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The urban #ClimateChange activists cannot see outside their own little worlds.

I do not watch a lot of network television. My go to networks for TV are the various Discovery Channel networks, primarily HGTV, DIY Network, and Great American Country, and I watch a lot of the home building and home search shows.

Of course, all of the house hunters have their wish lists, but one thing is very consistent: people want gas ranges in their kitchens.[1]If you watch the cooking shows on the Food Channel, as my wife and daughters do, you’ll see that all of them, with the exception of Molly Yeh’s Girl Meets Farm, use gas ranges. But what people want is not what the left want to allow them to have. From The Wall Street Journal:

Battle Brews Over Banning Natural Gas to Homes

Cities are considering measures to phase out gas hookups amid climate concerns, spurring some states to outlaw such prohibitions

passed the first such prohibition in the U.S. in 2019.

The bans in turn have led Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kansas and Louisiana to enact laws outlawing such municipal prohibitions in their states before they can spread, arguing that they are overly restrictive and costly. Ohio is considering a similar measure.

The outcome of the battle, largely among Democratic-led cities and Republican-run states, has the potential to reshape the future of the utility industry, and demand for natural gas, which the U.S. produces more of than any other country.

Proponents of phasing out natural gas say their aim is to reduce planet-warming emissions over time by fully electrifying new homes and buildings as wind and solar farms proliferate throughout the country, making the power grid cleaner.

There’s more at the original. What people in general want, the left say is bad, bad, bad! for us. One wonders what the municipal government leaders pondering these measures have in their own homes.

My wife and I live in the country; the nearest town is four miles away, and there are no natural gas lines out this far. When we moved in, in July of 2017, the house was total electric: electric heat pump for HVAC, electric water heater, and an electric range.

Come December of 2017, it got unusually cold in the Bluegrass State, with nighttime lows a few degrees below zero, and daytime highs in the teens. Our poor heat pump was running all the time, and the house was still cooler then we would have liked.

In January of 2018 came what the Weather Channel called Winter Storm Hunter, an ice storm which knocked out the power. Where we live, practically at the end of Jackson Energy Cooperative’s service area, it was 4½ days before the sparktricity was restored.

Mrs Pico went to stay with our daughters, who had a nice, warm apartment in Lexington. Me? I had to stay at the farm, to take care of the critters and the water pipes. Fortunately, it was warmed than it had been the previous month, but, by the time we got power back, it was down to 38º F in the house. I spent a lot of time in bed, under the covers and comforter.

Our remodeled kitchen, including the propane range! All of the work except the red quartz countertops was done by my family and me. Click to enlarge.

Our house is a fixer-upper, and we knew that when we bought it. The kitchen was going to be the first remodel project, and my wife wanted, like everyone else, a gas range. Out in the boonies, that meant propane. With the problems of the previous winter, we decided to replace the very old electric water heater with a propane model, and we added a propane fireplace as well.[2]I wanted a wood stove, but my wife vetoed that; too much of a mess, she said. If the power goes out for 4½ days again — and a somewhat nearby neighbor has told me that her power has been out for over a week before — we’ll be warm, able to cook, and have hot water.

Fast forward to early March of this year, and the flooding in eastern Kentucky. The flooding was so bad that the river gauge at Ravenna, the closest one to me, jammed at 38.4 feet, but the level was estimated to have crested at 41.00 ft, topping the worst previous flood, on February 4, 1939, which saw a crest of 39.37 feet. We were more fortunate than some people, in that we did not lose our house,[3]A lot of people around here did lose their homes, so we count ourselves as fortunate. but it was a very near thing: the HVAC system, which is in the crawl space under the house, was flooded and destroyed.

That meant, in early March, no heat.

But, after I stabilized the propane tank, which floated but I had tied in place so it didn’t float down the Kentucky River, as a lot of other people’s tanks had done, I was able to turn the propane back on, and once again, we had heat. The electricity never went out, but the electric HVAC system was totaled.

Were the left to have their way, we’d have suffered through early March without heat.

The left seem unable to think outside of their own comfort zones. When the electricity goes out, the power companies work to restore service in cities first, to get the largest number of people back into service fastest. The city dwellers in San Francisco and Seattle aren’t on the far ends of power lines, and don’t quite see that electric service in rural areas is dependent on long lines, stretched out over poles subject to the weather. They don’t understand how what they want imposes significant burdens on other people.

