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And another one bites the dust!

I have previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer does not really take much notice of shootings or homicides unless the victim is a cute little white girl. I do not know if the victim in this case is white, but the story made the website because one of the victims isn’t known to be a gang-banger.

Girl, 15, in critical condition after double shooting in West Philly

The shooting happened in the 6200 block of Chestnut Street.

By Robert Moran | Tuesday, February 23, 2021 | 4:43 PM EST

A 15-year-old girl and was hospitalized in critical condition after being wounded in a double shooting Tuesday afternoon in West Philadelphia, police said.

Just before 3:20 p.m. in the 6200 block of Chestnut Street, the girl and a 20-year-old man were both shot in the head, police said. The girl was taken by private amubulance to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The man was taken by police to the same hospital and was listed in stable condition.

Police reported no arrests or other details.

As of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 22, 2021, the City of Brotherly Love had counted 75 homicides, in 53 days of the year. On the same date last year, in which Philadelphia saw 499 killings, just one short of the all-time record, there had been ‘just’ 53, to yesterday’s totals were a 41.5% increase. It looks like Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw are doing just an outstanding job, doesn’t it?

Maybe I’m too early with the headline, but if I am with the victim in the Inquirer story, it’ll be true enough of someone else in Philly.

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You did know that the #ClimateChange activists would be coming for your lifestyle, too, right?

Joanna Gaines’ kitchen set, with its $60,000 range.

My daughters — when they’re here — and my wife tend to watch cooking shows like The Kitchen, The Pioneer Woman, and Giada in Italy, though, admittedly, Giada in Italy is watched as much for the Italian scenery as anything else. Joanna Gaines has just started her own cooking show, Magnolia Table, and she has the ultimate, a La Cornue Chateau range, a hand-crafted gas appliance that starts at $60,300, not including shipping and delivery. It’s simply the most expensive version of what it seems that every cooking show has, and every cook wants: a gas stove.

Molly Yeh in her set kitchen; note the old style electric range.

The notable exception is Molly Yeh’s Girl Meets Farm, where the hostess uses, unexpectedly, not only an electric range, but an older style one, with the spiral heating elements.

While I don’t spend an inordinate time in front of the boob tube, I do like to watch the various house hunting shows like Living Alaska, Restoring Galveston, and Building of the Grid. And one frequently noted request of the prospective homeowners is a gas range. Gas is on instantly, and is much more easily adjustable.

But that’s not what the global warming climate change activists think you should have . . . or be allowed to have! From The Washington Post:

The battle over climate change is boiling over on the home front

Municipalities want new buildings to go all electric, spurning gas-fired stoves and heating systems. The gas industry disagrees

By Steven Mufson | February 23, 2021 | 7:00 AM EST

A new front has opened in the battle over climate change: The kitchen.

Cities and towns across the country are rewriting local building codes so that new homes and offices would be blocked from using natural gas, a fossil fuel that when burned emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. New laws would force builders to install heat pumps instead of gas furnaces and electric kitchen stoves instead of gas burners.

When we moved to our retirement fixer-upper in July of 2017, it was total electric. In January of 2018, a snow and ice storm hit, and knocked out the electricity. Since we’re out in the country, at pretty much the far end of Jackson Electric Cooperative’s service area, we’re among the last people to get power back, and it took 4½ days. My wife went to Lexington, and stayed at our daughter’s apartment, but I had to stay here, to care for the critters, and the plumbing.
It got down to 38º F in the house.

Gas fireplace in my computer room/den.

As I said, our house is an eastern Kentucky fixer-upper, and it certainly isn’t done yet, but we decided that we would have gas in the remodel, because Mrs Pico wanted a gas range. Thus we now have a new gas (propane) range, water heater and the fireplace installed. If we lose power again, we’ll still be able to keep the house warm, cook and take showers.

Without that fossil fuel, the place would become a not-very-much-fun place in the winter when the electricity goes out.

Local leaders say reducing the carbon and methane pollution associated with buildings, the source of 12.3 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, is the only way they can meet their 2050 zero-emission goals to curb climate change.

But the American Gas Association, a trade group, and its members are campaigning in statehouses across the country to prohibit the new local ordinances. Four states last year adopted such laws, and this year similar legislation has been introduced in 12 more.

“Logically the natural gas industry does not want to see its business end, so it’s doing what it can to keep natural gas in the utility grid mix,” said Marta Schantz, senior vice president of the Urban Land Institute’s Center for Building Performance. “But long term, if cities are serious about their climate goals, electric buildings are inevitable.”

What people want is what the climate control activists do not want people to have.

