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Why can people never tell the truth about homicide?

As is my wont, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page this morning. I noted yesterday, on Twitter, that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Tuesday, April 6th, that 125 people had been murdered in the mean streets of Philadelphia, a 28.87% increase from the 97 killed by the same day last year. Since 2020 was a leap year, April 6th was the 97th day of 2020, while only the 96th day of this year.

On the 97th day of 2020, 97 dead, exactly one per day.

Well, that was then, and this is now. When I opened the Current Crime Statistics page this morning, the total had jumped to 132 people killed. On the 97th day of 2021, the City of Brotherly Love was seeing an average of 1.36 souls being sent to their eternal rewards early. That’s an average which, if it continues throughout the year, would see 496 homicides in Philly, which would be three fewer than in 2020. But, as we all know, the murder rate usually increases in the long, hot summer. Philadelphia is certainly getting a head start on last year!

Which brings me to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story:

Philly police officer wounded, man killed during gun battle

The officer was shot in the foot on the 1500 block of West Somerville Avenue.

by Robert Moran | April 7, 2021

A man was fatally wounded and a Philadelphia police officer was shot in the left foot during a traffic stop that escalated into a gun battle Wednesday evening in the city’s Logan section, police said.

With Fraternal Order of Police President John McNesby on the left, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw comments, from the 35th District station, on the alleged exchange of gunfire that left a man dead and an officer wounded on the 1500 block of West Somerville Avenue on April 7, 2021.Elizabeth Robertson, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer

About 6:45 p.m., police on patrol initiated a traffic stop on a blue Kia Optima on the 1500 block of West Somerville Avenue, said Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.

The officers ran a check on the four occupants — three men and a woman — and found that two had warrants, Outlaw said. The officers then asked for backup and two other police vehicles arrived.

Four officers approached the Kia and asked a 24-year-old man in the back seat to exit the vehicle, Outlaw said. Then one of the officers allegedly saw that he had a firearm and declared, “He’s got a gun.”

There’s more at the Inquirer original. And is it my imagination, or does Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, covered up in her uniform and cover and face mask, kind of look like an Afghan woman wearing a burqa, with only her eyes visible?

That the police officers’ union president was there sure looks like he was making sure that the Commissioner didn’t somehow trash her officers!

Commissioner Outlaw went on to explain that her officers reported that the armed man fired a shot at the officers from inside the Kia, and then got out and engaged in a gun battle with police. That turned out to be a poor tactical decision on his part, as he managed to hit one officer in the foot, but took multiple rounds in the chest.

“It just speaks to the level of gun violence in the city,” (Police Department spokesman Sgt Eric) Gripp said about the incident, in which one man allegedly opened fire on the officers, apparently without provocation.

Yeah, I suppose that a Police Department spokesman — the Inquirer referred to him as a “spokesperson,” but The First Street Journal does not go along with that politically correct bovine feces — would have been trained to use the term “gun violence,” but we need to start telling the truth here: it wasn’t “gun violence” but criminality! The now deceased criminal was already being sought by the law; there was an active warrant out for his arrest. He was stupid enough to have been carrying a gun, and stupid enough to start shooting at police officers, officers he had to know outnumbered him several to one. He started firing from inside the vehicle, thereby putting the other three people in the Kia in danger of being wounded or killed by return fire from the police.

But, maybe it wasn’t so stupid after all. Maybe the criminal knew that the gun, when ballistics are run on it, will turn out to have a body or three on it, maybe he knew that, if he was arrested, he’d wind up in prison for the rest of his miserable life. In Philadelphia, that’s always a possibility.

But, whatever his reasons, whether a cold, calculated estimate that it was shoot it out or face life in prison, or whether he was just messed up on alcohol and/or drugs and not thinking clearly at all, the deceased decided to risk the death penalty, and received it, all in just a few minutes. I do not support capital punishment, but it’s difficult not to see Philadelphia as being better off without the deceased alive and out on the streets.[1]While Pennsylvania has capital punishment on the books, District Attorney Larry Krasner does not seek the death penalty for any crimes.

Within minutes of the shootout, two men from another shooting also arrived at Einstein hospital by private vehicle. A 21-year-old man who had been shot twice in the head was pronounced dead. A 22-year-old man was shot in the left leg, and was listed in critical condition.

Well, that’s two of the seven people who were killed on April 7th; the Inquirer had no mention of the other five, although, the way statistics can be, it is possible that the others were shot or stabbed or whatevered a day or two earlier, and only expired on the 7th.

The sad fact is that the Inquirer doesn’t run many stories on homicides; there was that one short paragraph about the second murder victim, and that would never have generated a story were it not for the police-involved shooting. The truth is that, unless there’s something ‘special’ about a killing, such as the victim being an innocent bystander, and child, or, most importantly, a cute little white girl, it’s just not news in Philadelphia!

References

References
↑1 While Pennsylvania has capital punishment on the books, District Attorney Larry Krasner does not seek the death penalty for any crimes.
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More #woke reporting from The Philadelphia Inquirer

We noted last week that the Lexington Herald-Leader declined to post the freely available mug shot of a suspected murderer on its website, even though all of the other media sources in that fair city did so, and I speculated — and yes, that is the correct word — that the editorial decision not to do so was because the suspect is black.

Justin Smith, named a ‘person of interest’ in the murder of Dianna Brice, as pictured in the New York Post.

