Judge Judy blames liberal prosecutors for skyrocketing crime rate

The following is an edited version of an article published by the (UK) Daily Mail. 

In a recent interview with Fox News Digital, Judge Judy (Sheindlin) blamed liberal district attorneys for leaving America's cities "ruined", and said they would be better employed "filling ice-cream cones."

The veteran reality TV star, known for making rough the path of the wicked, said the country is in worse shape than it was when her popular programme started 30 years ago because "a small group of people who have very loud voices created a scenario where bad people got rewarded."

And she lashed out at a culture that increasingly excuses people's behaviour on the basis of their background. "I know how we got here," she said. "When society started to make excuses for bad behaviour, and react to criminality based upon the excuses, it fell apart."

Judge Judy spoke out after Multnomah County (OR) DA Mike Schmidt became the latest liberal prosecutor elected in the wake of the Black Lives Matter scam to lose his bid for re-election. "When you have district attorneys who are charged, whose job it is to do justice, but to keep the community safe, when you have elected district attorneys who don't know what their job is, they should go find another job," said the judge. "'Fill ice cream cones someplace, but don't ruin cities."

She added, "And what's happened around New York City, Portland, San Francisco, you had district attorneys who didn't know what their job was. And the cities are ruined, people are leaving."

So far this year, robberies are up 5.2% in the Big Apple, while recorded hate crimes have jumped 11% per cent. In Portland, larceny offenses jumped to more than 26,000 in the year to April, while arrests for prostitution more than doubled amid an ongoing drugs and homelessness crisis. 

Meanwhile, in the District of Columia, homicides jumped by 35% while robberies were up 67%. In San Francisco, DA Chesa Boudin lost his job in a 2022 recall election after securing just three -- count `em, 3 -- drug convictions the previous year.

Judge Sheindlin lashed out at the state of New York's 2019 decision to raise the minimum age at which a suspect can be tried as an adult to 18, branding it "ridiculous... If you have family, if you have a mother who's 65 years old who's walking to the grocery store and some crazy for no reason hits her over the head with a steel pipe and kills her, and they're 17, that person should never be allowed to walk the street again, because society can't take a chance.

"If I wouldn't take a chance on him living next to me why would I take a chance on him living next to you? You're just as dead as somebody 18 kills you, or 17. And if you're 17 years old and kill somebody, you don't belong with kids who are 12, in a juvenile facility. But a very small group of people pushed through in New York State, for instance, raising the level of criminal responsibility."

The explanations for why a person becomes a criminal should never be confused with excuses, she said. "You know there is always a reason for criminal behaviour. 

"Didn't have a good upbringing, didn't have two parents in the house, didn't have one parent in the house, there's always a reason. You're mentally ill. That's a reason. You took drugs, that's a reason. You took alcohol, your brain is fried, whatever it is. There is never an excuse for bad behaviour."

Judge Judy also reflected on how the situation has deteriorated since she began her TV career. "Here we are, 30 years later, and are we in a worse shape as a country, as a world, than we were in 1993? You bet your bottom we are. I think we better get smarter before we get lost," she added. "Permanently lost."

Victor Davis Hanson on the sad state of America's cities... and society

 Victor Davis Hanson is an American classicist, military historian, and political commentator. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets. His clear thinking has been reposted on WWW; plug his name into the search window to find earlier posts. 

Yesterday, Mr Hanson's latest thoughts on the decline and fall of the Disunited States of America were published on the American Greatness website under the headline "America’s Decline?". Subhead: The remedies are agreed upon, but the needed medicine is feared more than the disease. Because today, the government is the cause of our many crises. Here's the first part of his commentary.

Now with the election of Joe Biden, what had been a fast-tracked decline has accelerated at such an astonishing rate we can scarcely recognize our country.

Our largest cities are becoming uninhabitable—dilapidated, dangerous, and dysfunctional. The challenge is not just rampant crime, but the realization that if you, the citizen, are stabbed, shot, or beaten up on the street, the perpetrators may well be exempt from most punishments. And the victim either will be forgotten in his misery or, indeed, blamed for bringing such violence upon himself.

Urban schools are not places of instruction anymore. That fact is accepted by teachers’ unions, whose operative principle seems to be that the more hopeless the idea of educating urban youth is understood to be, the less burdensome the workload, and the greater their hazardous duty pay.

Urban chain stores are closing down on the principle that if police cannot or will not stop consumer violence and theft, then consumers there should not have any store to buy anything, anyway. If there is no store, how can it be looted or shop-lifted? [That's called "reparations shopping"! Ed.]