References

References
↑1 If you watch the cooking shows on the Food Channel, as my wife and daughters do, you’ll see that all of them, with the exception of Molly Yeh’s Girl Meets Farm, use gas ranges.
↑2 I wanted a wood stove, but my wife vetoed that; too much of a mess, she said.
↑3 A lot of people around here did lose their homes, so we count ourselves as fortunate.
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Well, that didn’t take long! Journolism at its finest!

Well, I didn’t have to wait long! Journolism[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ 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 … Continue reading at its finest!

After posting, at 7:42 AM this morning, on the Lexington Herald-Leader eschewing posting the mug shots of black criminal suspects, at 9:02 AM reported Jeremy Chisenhall posted:

$25k stolen in 1 minute. Thieves hit Lexington shops amid national trading card frenzy

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 4, 2021 | 09:02 AM EDT

Lexington police are looking for the man pictured here who is accused of breaking into a trading card shop and stealing merchandise. Provided by Bluegrass Crime Stoppers.

It only took about 68 seconds for a burglary suspect to smash through the front door of Jimmy’s Kentucky Roadshow Shop, a Lexington trading card store, snatch about $25,000 worth of cards and take off.

The cops and owner Jimmy Mahan were on the scene within minutes in the early morning hours of April 29, but it was too late to stop anything. The “smash and grab” burglar was gone with a bunch of unopened, untraceable card packs.

In another burglary last month, a man kicked in the glass door of a different Lexington card shop and made off with a “large quantity” of baseball trading cards, according to Lexington police. The shop, Baseball Card Warehouse, posted about the break-in on Facebook, saying it caused “a mess and a lot of issues with inventory.”

There’s more at the original.

Now, there are some differences. In this case, the (alleged) burglar can’t be identified in the photo provided, and published in the Herald-Leader, where the mugshots come with individual identification. And the (alleged) burglar is on the loose. But the Herald-Leader also declined to print the mugshot of Juanyah J Clay when he was on the loose, and charged with the far more serious crime of murder.

The more immediate difference is obvious: Mr Clay is black, and this unidentified (alleged) burglar appears to be white. Though not directly part of the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, the precursor article, in the Sacramento Bee, let us know what the concern really is:

Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

While I cannot read the minds of Mr Chisenhall, or of Peter Baniak, Executive Editor and General Manager of the newspaper, it almost seems as though the Herald-Leader is attempting to create a stereotype of its own about who commits crime in our community.

But, nahhh, that can’t be it!

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ 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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Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader (Part 5)

Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader has adhered to McClatchy Company’s mugshot policy.

2 teenagers charged with murder, robbery in the death of another Lexington teen

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 4, 2021 | 7:00 AM

Michael Rowland. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center.

Lexington police have arrested two teenagers and charged them with the murder of another teen after a fatal shooting in March.

Michael Roland, 18, was arrested Thursday and charged with murder and robbery after the death of 18-year-old Montaye Mullins, according to police. Mullins was shot in the early morning hours of March 11 and found by police at the intersection of Augusta Drive and Raleigh Road.

Mullins was taken to a local hospital where he later died, police said.

Police also arrested a 17-year-old whose name they didn’t release. Lexington police typically don’t disclose the names of defendants who were under the age of 18 at the time of a crime.

There’s more at the original, but what isn’t at the Herald-Leader original is that mugshot; I found that with a simple Google search, and it was on WKYT-TV’s website. WKYT, channel 27, is Lexington’s CBS affiliate. WTVQ, channel 36, the ABC affiliate and the NBC affiliate, WLEX-TV, channel 18, had the mugshot on their websites as well.

As we have previously noted, McClatchy’s mugshot policy is:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness. In fact, some police departments have started moving away from taking/releasing mugshots as a routine part of their procedures.

To address these concerns, McClatchy will not publish crime mugshots — online, or in print, from any newsroom or content-producing team — unless approved by an editor. To be clear, this means that in addition to photos accompanying text stories, McClatchy will not publish “Most wanted” or “Mugshot galleries” in slide-show, video or print.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor. Editors considering an exception should ask:

  • Is there an urgent threat to the community?
  • Is this person a public official or the suspect in a hate crime?
  • Is this a serial killer suspect or a high-profile crime?

If an exception is made, editors will need to take an additional step with the Pub Center to confirm publication by making a note in the ‘package notes‘ field in Sluglife.