Now comes The Philadelphia Enquirer Inquirer doing the same thing. The New York Post ran a story on Dianna Brice, 21, a missing and pregnant Delaware County woman, whose body was found in:

a wooded area in southwest Philadelphia, about one mile from where the car of her boyfriend, Justin Smith, 23, was found engulfed in flames hours after she vanished on March 30, WPVI reported.

CBS Philadelphia, citing police, said she had been shot. Smith is a person of interest in her slaying, the station reported.

One would think that the Inquirer would, as a public service to its readers, include the photo of Mr Smith, whom the Philadelphia Police Department have named as a ‘person of interest’ in the investigation of Miss Brice’s murder, in case one of the readers happened to spot Mr Smith, so that he could call the police. But if you thought that, you would be wrong.

Body of missing Upper Darby woman found in Southwest Philadelphia; boyfriend still missing

Dianna Brice had been reported missing March 30. Police tracked her cellphone and found her body in a wooded area in Southwest Philadelphia. Her boyfriend remains missing.

by Vinny Vella | Updated April 6, 2021

A pregnant woman reported missing from her home in Upper Darby was found dead late Monday, nearly one week after she disappeared, police said. Meanwhile, detectives continued their search for Justin Smith, the woman’s boyfriend and the last person seen with her.

Philadelphia police recovered the body of Dianna Brice, 21, in a wooded area near 58th Street and Eastwick Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, according to Kevin Ryan, a private investigator working with Brice’s family. Officers found the body about 11 p.m. Monday, and forensic investigators later identified it as Brice’s, he said.

Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt on Tuesday said the investigation into her death is being handled by Philadelphia police and is being treated as a murder case.

It remained unclear how Brice died. Sources familiar with the investigation said officers found the body by tracking the young mother’s cellphone.

The Inquirer story was updated the day before the Post story was published, so while the Inquirer might not have known, at the time of publication, that the Philadelphia Police Department said that Miss Brice had been shot, they did know, as they published, that it was being treated as a murder case.

So, why not post a photo of the ‘person of interest’ on the Inquirer’s story? Yes, the Inquirer is a non-profit business now, and yes, bandwidth costs money, but the Inquirer had enough bandwidth available to include a photo by staff photographer José F Moreno of the site in which Miss Brice’s body was found. That means, among other things, that the Inquirer spent the money to send Mr Moreno out to the site to take the picture.

Now, to be fair, in an earlier story, the Inquirer did embed a tweet from the Upper Darby Police, in a story on the search for Miss Brice when she was missing, and that included a photo of Mr Smith:

But the newspaper couldn’t manage to include it in the story in which Miss Brice’s death was noted and in which Mr Smith was named as someone whom the police sought in the case. [1]This story was last checked by me at 11:49 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 7th, and this statement was accurate at that time. The photo might be added in a subsequent update, but I have no way of knowing … Continue reading

So, why wouldn’t a credentialed media source I have mockingly called The Philadelphia Enquirer not have published Mr Smith’s photo? [2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt. The paper had the photo, and the paper had enough bandwidth available to include a photo of the street near where Miss Brice’s body was found. I can think of four possible reasons:

  1. Vinny Vella, the author of both stories on Miss Brice, forgot that he had included that tweet, with the photo, just the day before. If that is the case, Mr Vella isn’t particularly bright.
  2. Mr Vella’s editor — and yes, I am presuming here that an editor actually reviewed the story, as has been a journalistic tradition for, oh, more than a hundred years — didn’t remember the included tweet from the previous day, and never asked a question as to whether Mr Smith’s photograph was available, in which case that editor wasn’t doing a very good job;
  3. The Inquirer has taken an editorial decision not to publish very many photographs of suspects in criminal cases; or.
  4. The Inquirer has taken an editorial decision not to publish very many photographs of suspects in criminal cases, if those suspects are black.

Reasons 1 and 2 are evidence of incompetence. Could it be the third reason, that the Inquirer doesn’t print photos of suspects, period, for whatever reasons? That, I suppose, is possible, though if they are going to print the suspects’ names, that would seem more damaging, as those names could be much more easily found in future Google searches by prospective employers or whomever.

How about the fourth reason? That, I believe, is the more probable one, and given the #woke nature of the Inquirer staff, the ones who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too, I think it is a reasonable suspicion.

References

References
↑1 This story was last checked by me at 11:49 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 7th, and this statement was accurate at that time. The photo might be added in a subsequent update, but I have no way of knowing that at publication of this article.
↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
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No media bias there, huh?

I have previously referred to The City of Brotherly Love’s venerable newspaper as The Philadelphia Enquirer, in mocking reference to the National Enquirer, and it seems as though every day brings more justification of that.[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Had an experience with extremists or conspiracy theories? Tell us about it.

Have you experienced extremism in your community, or seen family or friends divided by conspiracy theories? Tell us about it and a reporter may reach out to you.

by David Gambacorta | April 7, 2021

We are living in a paranoid time.

Communities of conspiracy theorists have sprouted online in recent years in response to school shootings, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2020 presidential election — distorting reality, amplifying divisions, and fueling real-world harm.

» READ MORE: From Philly to the Capitol, conspiracy adherents have fractured families and harmed communities

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 73% of Americans believe that conspiracy theories are out of control. The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which left five people dead, illustrated the risks of allowing extremism, and conspiracy theories like QAnon, to spread unchecked.

