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Oops! Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella might be about to get called on the carpet!

It looks like Philadelphia Inquirer suburban reporter Vinny Vella is going to get called onto the carpet in Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar’s office: he referred to “gang” rather than “street group”! Then again, it wasn’t his first offense.

A group of Philly teens stole nearly 20 guns from a Bucks County gun shop, according to police

LugarMan Inc., in Langhorne, was burglarized at about 3 a.m. Tuesday, police said. The suspects were arrested in Trenton after a long chase through the suburbs.

by Vinny Vella | Tuesday, May 30, 2023 | 1:20 PM EDT

A group of Philadelphia teens burglarized a Bucks County gun store early Tuesday, according to police. The incident, which ended with three young people in custody, is the latest in a series of similar heists targeting gun stores in Bucks and Montgomery Counties.

This is a major pet peeve of mine! People have used “burglarize” so much that it’s now in the dictionary, but any educated person, especially a writer, should use the original word, burgle.

A motion-sensor alarm at LugerMan Inc. in Langhorne notified police in Middletown Township at around 3 a.m., Detective Lt. Steve Forman said. When officers arrived, they saw a car pulling out of the store’s lot and followed it.

The Middletown Township officers continued to chase the vehicle as it sped away from the store, Forman said. Officers from nearby Falls Township assisted, throwing down a spike strip that struck the car’s tires but didn’t end the pursuit.

The teens continued to Morrisville and then over the Calhoun Street Bridge to Trenton, where they lost control of the car and crashed without injury, according to Forman. Trenton Police helped arrest three teens, who haven’t been identified and remain in custody in the New Jersey city as they await extradition to Bucks County.

Mr Vella reported that all of the stolen firearms were recovered.

I just had to go ahead and take the screen capture, to document what was there before it got edited away.

Naturally, I don’t have access to any formal statement of the Inquirer’s stylebook, so perhaps the word “gang” actually is permitted, and only reporters Ellie Rushing, Jessica Griffin, Ximena Conde, and Chris Palmer, who wrote:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

actually persist in the “street group” nonsense, something that I have previously mocked.

The best part of Mr Vella’s story? The fact that the burglaries occurred in Bucks County, and not in Philadelphia, so the soft-on-crime, police-hating defense mouthpiece who is now Philly’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, won’t have the authority to let the alleged burglars and thieves off with the lightest of slaps on the wrist. These “teens” need to be charged as adults if possible, tried, convicted, and locked up for as long as the law allows.

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Some people still have a sad that the COVID ‘state of emergency’ is over.

I’ve long called the response to COVID-19 a panicdemic, because the chief disease we suffered was the loss of our rights due to the utter, widespread panic that government officials pushed, and the authoritarian controls they imposed, with most of the sheeple barely uttering a bleat.

And now, Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) has unwittingly admitted that all of his orders were based not on the disease, but political considerations:

Philly relaxes COVID vaccination policy for city workers now that national emergencies have ended

The vaccine mandate still applies to city-employed health-care providers.

by Jason Laughlin | Tuesday, May 30, 2023 | 5:03 AM EDT

Most Philadelphia municipal employees are no longer required to be vaccinated for COVID-19, Philadelphia officials said, ending a pandemic policy that went into effect less than a year ago.

As of last week, only city workers with jobs that put them in contact with patients, such as doctors or nurses, must be vaccinated, said Sarah Peterson, a spokesperson for the city. Philadelphia changed its policy in response to the end of two national emergency declarations earlier this month and new recommendations from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

The relaxed city employee mandate complies with the health department’s requirement that health-care practitioners in the city, with the exception of home-care workers, be vaccinated against COVID.

“The City updated its COVID-19 safety protocols to align with local health-care worker vaccination requirements while also recognizing that COVID-19 transmission has declined,” Peterson said.

“(I)n response to the end of two national emergency declarations earlier this month,” huh? In other words, politics. If the disease was so serious that it justified abridging our constitutional rights and firing people who refused to take the vaccines, why does the expiration of a political declaration mean anything?

The federal state of emergency ended because the public simply weren’t having it anymore. But, naturally, there remain those who are appalled that things have returned to normal:

‘This is going to hit most people.’ The COVID state of emergency has ended — but the need for support hasn’t.

