Tag Archives: #PhiladelphiaInquirer

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The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington show trial

Though he has been out of office for 17 months now, Donald Trump lives on, rent-free, in the skulls of the left. Four of the lovely Amanda Marcotte’s last five Salon articles are all about Trump, Trump, Trump!,, and, as always, the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer feel Mr Trump knocking on the inside of their skulls as well. I will admit it: I missed this bit of dumbness from the Inky on Tuesday, but they were good enough to tweet about it to alert me:

Liz Cheney’s lonely fight against the extremist wing of the GOP | Editorial

Cheney’s work on the committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, has come at great professional and personal cost, including death threats.

by the Editorial Board | Tuesday, June 14, 2022

It shouldn’t make headlines when a member of Congress upholds their sworn oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) stands out as one of the few elected Republicans in Washington willing to put country before party.

The vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol understands that the peaceful transfer of power is the linchpin of our democracy. She also fully grasps the historic importance of ensuring accountability for the months-long effort by Donald Trump and his minions to steal the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

Can we tell the truth here, since the Inky omitted it? Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) is not on the committee because the GOP appointed her, but because Speaker Nancy Pelosi did, to try to make it seem as though this was bi-partisan. There are two, and only two, Republican members, Miss Cheney and Rep Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) on the committee, the only two Republicans who voted to establish it in the first place. Mr Kinzinger, one of just ten Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump, could see the handwriting on the wall, and decided not to seek re-election.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: The J6 Smear Machine

I can’t just copy-and-paste the entire editorial, but you can read it if you follow the embedded link. The Editorial Board lament that Miss Cheney has lost power and prestige within the Republican caucus, and that she’s very likely to lose the Republican primary for re-nomination for Wyoming’s at-large House of Representatives seat.

The Inquirer Editorial Board does not typically agree with Cheney’s policy positions. She is a hard-line conservative who voted with Trump 93% of the time. But we agree that Trump is a danger to democracy, which is why we’re taking the unusual step of endorsing Cheney in the upcoming congressional primary.

This is where it truly got funny. The Editorial Board absolutely refused to endorse any Republican candidates in the Pennsylvania GOP primaries, due to their pro-life positions, but here they’ve endorsed Miss Cheney, who is pro-life herself, because Mr Trump is living so loudly within their skulls.

While most of our readers can’t vote for Cheney, they can donate to her campaign, send a message of support, encourage friends in her district to vote for her, and talk with friends and family about the ongoing threat to democracy that the Trump wing of the GOP represents.

In the 2020 presidential election, President Trump received 193,559 votes, 69.94% of the total, compared to Mr Biden’s 73,491, or 26.55%, and the Cowboy State provided Mr Trump’s largest percentage margin in 2020. The vast majority of Wyoming’s residents will never read or even hear of the Editorial Board’s position, and even if they do, the silly thing is behind the Inquirer’s paywall!

Friday will mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Nixon’s abuse of power and obstruction of justice were also a threat to democracy and the rule of law, but Republicans in Congress placed the Constitution and country above politics. Their actions were bolstered by public opinion shaped by the same set of facts. In today’s America, where right-wing pundits spin the truth Trump’s way on Fox News and the internet, it’s more difficult to reach consensus.

Watergate was an actual, serious — and completely unnecessary — crime, something that the Capitol kerfuffle really isn’t. The left want to call it treason, sedition, an insurrection, but the kerfufflers weren’t even armed. It’s kind of difficult to stage some sort of coup d’etat without any guns. Even Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch was better planned than January 6th as far as insurrections go.

Cheney’s lonely fight for her fellow Republicans’ support suggests Congress cannot be counted on this time. If the House Select Committee’s attempt to bring Trump to justice fails, it will be left to voters to remind candidates and incumbents who have dismissed the ongoing attack on our democracy that the people will have the last word.

Of course, the neither the House Select Committe, nor the House of Representatives as a whole, nor the Congress as a whole, can “bring Trump to justice”. The Congress has no power to issue indictments, and the two futile impeachments have demonstrated that a third attempt would be just as much of a waste of time and money. Meanwhile, the public are suffering under an 8.6% inflation rate, the economy contracted 1.4% during the first quarter, and store shelves are occasionally empty. This House Select Committee farce is very much about trying to deflect the voters’ attention away from the failures of the Biden Administration today by trying to focus them on 17 months ago. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who absolutely hates Republicans for denying him a Supreme Court seat, and his minions at the Department of Justice, do have the power to indict former President Trump on whatever crimes for which they can find evidence, but it’s laughable to picture being able to seat an impartial jury against him.