Have you experienced extremism in your community, or seen family or friends divided by conspiracy theories? Tell us about it in the form below and a reporter may reach out to you.

That’s all of the text. Mr Gambacorta’s end of article bio blurb is a short one:

I work on the investigative team, and narrative-driven projects.

I guess that the older style, something along the lines of “Mr Gambacorta is part of the Inquirer — to use the newspaper’s real name — investigative team,” isn’t young or #woke enough, and has to be more personalized.

But I digress. The article then gives four options in a response form:

Which extremist groups or conspiracy movements have you had an experience with?

  • QAnon
  • Proud Boys
  • Covid-19 Truthers
  • Other

Did you notice? All of the “extremist groups or conspiracy movements” given as options are those attributed to conservatives. There is no option to choose Antifa or #BlackLivesMatter as an extremist group with which one has had experience, even though Philadelphia experienced plenty of damage and violence in the protests over the killing of George Floyd and Walter Wallace.[2]Walter Wallace Jr was a mentally disturbed man who charged police with a knife, when officers responded to the fourth call from his family over his erratic behavior; the officers, who did not have … Continue reading

The Proud Boys, huh? A site search of the Inquirer’s website turned up this:

Far-right Proud Boys march through Center City

The alt-right Proud Boys marched through Center City Saturday with nearly 60 participants, many wearing body armor and helmets.

by Staff Reports | September 26, 2020

The alt-right Proud Boys conducted a march through Center City Saturday with nearly 60 participants, many wearing body armor and helmets, some waving American flags, and occasionally engaging in sharp verbal exchanges with onlookers.

They stopped in front of Independence Hall to sing The Star-Spangled Banner and then proceeded to City Hall, where they posed for a group photo, some displaying a white power sign with their fingers.

On the way there, they crossed paths without incident with the March to End Rape Culture, a protest to raise awareness about rape and express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Later, the Proud Boys chanted “Back the blue” as they made their way to a parking garage at Penn’s Landing, where police closed off access until members of the group drove off.

The action came a week after the Proud Boys were expected to rally in Clark Park, when instead about 500 counterprotesters showed up to the popular West Philadelphia site in a progressive, racially diverse neighborhood.

Social media posts claimed Proud Boys were present, but were disguised as journalists to gather information about leftist activists.

If you open that article, you will see several photographs of the Proud Boys march in Philly, none of them showing any violence, none of them showing the buildings they burned or the stores they looted, because none of that happened! Not one story concerning the Proud Boys indicates any violence, any violence at all, by them in Philadelphia.

There was plenty, though, concerning the arrest of Zach Rehl, a Philadelphia man whom federal prosecutors say was a Proud Boys leader and participant in the January 6th Capitol Kerfuffle. The Feds want to keep Mr Rehl locked up before his trial begins, even though they have conceded that Mr Rehl did not participate in any violence himself:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Luke Jones conceded in court Friday that the government had no evidence that Rehl had directly participated in any property destruction or violence against police once he was inside Capitol grounds. But he balked at the suggestion from Rehl’s lawyer that the man was being jailed pretrial solely for expressing controversial political views.

“He is not before the court because of his opinions,” he said. “He’s before the court because of his actions and the people he led.”

Yet it was the Proud Boys, not Antifa and not Black Lives Matter, who organized and committed actual violence and vandalism, whom Mr Gambacorta listed as an extremist group!

Even though I am no longer a Pennsylvania resident, I do pay attention to foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, enough so that I broke down and subscribed to the Inquirer — after my wife told me to do so, seeing the conniptions through which I was going to get their stories without paying for them — but it doesn’t take much to see the leftward bias of that newspaper.

The editors, writers and reporters of The Philadelphia Enquirer Inquirer have, of course, their absolute First Amendment rights to think and say and print whatever they want, but I have the same rights to point out their utter stupidity.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
↑2 Walter Wallace Jr was a mentally disturbed man who charged police with a knife, when officers responded to the fourth call from his family over his erratic behavior; the officers, who did not have tasers available to them, defended themselves.
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No, this isn’t about government controlling people at all!

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY), about whom I have had to write far too frequently, ignores the evidence. His minions tweeted for him:[1]Tweets on that account which are written personally by the Governor are signed are signed ^AB

“”Double down on public health measures,” and “masking up,” huh?

Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) eliminated the mandatory mask order in the Lone Star State, effective on March 10th; on that date, Texas’ seven-day moving average of daily new cases stood at 4,909. As of April 5th, that number was down to 3,007. The New York Times noted that while the moving average was down by 19% over the past fourteen days, the number of daily tests had increased by 8%. More tests, yet far fewer cases; how about that. Hospitalizations were also down, by 18%, and COVID-19 fatalities were down 38%.

Empirical data do not show that mask mandates have reduced COVID-19

So, why does Governor Beshear want us to “double down” on restrictions on our lives, why does he want us to continue to wear face masks, when ditching the mask mandate — which doesn’t stop people from wearing masks; it just makes them optional — not only didn’t result in an increase of cases, but Texas has seen a 38.7% decline in average daily cases four weeks after the mask mandate ended?