The only mystery remaining is how long these Democrat-controlled, racially charged, and corrupt municipalities can sustain their budgets and pension commitments with increasingly declining revenue. One can tax the well off, and perhaps even gouge them as California does. But one cannot insult and ridicule them in the process. Being highly taxed is one thing, being highly taxed while hated is quite another.

How eerie that medievalism—defecting, urinating, fornicating, injecting in the street—is relabeled “homelessness—as if the problem is merely a shortage of apartments or tent cities. Somehow cities developed the notion that it was crueler to be told not to pull down one’s pants and defecate in the street than it was for a pedestrian to step into infectious human excrement.

In the next five years, either cities will seek new governance to reduce taxes, break up municipal unions, mandate charter schools, restore police funding and manpower, recalibrate pensions, and prosecute criminals and corrupt officials—or Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and a score of others will become Detroit. [And let's not forget Chicago! Ed.]

One of the strangest phenomena amid our current debility are the millions of affluent leftists and liberals who have fled their unworkable, now unlivable blue-run, but naturally beautiful cities like San Francisco or Portland. They seem to lack an abstract recognition why they are leaving, or why and how their new chosen destinations are so different and therefore so inviting to them. Is their motto, “I am fleeing what I created, but I still hate those who created what I want”?

Mr Hanson is not one to post a jeremiad without suggesting some solutions, and he does so in the latter part of this article. Click here to read the whole thing. But will Mr Hanson's sensible solutions be enacted? Walt says there are two chances... slim and none!

It's official! Monkeypox is the new Covid is the new AIDs etc

Pandemics. They're everywhere! [Geddit? Ed.] Back in the good ole days all you had to get vaccinated against was smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, malaria, that sort of thing. But since the hippy-dippy 60s, when we learned that "free love" and "doing your own thing" without regard to the consequences was not just acceptable but commendable, we've had HIV/AIDs, SARS, bird flu, swine flu, Wuhan flu (aka Covid) and its Delta, Omicron etc variants. One health "emergency", which turns into a "crisis", after another. Arentcha sick of them? [Geddit? Ed.]

Although he still looks sick to me, President Brandon is said to be recovering from his second bout of Covid. He tells us, now, to keep getting vaccinated, over and over, and keep wearing a mask. Even so, he and Dr Death say, you're probably going to catch Covid anyway. In other words, the "emergency" is over. This is the new normal. Get used to it. 

That means a new "crisis" must be invented. Step forward monkeypox.

From darkest Africa, where the disease is endemic, monkeypox has spread rapidly to Europe and then to North America -- the Western World where intimate contact between male homosexuals (read: gay sex) is just as normal as straight sex used to be.

The "authorities" tell us that the monkeypox virus spreads through "prolonged skin-to-skin contact", which includes sex, kissing, breathing at close range, and sharing bedding and clothing, such as posing pouches. [Look it up. Ed.] Health officials are asking "people who could be at risk" to cover exposed skin when out in crowds and to watch out for symptoms, such as fever, blisters and rashes.

The lickspittle media are deliberately vague about who comprises the "at-risk populations", but now that the World Health Organization has declared the monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries a "global emergency", the LGBTQ2S+++ community itself is demanding that the rest of us spring to their assistance.

A state of emergency has now been declared by... wait for it... London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco. The city faces a public health crisis reminiscent of the AIDs epidemic that began devastating the city in the 1980s. "We are in desperate need of vaccines to support the people of San Francisco," she said, adding that the city has been pleading with federal health officials for more help, but to no avail.

The declaration was welcomed by gay advocates who have grown increasingly frustrated by what they called San Francisco's lacklustre response to a virus that affects "primarily men who have sex with men," although (they hasten to add) anyone can get infected.

State Senator Scott Wiener (D) said "San Francisco was at the forefront of the public health responses to HIV and COVID-19, and we will be at the forefront when it comes to monkeypox." Dr Susan Philip, San Francisco's answer to Dr Fauci, said "We can't and won't leave the LGBTQ community out to dry."

Thirty percent of all cases in California -- 261 out of roughly 800 -- are in San Francisco. There about 4600 cases nationwide.  A shortage of vaccine has resulted in people waiting in line for hours to catch a dose, often to be turned away when the shots run out. So far no-one has suggested the alternative, which would be for men to stop having sex with each other. Too Biblical, I guess.