So, the policy was followed, again. The odd thing is, the newspaper has made exceptions to that policy, as noted here, here, here, and here, though in every case in which the policy was broken the criminal suspect was white.

Will the paper adhere to the policy the next time a white murder suspect is arrested? They’ve broken it for people charged with lesser crimes! But, as always, I will continue to monitor it.

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A sad tale illustrates why gun control laws do not work

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has, fortunately for the individual rights of the citizens thereof, a state legislature controlled by Republicans, and current state law prohibits cities in the Keystone State from enacting their own, stricter gun control ordinances.

Naturally, in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, the Democrats who have controlled the city government or the last 69½ years, see the homicide numbers, and think that the answer is: more gun control! The Philadelphia Inquirer keeps up its calls:

But it was a sad story in Thursday’s Inquirer which revealed the futility of it all, without ever mentioning the subject:

Philly father sentenced to 6 to 12 years in prison after his teen son fatally shot his twin brother

Aleem Gillard encouraged his sons to play with a gun in his apartment and one son, Fayaadh, accidentally killed his brother, Suhail, authorities said.

By Julie Shaw | June 3, 2021

A Philadelphia man was sentenced Thursday to six to 12 years in state prison after one of his twin sons accidentally shot the other after he encouraged them to play with his gun in an Overbrook apartment two years ago.

Aleem Gillard, 43, pleaded guilty in February to charges of involuntary manslaughter and possession of a firearm. As a felon, he was not permitted to have a gun.

On Dec. 1, 2019, Gillard’s 18-year-old sons and 16-year-old daughter were in his apartment when his sons were playing with his gun, and one son, Fayaadh, fatally shot his brother, Suhail, in the chest.

Chesley Lightsey, supervisor of the DA’s homicide unit, told Common Pleas Court Judge Lillian Ransom during a virtual sentencing hearing Thursday that the father encouraged his sons to play with the gun. After the shooting, authorities said, Gillard told his surviving son and daughter to lie to police, telling them the teen was shot while going to a corner store. He also had his daughter hide the gun, she said.

The money paragraph was further down:

Aleem Gillard had four prior convictions for illegal gun possession, Lightsey said. In the most recent case, court records show, he pleaded guilty in February 2015 to felony firearm-possession charges stemming from a 2013 arrest and was sentenced to 2½ to five months in jail and 10 years’ probation.

So, Mr Gillard had four prior convictions for illegal gun possession, was not, as a convicted felon, allowed to own a firearm, and was on probation at the time his son was shot, yet he still had a gun! In 2013, Mr Gillard was shot himself, paralyzed, and is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, yet he still had a gun.

If all of that could not keep Mr Gillard from obtaining yet another firearm, just what other gun control laws would have prevented it? What laws would the bad guys of the City of Brotherly Love, who have already put 221 people in their graves, obey in a city that has people like Mr Gillard, already a jailbird, already a convicted felon, already paralyzed for life, choosing to keep a gun despite all of that?

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I wish that I had written this!

Yes, I have been harping on the promulgation of fear in our society rather a lot lately, but Glenn Greenwald said it better than I ever have!

Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.

Mr Greenwald wasn’t even talking about the restrictions so many have accepted, to out freedom of peaceable assembly, to our free exercise of religion, to mask mandates and the other things government has imposed on us due to COVID-19, though he certainly could have been. No, he was talking about the Biden Administration and its cranking out of ‘domestic terror’ alerts.

The New Domestic War on Terror Has Already Begun — Even Without the New Laws Biden Wants

Homeland Security just issued its fourth danger bulletin this year. And both the weapons and rhetorical tactics of the first War on Terror are increasingly visible.

Glenn Greenwald | June 2, 2021

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a new warning bulletin, alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. This was at least the fourth such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into the American population has materialized.

The first was a January 14 warning, from numerous federal agencies including DHS, about violence in Washington, DC and all fifty state capitols that was likely to explode in protest of Inauguration Day (a threat which did not materialize). Then came a January 27 bulletin warning of “a heightened threat environment across the United States that is likely to persist over the coming weeks” from “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” (that warning also was not realized). Then there was a May 14 bulletin warning of right-wing violence “to attack higher-capacity targets,” exacerbated by the lifting of COVID lockdowns (which also never happened). And now we are treated to this new DHS warning about domestic extremists preparing violent attacks over Tulsa (it remains to be seen if a DHS fear is finally realized).

Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity. They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country. A CNN article which wildly hyped the latest danger bulletin about domestic extremists at Tulsa had to be edited with what the cable network, in an “update,” called “the additional information from the Department of Homeland Security that there is no specific or credible threats at this time.” And the supposed dangers from domestic extremists on Inauguration Day was such a flop that even The Washington Post — one of the outlets most vocal about lurking national security dangers in general and this one in particular — had to explicitly acknowledge the failure:

Thousands [of National Guard troops] had been deployed to capitals across the country late last week, ahead of a weekend in which potentially violent demonstrations were predicted by the FBI — but never materialized.

Once again on Wednesday, security officials’ worst fears weren’t borne out: In some states, it was close to business as usual. In others, demonstrations were small and peaceful, with only occasional tense moments.

President Biden just said:

Terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al Qaeda, white supremacy.

Here’s the video:

According to the Philadelphia Police Department, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 2nd, 221 people had been murdered in the city so far this year. That’s 1.444 per day in the City of Brotherly Love, a rate, which if maintained throughout the year would mean 527 people spilling out their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets.

In Chicago, 266 people have been murdered so far this year, 1.739 every single day, putting the Windy City on track for 635 homicides.

In much smaller St Louis, 78 people have been killed, ‘only’ 0.510 per day, for ‘just’ 186 for 2021.

In just those three cities, that’s a total of 565 people murdered so far this year, and a projected 1,348 for the entire year.

White supremacists? So far they’ve killed exactly zero people in 2021![1]The claim that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed in the Capitol kerfuffle is untrue. The Washington medical examiner found the Officer Sicknick had died of “acute brainstem and … Continue reading Yet President Biden tells us that they are “the most lethal threat to the homeland today.”

Mr Greenwald compares the measures the Democrats are taking today to those under Presidents Bush and Obama following the September 11th attacks, and finds them shockingly similar.

Yeah, I want you to keep reading The First Street Journal, every day, but this is the time in which you should follow the embedded link and read Mr Greenwald’s article on substack. It’s just plain brilliant!

References

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Resistance is not futile. I will not be assimilated.

Is National Public Radio supposed to be an advocacy reporting organization? Is NPR supposed to push a particular political point of view?

NPR’s Laurel Wamsley, who purports to be a journalist, wrote an article entitled A Guide To Gender Identity Terms, in which she presented the “proper use of gender identity terms.”

Issues of equality and acceptance of transgender and nonbinary people — along with challenges to their rights — have become a major topic in the headlines. These issues can involve words and ideas and identities that are new to some.

That’s why we’ve put together a glossary of terms relating to gender identity. Our goal is to help people communicate accurately and respectfully with one another.

Proper use of gender identity terms, including pronouns, is a crucial way to signal courtesy and acceptance. Alex Schmider, associate director of transgender representation at GLAAD, compares using someone’s correct pronouns to pronouncing their name correctly – “a way of respecting them and referring to them in a way that’s consistent and true to who they are.”

This guide was created with help from GLAAD. We also referenced resources from the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Trans Journalists Association, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, Human Rights Campaign, InterAct and the American Psychological Association. This guide is not exhaustive, and is Western and U.S.-centric. Other cultures may use different labels and have other conceptions of gender.

Yeah, that’s an unbiased group!

But, Mr Schmider did tell the truth in one important way. Using a ‘transgendered persons’ preferred pronouns and sexual identity terms is meant to be “respecting them and referring to them in a way that’s consistent and true to who they are.” Miss Wamsley put it as “a crucial way to signal courtesy and acceptance.” At bottom, it is an attempt to coerce “acceptance” by claiming it is only courtesy.

The unasked question is — and the author never added anything in to her article which would have paid any attention to those who disagree — what if someone does not accept the idea that Bruce Jenner is really now a woman, or that anyone can somehow change his sex?

It begins with a falsehood. “Sex,” Miss Wamsley wrote, “refers to a person’s biological status and is typically assigned at birth, usually on the basis of external anatomy. Sex is typically categorized as male, female or intersex.” This is wholly untrue. While we might forgive His Majesty King Henry VIII for believing that Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn were somehow responsible for his first two children being daughters, the role of the X and Y chromosomes in determining the sex of mammals, including humans, has been known for over a century. Sex is not somehow “assigned” at birth; sex is determined at conception, depending upon whether the sperm which fertilized the egg carries the X or Y chromosome. We recognize the sex of a newborn child by visual examination of the child, but the characteristics which indicate sex developed long before birth, during gestation, as programmed in by the developing child’s DNA.