Republicans agitated for President Trump’s entire term to bring Hillary Clinton and her minions to justice, and it never happened. President Gerald Ford, with his pardon of former President Richard Nixon, pretty much established that the United States was not going to put former Presidents on trial, so the House is now engaged in something not that dissimilar from the Moscow show trials.

From 1861 to 1865, we were engaged in what Abraham Lincoln called a “great Civil War,” but, after the defeat of the Confederacy, no one was brought to trial for treason or revolution against the United States. Robert E Lee was charged, but never tried. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured, and held in irons in a casemate at Fort Monroe for two years before any trial, but was eventually released on bail; no trial was ever held, as President Andrew Johnson, on Christmas Day of 1868, issued a blanket “pardon and amnesty” for treason to “every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion.”

The Editorial Board and the Democrats want to treat the Capitol kerfuffle more harshly than the Civil War, which saw a million Americans, civilian and military, sent early to their eternal rewards.

The Editorial Board concluded:

(I)t will be left to voters to remind candidates and incumbents who have dismissed the ongoing attack on our democracy that the people will have the last word.

In the end, that much is true. And while the general election is still 4½ months away, and anything can happen, the probabilities are that the voters will have that last word by ending the Democrats’ majority in the House of Representatives and quite possibly the Senate as well. If the Republicans regain control of the Congress, will they hold show trial hearings over the Mrs Clinton and her campaign and the faked ‘Russian collusion’ scheme? They could, and today’s Democrats have set the precedent to allow them to do so.

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Black lives don’t matter, at least not to credentialed media

While I have mentioned the censorship of The Philadelphia Inquirer previously, we don’t always get the evidence quite so directly.

Police Officer Miguel Torres, Badge Number 7191, reported on a shooting in Mantua:

16th District — Shooting Incident

35XX Fairmont Avenue on highway at 7L06 PM. Victim #1 – Black female 19 years old was shot 2X in the right side. She was transported to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center by RPC 16S6. She is in stable condition. Victim #2 – Black female 34 years old was shot 2X in the right leg. She was transported to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center by EPW 1601. She is in stable condition. Victim #3 – Black male 59 years old was shot 3X in the right leg. He was transported to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center by RPC 16S7. He is in stable condition. Victim #4 – Black male unknown age was shot multiple times in the right side. He was transported to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center by RPC 16T1. He is in critical condition. Scene held, no arrest and no weapon recovered.

So, how did the Inquirer report the incident?

Gun violence across the city Wednesday also included a quadruple shooting in Mantua. At about 7 p.m., while walking on the 3500 block of Fairmount Avenue, a 19-year-old woman was shot twice in her right side, a 34-year-old woman was hit twice in right leg and a 59-year-old man was shot three times in his right leg. A 19-year-old male was shot multiple times in his right side,. All of the victims were brought to Penn Presbyterian, police said. Three were in stable condition, but the teenage male was in critical condition.

Police told reporters on the scene that the four victims were walking to a prom send-off party when they were shot, possibly by someone riding by on a bicycle, according to FOX29.

Reporter Rita Giordano cited Fox 29 News as her source, but the Fox 29 report did not state that the victims were transported to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, so Miss Giordano had to have a second source. The police report noted that each of the victims was black, something wholly omitted from the Inquirer article. Why does the Inquirer censor the news?

The 19-year-old male victim appeared to be the person specifically targeted when the “gunman rode past the four victims on a mountain bike and fired at least 9 shots from a semi-automatic weapon,” according to the Fox 29 News report. The other victims were simply struck by “stray bullets.” Continue reading →

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Killadelphia All the News That's Politically Correct!

The WordPress software I use for The First Street Journal assigns numbers to posts with the same name; the system tells me that this is the 34th post entitled “Killadelphia”. That says something right there!

Robert Stacy McCain wrote too quickly:

The homicide total so far this year is 180 in “Killadelphia,” meaning that the city’s averaging about one homicide a day, but nobody seems to consider this an emergency, and Congress is sending billions to Ukraine.