In Andy Weir’s book, The Martian, the nerds on earth are discussing why the “Hab,” the living quarters for the astronauts on Mars, didn’t have redundant communications systems capable to contacting earth. The comm systems were instead mounted on the MAV, the Mars Ascent Vehicle, and one of the nerds says, “(It) Never occurred to us. We never thought someone would be on Mars without a MAV. I mean, what are the odds?”

To which another nerd replied, “One in three, based on empirical data. That’s pretty bad if you think about it.”

And so it is. Regardless of what the heavily politicized Centers for Disease Control tell us, the empirical data have shown that dropping the restrictions on people’s lives hasn’t led to the Chicken Little ‘The Sky is Falling’ scenario we’ve been being told. Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was dropping mask mandates last December, and while cases continued to increase into January, just like they did everywhere else, cases then started falling rapidly.

In the Bluegrass State, on March 10, the average seven day moving average was 790 new cases per day; on April 5, it was down to 574. That’s a 27.3% reduction, a smaller percentage reduction than was seen in Texas, despite Governor Beshear keeping the mask mandate in place.

And while the number of tests being performed in Texas have increased by 18% over the past 14 days, in Kentucky they have decreased by 9%, which means that more cases may have been missed.

If the empirical data do not show that the mask mandates have reduced COVID-19, then why do Democratic Governors like Mr Beshear keep imposing them? There’s really only one answer: they love authoritarian control!

References

References
↑1 Tweets on that account which are written personally by the Governor are signed are signed ^AB
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A stunning lack of self-awareness at The Harvard Crimson

I will admit it: The Harvard Crimson is not one of my first reads of the day, and I would not have spotted the article referenced below were it not for this tweet from my good friend Hube of The College Fix. It seems that the Editorial Board of the Crimson are just terribly, terribly upset at discrimination against Asians:

Anti-Asian Hate and Atlanta’s Aftermath

By The Crimson Editorial Board | April 5, 2021

Racism directed against Asian people in America is old and urgent. The recent murder spree carried out in Asian spas and massage parlors in Atlanta — in which eight people, including six Asian women, were shot and killed — is the latest horrific entry in the history of violence Asian American and Pacific Islanders have been subject to in the United States.

This violence sickens and shocks us, but perhaps our shock is a failure in and of itself. Asian Americans have been sounding the alarm on their lack of protection for over a year as attacks against Asian Americans have sharply risen. Covid-19, despicably dubbed “Kung Flu” and “the Chinese Virus” by former President Donald Trump, has triggered a wave of irrational violence against people of Asian descent. Between this piece’s publication and when our board first gathered to grapple with the Atlanta shooting, a woman of Filipino descent was brutally attacked in Times Square by a man spitting that she did not “belong here.” Yet even as the threat became more evident and pressing — even as New York reported a more than nine-fold increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, and an 84-year-old Thai man lost his life in San Francisco to a brutal attack his family describes as racially motivated — most of American society remained unfazed until Atlanta. It took a massacre for us to pay attention.

Would it be wrong of me to point out that the cities in which the incidents pointed out by the Editorial Board occurred, Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco, are heavily Democratic?

The suspect in the Atlanta shootings claims that he was not racially motivated; that his decision to shoot up three separate Asian-affiliated establishments was a reflection of his ‘“sex addiction” and desire to remove the “temptation” Asian spas presented. The sheriff in the county the crime took place seemingly sympathized, saying on the alleged perpetrator: “He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”

This coddling and utterly absurd response underscore how racism and white supremacy shaped the course and fallout of the Atlanta shooting.

I do love how the Editorial Board, made up of matriculants at one of the most highly selective universities in the country, have managed to conclude that the accused killer’s motive was different from what he said it was. Ought we not to expect that such brilliant students would do something really radical like, oh, examine the evidence?

Have they interviewed the suspect? Have they talked to him? The Editorial board noted searches for Asian women are among the top hits on a pornographic site, and assumed that because millions and millions of (mostly) men search for such, that this one individual male must have an Asian fetish. If the left object to my pointing out that the anti-Asian attacks listed above occurred in heavily Democratic cities, that just because the cities are liberal in the aggregate does not mean that the perpetrators of individual acts couldn’t be evil reich-wing Trump supporters, then the logical fallacy of the Editorial Board’s statement becomes obvious.

We are a country with a rich history of coddling white, male mass murderers. Authorities and the media extend undue sympathy even when their crimes demonstrate an extreme disregard for human life. It’s a privilege we rarely afford other demographics; one we only seem eager to extend when victims, unlike the perpetrator, belong to a minority group: Cops buying mass murderer Dylan Roof Burger King comes to mind. The dynamic is symptomatic of how racist biases and misconceptions can shape our response to crime, and of how failing to understand their pervasive influence can mean completely misinterpreting the root of tragedies born from racial hatred.

Dylann Roof was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on South Carolina state charges, and received a capital sentence on federal charges. I’m not certain just what more can be done to him.

Of course, the Editorial Board seem to think that Mr Roof was coddled because the police brought him food after his arrest, when he said he was hungry. Not feeding Mr Roof, who told the police he hadn’t eaten for a couple of days, would have been a civil rights violation which could have tainted his arrest. It took me, with my baccalaureate degree from the not-so-selective University of Kentucky, about three seconds to find that information.[1]While UK has selective admissions now, when I matriculated there in the fall of 1971, any Kentucky resident who had been graduated from an accredited Kentucky high school was guaranteed admission. UK … Continue reading

Solidarity means focusing on our common societal goal of defeating white supremacy, whatever shape it takes. In doing so, we must avoid pitting urgently needed movements against each other; forcing them to prove their comparative validity. Oppression Olympics are counterproductive, particularly when the common, violent enemy looms as large as white supremacy. Stop Asian Hate must function as a rightful ally of its counterparts like Black Lives Matter; minority ethnic groups standing in solidarity against the lashes of white hatred and rage. As for white Americans: Start fighting white supremacy in your own communities.