“The end of the state of emergency is not a declaration of the end of a pandemic — it’s just the end of the support for the pandemic,” said Kayla O’Mahony, a Philadelphia resident who has had long COVID for two years.

by Massarah Mikati and Michelle Myers | Tuesday, May 30, 2023

When the world started to return to “normal” in the summer of 2021, Kayla O’Mahony was young, fit, healthy, and fully vaccinated for COVID-19. She had little reason to be concerned for her health and safety — or so she thought.

Soon after O’Mahony started opening her life back up, she contracted COVID-19. What was initially a so-called mild infection (meaning she didn’t require hospitalization) consisting of fever, loss of taste and smell, nausea, and body aches turned into a two-year, ongoing infection that turned her life upside down.

She became disabled and had to move in with her mom for almost a year. She lost her job as a local farmer. And she hasn’t been able to experience the simple joys of seeing friends spontaneously (only if they have a negative PCR test and isolate days in advance).

So when O’Mahony learned that the federal COVID-19 public health emergency was terminated on May 11, she was in disbelief.

In disbelief? The federal government announced that the ‘state of emergency’ would be ended on May 11th months ago. One would think that, given her illness, she would have paid attention to the news, and been mentally prepared.

“The end of the state of emergency is not a declaration of the end of a pandemic — it’s just the end of the support for the pandemic,” O’Mahony said. “It’s infuriating to me.”

Actually, it kind of is the end of the pandemic. Pandemic is defined as affecting “a significant proportion of the population,” and “an outbreak or product of sudden rapid spread, growth, or development,” neither condition of which is met by the current low incidence of the disease. We can sympathize with Miss O’Mahony for the severe toll that COVID-19 has taken on her, but affects relatively few people these days, most people have some form of immunity, whether from the vaccines or natural immunity due to past exposure.

Her real concern? Money!

Under the emergency declaration, folks could access free COVID-19 vaccines, onsite and at-home tests, and Paxlovid — an antiviral that helps high-risk patients prevent severe illness. That will slowly change, as manufacturers are authorized to determine prices after the free vaccine and Paxlovid supplies run out, and insurance providers are no longer required to waive costs.

For example, PCR tests — which are the most reliably accurate COVID tests, and the ones people like O’Mahony rely on to avoid infection — are estimated to cost about $130 out-of-pocket, as opposed to $20 during the emergency declaration. And they’re becoming harder and harder to find.

Further down:

Leah Garrity was first diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, a bone marrow failure called aplastic anemia, on January 1, 2020. She needed to start masking, social distancing, and staying away from sick people two months before the rest of the world did.

“The hardest part has probably been this past year,” said Garrity. “It’s not talked about, people want to move on, but the reality is the same. The first year, at least it felt like everyone was at least somewhat on the same page.”

So, what, she’s depressed that other people no longer feel the need to take the same precautions that she does?

Aplastic anemia is a long-term, serious condition in which the bone marrow does not produce a sufficient number of new blood cells. The only known cure is a bone marrow transplant, which does not always work.

There’s a lack of education and awareness about the virus and how to protect oneself and others from contracting it, Garrity and O’Mahony said. But the failure of taking the pandemic seriously, which has been taking place across the political spectrum, has been a chief frustration for people who are still at-risk — particularly with masking.

When Garrity goes to the hospital for her treatments, for example, most people are unmasked. When O’Mahony recently had a COVID-19 scare, the nurse who conducted her PCR test was unmasked.

Does Miss Garrity believe that everybody else needs to wear a mask to protect her?

Masking ended not because the government said it was OK, but because the public, as a whole got tired with it, and people started complying with mask mandates less and less. We noted, in October of 2021, that Kroger was no longer requiring customers to wear masks, and that the number of people complying with masking requests was declining. People were getting over their panic a year and a half ago, even while the government was trying its hardest to keep the panic alive.

Let’s tell the truth here: governments love authoritarian control, and the COVID panic, a panic that governments themselves helped to increase, just gave them more control. While some of us were appalled and saying so from the very beginning, far too many people proved themselves to actually be sheeple, and just go along with all of the suspensions of our constitutional rights, because they swallowed, and wallowed in, the panic. It was only as the panic faded that the tinpot dictators in our cities and states started to lose their ability to buffalo people into surrendering their rights.

And this is why we must stand fast in support of our rights as Americans, as a free people, and as human beings: when we allow fear to overcome freedom, freedom is lost, and freedom lost is a damned hard thing to get back.