If only it was just one homicide per day! The 180 murdered number was for Thursday, May 19th, the date for which that 180 total is accurate — the Philly Police do not update their statistics on Saturday or Sunday — was the 139th day of the year, meaning that the City of Brotherly Love is killing the brothers at the rate of 1.295 per day!

But, come Monday morning, and we get the update: there have now been 186 souls who have been sent early to their eternal rewards on Philly’s mean streets as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, May 22nd, upping that average to 1.310 per day. As of right now, the statistics project 520 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love for 2022.[1]Methodology: I have taken the number of homicides on this date in 2022 and divided that by the number of homicides on the same date in 2021, then multiplied that number by 562, the number of … Continue reading

As of the same date, 807 people had been shot in the city. Maybe the gang bangers had actually killed 180 people, but they tried to kill at least 807!

As of May 18th, ‘only’ 160 out of 180 homicides was committed by firearm; on the same day Philly reported 802 shootings, down from 807 on the same date in 2021. While homicides were down by 9.91%, shootings were down only 0.62%. Translation: the thugs are shooting at each other at about the same rate, but they have become poorer shots, killing only 19.95% of their intended victims.

Actually, it’s even lower than that, since we have no statistics on how many people were shot at, but missed completely.

Interestingly enough, The Philadelphia Inquirer actually reported on the weekend’s bloodletting, in a story which was linked on the main page of the newspaper’s website, which was yet another surprise to me! Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 Methodology: I have taken the number of homicides on this date in 2022 and divided that by the number of homicides on the same date in 2021, then multiplied that number by 562, the number of homicides in 2021. I do this to account for the fact that homicides tend to increase as the weather warms up, and this approximates the trend as the year progresses. Other methods of doing this could be used. If I simply multiplied the current daily homicide number by 365, it would result in an anticipated homicide number of 478, but that doesn’t take into account the effects of warmer weather, nor does it seem anywhere like a reasonable number the way the trends are moving.
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Killadelphia Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.

Philly Police Department press release via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News. Click to enlarge.

Two more Philadelphians bit the dust yesterday, but if The Philadelphia Inquirer was your only news source, you’d never know it. Nine people bled out their lives’ blood in the city’s mean streets over the last five days, but the “anti-racist news organization” won’t tell you anything. In December of 2020, columnist Heleb Ubiñas wrote, “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.” A year and a half later, the Inquirer, under publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes and Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar, don’t want you to know that anyone was killed.

With 6,245,051 people according to the 2020 census, Philadelphia and its surrounding metropolitan area is the seventh largest in the United States. With a population of 1,603,797, the city of Philadelphia itself is the sixth largest in the United States. The Inquirer is the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, older than The New York Times and The Washington Post. So why, then, does The Philadelphia Inquirer rank only 17th in circulation? Could it be because they censor the news?

The numbers are stark. At the end of Thursday, May 12, the city was seeing 1.295 homicides per day. Five days later, that’s up to 1.314 per day. More importantly, the City of Brotherly Love has gone from a projected 503 homicides in 2022 to 514.[1]Methodology: to compensate for the normal increase in homicides as warmer weather approaches, I have taken the number of homicides on a given date, divided it by the number on the same day in 2021, … Continue reading

So, if the newspaper does not report on homicides in its own home city, on what does it report? How about his gem? Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 Methodology: to compensate for the normal increase in homicides as warmer weather approaches, I have taken the number of homicides on a given date, divided it by the number on the same day in 2021, and multiplied that fraction by 562, the number of homicides in 2021. I have also compared the numbers to 2020’s homicide rate, and come up with huge numbers, 623 and 642, but have not really given them much credence. There are several different ways of calculating the numbers, but I will note that I accurately projected 562 homicides for 2021 on July 9, 2021.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer is still covering for tax cheat Larry Krasner

We noted, on May 13th, how Fox News had reported, the previous day, that District Attorney Larry Krasner’s private business ventures had not paid all of their taxes. We pointed out how The Philadelphia Inquirer, which had just sent out a begging-for-donations letter touting their “accountability journalism”, had not reported on Mr Krasner’s unpaid taxes.