Solidarity among marginalized groups counters white supremacy in and of itself by chipping at the model minority myth, used to pit Asian people against other minority groups and to promote the falsehood that anyone can succeed their way out of racism. The financial success of some Asian Americans has been weaponized to perpetuate the notion that other people of color could achieve the same success if only they worked hard enough. The model minority myth not only glosses over the huge income disparity that exists within the Asian American community but also ignores the historical injustices and systemic barriers that have been constructed to keep African Americans specifically in poverty. Expressions of unity are one way to dispel this insidious myth, alongside rejecting any stereotype that caricatures the incredibly diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander community as a monolith.

I have omitted much of the editorial, because I do not wish to plagiarize, and try to adhere to fair use standards. You can follow the link to the original, but at least when I read it, at 8:20 AM, there wasn’t a single word in it notiong that their own university, Hahvahd, has an admissions department which regularly discriminates against Asian applicants!

Not that it’s just Harvard. The Justice Department, under President Trump, brought a lawsuit against Yale University for the same thing, but the Biden Administration dropped it two weeks after coming into office.

Finally, to our Asian American peers: We see you, and understand that Atlanta is just the latest straw after a year-long onslaught of unjustified vilification and hatred. You deserve better than the response Harvard has given you, and more than what this editorial could ever offer. In the aftermath of Atlanta, we can offer no silver lining; only a reaffirmed commitment from this board to listen, learn, and use our voice to discuss and dismantle anti-Asian hate as best we know how.

If the Editorial Board see them, just how do the Board not mention, in their long editorial, that their own University discriminates against Asians. But, the Board, being beneficiaries of Harvard’s admissions processes, might not want to take that step. It is, after all, a reasonable question: if Harvard admitted strictly on academic achievement, how many of the Board would have been quoting Tom Cruise in Risky Business, “Looks like the University of Illinois!“[2]The Editorial Board could not have been unaware, given that the Crimson’s website lists as it’s fifth most read article Texas Files Amicus Brief Supporting SFFA in Harvard Admissions … Continue reading

References

References
↑1 While UK has selective admissions now, when I matriculated there in the fall of 1971, any Kentucky resident who had been graduated from an accredited Kentucky high school was guaranteed admission. UK made up for that with a high flunk-out rate.
↑2 The Editorial Board could not have been unaware, given that the Crimson’s website lists as it’s fifth most read article Texas Files Amicus Brief Supporting SFFA in Harvard Admissions Lawsuit. That article was published just three days earlier.
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Schadenfreude! The rampage of the #woke is trampling the woke!

I have been somewhat — OK, OK, maybe more than “somewhat” — disparaging 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 so a gleam appears in my beady brown eyes when I hear of yet another of the left getting destroyed by their own. We have previously noted the ‘turmoil’ at The New York Times, and that editorial page editor James Bennet was fired resigned, and deputy editorial page editor James Dao was demoted reassigned to the newsroom. We noted Bari Weiss Twitter thread that “The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same.” A few days later, Miss Weiss was gone, too.

Then, a couple of months ago, The Washington Post reported that Times “star reporter”, who had joined the NYT in 1976 as a copy boy, used the infamous “n” word, not in a statement he made but in quoting something from someone else, was history. The Post said that Mr McNeil “wasn’t fired, according to people with knowledge of the decision, but was essentially compelled to resign.”

And this morning, we have this gem, also from the Post:

Inside the Teen Vogue mess — which is really a Condé Nast mess

By Sarah Ellison | April 4, 2021 | 6:00 AM EDT

From the start, Alexi McCammond seemed an unlikely candidate to become a top boss within the storied Vogue empire — at least on paper.

Only 27, she had little editing experience and had never managed a staff before she was tapped as editor in chief for Teen Vogue early last month. A stranger to the world of glossy New York magazines, she had spent the past four years as a junior reporter at a news start-up in Washington, scrapping for incremental scoops and gritty campaign-bus assignments alongside scores of other young D.C. journalism strivers.

Yet in her short career, McCammond had acquired the rare sort of Washington currency that translates to Manhattan’s power centers: buzz.

It was a wave of buzz — her youthful reporting successes amplified by a high-profile celebrity dust-up and vivid and appealing national TV appearances — that helped put her on the radar of Anna Wintour, the legendary longtime editor of Vogue and top Condé Nast executive, who hired McCammond.

Shades of Ali Watkins, the New York Times reporter who kept her job even after it was revealed she had been sleeping with one of her sources, though the Times at least tried the fig-leaf cover of reassigning her to a different beat. Miss Watkins had buzz, don’t you know!

Alexi McCammond was hired as editor in chief of Teen Vogue after four years of covering politics in Washington. (Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images)

“Alexi has the powerful curiosity and confidence that embodies the best of our next generation of leaders,” Wintour announced March 5.When it all fell apart within days — after a staff uproar over anti-Asian tweets that McCammond posted as a college freshman — some critics saw a parable about an unforgiving “cancel culture” in elite media. Others clucked over the irony of Condé Nast both hiring and firing a young Black woman in its flailing attempts to align with a renewed push for diversity.