Of course, the timing of this article is interesting, considering the electricity outages due to the severe cold snap in the Lone Star State. The problems have been serious there, in part because of Texas’ large population, and because the state is simply not used to temperatures near 0º Fahrenheit. That the state has solidly Republican leadership has simply added to the impetus of the credentialed media to place blame.

But here in the Bluegrass State, we’ve had similar problems, just ones which haven’t gotten as much national media attention. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

KY couple without electricity after ice, snow storm apparently froze to death
By Bill Estep | February 22, 2021 | 5:04 PM EST

A couple found dead in Laurel County Sunday apparently froze to death, Sheriff John Root said in a news release.

Autopsies conducted Monday on James Duff, 62, and his wife Dinah Duff, 63, of Laurel County determined their apparent cause of death as hypothermia, according to the release.

A person who knew the couple found them Sunday about 10:30 a.m. and called police. Officers from the sheriff’s office responded.

James Duff was lying in the yard of his home on Pine Hill — Brock Road, about five miles east of London. Dinah Duff was inside the house, according to a news release.

The house had no electricity for some period before the couple was found because of damage to power lines from ice and snow that hit the area earlier in the week, said Deputy Gilbert Acciardo, spokesman for Root’s office.

Tens of thousands of people in Kentucky lost power recently after trees and limbs weighted by ice fell and knocked down lines.

Mr and Mrs Duff had apparently attempted to build a fire in their fireplace, but the home had no secondary heating source. The article does not tell us what the primary heat source for the house was, but it was apparently dependent upon electricity to run.

Our house in Jim Thorpe.

On Christmas Day of 2002, our first in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, the town received 14″ of heavy, wet snow in the beautiful white Christmas about which Bing Crosby so wonderfully sang. It also knocked out the power at 11:30 AM.

Our house in Jim Thorpe had steam radiators powered by a heating oil boiler, but the boiler required electricity to start and run. By the time the sparktricity came back on, at about 6:00 PM on the 26th, it was around 50º F inside.

Because the house did have a chimney for a wood stove installed by the previous owner, we later bought a wood stove, but never went through another prolonged power outage there again.

An anecdote? Perhaps, though, despite the protests of some, the plural of anecdote really is data! That episode pointed out to me that Mr and Mrs Duff could have had a primary heating source that wasn’t electric, but it still depended upon electricity to run.

A cheery fire in our wood stove in Jim Thorpe, December 18, 2016.

As it happens, we get our electricity from Jackson Energy as do many other people in eastern Kentucky, but we’ve been fortunate during the recent series of ice and snow storms: other than a couple of flickers, our electricity stayed on, and our house was nice and warm. My good blogging friend William Teach cross-posted some of his articles here, upon my request, because I didn’t know beforehand whether we would lose power. Being at the far western end of Jackson’s service area — just a couple miles up the road, power comes from Kentucky Utilities — when the power does go out here, it can stay out for days.

But, as noted above, because we have a secondary heat source of which the Patricians disapprove, if it had gone out, we wouldn’t have suffered Mr and Mrs Duff’s fate.

The socialist nature of the argument comes from the Post article originally cited:

“The average American likes choice and doesn’t want to be told what kind of fuel to use in their homes,” said Karen Harbert, chief executive of the American Gas Association. “Municipalities cannot take away that choice.”

“The natural gas industry frames it as a choice issue; we frame it as a choice issue,” said Johanna Neumann, a senior director at Environment America, an environmental group. “The industry frames it as a choice for people who want to use natural gas. We see it as a choice for a community to decide its energy future.”

One group want to leave your choices up to you; the other want to have the “community” dictate your “choice” to you. Of course, for the longest time the left have been pro-choice on exactly one thing.

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Joe Biden is not President of the World; he is President of the United States His first duty is to Americans, not foreigners.

As previously noted, my estimate/guesstimate of the total unemployed/underemployed in the United States is roughly 17¾ million people. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 8,628,000 fewer jobs in January of 2021 than in January of 2020, before the economic restrictions cause by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite an increase of 1,349,000 in the “civilian noninstitutionalized population,” the workforce decreased by 4,295,000, meaning that over four million people got too discouraged to look for work.

Doing the math, and basing my estimate on the U-6 unemployment numbers,[1]U-6 includes “Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have … Continue reading I came up with an estimated 11,898,000 people out of work who want jobs, even if they’ve been too discouraged to look for work, plus another 5,950,000 people who need full-time jobs but are stuck working only part-time because they can’t get anything else, for a total of 17,848,000.