As of 8:10 PM EDT on Tuesday, May 17th, there’s still no indication in a site search for Larry Krasner that the Inquirer has mentioned it. Well, they may have to do so soon:

It seems that the public, many of whom are loudly complaining about recent assessments which will increase their property tax bills, might not be that thrilled with Mr Krasner not paying what he owes.

I’ll check the Inky again later tonight, and Wednesday morning, to see if they’ve had the guts to tell Philadelphians the truth.

Update: Wednesday, May 18, 2022 | 8:20 AM EDT

As of this time, site searches for Larry Krasner, Krasner tax, and Krasner protest have not indicated any stories about the District Attorney’s tax problems. There was no story on the issue on the main page of the Inquirer’s website. What can anyone conclude other than the newspaper has simply chosen not to report anything negative about George Soros’ stooge?

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The left worry about ten people killed by a deranged white shooter, but ignore the wholesale slaughter of young black men by other young black men There's just no political value for the left in worrying about street crime

Robert Stacy McCain wrote:

This reminds me of how anti-Semitic and anti-Asian hate crimes were spiking a few months ago, but because the perpetrators were black, liberals didn’t want to talk about the problem.

It is no longer enough to not be racist; you must now be anti-racist!

Anti-racism encompasses a range of ideas and political actions which are meant to counter racial prejudice, systemic racism, and the oppression of specific racial groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions which are intended to provide equal opportunities for all people on both an individual and a systemic level. As a philosophy, it can be engaged in by the acknowledgment of personal privileges, confronting acts as well as systems of racial discrimination, and/or working to change personal racial biases. Major contemporary anti-racism efforts include Black Lives Matter organizing and workplace antiracism.

Today’s credentialed media have taken that to mean that news which could “perpetuat(e) stereotypes about who commits crime in our community” — quote taken from the Sacramento Bee but could have come from any number of newspapers — must be soft-peddled if not outright suppressed. Maybe that’s why the two murders yesterday in the City of Brotherly Love — both committed fairly early in the evening so there was plenty of time — were not mentioned on either the main page or crime page of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Continue reading →

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About that “accountability journalism”?

On Monday, May 9th, I received the email pictured at the right from Annie McCain Madonia, Chief Advancement Officer for the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the non-profit owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, saying:

As an Inquirer reader, you know the importance of quality, in-depth local news. Inquirer journalists are dedicated to keeping you informed and connected to the latest news in the Philadelphia area.

The Inquirer is owned by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which makes it the largest American newspaper owned by a nonprofit organization. This innovative ownership structure helps support investigative news and accountability journalism, new technology, and a newsroom of growing diversity and community impact.

Thanks to the support of individuals like you, The Inquirer has the resources to report on stories that impact and improve our communities. Will you join me in making a gift to support The Inquirer’s journalism, and double your impact with this match?

“Investigative news”? “Accountability journalism”?

Why, then, is there not a single mention on the Inquirer’s website, of a story which appeared an entire day ago concerning Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s failure to pay his taxes? Continue reading →

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Why does a newspaper censor the news? The Philadelphia Inquirer kept from its readers information already available to the public.

With 6,245,051 people according to the 2020 census, Philadelphia and its surrounding metropolitan area is the seventh largest in the United States. With a population of 1,603,797, the city of Philadelphia itself is the sixth largest in the United States. So why, then, does The Philadelphia Inquirer rank only 17th in circulation? Could it be because they censor the news?

Grandson charged with murdering his grandfather and another man stemming from a dispute over bedroom conditions

The circumstances leading to the arrest of Czar McMichael, 22, of North Philly, began on Thursday when Benjamin E. McMichael, 67, conducted “a routine inspection” of his grandson’s bedroom.

by Diane Mastrull | Sunday, May 1, 2022 | 4:27 PM EDT

Czar McMichael, via Fox 29 News

A Philadelphia man has been charged with murder in two shootings over two days that left his grandfather and another man dead in a double homicide that emanated from a complaint over the condition of the grandson’s bedroom, police said Sunday.The circumstances leading to the arrest of Czar McMichael, 22, of the Logan section of North Philly, began on Thursday when, police said, Benjamin E. McMichael, 67, conducted “a routine inspection” of his grandson Czar’s third-floor bedroom in their home on the 4600 block of North Broad Street and was upset with the condition of the room.