Now, I have to admit it: when I looked at Miss McCammond’s photo in the Post, “young black woman” is not really what I see.[2]As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not go along with the politically correct foolishness of the Associated Press Stylebook in capitalizing ‘black’ when referring to … Continue reading

So at the start of the year, when New York Magazine poached Teen Vogue’s top editor — Lindsay Peoples Wagner, a 30-year-old who is one of the few Black women ever to helm a Condé Nast title — Wintour and Condé CEO Roger Lynch may have wanted to send a reassuring signal in picking a replacement. In McCammond, they found not only a journalist gaining notice for her work, but also a young Black woman with the stylish good looks of many Condé editors.

T J Ducklo and Alexi McCammond. Phots from Twitter and Instagram.

Guffaws! Condé Nast found a woman with enough ‘black’ in her to qualify as black — perhaps they were using the old “one drop rule“? — but those “stylish good looks of many Condé editors” certainly seem to come from some obviously Caucasian ancestors. Looking at Miss McCammond’s photo, I see a woman no darker a complexion than I have on a summer’s day. She very famously dated T J Ducklo, briefly a Biden Administration deputy press secretary, who got himself fired resigned after threatening a Politico reporter who was going to reveal that relationship.

Mr Ducklo sure looks white to me! A white boyfriend, a light complexion, mostly Caucasian-ancestry features, but Miss McCammond was hired at least in part because she was black? Shades of Rachel Dolezal!

I might have skipped the Post article entirely had I not previously noted Lauren Duca, previously a columnist and editor at Teen Vogue, who was used as a supposedly informed commentator by CNN. The very left wing Miss Duca has had her own problems with wokeness:

In May 2018, it was announced that Duca would be a visiting scholar at New York University’s journalism department.[32][33] In the summer of 2019, Duca taught a six-week course there entitled “The Feminist Journalist.” The class was taught under the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and focused on intersections of feminist ideology and the practice of journalism, and was made up of high-school and college students.[34] Four weeks after the course, students sent a collective formal complaint to school’s journalism department regarding Duca’s conduct during the class, writing, “We are disappointed at the department and NYU for hiring a professor with more interest in promoting her book than teaching a group of students eager to learn.”[35] Students allege that Duca targeted an exchange student, writing that she “consistently targeted this student on the basis of a communication difficulty the student cannot change.[35][36]

The left have created a situation in which the 27-year-old Miss McCammond lost her new job because of a couple stupid tweets she made when she was a college freshman. Given that the left tried to torpedo the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh over wholly unproven and unprovable accusations from the 1980s, when he was a minor, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that their own wokeness is coming back to bite them in the ass. Schadenfreude!

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 As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not go along with the politically correct foolishness of the Associated Press Stylebook in capitalizing ‘black’ when referring to race. However, in reading the Post, it seems that the newspaper also capitalizes ‘white’ when referring to race, something specifically not done according to the AP Stylebook.
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Show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you rotten parents

I hadn’t heard of this story until I saw this tweet:

Yeah, that sounds kind of bad!

13-Year-Old Boy Who ‘Wanted to Become a Cop’ Is Killed by Chicago Police

Pilar Melendez | Friday, April 2, 2021 | 12:10 PM

The death of a 13-year-old boy, who dreamed of joining the police but was gunned down by a cop in an “armed confrontation” this week, has horrified the crime-weary city of Chicago, prompting demands for answers from the mayor on down.

The Cook County Medical Examiner confirmed to The Daily Beast that Adam Toledo died of a gunshot wound to the chest on Monday. His death, which occurred after a confrontation with Chicago police in Little Village, has been classified as a homicide.

The boy’s family, community leaders, and even Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot are demanding police release the body-camera videos of the incident. The officer involved in the shooting has been put on desk duty for at least 30 days pending an investigation.

“Adam was a seventh-grade student at [Gary Elementary] School, enjoyed sports, and was a good kid. He did not deserve to die the way he did,” the Toledo family said in a Friday statement.

Uh huh.

The family said Adam was killed “due to the unreasonable conduct of a Chicago Police Officer” and they would “seek justice for this reprehensible crime.” They added that they were only notified of Adam’s death two days after he was killed.

“We are confident that the Chicago Police Department and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability will conduct a thorough investigation, that there will be transparency, and that Toledo Family will find out the truth of what happened to Adam.”

Police said the incident began at around 2:35 a.m. on Monday when officers responded to a call of “multiple shots fired in the 200 block of S. Sawyer.” When they arrived, they found two males—later identified as Toledo and 21-year-old Ruben Roman Jr.—“in a nearby alley” and at least one was armed. Police said the armed person ran from the scene, prompting officers to start a foot pursuit that ended in an “armed confrontation.”

What, exactly, was a 13-year-old boy doing out on the streets at 2:35 AM on Monday morning?

There’s more at the original, and the Usual Suspects are trying to make this about politics, but two perps, running from the police at 2:35 in the morning isn’t exactly the type of situation in which the officers would have suspected that one was a 13-year-old kid. If the text of the story is accurate, Mr Roman did not flee the police, while young Adam Toledo fled while carrying a firearm. The story states that Mr Toledo was struck “in the chest” by the officer’s bullet; if he was not struck in the back, then it seems likely that he turned after fleeing and confronted the officer. If he confronted the officer with a weapon in his hand, then the officer was justified in taking the shot.