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At what point does it have to be asked: “Jim Kenney, Larry Krasner, Danielle Outlaw, have you no shame?” They have not just failed, but failed spectacularly

We have previously noted how the government of Mexico has used street scenes from Kensington in ads to warn the Mexican people about the dangers of using drugs, and asked the very politically incorrect question: why should we spend money to keep junkies alive?

Now comes London’s Daily Mail:

Inside Philadelphia’s tranq hellscape: Disturbing new footage shows devastating scale of drug crisis in Kensington neighborhood – with addicts crowding filthy sidewalks and shooting up in broad daylight

By Will Potter for DailyMail.com | Saturday, May 27, 2023 | 12:43 PM EDT | Updated: 8:37 PM EDT

Shocking footage has revealed the scale of Philadelphia’s untamed ‘tranq’ epidemic, which has transformed the city’s streets into a drug-infested hellhole.

The Kensington neighborhood – known as ‘ground zero’ for the city’s drug crisis – is seen littered with zombie-like addicts, with many shamelessly shooting up in broad daylight.

Gruesome scenes in the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ show droves of homeless addicts aimlessly staggering through the streets, surrounded by tents and scattered trash.

There’s a lot more at the original; hat tip to @DawnStensland. Since this article has an embedded video, the rest is off the front page. Continue reading →

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The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us about its impending death.

Yes, I subscribe to The Philadelphia Inquirer, to keep up with the news from the state in which I lived for fifteen years, and the news from the City of Brotherly Love, and yes, I have often mocked the paper by calling it The Philadelphia Enquirer, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it sometimes can be. RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but it seems apt enough that I often use it. And thus I was wryly amused by this story:

At Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, the last newsstand stopped selling newspapers

The explanation, sadly, is old news. Nearly no one was buying them.

by Mike Newall | Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

The handwritten sign hung on the door of the newsstand at 30th Street Station. It offered one final headline from a shop that will carry no more.

“No newspapers,” it read, underlined four times for emphasis.

That’s because earlier this month Faber, the New Jersey-based newsstand and bookseller, stopped selling newspapers at its 30th Street location. The store’s shelves remain stocked with magazines, periodicals, books, snacks, greeting cards, and travel trinkets. But the iconic station’s sole newsagent is now a newsstand without newspapers.

The explanation, sadly, is old news. Nearly no one was buying them.

One would think that this story would truly alarm Publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar, and the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which owns the newspaper. If no one is buying the newspaper, that means that no one wants the newspaper, at least not enough to pay the newsstand price of $2.95.

Slumping sales would hardly come as a surprise. Not in the Age of Smartphones. Not when the pandemic only worsened the newspaper industry’s existential struggle to survive its digital transformation. And not as newsstands themselves, like coin-operated news boxes before them, slowly disappear.

But newspaper sales had grown beyond bleak at 30th Street Station, Carr said. Each year an estimated four million passengers pass through the station’s soaring concourse, making it Amtrak’s third busiest hub. Meanwhile, in recent times, the stand rarely sold more than a dozen daily papers each day, Carr said. (And mostly out-of-town publications. Ouch.) Then there’s rising prices, delivery costs, and time and energy spent bundling up returns.

I’m actually a special case. Due at least in part to my poor hearing, getting the news via television or radio isn’t effective for me. More, when I read the news, if there’s something which sounds strange or inconsistent, I can go back are reread the part that confused me. More, using printed material for my poor site, I like using a more comprehensive and consistent site; newspapers have the ability to go more into depth than the broadcast/cablecast media. Finally, I delivered newspapers when I was in junior high and high schools. They are, for me, a medium I appreciate and like.

But if newspapers, which actually are just updated 18th century technology, want to survive somehow, they have to produce a product that people actually want to not just read, but actually buy. National news we can get for free, even if in print form, from CNN or Fox or the new News Nation, which claims to be unbiased. I’m paying for the Inky because I’m looking for Philly and Pennsylvania news, and if the Inky can’t provide that, in a form that people will buy, in the end, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper will be history.

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Democrisy: How the #Climate activists want you to do as they say, not do as they do.

Two stories appeared nearly side by side in my morning feed:

Jane Fonda blames ‘White men’ for climate crisis, calls to ‘arrest and jail’ them

Story by Taylor Penley • Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023 • 12:45 PM

Jane Fonda blamed men – and racism – for climate change during a conversation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, arguing that without the patriarchy, the crisis allegedly of epic proportions would cease to exist.