My previous article was based on President Biden’s cockamamie plan to find some form of legalization and a path to citizenship for the roughly 11,000,000 illegal immigrants in the United States. If we have roughly 17,850,000 Americans who want full time jobs but either can’t find anything but part-time, or can’t find work at all, why would we ‘legalize’ 11,000,000 illegal immigrants to compete with them?

Is there any way that isn’t utter madness?

President Donald Trump probably never saw the economic collapse over the COVID-19 restrictions coming, but he had what he called an “America First” policy. He would never have agreed to make it easier for non-Americans to compete with actual American citizens for jobs, but that’s what his successor is doing. Under President Biden, we will have more Mexicans and Guatemalans and Venezuelans getting jobs that would otherwise have gone to people born in this country, to people who are real American citizens.

But it’s not just the illegal immigrants. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Philly readies for new neighbors as Biden plans to resettle more of the world’s most vulnerable people

Under Biden, more people who have waited years in difficult conditions have hope of better lives

by Jeff Gammage | February 21, 2021

Margaret O’Sullivan remembers frantically trying to hide the condoms.

Scott Lloyd, the Trump administration’s fiercely antiabortion director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was due any minute at the Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia.

“We ran to the men’s room to grab them out, fearful he’d cut our funding,” the NSC executive director said of that 2018 visit. “That’s what it was like trying to navigate through Trump world.”

Now there’s wide hope at NSC and other agencies around the Biden administration’s plan for a robust return to welcoming some of the world’s most vulnerable people to new homes in the region.

Back in the dark ages, journalism schools taught the five “w”s were the first and most important parts of a news story. That way, if a person didn’t finish the article, or go to the “continued on page A-13” part, he still got the “who, what, when, where and why” of the story; the “h”, of “how”, was next.

But not today! Not the #woke reporters. No, Jeff Gammage begins with a trite anecdote, one designed to make former President Trump’s policies look bad. I’m not certain why a “fiercely antiabortion” administrator would cut funding due to the presence of a non-abortifacient contraceptive method — one would think that someone who was “fiercely antiabortion” would appreciate fewer pregnancies among women who would want abortions — but the logic behind Margaret O’Sullivan’s thinking is never explained to the reader. I suppose that it’s hardly surprising, given that Mr Gammage’s brief bio at the bottom of the Inquirer article states, “Jeff covers immigration ― the people, the issues, the conflicts.” There’s a reason I sometimes refer to it as The Philadelphia Enquirer.[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, as in the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Trump squeezed the admission of refugees to a series of record lows, down to a maximum of 15,000 a year. Biden intends to raise the cap to 125,000.

More poor writing from the Inquirer. Rather than “down to a maximum of 15,000 a year,” it should be “down to a maximum of 15,000 for FY 2021.”

This month he issued an executive order to rebuild and enhance the program, saying it promotes stability in unsettled regions and encourages nation-to-nation cooperation amid the worst refugee crisis since World War II. It reinforces America’s long, if frayed, standing as “a beacon of hope for persecuted people around the world,” the president said.

Perhaps 125,000 isn’t that many, not compared with 11,000,000 illegal immigrants that the President wants to ‘legalize,’ but that’s still 125,000 more people, few of whom speak English, few of whom bring with than any resources, and few of whom have the skills to fit into the American economy as anything other than low-wage laborers. That’s still 125,000 people who will need to be fed, clothed and housed, all on the backs of the American taxpayers.

What great ideas are coming from the Biden Administration! Eleven million people to compete with actual American citizens for the too few jobs out there, with many of the lost jobs never to return, and now the President wants to add roughly 125,000 new people, in just the next year, to the welfare rolls.

The article is a long one, designed to pull at the heartstrings. We are told stories of individual refugees, and how they faced persecution, impressment into military service, and many, many hardships. A good, kind-hearted man, President Biden feels for these people, and wants to help them.

But Joe Biden is not President of the World; he is President of the United States, and as President of the United States, his first duty is to Americans, not to refugees from Honduras and Guatemala and the Congo. As he wants to bring in 125,000 refugees, in just a year, refugees who will need to be supported, he seems to have forgotten that there are native-born American citizens who are living in the streets of San Francisco and Minneapolis, real American citizens living in should be condemned shacks in eastern Kentucky, American citizens squatting in dilapidated row houses in Philadelphia.

We need to realize that we need to take care of Americans first. President Biden can have all of the sympathy in the world for foreigners facing persecution and poverty in their home lands, but his actual duty is to Americans first.

References

References
↑1 U-6 includes “Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.”
↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, as in the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
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We’re from the Government and we know better than you what you should drive If you live in a Philadelphia row house, just where will you charge your electric car?