Eventually body camera footage will show the confrontation, but it would seem pretty clear to me: if young Mr Toledo was out at that hour of the night, and was carrying a pistol, then Mr Toledo is responsible for his own demise.

But Mr Toledo isn’t the only one responsible for his death. Where were his parents? Which adult was responsible for the supervision of a 13-year-old boy at 2:35 AM on Monday? Some adult, somewhere, failed in his responsibility, failed not only to have young Mr Toledo inside his home at that hour, and, to be very blunt about it, failed in his duty to rear the child properly.

Mr Toledo is dead, but his parents, or whomever was supposed to be caring for him, are just as responsible for his behavior, and his death, as was the young boy.

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Once again, the government is targeting religion during Easter Government has turned attending church into an act of political defiance as well as one or religious faith

St Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, where I attend Mass

On March 19, 2020 Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) unconstitutionally ordered all churches closed in the Bluegrass State. That order covered the Easter holiday, the most important day in the Christian calendar. When a couple of churches ignored the Governor’s order, he sent the Kentucky State Police to record license plates and vehicle identification numbers on vehicles in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday!

Two federal judges ruled against the Governor, allowing churches to reopen, but they did not rule until May 8, 2020.

Then, on July 24, 2020, he asked church leaders to suspend services for two Sundays, which most declined to do, and again on November 19th made another request that churches close, for “three or four weeks,” a request that would have taken them through Thanksgiving. Fortunately, that request was denied as well.

Now comes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and as Easter Sunday comes this weekend, the purportedly Catholic President Biden’s CDC wants us to miss Easter again:

Safer Ways to Observe Religious Holidays

Attending gatherings to observe religious and spiritual holidays increases your risk of getting and spreading COVID-19. The safest way to observe religious and spiritual holidays this year is to gather virtually, with people who live with you, or outside and at least 6 feet apart from others.

  • Enjoy traditional meals with those who live with you.
  • Practice religious holiday customs at home.
  • Prepare and deliver a meal to a neighbor.
  • Watch virtual religious and cultural performances.
  • Attend religious ceremonies virtually.

If you plan to celebrate with others, outdoors is safer than indoors.

With COVID-19 cases seeing a slight uptick again, I have to wonder if Governor Beshear will try similar stupidity.

Our country was founded in part on religious freedom; my earliest American ancestor, Richard Warren, risked death on stormy North Atlantic seas, to come to a savage and untamed continent on the Mayflower. The idea that the government can restrict our freedom of religion is wholly repugnant, but Governor Beshear got away with it for almost two months, and while his orders were invalidated, he incurred no punishment or penalty for it.

I was a pretty regular attendee at Mass before the unconstitutional shutdowns, but ever since we were so graciously allowed to return to church, I haven’t missed a single Sunday. Our repugnant Governor has managed to turn attending church into an act of political defiance as well as a religious observance.[1]Sadly, while the Governor’s orders were declared unconstitutional on May 8, the Governor had already issued guidelines for churches to reopen on May 20, 2020, and John Stowe, Bishop of … Continue reading

That should not be a good thing, but it is: we can, and should, and must show our defiance to the Democrats in power by attending church. Not just this coming Sunday, not just Easter, but on every Sunday. Faith in God is the most important thing in life, but the resistance of tyranny is a close second.

References

References
↑1 Sadly, while the Governor’s orders were declared unconstitutional on May 8, the Governor had already issued guidelines for churches to reopen on May 20, 2020, and John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington, went along with the Governor and did not allow the churches of his diocese to resume services until Sunday, May 24.
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President Biden wants to tax working-class people to subsidize new electric cars for their bosses Sadly, this headline isn't an April Fool's Day joke.

2020 Chevy Dolt Bolt.

President Biden, along with all of the other 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, promised to require that all new cars after a certain model year — 2035 for Mr Biden, 2030 for some of the others — would be ‘zero emission,’ which primarily means plug-in electric vehicles, all to fight global warming climate change.

Well, Mr Biden was elected, and he wants to try to put his promise into action, but even the liberal New York Times notes the problems:

Biden’s Push for Electric Cars: $174 Billion, 10 Years and a Bit of Luck

The president is hoping to make electric vehicles more affordable to turn a niche product into one with mass appeal.

By Niraj Chokshi | March 31, 2021

President Biden is a muscle-car guy — one of his most prized possessions is a 1967 Corvette that he got from his father. But he’s trying to make this an electric vehicle world.

So, his fossil-fueled Corvette is OK for he, but not for thee! Got it!

The $2 trillion infrastructure plan that he unveiled on Wednesday is aimed at tackling climate change in part by spending up to $174 billion to encourage Americans to switch to cars and trucks that run on electricity, not gasoline or diesel. That is a large investment but it might not be enough to push most Americans toward E.V.s.

Despite rapid growth in recent years, electric vehicles remain a niche product, making up just 2 percent of the new car market and 1 percent of all cars, sport-utility vehicles, vans and pickup trucks on the road. They have been slow to take off in large part because they can cost up to $10,000 more than similar conventional cars and trucks. Charging E.V.s is also more difficult and slower than simply refilling the tank at far more prevalent gas stations.