“This is serious,” she said Saturday. “We’ve got about seven, eight years to cut ourselves in half of what we use of fossil fuels, and unfortunately, the people that have the least responsibility for it are hit the hardest — Global South, people on islands, poor people of color. It is a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop. We have to arrest and jail those men — they’re all men [behind this].”

She continued, answering a question from one of the audience members when she delved into her claims that the climate crisis couldn’t exist without the perfect conditions.

“It’s good for us all to realize, there would be no climate crisis if there was no racism. There would be no climate crisis if there was no patriarchy. A mindset that sees things in a hierarchical way. White men are the things that matter and then everything else [is] at the bottom.”

There’s more at the original, and there’s no paywall involved. 🙂

As William Teach tweeted out, the washed-up actress claimed that her former four-time costar, Robert Redford, “did not like to kiss” and was “always in a bad mood,” apparently without ever considering that maybe he just didn’t like doing stuff with her.

But I digress. The second story in my feed was this:

What life in medieval Europe was really like

by Erin Blakemore • Thursday, May 25, 2023

A time of innovation, philosophy, and legendary works of art: the realities of the medieval period (500 to 1500 C.E.) in Europe may surprise you.

Many know the years before the Renaissance and Enlightenment that followed as Europe’s “Dark Ages,” a time of backward, slovenly, and brutal people who were technologically primitive and hopelessly superstitious.

But it turns out the Dark Ages was anything but. Here are four myths about the medieval world it’s time we moved past.

Sure, it would take until the 19th century for the germ theory of disease to overtake the concept of humors and “miasmas” that could damage human health. But the common image of medieval people as slovenly, unwashed, and lacking hygiene is false.

There’s much more at the original, with the author telling us that medieval Europeans were more ‘civilized’ than we imagine, but it still points out one thing: that before the evil white men Miss Fonda blames for global warming climate change, the vast majority of people were living in small huts, heated solely by burning wood, and most died by their forties . . . if they lived even that long.

There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, The Lion in Winter, in which Peter O’Toole, as King Henry II, arises in the morning and breaks the ice on the top of the bowl of water to splash water on his face.

Indoors.

There was no glass in the small window into the castle’s bedroom, and the bed was heaped with furs — and Jane Merrow as Alys, the Countess of Vexin — due to the brutal conditions in which even kings lived.

It was, of course, those wicked, wicked men that the lovely Miss Fonda wants jailed who discovered and refined the fossil fuels which enable modern transportation, which moves us from place-to-place, so that we are not stuck within a few miles of our homes for all of our lives, which fueled the modern industry which, among other things, enabled the creation of the motion-picture industry which made her wealthy, and which cooks our food and heats our homes. Without all of those things, we’d still be like Henry II, breaking the ice off the water vessel in the morning.

Then there’s Sophia Kianni, who bills herself as the “Youngest UN Advisor” She believes that:

The three most important things you can do when it comes to climate change are:
• Talk about it!
• Join an organization that amplifies your voice, and
• Advocate for system-wide change

Of course, she had just previously said that:

Focusing on individual choices around air travel and beef consumption heightens the risk of losing sight of the gorilla in the room: civilization’s reliance on fossil fuels for energy and transport overall, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of global carbon emissions

The lovely Miss Kianni, who has shown us photos of her having jetted off to Denver, Washington, DC, jetlagged somewhere, Poland, and Boston, and is wealthy with a net worth of approximately $3 million, doesn’t want anyone to focus on her travel, but the ability of everybody else to travel.

The left apparently believe that we can run and power our country entirely on hopes and dreams, never realizing that completely electrifying our country, with all power being generated without the use of burning fossil fuels, would take decades, several decades. We would have to completely change all automobiles in the country, and not just replace every oil, gas, coal, and trash-burning power plant in the country, but build hundreds additional ones, to meet the power demands of vehicles, homes, businesses, and industries which had previously used natural gas and heating oil. Yes, it could be done, but not until Miss Kianni is old and grey.

Yet somehow, some way, she does not believe that her individual choices send a message, a message of do as I say, not do as I do, because she certainly doesn’t want to change her lifestyle. Miss Fonda? She’s 85 years old, so the years left to her on Mother Gaia are few, but if she has told us that she’s willing to go back to the 12th century, and break the ice on her morning water bowl, I’ve somehow missed it.

