Author name: Josh Slocum

Big Cities, crime

Suspected Health Insurance Assassin’s Family Was in the For-Profit Medical Business Too

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Police caught up with alleged assassin Luigi Mangione less than a week after, they suspect, he gunned down Brian Thompson in broad daylight in front of a hotel in New York City. Thompson, 50, was the CEO of one of the country’s largest health insurance companies, UnitedHealthcare. 

Magione, 26, an upper class man originally from Maryland who graduated from Penn State, may have been motivated by some kind of resentment against health insurance company practices. Police say someone, presumably Mangione, had inscribed the words “deny,” “depose,” and “defend,” on the shell casings left at the scene after the gunfire. These words are similar to the title of a book that castigates the insurance sector for working to deny payment to patients in need. The title of the book is Delay, Deny, Defend. 

Police caught the suspect at a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after someone spotted him and correctly deduced that he was the same person they had seen in CCTV stills of the killer police released to the public. 

It is important to remember that nearly everything about this case is speculative at this point. While police and the public may have some clues about what may have motivated Mangione, nothing is proven, and there is a mountain of evidence behind the scenes that no one in the public has seen yet. 

But the public speculation is that Mangione had some personal resentment toward health insurance companies. Police have apparently found writings, including a manifesto, in which Mangione expressed that he was “frustrated with the health care system in the United States.”

NewsNation has a comprehensive timeline of the crime and the aftermath. 

If Mangione was motivated by malice toward the health insurance sector, one Twitter/X user thinks there may be an element of hypocrisy in the alleged shooter’s motivation. David Petersen posted that Mangione’s family, who are wealthy, own a for-profit nursing home as part of their business Lorian Health Systems. 

Petersen points out that Lorian Health Systems has a poor track record of patient care, with low scores on vaccination rates for residents and staff, plus poor grades on health inspections. 

Here’s a sampling of the online reaction: 

Big Government, LGBTQ+

Hey! Are You Sufficiently Aware of Pansexuality? HHS Would Like to Know

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Lots of people are saying they can feel a change in the air. After the election of Donald Trump and the conservative capture of both chambers of the legislature, people are feeling like it might be morning in America once again. 

Trump has big plans for his presidency. Yeah, he’s promising again that he’s going to drain the swamp, but he’ll have more success this time around with the experience garnered from his first term. After learning bitter lessons about staffing after appointing cabinet members who frustrated his plans and stabbed him in the back, Trump is picking loyalists this time around. 

Half the country’s politicians and nearly all the major media are still devolving into hysterics as they come to grips with the reality that the woke train is about to get derailed. MSNBC narcissist in chief Joy Reid is telling her viewers—few as they are—that the Bad Orange Man is going to resurrect The Third Reich and reintroduce it American-style. I guess she doesn’t remember when she said that the first time around and it didn’t happen.

But the interest group with the most to fear is probably the LGBTQ+(and whatever other letters I forgot) set. This strange amalgamation of confused individuals, abusive parents, doctors, and medical policymakers, is scrambling as they realize their project of psychologically and physically mutilating as many children as possible is drawing to a close. Right now the Supreme Court weighing U.S. vs Skrmetti, a case brought by the federal government against Tennessee. Yes, the U.S. government is suing Tennessee to stop that state from protecting children from gruesome sex-change experiments. And from the tone of the questions asked by the court’s conservative justices, it doesn’t look good for the kiddy butchers. 

It looks like some of the gender clowns in our three-letter agencies are having a last hurrah, or a extinction-burst tantrum. Take a look at what the Department of Health and Human Services is posting on X/Twitter. 

What is Panromantic and Pansexual Awareness Day? Why, it’s a day to be aware of people who are panromantic and pansexual. And what are they? People who’ve decided that it’s just too limiting to be merely gay or straight or bisexual. Nay, say they, they are capable of loving “all genders.” There aren’t any “genders” other than man or woman, of course, but that doesn’t stop this lot from naming itself something that sounds like a lonely hearts club for admirers of cookware. 

Let’s see what the general public on X has to say. 

Big Cities, Race Baiting, Race Politics

Manslaughter Charge Against Daniel Penny Dropped – How Did We Even Get Here in the First Place?

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The Daniel Penny subway trial is winding up as of press time, and the jury is in deliberations after the judge in the case dropped the manslaughter charge against Penny. More on this below, but first, how the hell did this trial even happen? How did we get here? 

Millions of Americans are tired of “woke” politics. Race-based grievances, special rights for minority groups, total social censure of non-left voices, and non-step leftist economic policies are a big part of why the country elected Trump this fall. 

Not only has the U.S. lost social and moral cohesion over the past few decades, but we have also lost belief in some of the most fundamental rights that everyone used to agree on. Self-defense is one of them. We’re all used to Democrat politicians trying to chip away at the Second Amendment right to bear arms, and that’s bad enough, but it doesn’t stop there. 

We appear to be losing the belief in our own right to defend our lives and the lives of those around us. How else can we explain the shockingly ignorant public response to the Kyle Rittenhouse trial? Rittenhouse traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August of 2020 to help protect the town and its businesses as BLM protesters rioted and set fires to buildings in protest of the police shooting of a black man. Several men attacked Rittenhouse, and he fired, killing two of them. 

The country went insane. Many liberals believed, absent evidence, that Rittenhouse killed “unarmed black men.” The men who attacked him, and whom he shot, were not black, and at least one of them tried to take Rittenhouse’s gun as Rittenhouse lay on the ground trying to defend himself. He was acquitted, but only barely, as the media and politicians almost succeeded in painting the innocent teen as a monster when he was the one under attack. 

