes, respectively, to Kamala Harris Emhoff. Both the state Representative, Doyle Heffley, and state Senator, David Argall, for Jim Thorpe, are Republicans.
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Will Vanity Fair staffers quit over their #TrumpDerangementSyndrome?

Job cuts and layoffs in the credentialed media have been a persistent problem for a couple of decades now, especially in the print medium. Vanity Fair has been among those reporting layoffs at The Washington Post as well as other places, the magazine has seen its share of layoffs, and the people working there have to know just how precious jobs like theirs are right now. So, when an ‘unidentified staffer’ says, “If I have to work bagging groceries at Trader Joe’s, I’ll do it. If [Editorial Director Mark Guiducci] puts Melania on the cover, half of the editorial staff will walk out, I guarantee it,” it sure sounds like the emptiest of threats to me!

Vanity Fair employees lash out over proposed Melania Trump cover: ‘I will walk out the motherf–king door’

By Emily Crane | Tuesday, August 26, 2025 | 7:43 AM EDT

Vanity Fair’s new boss reportedly wants first lady Melania Trump to grace the glossy magazine’s coveted cover — leaving disgruntled woke staff threatening to “walk out the motherf–king door” if it goes ahead.

The fashion mag’s global editorial director, Mark Guiducci, has floated the possibility of putting President Trump’s wife on the cover of the Conde Nast-owned publication as he tries to make his mark in his newly minted role, Semafor reported.

But the mere thought of having the former model as a cover girl sparked fierce backlash from raging lefty staffers.

“I will walk out the motherf–king door, and half my staff will follow me,’ one sensitive editor fumed to the Daily Mail.

“We are not going to normalize this despot and his wife; we’re just not going to do it. We’re going to stand for what’s right,” the unidentified staffer whined.

“If I have to work bagging groceries at Trader Joe’s, I’ll do it. If [Guiducci] puts Melania on the cover, half of the editorial staff will walk out, I guarantee it.”

It sounds to me as though Mr Guiducci’s job just became easier: he won’t have to decide on more layoffs if a bunch of #TrumpDerangementSyndrome afflicted staffers walk out the door!

But, alas! the chances that many, or even any, of the staffers would carry through with such a threat are pretty small. Perhaps the ‘unidentified staffer’s’ guarantee isn’t all that solid?

We previously noted how The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch got his thong panties in a twist over Ivanka Trump Kushner visiting the Philadelphia Eagles Nova Care practice facility with her son and his flag football team. Mrs Kushner is not part of President Trump’s present Administration, the article he referenced had nothing to do with politics, yet the columnist was appalled anyway.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing these days.