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The real way to keep your kids out of trouble Doing the right things teaches your kids to do the right things

We have previously noted the homicide rate in St Louis, which, with an even 200 murders in 2022, and a Census Bureau estimated population of 286,578 as of July 1, 2022, yields a homicide rate of a whopping 69.79 per 100,000 population. When Philadelphia says that it’s the murder capital of the United States, St Louis laughs and says, “Hold my beer!”[1]With a Census Bureau estimated population of 1,567,258 as of July 1, 2022, and 516 murders that year, Philly’s homicide rate works out to a measly 32.92 per 100,000 population.

More specifically, with 45 of the homicide victims so far this year in the Gateway City being black males, black males in St Louis are bearing a homicide rate of a staggering 179.93 per 100,000 population.[2]The math: 286,578 total population, times 0.448, the percentage of the population listed as being black, times 0.487, the percentage of the population who are male, yields a black male population of … Continue reading

Now, why do I raise that subject? It is due to an article I saw in the St Louis Post-Dispatch:

Archbishop of St. Louis closes 35 parishes, reassigns 155 priests in Catholic church reorganization

by Blythe Bernhard | Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023

SHREWSBURY — The Archbishop of St. Louis will close 35 parishes and reassign 155 priests in the most sweeping reorganization of the Catholic church in St. Louis history.

After 18 months of waiting, Catholics learned on Saturday the fate of their priests and parishes in the downsizing of the archdiocese called “All Things New.”

The changes, which will reshape the archdiocese from 178 individual parishes into 134, were announced Saturday by Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski in a press conference and in a letter read by priests during vigil Mass.

“I wish these changes were not necessary, but it is what we are called to do at this moment,” Rozanski said Saturday.

The archbishop maintained that the plan affects the entire region, although nearly half of the closures are in north St. Louis and north St. Louis County and only one, St. John Bosco in Maryland Heights, is west of Interstate 270 in St. Louis County.

There’s more at the original.

One thing really jumped off the page at me: in the very areas in which St Louis was suffering the greatest number of murders, the “North Patrol,” are also the areas in which Mass attendance has declined so greatly that the Church is having to close parishes.

Let me be perfectly clear here: if you want your children not to grow up to be gang-bangers, not to be getting into situations in which gunfire or other serious violence is going to be the result, take them to church! Don’t send them to church, but take them to church. Don’t find excuses to sleep in, don’t say, “Oh, we’ll go next Sunday,” but take them to church every Sunday.

Some readers will complain that I have been overly simplistic in this, that there are so many other factors involved, but I really don’t see it that way. Taking your kids to church, every Sunday, teaches them that you believe religion and reverence are good and important things. Taking them to church every Sunday shows them that you are willing to make the effort to get out of bed yourself, to do the right thing. Taking them to church every Sunday exposes them to other kids and other families, also being taught the same lessons.

And taking the kids to church every Sunday encourages parents to do the right thing as well.

Is this the only thing that parents need to do? No, it isn’t, but it is the one thing which will help them get started, help them to do better, which does not require a lot of money or some complicated organizational effort. All you need to do is get the kids, your spouse, and yourself out of bed in the morning, and go. Yeah, it’s nice if you can drop some money in the collection basket, but if you don’t have the money to spare, the priest will still be happy to see you, other families will be glad you are there, and soon enough you will be able to manage to contribute something, anything, to the church. Doing the right thing very often brings the right rewards, even if it doesn’t always seem obvious.

References

References
↑1 With a Census Bureau estimated population of 1,567,258 as of July 1, 2022, and 516 murders that year, Philly’s homicide rate works out to a measly 32.92 per 100,000 population.
↑2 The math: 286,578 total population, times 0.448, the percentage of the population listed as being black, times 0.487, the percentage of the population who are male, yields a black male population of 62,524. 45 black male victims divided by 0.62524 equals 71.97236, divided by 146, the day of the year, and multiplied by 365 days in the year yields 179.93.
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Lies, damned lies, and statistics The left use bogus numbers to try to make their case

Garbage in, garbage out: when you base your arguments on lies bad data, your arguments fall apart.