Oh, goody! Pennsylvania is about to waste more money . . . again! From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Pa. to install electric vehicle chargers in Philly, Ridley Twp., and Quakertown

The Pennsylvania DEP issued nearly $1 million in grants to install fast chargers on West Oregon Ave. in Philadelphia, as well as locations in Ridley Township and Quakertown.

by Frank Kummer | February 19, 2021

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has announced nearly $1 million in grants to install fast chargers on West Oregon Avenue in Philadelphia, as well as locations in Ridley Township, Delaware County; and Quakertown, Bucks County, as part of a larger effort to expand electric vehicle use statewide.

Overall, the $936,000 will pay for 12 fast chargers installed in those locations, as well as four in Allegheny County.

“DEP is committed to supporting this choice by increasing public knowledge of electric vehicles, making it easier for consumers to find electric models, and helping to expand charging infrastructure,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell.

Funding for the project comes from the commonwealth’s share of the national settlement with Volkswagen for cheating on emissions tests.

The author, Frank Kummer, “cover(s) local environmental issues, from the Poconos to the New Jersey Shore.”  His article provides us with the statistics about where the Pennsylvania DEP plans on building the fast chargers:

DEP awarded $750,000 for the three local projects:

  • $250,000 for six fast chargers to be installed by EVgo, the largest public fast-charging network for electric vehicles, at Cedar Realty Trust in Quartermaster Plaza at 2300 West Oregon Ave. in Philadelphia, a site that’s located within an environmental justice community — defined as an area with certain socioeconomic challenges — and within a half-mile of I-76.
  • $250,000 for four fast chargers to be installed by EVgo at Albertsons Acme Market at 124 Morton Ave. in Ridley Township. The location is within two miles of I-95 and I-476.
  • $186,619 for two fast chargers to be installed by EV Build in a mall parking lot at 100 N.W. End Boulevard in Quakertown. The project is located along high-traffic Route 309.

Officials said the chargers will be located in community hubs to serve local residents of single homes and apartments. They are part of a network the DEP and PennDOT hope to build to help drivers traveling longer distances from their homes. The goal is to have chargers every 50 miles along highways and no more than five miles from the road. Interstates 76, 95, 376, and 476 are key.

I will admit to shaking my head at the notion of investing in fast charging stations in an “area with certain socioeconomic challenges,” given that such would be an area which will see a slower adoption of plug-in electric vehicles, because the residents are less able to pay for them. That was a point which Mr Kummer did not mention.

But, with all of the statistics and documentary hyperlinks Mr Kummer included, he omitted the one that most people don’t know about: how long it takes to charge your plug-in electric vehicle! While I cannot read Mr Kummer’s mind, I know why I wouldn’t mention that in an article of the nature of the one he wrote: because it would totally turn off people to the idea of plug-in electrics!

How long does it take to charge an electric car?

Charging an electric car can take a matter of minutes or days, depending on what method you use. Here, we take a look at the ins and outs of the process…

by Martin Saarinen | 28 January 2021

The time it takes to charge an electric car can be as little as 30 minutes or more than 12 hours. This depends on the size of the battery and the speed of the charging point.

  • A typical electric car (60kWh battery) takes just under 8 hours to charge from empty-to-full with a 7kW charging point.
  • Most drivers top up charge rather than waiting for their battery to recharge from empty-to-full.
  • For many electric cars, you can add up to 100 miles of range in ~35 minutes with a 50kW rapid charger.
  • The bigger your car’s battery and the slower the charging point, the longer it takes to charge from empty to full.

Tip: Charging an electric car is similar to charging a mobile phone; you top it up during the day if you need to and give it a full charge at home overnight.

Emphases in the original.

The first bullet point is for an at-home charging unit; the third is for a “fast charging station,” such as the type mentioned in Mr Kummer’s article.

Most people don’t know how long it takes to charge an electric vehicle.

Think about that: if you can add roughly 100 miles of driving range in about 35 minutes, but your gasoline-powered car gets 300 miles of range on a single tank of fuel, the article is saying that to match your gasoline powered vehicle’s one-tank range would require roughly 105 minutes at the “fast charging station.”[1]The 36 gallon tank on my 2010 Ford F-150 gives me about 625 miles of range!

Do you want to replace 5 to 10 minutes at the gas station with one hour and 45 minutes?

Philadelphia has more row houses than any other city.

The article suggests “topping off” during the day, and fully charging overnight at home. That’s a great idea . . . if you have a garage or secure, dedicated parking space at home where you can install an at-home charger. If you don’t, that means complete dependence on public charging stations. If you live in a Philadelphia row house, something fairly common — though often in poorer shape than the ones pictured at the left — in what Mr Kummer described as “an environmental justice community, defined as an area with certain socioeconomic challenges,” just where are you going to put that at home charging unit? Are you going to be running an electric cable out your basement window to your car parked on the street?