"Allahu akbar!" in SanFran: berserk Afghan terminated by cops

Last Wednessday, in beautiful downtown San Francisco, a man screaming "Allahu akbar!" charged at police with a large kitchen knife and was shot multiple times with a handgun and beanbag projectiles. 

According to AP, Ajmal Amani had previously threatened to kill a man in his residential hotel with the same large knife, and later died of his wounds. He was "a former Afghan interpreter for U.S. special forces who had been shot several times during more than five years of service and struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder."

PJ Media's Robert Spencer, who authored this report, sez: That is a tragedy, but it's also a warning: how many of the tens of thousands of unvetted Afghans who have been brought to the U.S. by Old Joe Biden’s handlers are a similar threat?

UPDATED: Climate change denier, you are being watched!

This massive mural of hair-on-fire teen "climate activist" Greta Thunberg is going up near Union Square in the heart of San Francisco. It is still being detailed and is expected to be completed early next week.

Said Paul Scott, executive director of One Atmosphere, the nonprofit that commissioned the work, "We're hoping [the mural] is going to touch people and that it will open up their hearts and minds to the unbridled conviction of Greta's message." Doesn't that remind you of huge pictures and billboards with the face of Jesus that we used to see scattered around rural America? Very scary...

Walt wonders if there are CCTV cameras embedded behind Greta's eyes. Perhaps they relay images of the street below direct to Greta on the planet Nutso, or wherever she is. Perhaps not. She wouldn't be pleased to see the shit and other filth that are part of the San Fran street scene.

Further reading (added 11/11/19): "Declaring California a 'Compassionate State' – That’ll Fix Everything", by Phil Cowan, in the California Globe, 10/11/19. Subtitle: Where, exactly, is the compassion for Californians?

George Washington High School to cover up mural of... guess who?

Walt was saddened but not surprised to read a report on the FrontPage Mag site that a California high school named after the founder of the Excited States of America plans to cover a mural depicting George Washington.

Why? Need you ask? Because some liberal SJWs have complained that it's offensive and demeaning to Native Americans and African Americans (or "Indians" and "blacks", as they were once called).

Need I add that this over-the-top genuflection to political correctness is happening in America's gayest city -- San Francisco? The San Francisco school board is expected to decide next week whether to simply cover the image or, better yet (the guilt-ridden liberals say) paint over it. Whatever they do, they certainly won't leave the image in the open wherer students might look at it.

Daniel Greenfield, writer of the piece, comments that the cover-up "should be followed by a book burning of any volumes about George Washington and any history books featuring him." Indeed.

VIDEO: San Francisco BART won't release video of black yoofs mugging pax because "it will make people racist"

San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has surveillance videos -- hours and hours of them -- showing crimes such as mugging being committed on its trains. But it won't release them, because, in a feat of PC self-censorship remarkable even for San Francisco, the snowflakes at BART are concerned that the videos might "perpetuate racial bias and stereotyping." Seriously...

KPIX-TV reports that in just three months, at least three robberies have been perpetrated at BART's San Francisco station by groups of teenagers who were, errr, non-white. One such "swarming", on April 22nd, was committed by some 40-60 teens. Debora Allen, a director of BART, admits in the video embedded below, "I think people are genuinely concerned. They are fearful about the stories that have come out about the recent attacks, the assaults, the thefts."

Why, then, don't they release the surveillance videos so people can see what's going on and judge for themselves whether it's safe to ride on the system? Ms Allen says that when she asked BART management that question, they told her that releasing the videos "would create a racial bias in the riders against minorities on the trains."

That would seem to suggest that the poor disadvantaged yoofs involved were black. Well, maybe Hispanic. Ummm, no... let's call a spade a spade. In a follow-up e-mail, Ms Allen said, "I don’t understand what role the color of one's skin plays in this issue. Can you explain?"

BART Assistant General Manager Kerry Hamill answered, "If we were to regularly feed the news media video of crimes on our system that involve minority suspects, particularly when they are minors, we would certainly face questions as to why we were sensationalizing relatively minor crimes and perpetuating false stereotypes in the process."

Walt has highlighted the weasel words in that response. "False stereotypes" indeed! Seems to me the stereotypes are based on fact. The criminal behaviour which we assume is shown in the videos goes on 24/7, not just in San Francisco but in every city in the USA fortunate (?) enough to have a BART-type mass transit system. Riding mass transit in the USA is like inviting 20 random hitchhikers into your car. Do so at your peril.