Mary Lou Marzian, former Kentucky House Representative for the previous District 34, and Honi Marleen Goldman, described as “a Kentucky activist,” and is, in fact, a pro-abortion agitator, were granted OpEd space in what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal, claiming that the General Assembly, Kentucky’s state legislature, is unfairly gerrymandered to harm the interests of the Commonwealth’s urban residents.

Fueled by dark money, Kentucky’s rural/urban divide hurts all of us | Opinion

by Mary Lou Marzian and Honi Goldman | Thursday, May 25, 2023 | 10:11 AM EDT | Updated: 12:23 PM EDT

Kentucky is comprised of 120 counties. In only two of those counties is there a major city, Louisville and Lexington (1.4 million and 517,000 respectively). Together these two key cities make up 44% of Kentucky’s population.

The citizens of Louisville and Lexington are diverse in race, religion, and ethnic origin. The population in Kentucky’s smaller towns and counties is primarily white and Christian.

The biggest concerns in the urban centers are crime, homelessness, and human rights. The rural areas focus on gun rights, “Family Values” and government overreach.

The issues for both sides are unique and fundamental to their respective populations.

Read more here.

One of the things about reading articles online is that the browser tabs can sometimes tell you more than the authors and editors want you to know. As originally saved, the article was entited “With misinformation, Ky’s urban/rural divide hurts us.” Someone, who would normally be the newspaper’s editor, changed the title, to blame “dark money”, and changed urban/rural to rural/urban. 🙂

The authors’ first paragraph gives us the “misinformation” with which the article was originally entitled. Louisville’s population is not 1.4 million and Lexington’s is not 517,000. According to the United States Census Bureau, the Louisville/Jefferson County’s population in the 2020 Census was 633,045, and the July 1, 2022 guesstimate is 624,444. The Census Bureau stated that Lexington/Fayette County’s population was 322,570 in the 2020 Census, and a guesstimated 320,347 as of July 1, 2022. The population of the entire state was given as 4,505,836 in the Census, and an estimated 4,512,310 last July.

Let’s do the math! 624,444 + 320,347 = 944,791. 944,791 ÷ 4,512,310 = 0.2094, or 20.94%.

So, no, those “two key cities” do not “make up 44% of Kentucky’s population.”

It has been suggested that Misses Marzian and Goldman were actually using the metropolitan statistical area concept for population numbers, and the Louisville metropolitan statistical area had a population of 1,395,855, close enough to the 1.4 million the authors claimed.

Also see: William Teach; Credentialed Media Is Losing Minds After Target Removes LGBT Material

But the metropolitan statistical area for Louisville includes Clark, Floyd, Harrison, and Washington counties in Indiana! Unintentionally or otherwise, Misses Marzian and Goldman were trying to include parts of Indiana in the Bluegrass State’s population, to reach their elevated count of 44%.

The Kentucky counties listed as part of the Louisville metropolitan statistical area are, along with Jefferson, Bullitt, Henry, Oldham, Shelby, Spencer, and Trimble. The authors contended that these were all urbanized counties, with urbanized interests: “crime, homelessness, and human rights.” But, in the 2020 presidential election, while Joe Biden carried Jefferson County 228,358 (59.06%) to 150,646 (38.96%) for President Trump, Mr Trump carried the other listed Kentucky counties, in the same order, by 73.12%, 72.05%, 59.65%, 63.93%, 76.42%, and 74.70%.

The counties listed as part of the Lexington/Fayette County metropolitan statistical area are Bourbon, Clark, Jessamine, Scott, and Woodford, and while Mr Biden carried Fayette County 90,600 (59.25%) to Mr Trump’s 58,860 (38.49%), President Trump carried the other listed counties, respectively, 64.16%, 65.11%, 65.05%, 61.33%, and 54.97%.

In the two United States Senate races, Mitch McConnell vs Amy McGrath Henderson in 2020, and Rand Paul vs Charles Booker in 2022, while the Democrat challenger carried Jefferson and Fayette counties, the Republican incumbent carried all of the others in their metropolitan statistical areas.

These are all statewide races; there are no gerrymandered districts.

Back to the original:

However, 75% of Kentucky State House Representatives, 77% State Senators, 83% of U.S. House Representatives and 100% of Kentucky’s U.S. Senators are making laws that affect nearly half of Kentucky’s population who are against what these legislators are voting for and what their campaigns are based on.