Think about that. You might be able to get away with just the 35-minute 100 mile range topping off, but it will also mean stopping at the charging station thrice as often as you have to pump gasoline now.

Car and Driver has a good article on the basics of charging up your vehicle. When using a fast charging station, the article notes that:

A certifiably lethal current of DC power is pumped into the car’s battery, and miles of range are added in short order. Tesla’s V3 superchargers pump out up to 250 kW, and Electrify America’s automotive defibrillators fire out up to 350 kW of heart-stopping power.

“Certifiably lethal”, huh? Yeah, that’s what I want to see, 17-year-olds using 240 volt three-phase power cables!

In the rain and the snow of the City of Brotherly Love.

Am I the only one who sees this as maybe not the greatest idea ever?

If you have a good garage with sufficient electric service, an electric car might not be that bad an idea for you, depending upon your other circumstances. In our current home, out in the country, with a garage with separate electric service, we are as well-situated as anyone to replace one car with a plug-in electric, as long as I can keep my F-150 powered by gasoline. But in our previous home? It would not have worked. If you live in rental property, it might not work, and I can easily see a landlord increasing the rent by $50 or $100 a month for the installation of an vehicle charging station if he did allow it.

The climate change activists, whose numbers now, sadly, include the President of the United States, have no conception of what regular people live like, and how much they are trying to impose on people. But you will do what you are told, won’t you?

References

References
↑1 The 36 gallon tank on my 2010 Ford F-150 gives me about 625 miles of range!
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President Biden wants to ‘legalize’ 11 million illegal immigrants, when 17½ million Americans can’t find the jobs they need If you voted for Joe Biden because he was a nicer guy than Donald Trump, then you also voted for this

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 158,659,000 Americans with jobs in January of 2020, but only 150,031,000 in January of 2021. That’s a loss of 8,628,000 jobs. Despite the “civilian noninstitutionalized adult population” increasing from 259,502,000 to 260,851,000, or 1,349,000 souls, the labor force, meaning people who are either working or looking for work, decreased by 4,295,000, meaning that over four million people got too discouraged to look for work. The “not in labor force” adult population increased by 5,643,000 people, from 95,047,00 to 100,690,000.

The total number of unemployed, even by the BLS U-3 measure, leapt from 5,796,000 to 10,130,000, or 4,334,000.

The “official” unemployment rate was reported to be 6.3%, which doesn’t sound too bad I suppose, but, quite frankly, I see U-3 as a way to under-report to the American people just how bad the economy is. Former Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnunchin thought that U-5, “Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force,” was the better number to use.[1]Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work … Continue reading I prefer U-6 as the best number, which includes everyone in U-5, plus those who are employed part-time, but want full-time work and cannot get it.

U-5 currently stands at 7.4%, while U-6 is a whopping 11.1%.

Doing the math, U-5 reports 1,768,000 people who want jobs, but have been too discouraged to look hard, while U-6 tells us that there are roughly 5,950,000 people who are working part-time only because they can’t find full-time work.

And that’s why this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer pisses me off so much:

Biden, Democrats unveil bill that would overhaul path to citizenship for millions

by Alexandra Jaffe, Associated Press | February 18, 2021 | 3:48 PM EST

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats proposed a major immigration overhaul Thursday that would offer an eight-year pathway to citizenship to the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally.

The legislation reflects the broad priorities for immigration changes that Biden laid out on his first day in office, including an increase in visas, more money to process asylum applications and new technology at the southern border.

It would be a sharp reversal of Trump administration policies, and parts are likely to face opposition from a number of Republicans. Biden has acknowledged he might accept a more-piecemeal approach if separate major elements could be approved.

“We have an economic and moral imperative to pass big, bold and inclusive immigration reform,” said New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, one of the lead sponsors of the bill, in unveiling it Thursday.

There’s more at the original, but the obvious question is: if we have roughly 17,850,000 Americans who want full time jobs but either can’t find anything but part-time, or can’t find work at all, why would we ‘legalize’ 11,000,000 illegal immigrants to compete with them?

Is there any way that isn’t utter madness?

President Donald Trump probably never saw the economic collapse over the COVID-19 restrictions coming, but he had what he called an “America First” policy. He would never have agreed to make it easier for non-Americans to compete with actual American citizens for jobs, but that’s what his successor is doing. Under President Biden, we will have more Mexicans and Guatemalans and Venezuelans getting jobs that would otherwise have gone to people born in this country, to people who are real American citizens.