SanFran Girl Scout sells cookies to potheads -- 117 boxes in under 2 hours

Meet Daneille Lei -- a Girl Scout and a typically enterprising ABC. Even though she's just 13, she's already learned a basic precept of successful marketing: go where your customers are!

Danielle has proved the wisdom of choosing the right location by selling 117 boxes of cookies in just under two hours from her stand outside The Green Cross medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco. According to clinic staff, she sold out of her first batch within 45 minutes.

Walt notes that the old bland cookies of his youth [He was a buyer, not a seller! Ed.] have been supplanted by things like Tagalongs and Thin Mints, which I guess are more nutritious. ??? Danielle is trying to move 1200 boxes of the junk [Oh c'mon! Ed.] in the next two weeks. Half of the proceeds will go to charitable organizations related to Alzheimer’s in some way which I've forgotten.

Her choice of location was approved by the Girl Scouts of Northern California, who said it was not up to them to decide where the cookies could be sold. Green Cross employee Holli Bert said she was not surprised by the volume of biscuits being sold. "It's no secret that cannabis is a powerful appetite stimulant, so we knew this would be a very beneficial endeavour for the girls," she said. "It's all about location, and what better place to sell Girl Scout cookies than outside a medical cannabis collective?"

The cookie stand proved so popular that Danielle and her fellow Girl Scouts [Isn't that an oxymoron? Ed.] were invited back for the Saturday just past. Perhaps this time they brought Twinkies!

Note from Ed.: What? You don't know what an "ABC" is? We're talking San Francisco here -- the birthplace of fortune cookies. Got it now? Thanks to Agent 34 for the [pot]heads up!

How gay is "gay enough"?

Sometimes it takes the news a while to get to Walt. The Wells Fargo rider just brought the November 29th issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. The headline
"'Not gay enough' softball players settle suit" caught my eye.


Pictured here (courtesy of the National Center for Lesbian Rights) is the D2 softball team, which plays in the San Francisco Gay Softball League. (Of course I'm not making this up. It's San Francisco!) In 2008 D2 finished in second place in the Gay Softball World Series. But then came the challenge.

Seems the league rules allow a maximum of two heterosexuals (or metrosexuals or whatever it is) per team. But, the Atlanta Mudcats complained, D2 had three players who were not sufficiently light in the loafers. The three countered that they were actually bisexual -- capable of batting left or right, so to speak.

There followed a hearing in front of a panel of 25 LGBT types from the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (not making that up either) who asked some very intrusive and embarrassing questions.

LaRon Charles, who was D2's manager, and whose Facebook profile says he's married to, errr, a woman, was asked whether he could say he was bisexual. When he replied in the affirmative, he was told, "This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series."

The Alliance ultimately determined that the three men were "non-gay" and that D2 had broken the rules. This being America, the decision was followed by a lawsuit, which was finally settled late last year.

The settlement came a week after U.S. District Judge John Coughenour ruled that the group had the right under the First Amendment to limit the number of heterosexuals who could play on a team to two. The judge also found that there had been no discimination against the bis.

However, the NAGAAA will kiss and make up. They will pay D2 an undisclosed sum and will give back their second-place 2008 championship trophy.

Warms the cockles of your heart, doesn't it? If your cockles get too warm, rub them with ice.

"He has many sons, if you are preferring boys"

Walt is paraphrasing a great line from The Man Who Would Be King, the **** movie starring Michael Caine and Sean Connery, about two British ex-soldiers who set out to be kings of Kafiristan. There actually is (or was) a Kafiristan, a.k.a. Waziristan, in the region where Afghanistan, Pakistan and India meet. You can look it up.

A point that is being overlooked in all the talk about honour killings is that the people who inhabit the armpit of the world are not like us.

"Afghanistan's dirty little secret", which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle points out that for centuries, Afghan men have taken boys -- 9 to 15 years old or thereabouts -- as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player."

The men like to boast about it. Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun. Freely elected President Karzai is Pashtun, from a village near Kandahar, and he has six brothers. So the natural question arises: Has anyone in the Karzai family been bacha baz?

An American who worked in and around Karzai's palace in an official capacity for many months told the writer of the Chronicle piece that homosexual behavior "was rampant" among "soldiers and guys on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time."

My point -- and I do have one -- is that these people are not like us. When we allow 1000s upon 1000s of them to immigrate to our so-called civilized society, and expect them to adopt our values, we are deluding ourselves.

Footnote: Walt assumes there was a reason why the editors of the Chronicle thought this story would be of interest to their readers. Hey, it's San Francisco!