The authors couldn’t even get that right! The GOP controls 80%, not 75%, of the seats in the state House of Representatives; the 75% figure was from the previous House, from 2021-22, rather than the current one. With 30 seats in the state Senate, the GOP controls 79% — 78.94% to be more accurate — in that chamber. Can’t the authors do math?

But, while those numbers are pretty strong for Republicans, with the only two reliably Democratic counties in the state having just 20.94% of the Commonwealth’s population, they seem to fit the way Kentuckians vote!

Naturally, there are some Republicans in Jefferson and Fayette counties, just as there are Democrats in the rural areas, but the numbers have pretty much worked out.

While the authors gave at least a tip of the hat to more rural Kentuckians — “The rural areas focus on gun rights, ‘Family Values’ and government overreach. The issues for both sides are unique and fundamental to their respective populations” — it didn’t take them too long to list a litany of complaints blatantly tilted to the ‘progressive’ agenda. They continued:

The citizens of Kentucky are fighting for their very existence. Laws are being passed that claim to “protect” the rural population from concocted horrors, are in fact hurting and killing people in the urban population.

Killing people? What laws are being passed which kill people? We know, of course, that Miss Goldman fully supports prenatal infanticide, so it would seem that the laws she supports would actually kill people!

In very conservative Kentucky, the Lexington Herald-Leader has apparently taken a full-tilt transgender advocacy stand. Long-time Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford even told us it was coming:

Alex Acquisto has written a harrowing, intimate account of some of the families in our state who are simply trying to meet their children’s needs in the wake of Senate Bill 150, which bans gender-affirming healthcare. She opens with a scene of 13-year-old Henry Svec who sat in a Frankfort hearing room as “experts” defined him as unnatural, confused and disordered. Henry and his parents are actually pretty clear about who Henry is and what he needs. They’d like to provide it to him, but the GOP majority has decided that “parents rights” means politicians get to decide what’s best for Henry.

In Opinion, we will have some first person accounts from trans people on the front lines. Rebecca Blankenship, the first trans person elected to public office in Kentucky, and some of her colleagues talk about how the trans movement is used by both the left and right for their own purposes. Ysa Leon, the incoming SGA president at Transy, always believed they would live in Kentucky and work to make it a better place, but now believes they will have to leave[1]The author claims to be transgender and uses the plural pronouns. because politicians are ginning up so much hatred. Bill Adkins, a lawyer in Williamsburg, is not trans, but he does study history and explains how political scapegoating of minorities can lead to far more deadly consequences. Former Rep. Mary Lou Marzian explains how gerrymandering has given rural legislators too much power over urban areas, which further heightens these kinds of divides.

As we have previously noted, the newspaper has fallen completely out-of-touch with its readership. Newspapers are failing all over the country, but the newspaper, which was once the dominant paper in central and eastern Kentucky, is a shadow of its former self. Where, in junior high and early high school I used to deliver the old Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, they closed up their printing plant in seven years ago, outsourcing the print edition to a plant outside of Louisville 1½ hours west of Lexington, and dropped a separate Saturday edition at the beginning of 2020.

You want home delivery outside of Lexington? Too bad, so sad, but it ain’t going to happen!

The truthful statistic? Kentuckians as a whole are pretty conservative, and while there are some liberals and even progressives in the Bluegrass State, they are a decided minority. I can remember, back in the dark age of quill pens on parchment, University of Kentucky political science professor Malcolm Jewell telling his students that the two major party candidates are practically guaranteed 40% of the vote, and the real battle is for the 20% that’s actually up for grabs. But in the three most recent statewide general election campaigns, Democrats Joe Biden, Amy McGrath Henderson, and Charles Booker couldn’t even get the 40% Dr Jewell told us they were guaranteed.

References

References
↑1 The author claims to be transgender and uses the plural pronouns.
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Killadelphia: Could Philly see ‘only’ 450 homicides in 2023?

I have not been posting nearly as many ‘math’ stories about the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love this year, because that math is so different.

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, there have been 165 total homicides through 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, May 24, while the website Broad + Liberty has the total at 168. The 24th was the 144th day of the year, which leads to a homicide rate, using the ‘official’ PPD number, of 1.1458 homicides per day, on pace for 418 murders for the entire year.

Of course, that ignores the normal increase in homicides during the long, hot summer!