And if you voted for Joe Biden, because Donald Trump was an [insert slang term for the rectum here], and Mr Biden was such a nice guy, then you also voted for this!

References

References
↑1 Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.
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The editors of the Lexington Herald-Leader and their one-sided OpEd pages

In a short letter to the editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, Jeffrey Bradford of Nashville, Tennessee, said:

I’m a Lexington native who moved to Nashville many years ago. Recently, while visiting family in Lexington, I read the opinion section of your paper and was astounded by how completely one-sided it is (Jan. 31, 2021 edition). Entirely from the left. Yours is the only newspaper I’ve read in recent years — with the possible exception of the New York Times and Washington Post — that completely excludes views from the right. This is odd on two levels: 1. I’m sure your readership is not so monolithic in its political views. 2. You lose all credibility by only publishing one side of the story. That is, your views carry no weight.

I encourage you to strive for a more balanced approach in the future, as I used to read in my hometown paper when growing up here. Not only would it be more intellectually honest, but you might sell more papers.

Reading just one print edition isn’t much of a sample, but a perusal of what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal’s website doesn’t show much diversity of opinion. There is a real question of how in touch the editors are with their readership. I would point out here the Editorial Board’s recent political endorsements:

  • 2020: Joe Biden for President, Amy McGrath Henderson for Senate, and Josh Hicks for 6th District Representative;[1]Notably, the editors endorsed Charles Booker over Mrs Henderson in the Democratic primary, saying that he was the more progressive candidate. Mrs Henderson once said, “I am further left, I am … Continue reading
  • 2018: Amy McGrath Henderson for 6th District Representative
  • 2016: Hillary Clinton for President, Jim Gray for Senate, and Nancy Jo Kemper for 6th District Representative
  • 2014: Alison Lundergan Grimes for Senate, and Elisabeth Jensen for 6th District Representative

All Democrats, and all defeated in Kentucky and in the 6th District. It seems that the Herald-Leader Editorial Board isn’t exactly in tune with the voters of the Commonwealth. Note that the 2016 and 2014 Democratic nominees for the 6th congressional district were political novices, and the editors struggled to find much good reason to endorse them. Representative Andy Barr (R-KY 6th District) beat them both by landslide margins.[2]Dr Malcolm Jewell, one of my political science professors at the University of Kentucky during medieval times, defined a landslide margin as 10% or greater.

In fact, with the exception of the 6th district race in 2018, the editors’ endorsed candidates lost by landslide margins. Even in 2018, with Mrs Henderson outspending Mr Barr $8,274,396 to $5,580,477, she lost 51.0% to 47.8%.

In her Senate campaign, Mrs Henderson raised $94,120,557 and spent $90,775,744 compared to Senator Mitch McConnell’s $71,351,350 and $64,787,889, only to lose 38.2% to 57.8%. As it happens, Mrs Henderson had the lowest percentage total against Mr McConnell of any of his opponents save sacrificial lamb candidate Lois Combs Weinberg in 2002.

Simply put, the editors are completely out-of-touch with their readership. Voters in Lexington are closer to the editors’ views, but once you get outside Fayette County, nope, nowhere close, and the Herald-Leader is a regional newspaper for most of eastern Kentucky.[3]I delivered both the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, just a few years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

I do not expect the editors to change their views. But perhaps, just perhaps, they might consider that their readers are not all from the city, and provide a bit more content for them.

References

References
↑1 Notably, the editors endorsed Charles Booker over Mrs Henderson in the Democratic primary, saying that he was the more progressive candidate. Mrs Henderson once said, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky,” while at a fund raiser in Massachusetts.
↑2 Dr Malcolm Jewell, one of my political science professors at the University of Kentucky during medieval times, defined a landslide margin as 10% or greater.
↑3 I delivered both the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, just a few years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
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The Woke-ington Post defends Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams

We noted, four days ago, the firing of Chattanooga librarian Cameron Williams for being boneheadedly stupid burning library books with which he disagreed. Now comes The Washington Post, with their own article on the subject:

A Black Lives Matter activist was accused of burning books by Trump and Ann Coulter. He was then fired from his job.

By Teo Armus | February 17, 2021 | 3:08 AM EST

From the article title alone — and it should be noted that article titles in newspapers are normally written by the editors, not the article authors — you san tell: grab on to a support bar, because this one leans far to the left!

Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams says his instructions were clear enough: The 35-year-old library staffer was supposed to comb through the shelves of his branch in Chattanooga, Tenn., looking for books that were damaged, outdated or untruthful.

Black Lives Matter activist Cameron Williams

We noted Mr Williams’ appearance in the previous article; I can see from where his ‘street name’ of “C-Grimey” comes.