When you read or hear someone talking about sex being assigned at birth, you know automatically the pure bovine feces is about to follow.

Everyone has pronouns that are used when referring to them – and getting those pronouns right is not exclusively a transgender issue.

“Pronouns are basically how we identify ourselves apart from our name. It’s how someone refers to you in conversation,” says Mary Emily O’Hara, a communications officer at GLAAD. “And when you’re speaking to people, it’s a really simple way to affirm their identity.”

“So, for example, using the correct pronouns for trans and nonbinary youth is a way to let them know that you see them, you affirm them, you accept them and to let them know that they’re loved during a time when they’re really being targeted by so many discriminatory anti-trans state laws and policies,” O’Hara says.

“It’s really just about letting someone know that you accept their identity. And it’s as simple as that.”

Well, yes it is . . . and I don’t. When Bruce Jenner tells me that he is now a woman, I do not believe him and I do not accept his claims. To refer to him as “Caitlyn,” to use the feminine pronouns in reference to him, is to concede something I do not and will not concede; it would be both lying to him, leading him to believe that I went along with his claims, and it would be lying to myself.

But, at least Miss Wamsley was sort of asking us to use the terms the transgender would like. It was November 29, 2018, that The New York Times granted OpEd space to Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be a woman, going by the name ‘Parker’ Malloy. to publish an article claiming that Twitter’s ban on ‘deadnaming’ and misgendering[2]‘Deadnaming’ refers to using the name a person was given at birth, such as Chad Malloy rather than his faux name of ‘Parker’ Malloy, while misgendering means referring to … Continue reading actually promotes free speech rather than stifling it. On October 4, 2019, the Times published an OpEd by staffer Andrew J Marantz, entitled Free Speech Is Killing Us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence. What can we do about it?

Messrs Marantz and Malloy obviously believe that what hey can do about it is simply to ban any publication of speech with which they disagree. If I say that no, Mr Malloy is not a woman, I have not harmed him, at least not beyond hurting his precious little feelings, nor have I prevented anyone else from going along with his claims of being a woman; all that I would be doing is being truthful to myself.

It does not matter how well or how poorly this article is written; neither The New York Times nor any other outlet of the credentialed media would ever publish it, because they have established transgenderism as part of their core beliefs. In publishing Miss Wamsley’s article in its present form, it becomes clear that NPR has done so as well.

To control language is to control the terms of the debate, and the credentialed media clearly believe that if they can just get people to refer to Bradley Manning as ‘Chelsea,’ to get people to use the preferred gender identity pronouns and terms in reference to the ‘transgendered,’ such concessions will go a long way to validating their argument.

But I will not, and I urge others to look at what they are saying, and how they are saying it, and not to go along with the left’s attempts at controlling speech.
______________________________________
Cross posted on American Free News Network.

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be a woman, going by the name ‘Parker’ Malloy.
↑2 ‘Deadnaming’ refers to using the name a person was given at birth, such as Chad Malloy rather than his faux name of ‘Parker’ Malloy, while misgendering means referring to someone by his biological sex rather than his preferred ‘gender identity.’
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Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

When the Centers for Disease Control finally changed their recommendations for mandatory mask wearing on May 13th, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) quickly went along with it. The Kroger Company KR: (%) did not. Kroger had previously announced, on March 4th, that it would continue to require masks of all employees and customers in the Lone Star State when Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) announced the end to his states mask mandate, beginning March 10th.

Well, Kroger must’ve heard from its customers, because, after announcing that masks would still be required in their stores following the CDC’s changes, six days later, they changed their minds. I would like to think my couple of tweets, which included Kroger as an addressee, that I was taking my business to Meijer’s instead, contributed to their change of mind.

I may still take my business to Meijer’s. Kroger is more convenient to us, by about four miles, but still . . . .However, fear still rules the day in some people. The Philadelphia Inquirer published an OpEd piece by Cameron Adamez, the front-end manager at South Philly Food Co-op, and Mr Adamez wants everybody to keep wearing masks.

With the recent CDC policy changes, public expectations around health during the pandemic are changing. The city has lived more than a year with masks in public and the populace is beset with pandemic fatigue. Now, in many cases, the people are ditching their masks. Generally, that’s a good thing — a sign that we are in the clear. But there are some instances where, regardless of vaccine status, people should keep masks on for the safety of others.