This is what prompted me to write on this article. Not only does the Times note that plug-in electrics are ‘niche products,’ but this is the first one I’ve seen from the liberal side of the credentialed media which has noted the problems with recharging the vehicles. The article noted that charging them was “slower” than filling your fuel tank with gasoline, though it was a journalistic failure to note how much slower. As we noted here, they can take the better part of an hour to charge at a high-capacity public station:

Charging an electric car at a charging station can take as little as 30 minutes or up to a day depending on a number of factors. The car’s battery size, your battery’s current state of charge, the max charging rate of your vehicle and the charger you’re using, and even the weather — all play a role in how quickly you’ll be able to fill up. A typical electric car like a Nissan Leaf (62-kWh battery) would take about 11.5 hours to charge from empty to full at home on a 240-volt Level 2 charger or could get to about an 80% charge in just 45 minutes if using a public Level 3 DC fast charger.

Then there was this:

Tesla Owners Wait in Long Lines to Recharge over Holidays

Institute for Energy Research | January 6, 2020

With over 400,000 Tesla vehicles on U.S. roads, Tesla’s Supercharger stations were overcrowded over the holidays and many Tesla owners faced an hours-long wait to recharge their electric vehicles. At one location in Kettleman City, California, a line of 50 or so Tesla vehicles awaiting a Supercharger stall stretched to about a quarter mile over Thanksgiving weekend. The station is located about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Its 40 stalls were insufficient to accommodate the demand, and the simultaneous recharging of the vehicles lowered the rate of recharging, frustrating customers even more. It takes about 52 minutes to charge a Model 3 to 80 percent at a 120 kilowatt Tesla Supercharger.

How many times have you gone to the gas station, and had to wait behind a vehicle or two to get your turn to fuel up. When it takes around five to ten minutes to pump gasoline into a vehicle, it’s annoying enough, but what if there was just one vehicle ahead of you . . . and it took the driver 52 minutes to recharge his car?

Mr. Biden hopes to address many of those challenges through federal largess. He aims to lower the cost of electric vehicles by offering individuals, businesses and governments tax credits, rebates and other incentives. To address the chicken-and-egg problem of getting people to try a new technology before it is widely accepted, he hopes to build half a million chargers by 2030 so people will feel confident that they won’t be stranded when they run out of juice. And he is offering help to automakers to get them to build electric vehicles and batteries in the United States.

It will take “federal largess,” because, as The Wall Street Journal noted, consumers aren’t buying them because most consumers don’t want them. The plug in electrics are simply not as convenient as gasoline powered automobiles.

And American consumers want larger vehicles; that’s why trucks and SUVs dominate the American market. Plug in electric vehicles like the Chevy Dolt Bolt are smaller, because manufacturers need to reduce size and weight to increase range.

The federal government and some states already offer tax credits and other incentives for the purchase of electric cars. But the main such federal incentive — a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of new electric cars — begins to phase out for cars once an automaker has sold 200,000 E.V.s. Buyers of Tesla and G.M. electric cars, for example, no longer qualify for that tax credit but buyers of Ford and Volkswagen electric cars do.

Mr. Biden described his incentives for electric car purchases as rebates available at the “point of sale,” presumably meaning at dealerships or while ordering cars online. But the administration has not released details about how big those rebates will be and which vehicles they would apply to.

Let’s be honest here: new car buyers are wealthier than most Americans. In 2019, the last year before the pandemic hit, there were 40.8 million used cars sold, versus 17 million new vehicles, because used vehicles are much less expensive. President Biden’s plan calls for, in effect, taxing lower-income earners more to give a financial benefit to higher-income people, taxing working-class people to help pay for their bosses’ cars. What an absolutely great idea!

There’s considerably more at the Times original, but it’s pretty much what I have been saying all along: a whole lot of people do not have garages or secure, dedicated overnight parking spots in which they can have their own vehicle charging stations. Naturally, the Times looks at it from the perspective of a wealthier urban area, but when I look around the poorer area in eastern Kentucky where I live, I see older, not-as-well-kept-up homes, many of which have inadequate, 100 amp electric service — and not a few probably still have old fuse boxes instead — and I see people who have little prospect of buying a new car, having to depend on used vehicles.

Siemens US2 Versicharge electric car charger

President Biden’s ideas suffer from the same thing as the rest of the climate change activists: they are the wealthier elites who have no flaming idea how poorer people have to live their lives, how poorer people have to struggle. When around 40% of Americans would struggle with an unexpected $400 expense, how can we expect them to spend $599 for a Siemens 30 amp, 240 volt car charger? If they don’t have the tools, knowledge and skill to install a NEMA L 14-30P receptacle on a 40 or 50 amp circuit themselves, how are they going to come up with the money to pay a real electrician to install that for them?

I’ve said it before: the Democrats, who have for generations purported themselves to be the party of working people, have no idea what a working-class life is like. The Patricians driving the climate change agenda aren’t the people who have to worry about having enough money to buy the kids new blue jeans because what they have are worn out, don’t have to buy cheap Kroger brand products at the grocery store because the name brands cost more, and don’t have to worry if the electric bill gets too high due to colder weather in the winter. It’s just so easy for the elites to say that something won’t cost the plebeians all that much when they don’t themselves have to worry if the price of milk has risen.