Let me be clear here: I would never hire, for any position involving public contact, anyone who looked like that. Nor would I ever hire anyone with any connection to #BlackLivesMatter. If someone cannot have decent, respectable grooming habits, nope, he doesn’t get hired. And having anyone on your payroll who you know is involved with attempting to defund or harm the police, who has a basically racist attitude — racist from any direction! — is something you do not want. It’s like hiring someone with any sort of “social justice” degree, such as Women’s and Gender Studies; such people are walking, talking discrimination lawsuits waiting to happen. You take their résumés, interview them if you must, and then quietly choose another candidate. The library was hiring someone to help people find books, not someone to push his political opinions on patrons.

The branch managers told employees they could bring home any weeded-out titles, he said. But Williams, a rapper who helped organize demonstrations against police brutality last year, reportedly had other plans for the books he picked out.

After nabbing Ann Coulter’s “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” and Donald Trump’s “Crippled America,” he allegedly set them on fire in his backyard in December, live-streaming the blaze on Instagram, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Last week, the library fired him over the alleged incident, saying that he’d broken the rules by “improperly removing items from the Library’s collections.”

Cameron “C-Grimey” Williams, picture by Mr Williams, taken from The Washington Post.

One point the Post article does not mention is that the library met with the Chattanooga city attorney about this, before taking the decision to terminate Mr Williams. One would assume that the city attorney would have been very careful in advising the library on the legalities. More, the Post article states that, “Before his firing, (Mr Williams) was the only Black man on a staff of about 80 people, he said.” Note that verbiage: Mr Williams was the only black man on the staff; it does not mean he was the only black person employed there. Library personnel tend to be heavily female. Was this poor writing by the Post article author, poor reporting in failing to clarify the situation, or just laziness in taking Mr Williams’ word for it?

That point should have been caught by whichever Washington Post editor reviewed the story. At least I assume the normal practice of editorial review; perhaps such an assumption isn’t a wise one?

The Hitlerjugend burning books, 1938.

Mr Williams provided this picture to the Post. In it, he is shown in what appears to be the library stacks. He’s also wearing a black hoodie, something hardly professional, and a Black Lives Matter facemask. Was he projecting a politicized image while working at the library?

There’s some rather delicious irony when we see the Post publishing sympathetic articles about book-burners. Some things are just not good looks.

The Post’s story is an example of absolutely horrible journalism . . . which seems to be a 21th century trend. We should not be able to discern the writer’s biases by reading what is supposed to be a straight news article, but they are there for all to see. This is what happens when you hire the #woke.

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It’s not just the big boys like The New York Times and The Washington Post who don’t like #FreedomOfSpeech for other people Much smaller media like the Lexington Herald-Leader aren't too fond of it either

At The First Street Journal, and William Teach’s The Pirate’s Cove — and Mr Teach has done this site an invaluable service, crossposting because I’ve been under power-cutting ice storm threats for several days now — we have been tireless defenders of the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech. Thus, I was interested enough to read Joel Pett’s OpEd piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader celebrating that free speech pioneer, Larry Flynt.

RIP Larry Flynt: Kentucky native, porn publisher, and First Amendment champion

By Joel Pett | February 15, 2021 | 10:50 AM | Updated 12:50 PM EST

In the gathering gray of an April evening in 2004, I waited alone in the alley behind the Kentucky Theater, uncertain that my guest would show up. Inside, 150 or so attendees of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists annual convention watched a screening of the 1996 drama “The People vs. Larry Flynt.”

The film chronicled the infamous pornographer’s landmark 1988 legal battle with the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, which ended with a unanimous Supreme Court firmly reinforcing our collective right to satirize the powerful. (Even if that satire implies that a renowned religious figure had fornicated with his own mother in an outhouse.) The AAEC had filed a friend of the court brief on Flynt’s behalf.

I didn’t wait long. A standard prom-issue limo slid up next to the loading dock. A couple of well-dressed young men emerged, lifted the gold wheelchair out and positioned it. Out swung Larry Claxton Flynt’s legs, rendered useless by a 1978 assassination attempt and wrapped in an expensive suit. Flynt struggled into position, looked up at me and growled “Goddammit, I hate to f—ing travel!”

Flynt, who died last week at 78, not only won the big First Amendment case, he was a native Kentuckian, making him a natural “get” for the Lexington convention. I had found his office tricky to communicate with, since they made no demands, didn’t need airline tickets (he had his own jet) and handled their own hotel reservations. He had simply barked into the phone, some eight months earlier, “All right, dammit, I’ll be there!”