Essential workers like grocery store employees are still at risk and their safety needs to be considered. Stores like Aldi, Trader Joe’s, and Sam’s Club almost immediately dropped their masking requirements for customers. This is a mistake. Grocery stores should consider the safety of their workers and keep masking requirements in place for customers and employees.

If people like Mr Adamez are concerned that their safety might be jeopardized by people not wearing masks, they are completely free to continue to wear their own. He stated, “It is not always possible for workers to avoid contagion entirely,” and this is true, but it is true concerning every communicable disease. His argument would be just as valid if someone entered the store with chicken pox, which is at its most contagious phase a couple of days before the blisters appear. Measles, rubella and rubeola, are also highly contagious, and spread by airborne droplets.

“There is no way to quickly verify if a customer is vaccinated,” he wrote, and that’s true enough. Any store which is going to ask to see your vaccination papers before allowing you to enter is a store which will quickly lose most people’s business. Mr Adamez apparently knows this, and said, “Requiring anyone in a store to wear a mask is a much more reasonable request.”

But is it reasonable? What Mr Adamez is asking is for other people to protect his health. Is it not his responsibility to protect his own health?

In the end, his article is driven by fear, and fear was what the government used to get so many Americans to comply with restrictions on their individual, constitutional rights. For some, that fear will be a long time subsiding. Frank Herbert wrote, in Dune, that “Fear is the mind-killer, fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.” Mr Adamez, who stated that he was fully vaccinated, has expressed his fear, though he couched it in terms of being concerned for the health of other people.

To me, it’s very simple: if you see someone without a mask, and you are afraid that he might not be vaccinated, and you are afraid you might catch the virus from him, then stay away from him. That is your right. What is not your right is to try to impose responsibilities on him due to your own fears.

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There’s that McClatchy policy again! Despite having recently published several mugshots of white suspects, the Herald-Leader declined to do so in this case.

We have made much about the McClatchy mugshot policy, and the uneven application of it by the Lexington Herald-Leader. The McClatchy policy became known in August of 2020, which was well after this story from the Lexington newspaper:

3 gunshot victims. 2 robberies. 1 dead. Lexington detective describes violent night

By Morgan Eads | January 9, 2020 | 1:40 PM EST | Updated: January 10, 2020 | 9:01 AM EST

The case against a man facing multiple charges in shootings that killed one person and injured two others in Lexington was sent Thursday to a Fayette County grand jury after a detective testified about details of the investigation.

Jo’Qwan Anthony Edwards Jackson. Fayette County Detention Center. Click to enlarge.

Jo’Qwan Anthony Edwards Jackson, 19, is charged with murder in the Dec. 10 death of 23-year-old Damontrial D. Fulgham, according to police and court records. Jackson is also charged with first-degree robbery, first-degree assault, evidence tampering and receiving stolen property in connection with the Osage Court shooting that killed Fulgham, according to court records.

John George Boulder IV Fayette County Detention Center. Click to enlarge.

Also on Thursday, Lexington police announced that a third person was charged in the case. John George Boulder IV, 20, was charged with murder, first-degree assault, first-degree robbery and tampering with evidence, according to police. A juvenile is also facing charges in the case, but their name has not been released because of their age.Boulder was already being held in the Fayette County jail on unrelated charges, according to police.

At least it seems as though the Herald-Leader was publishing mugshots of arrestees prior to the issuance of the McClatchy policy. But that was then, and this is now:

Police: Teenager charged with murder, assault in separate Lexington shootings

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 1, 2021 | 12:15 PM EDT

A Lexington 18-year-old has been arrested and charged with murder in a 2019 homicide case that now has four defendants, according to Lexington police.

Andre Tennial Hilliard, 18, was charged with murder in the death of Damontrial Daquan Fulgham, 23. Fulgham was killed on Dec. 10, 2019, during a shooting on Osage Court, according to police and jail records. Hilliard is one of four charged with murder in the homicide, according to court records. The others are John Boulder IV, Jo’Qwan Jackson and Javari Butler.

Hilliard was also charged with assault, two counts of robbery, evidence tampering and being a minor in possession of a handgun, according to jail records.

Some of the charges stemmed from a separate shooting in 2019 in the 900 block of Red Mile Road, police said. Hilliard is accused of shooting a 17-year-old the night before the homicide, causing the teenager to suffer a non-life-threatening injury.