The number of homicides is 12.23$ lower than the same day in 2022. If we multiply that over the course of the year, that would yield a total homicide number for the year of 452.87, certainly a vast improvement over 2022’s 516 killings. Doing the same math, using 2021’s record-setting pace, the math works out to 450.15 homicides.

But then I look at 2020’s official homicide total of 499 — though there’s reason to believe that 502 is the correct figure — and the math works out quite differently. The current numbers are 12.24% higher than 2020’s homicide pace, which works out to 560.10 murders for 2023.

So, why is this significant? Because today, May 25th, is the third anniversary of the unfortunate death of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl addled convicted felon George Floyd while he was resisting arrest for passing counterfeit money in Minneapolis. With that, the American left went absolutely bonkers, and killings soared. The idiotic #BlackLivesMatter protests led to more black people being killed!

The death of Mr Floyd was hardly the only tragedy of 2020, as the COVID-19 panicdemic[1]No, that isn’t a typographical error: the spelling of ‘panicdemic’ reflects exactly how I see it as having been. hit, the economy was trashed, and our civil rights unconstitutionally restricted.

But life has returned to (mostly) normal now, and with the numbers working out as they do, I have to wonder: absent another monumental stupidity like we saw three years ago, could Philadelphia see well under 500 homicides this year? Is something around 450 a reasonable projection?

References

References
↑1 No, that isn’t a typographical error: the spelling of ‘panicdemic’ reflects exactly how I see it as having been.
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The good, #progressive and environmentalist Penn students leave the streets filled with garbage Why should I take their environmentalist statements seriously when they won't live up to them personally?

Do you see those dark blue areas, just to the left of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia? The dark blue areas are the wards in which far-left ‘progressive’ Helen Gym Flaherty received the plurality of the votes cast in the Democratic mayoral primary, and the bulge toward the east is University City, where the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University are located.

The University of Pennsylvania, more commonly referred to as UPenn or just Penn, is a private, Ivy League college, the total tuition and fees of which were $63,452 for the 2022-23 academic year, not including housing. Cha-ching!

Mrs Flaherty did not win the nomination, and finished in third place, with just 22.02% of the votes, but as we have previously noted, Mrs Flaherty had:

her biggest appeal wound up being with wealthier (white) voters in the city.

Gym won 29% of the vote in precincts where people made an average of $100,000 and more and just 11% in precincts where the average income was less than $50,000 a year, an Inquirer analysis shows.

That’s why this next story is so amusing. Her support was supposedly strongest among the progressives who wanted to fight against global warming climate change and were strong environmentalists, but there’s apparently a lot of do as we say, not do as we do there:

A non-exhaustive list of trash Penn students left on the streets of Philadelphia

As students move out for the year, it’s “Penn Christmas” — or trash apocalypse.

by Zoe Greenberg | Wednesday, May 24, 2023 | 7:05 AM EDT

When University of Pennsylvania students evacuate their off-campus houses each spring, looking forward to bright summers and brighter futures, one thing stays behind on the streets of Philadelphia: their junk. This season in West Philly is sometimes called “Penn Christmas” because of the potential hidden treasures buried in the trash; it’s seen by others as pure disaster.

In honor of this annual event, we compiled a non-exhaustive list of the detritus we observed on four city blocks surrounding Penn’s campus this year. (Penn commencement was May 15, so there were not many treasures left):

Rather than reprint author Zoe Greenberg’s non-exhaustive list, I chose to include her photo, as fair-use documentation. A picture, it has been said, is worth a thousand words, and another photo she took shows a discarded love seat, as well as some carpeting ripped up, cardboard, and other trash left on the curb. There are also other photos, taken by staff photographer Monica Herndon.

Miss Greenberg’s Inquirer bio tells us that she specializes in the city’s “youth culture, gender, sexuality, and how people make money and meaning.” So what, I have to ask, is the “meaning” behind wealthy and well-to-do students, students who, in the main, are progressive and environmentalist, leaving their junk on the city’s streets?

Well, the “meaning” I take is simple: why should I take seriously the global warming climate change and environmental activist statements of people who, again, overall, don’t seem to show any real concern for the environment themselves?

One wonders what the working-class Philadelphia Sanitation Department workers think about the good, privileged Ivy League students who made 42nd Street and Baltimore Avenue look like Kensington for a week, as those workers have to pick up the trash strewn around.