Mr Pett’s paean to Mr Flynt is somewhat tiresome. Larry Flynt was the extreme test case for the first amendment, just as a vicious, cold-blooded killer is the extreme test for opposition to capital punishment: the concepts one wishes to defend are personified by the worst of people. Mr Flynt’s Hustler magazine went where Playboy and Penthouse did not go, far exceeding them in raunchiness and crudity. Since then, the internet has made much more graphic pornography widely available, often for free, and if there’s anything not available on the internet somewhere, I can’t think of what it would be.

Heck, you can find the basics for building nuclear weapons on the internet!

Mr Pett was unstinting in his praise for the Hustler publisher:

His injuries made speaking a struggle, but Flynt delivered. He animatedly railed against former President George W. Bush, for whom he had a particular dislike. He stayed to answer plenty of questions with grace, wit and humor.

I was a little disappointed that, over dinner, Flynt was considerably less effusive. No matter, he had done his job, sparking soul-searching among our self-important, ponderous, mainstream newspaper cartoonists about First Amendment protections extending to the gratuitous, crude, misogynistic and utterly distasteful smut between the slick covers of porn mags.

I don’t have to like Mr Flynt to agree as far as freedom of speech and of the press are concerned. But, as we’ve sadly noted previously, today’s credentialed media are a lot more supportive of their own First Amendment rights than they are for others.

And so we have Mr Pett’s conclusion:

Larry Flynt once said, “If the First Amendment protects a scumbag like me, then it will protect all of you. Because I’m the worst.”

Maybe. But watching Donald Trump’s outrageous claims to free-speech protection play out last week, some might disagree.

Mr Flynt had done his job, Mr Pett said, “sparking soul-searching among our self-important, ponderous, mainstream newspaper cartoonists about First Amendment protections extending to the gratuitous, crude, misogynistic and utterly distasteful smut between the slick covers of porn mags.” Yet when it comes to the political speech of President Trump, speech with which both Mr Pett individually and the editors of the Herald-Leader in general disagreed, that First Amendment, well, maybe it shouldn’t cover that!

Mr Teach’s blog tagline is, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” It seems to me that today’s credentialed media do not believe in freedom of speech and of the press for those theyn despise.

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About that getting rid of fossil fuels?

As Joltin’ Joe Biden and the rest of the #ClimateChange alarmists want you to end your dependency on fossil fuels, perhaps this story from the Austin American-Statesman ought to be in the backs of your minds:

Frozen wind turbines hamper Texas power output, state’s electric grid operator says

Brandon Mulder | Austin American-Statesman | February 14, 2021 | 4:30 PM CST | Updated: February 15, 2021 | 10:11 AM CST

Frozen wind turbine in Texas.

Nearly half of Texas’ installed wind power generation capacity has been offline because of frozen wind turbines in West Texas, according to Texas grid operators.

Wind farms across the state generate up to a combined 25,100 megawatts of energy. But unusually moist winter conditions in West Texas brought on by the weekend’s freezing rain and historically low temperatures have iced many of those wind turbines to a halt.

As of Sunday morning, those iced turbines comprise 12,000 megawatts of Texas’ installed wind generation capacity, although those West Texas turbines don’t typically spin to their full generation capacity this time of year.

Fortunately for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s electric grid, the storm’s gusty winds are spinning the state’s unfrozen coastal turbines at a higher rate than expected, helping to offset some of the power generation losses because of the icy conditions

“Some of,” I note. There’s more at the original.

The story continues to tell us that wind generated sparktricity was 23% of the Lone Star State’s generation capacity, but it has to be asked: if the Climate Change policies that President Biden wants to put in place, to transition us to 100% ‘renewable’ carbon-free sources were actually in place, in this miserable February with it’s strong Arctic air mass having borne down upon the Midwest plains states, just how many people would be shivering in their homes right now?

Gas fireplace in my computer room/den.

When we moved to our retirement fixer-upper in July of 2017, it was total electric. In January of 2018, a snow and ice storm hit, and knocked out the electricity. Since we’re out in the country, at pretty much the far end of Jackson Electric Cooperative’s service area, we’re among the last people to get power back, and it took 4½ days. My wife went to Lexington, and stayed at our daughter’s apartment, but I had to stay here, to care for the critters, and the plumbing.

It got down to 38º F in the house.

As I said, our house is an eastern Kentucky fixer-upper, and it certainly isn’t done yet, but we decided that we would have gas in the remodel, because Mrs Pico wanted a gas range. Thus we now have a new gas (propane) range, water heater and the fireplace installed. If we lose power again, we’ll still be able to keep the house warm, cook and take showers.

Without that fossil fuel, the place would become a not-very-much-fun place in the winter when the electricity goes out.

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