Police said the elder McMichael grabbed his grandson’s arm and Czar McMichael spun around and shot his grandfather.

On Saturday Anthony Ham, 45, of Philadelphia, along with an acquaintance stopped by the McMichael home to check on Benjamin because they hadn’t heard from him in a couple days. Ham got into the home by climbing through a window and unlocked the door for the person with him, whom police did not identify.

There’s more at the original.

What did I predict? That the newspaper would decline to print the suspect’s mugshot and would do what it could to conceal the suspect’s race. And in fact the Inquirer did not include the suspect’s mugshot, though it was easily available and had been published on Fox 29 News. Steve Keeley of Fox 29 tweeted his mugshot at 1:47 PM EDT, 2 hours and 40 minutes before the Inquirer’s article was published.

Mr Keeley also published the Philadelphia Police Department’s press release on the matter, which noted that the victims were a (45/B/M) and a (67/B/M), but of course the very “anti-racist” and #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Inquirer were not about to publish that!

Yet the newspaper published the mugshot of Kathleen Kane, a Scranton woman who has been out of public office for six years, who has been disbarred and thus no longer practices law, and who has, as nearly as I can discover, simply been living on the spousal support from the wealthy businessman she divorced since she got out of jail.

Black murder suspect in the newspaper’s hometown? Conceal that information! Attractive white woman accused, but not convicted of, a DUI? Splash her photo all over the newspaper’s website, and Twitter!

This is what passes for journalism in the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper: conceal the facts which are inconvenient and do not go along with publisher Lisa Hughes’ ideas and goals.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Isn’t this interesting?

Screen capture from The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 30, 2022. Click to enlarge.

The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t print mugshots of people accused or rape and murder, but they made an exception for a cute white girl.

Kathleen Kane was Pennsylvania’s Attorney General from 2013 to 2016, when she was forced to resign. She won election after a campaign in which she accused Governor Tom Corbett (R-PA), a former state Attorney General, of dragging his feet in building up the child sexual abuse case against former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, stating that more boys could have been raped due to Mr Corbett’s slow process; Mrs Kane was never able to find such a victim.

The case Mr Corbett and his successors built was almost air-tight, and Mr Sandusky was convicted, and sentenced to 30 to 60 years behind bars, which is tantamount to a life sentence for someone of his age.

Former State Attorney General Kathleen Kane was jailed again to await a hearing on a DUI arrest

Kane previously served eight months behind bars for her attacks on a rival.

by Craig R McCoy | Friday, April 29, 2022 | 4:36 PM EDT

Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was jailed Friday for violating her probation on a perjury conviction with her arrest last month on a DUI charge.

Kane, 55, turned herself in Friday morning after Montgomery County Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy issued a warrant for her arrest for violating her probation. The judge had previously sentenced Kane to prison after presiding over the 2016 perjury case that cut short Kane’s meteoric political career.

Kane will stay behind bars until a hearing on the probation violation, unless her lawyer can win an earlier release. No date has been set for the hearing, at which the judge could which revoke Kane’s probation and keep her in jail, order her to get alcohol treatment, or impose no further penalty.

The state’s former top prosecutor was released on five years’ probation in the summer of 2019 after serving eight months for the perjury conviction at the Montgomery County jail in Eagleville, where she is now being held again.

There’s more at the original.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Back where she belongs

The story isn’t really that interesting, and I would probably not have mentioned it, other than the Inquirer’s hypocrisy. The newspaper declined to print the publicly available mugshot of previously convicted felon Quintez Adams, accused of raping a woman on a SEPTA train, something most people would thing a far more serious crime than a DUI, but was perfectly willing to splash Mrs Kane’s mugshot across the internet, not only in the digital version of the story, but on Twitter as well.

Yes, Mrs Kane used to be a public figure, but she’s now just a convicted felon, with no public role, and hasn’t had a public role since she resigned as Attorney General six years ago. She does not live in Philly, but well up the Northeast Extension in Scranton. Following her conviction, the state Supreme Court disbarred Mrs Kane, so she’s no longer an attorney.

So, why publish Mrs Kane’s mugshot, but not the mugshots of the criminals apprehended and charged in the City of Brotherly Love? It couldn’t possibly be because most of the criminals in Philly are black, while Mrs Kane is a pretty white woman, could it?