So, not a good guy, it would seem. But, in keeping with the McClatchy policy, the Herald-Leader did not publish his mugshot, despite having published several recently, all of white criminal suspects. A Google search failed to turn up a mugshot of Mr Hilliard, though there is a good chance that one of the local television stations will do so later today. I’m betting that when the mugshot does turn up in public, we will see that Mr Hilliard is black. After all, his (alleged) fellow suspects are black, and the victim, Damontrial Daquan Fulgham, was also black. However, Mr Hilliard was a juvenile, 17 years old, at the time of the offense. The Herald-Leader article does not say whether Mr Hilliard was charged as an adult.

Andre Tennial Hilliard, Fayette County Detention Center.

Update! 10: 01 PM EDT

As I had guessed, Mr Hilliard’s mugshot was released; I saw the mugshot on the 5:30 PM EDT news on Channel 18, WLEX-TV, and this one was copied from WKYT-TV, Channel 27. To no one’s surprise, Mr Hilliard appears to be black. A quick return to the Herald-Leader’s original shows that Mr Hilliard’s mugshot was not added to their story.

At least thus far, the newspaper has adhered to McClatchy Company policy. But you can bet your last can of Mountain Dew that I will be checking the newspaper, every day, to see if the next person arrested for some crime big enough to warrant a story has his mugshot published.

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We told you so! The Washington Post is shocked, shocked! that a city which is trying to cut back on the police is seeing a massive increase in violent crime

It seems that even The Washington Post is fed up with Antifa, at least now that Donald Trump is no longer President.

Anarchists and an increase in violent crime hijack Portland’s social justice movement

By Scott Wilson | May 31, 2021 | 6:00 AM EDT

PORTLAND, Ore. — The church, on the edge of this city, was built to hold thousands, and on this drizzly day the pews of Mannahouse were filled with hundreds of mourners, scattered throughout the broad, high-ceilinged chamber to comply with pandemic rules.

Nearly all of them were Black.

They had gathered to memorialize Jalon Yoakum, 33, whose body lay in a clear casket at the front of the stage. The wounds on his face had been brushed over; a blue suit and white open-collar shirt hid the rest of the scars from the daylight gunshots that killed him in a pizza restaurant parking lot this month.

Portland is a White city, overwhelmingly so — African Americans account for just 6 percent of the population. But it is Black people such as Yoakum, an aspiring union electrician, who are dying at near-historic rates and filling churches with grief.

Why is anybody surprised? Conservatives told you what would happen! When you promote lawlessness, is it any surprise that you get lawlessness? When you allow the anarchists free run of your city for three months, can you really be surprised if anarchy continues?

On May 12, Yoakum, a father of two young boys, became the city’s 30th homicide victim this year. That is five times the number recorded during the same period in 2020, a frightening pace that could see more slayings here by the end of the year than in the past four decades.

This was not how the year following George Floyd’s murder was supposed to end, not with Bishop Garry Tyson, of the General Baptist Convention of the Northwest, telling mourners that “Jalon didn’t die. He was killed. His life was taken.”

None of this was supposed to happen. But I noted, on Twitter, the last sentence from a Philadelphia Inquirer article:

Since 2015, nearly 8,500 shootings have been recorded in Philadelphia, but only 21% have resulted in a someone being charged.

When the police aren’t respected, when the public do not help the cops catch the bad guys, why should the bad guys be deterred from trying to kill people? In foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, if you shoot someone, you have four chances out of five that you’ll never get caught!

The nightly confrontations with police and federal agents deployed here by President Donald Trump have been replaced by a kind of generational hopelessness, a tenuous sense of security across an under-policed city and a return to an old-school style of gun violence reminiscent of a tit-for-tat cycle of deadly reprisals, almost always among young men of color. Through April, the police reported 348 shootings, more than double those recorded over the first four months of last year.

And the first four months of 2020 were significantly higher than the first four months of 2019. 2020 saw 891 shootings in very liberal Portland, more than 2¼ times as many as the 389 in 2019.

When even The Washington Post says that a city is “under-policed,” you know it’s bad.

Our Democrat-controlled cities have been trying to placate the mob, and their citizens are paying the price . . . in blood.

Also in the Post:

Amid surge in violent crime, Atlanta’s wealthiest neighborhood ponders new city

By Tim Craig | May 31, 2021 | 9:00 AM EDT

ATLANTA — Just a few days after Beth Weaver moved from the suburbs to a new townhouse in this city’s wealthy Buckhead district, she began to worry that she had made a mistake.

One night she sat on her balcony and watched a thief rifle through her BMW. A few weeks later, someone broke into her family’s truck. In November, there was a shootout on her narrow street lined with townhouses that start at a half-million dollars.

“They would come through here on a bicycle and just start picking up packages and right out of your garage in broad daylight,” said Weaver, who lives in the area’s Broadview Place neighborhood.

“You did not feel safe,” said Weaver, whose neighbors have installed a network of surveillance cameras and are pushing city leaders to allow them to gate their development.

That feeling of not being safe has persisted as crime in the city has skyrocketed — the result, some say, of the pandemic and the civil unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd last summer. Some residents and business leaders in this affluent, predominantly White enclave north of downtown think they have a solution: They want Buckhead to become its own municipality.

There’s more at the original, but it’s unsurprising: the black population of Atlanta are upset that their mostly white, more affluent residents want to leave the disaster that the poorer neighborhoods have become, and the municipal government policies which have allowed it.

“It makes me angry because the crime they are seeing in Buckhead is the same crime we on the Southside have been dealing with for years,” said Stephanie Flowers, chair of Atlanta Neighborhood Planning Unit V, which oversees a group of neighborhood associations in predominantly Black neighborhoods southwest of downtown.

“We on the Southside, because of our demographics. We can’t pay our way out” of Atlanta, Flowers said. “This is just a way to separate the haves from the have-nots.”

In other words, Miss Flowers wants other neighborhoods to suffer what her neighborhoods have, rather than try to fix the problems in their own neighborhoods!

Crime exists because neighborhoods tolerate it. When someone gets shot, there are almost always other people who know who did it, or at least have valuable clues that they can give the police. When the neighborhood don’t help the police, they enable the criminals, and it’s not much of a surprise that they wind up with more criminals.

The Post continued to tell its readers that Buckhead was one of Atlanta’s safest communities, but now the crime wave has spread there. Is it any surprise that residents are alarmed and want to do something about it?

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, of course, pushed the same types of policies that other liberal municipal government leaders have done: keep more low-level offenders out of jail and the elimination of cash bail for “minor” crimes.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-New York City) led the way in the 1990s, not by being nice, but by being tough on crime. He didn’t look the other way on ‘minor’ offenses, but had the NYPD aggressively go after the ‘squeegee boys‘ and the lower level wannabe thugs before they became big time criminals. Some might have been scared straight, and some might simply have been in jail when they would otherwise have been out committing more crimes, but crime dropped rapidly in New York City under Mr Giuliani’s ‘broken windows‘ policing. ‘Broken windows’ worked, but the left still didn’t like it, didn’t like that poor, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly boys had criminal records.

Me? I look at John “Jordan” Lewis, a young punk in Philadelphia. He was arrested on small-time drug charges, and then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham treated him leniently. Mr Lewis never went to jail, and he spent his time knocking over small businesses for money to buy drugs. On Hallowe’en of 2007, Mr Jordan was robbing the Dunkin’ Donuts store on the corner of 66th Avenue and Broad Street, the second time he’d hit the place, when Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, 54, walked in, checking on a store which had been previously robbed. Mr Jordan spun and fired a shot into Officer Cassidy’s head; the officer died the following day.

Had Miss Abraham treated Mr Jordan seriously during his initial drug charges, he could have been in jail on that fateful day in 2007. Yeah, he’d have a record, a misdemeanor record, and he probably wouldn’t have liked jail, but he’d have been out of jail a long time ago, with at least a chance to straighten out his life.

Instead, he languishes on death row in Pennsylvania, and even if he is never executed — in Pennsylvania, he almost certainly never will be — he’s going to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. Did Miss Abraham really do Mr Jordan any favor by not treating him harshly for his earlier offenses?

The way to fight crime is to fight crime, to fight all crime, and to lock up the small time wannabes before they become big-time thugs. Some might reform, some might just get scared straight, and some will still be behind bars at times when they would otherwise be out committing more crimes.

“America’s Mayor” showed us the way, but today’s left don’t like it. They think that being nice to bad guys will make them see the way of goodness and light.

Well, we’ve tried that, and stupid governments in Minneapolis, in Portland, in Philadelphia and Atlanta, are seeing the results, as the results spill out blood in the streets.