The same thing has happened to subway hero Daniel Penny, who is on trial in New York City (the jury is deliberating as this story is written) for allegedly killing subway menace Jordan Neely. The media worked overtime to portray Neely, a mentally unstable criminal and drug user with a long rap sheet, as an innocent and friendly “Michael Jackson impersonator” – as opposed to someone who threatens to murder their fellow subway passengers. This is what they always do when violent black men are pushed back against by their targets. 

Neely entered a subway and started threatening passengers, causing mothers to huddle in fear with their children behind strollers. Penny, a former marine who looks like Errol Flynn, put Neely in a chokehold until police could arrive. Contrary to initial media reports, Neely did not die on the subway, he died later at a hospital. 

Race-baiting, dishonest New York City prosecutor Alvin Bragg (the same man who went after Donald Trump in court over “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels), charged Penny with manslaughter. It was obvious from the beginning that black Alvin Bragg intended to scalp a white man, even though he appears to be a hero, not a thug. 

But as of yesterday, presiding judge Maxwell Wiley has dropped the manslaughter charge, leaving Penny to face a charge of criminally negligent homicide. Though the name of the crime sounds worse, it actually carries a lesser sentence than manslaughter.

Penny should never have been arrested, let alone charged. But this is the United States in 2024, and if you’re white, male, or a Republican, a good half the country does not believe you have the moral or legal right to protect yourself and others from assault or murder. 

Let’s see how X/Twitter users are reacting. 

Democrats

Hunter Biden Skips Out on $300k Rent

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Oh, Hunter Biden. Has there ever been a presidential child so “troubled” as Hunter Biden? Of course, the people we often call “troubled,” the people we say are “suffering from” addiction or some other condition, are usually the people causing a great deal of trouble for other, innocent people. 

First, Hunter Biden leaves his laptop at a computer repair shop, where, naturally, someone boots it up and starts taking a look. They found what appears to be pretty clear evidence of hard drug use, consorting with prostitutes, and other unsavory activities. The New York Post, America’s oldest newspaper, broke the story, and then all hell broke loose.

Or, rather, it didn’t, because the entire mainstream media hushed it up in concert with the Democrat party. Twitter not only silenced the Post’s tweets about the story, but banned the newspaper entirely from Twitter. Democrats and liberal media uniformly called the Post a nest of liars, purveyors of “disinformation,” and buried the story to help Joe Biden “win” the 2020 presidential election. The days of Watergate-style reporters committed to the truth were obviously over. 

The Post has since been vindicated, of course, but the damage was done. Former CBS reporter Catherine Herridge now says her former employer outright ignored a directive from the CEO of CBS instructing reporters and editors to “probe into” the Biden laptop story. 

And as everyone now knows, a senile President Joe Biden issued a sweeping pardon getting rid of all crimes his son committed. His illegal gun purchase? Gone. His tax evasion? Gone. Even the judge in Hunter’s tax case felt compelled to call foul, describing the president’s actions as an attempt to “rewrite history.” 

But even worse, the president’s pardon covers any crimes his son may have committed between 2014 and 2024. This seems very convenient as allegations of influence peddling by the Biden’s senior and junior with Ukrainian nationals apply to that period. 

Now, a property owner is accusing Hunter Biden of owing him a pile of back rent from a home Hunter allegedly rented from him. Worse, says property owner Shaun Maguire, Hunter tried to pay it back through his “art” made of human feces. 

According to Inside Edition (which also made the video at the beginning of this article):

Hunter Biden’s former landlord claims he stiffed him on a whooping $300,000 in rent. Shaun Maguire says he rented a $4.25 million home in California to the president’s son back in 2019. Maguire claims Hunter tried to pay with his art. Meanwhile, President Biden is facing more fallout for issuing the pardon for his son. Behind the scenes, CNN reports it was First Lady Dr. Jill who pushed for Hunter’s pardon.

Strangely, Fox News had two published stories on the topic, but they do not appear on the Fox site anymore, and you get brought to an error page if you click them. The headlines are still listed in search results on the Fox website however. The New York Post’s former article on this story also leads to an error page. It’s standard practice to issue a correction at the start or end of a story if there was an error made in details, and if a story is completely wrong they’ll keep the article up but note that it’s been retracted. Perhaps they received a likely baseless but threatening legal note that would’ve been a headache and figured it would just be easier to remove the article – but who knows.

There’s no reason to doubt the story, as this isn’t exactly new behavior from Hunter. Back in August of 2023 it was reported that Hunter stiffed the owner of a Venice Beach property out of $80,000 in unpaid rent – and “destroyed” the property.

Needless to say, his blanket pardon doesn’t cover this.

Let’s take a look at what X/Twitter thinks. First we hear from the owner of the site himself. 

Media

MSNBC’s Joy Reid Pretends Not to Get Trump Annexation Joke

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One can tell a lot about a person, or a culture, by observing how that person or culture relates to humor. Do they have a sense of humor? Do they like to cut up? Can they roll with banter and friendly mockery, taking it and dishing it out? Or, do they scowl and take offense at words that everyone else finds amusing? 

Who knows if there’s any research behind the idea, but it seems pretty clear to a lot of people that authoritarian and totalitarian ways of thinking don’t make room for humor. Authoritarian personalities hate being mocked, and totalitarian regimes take deep—and often violent—offense at humor’s close cousin, satire, as author Salman Rushdie has learned painfully and repeatedly. 

Since the election of Donald Trump this time around, it’s been quite clear that the left has zero sense of humor. Or more nearly, they have no sense of humor about themselves even as they allow their side to indulge in “humor” that’s not-even-thinly disguised wishes of violence on anyone to the right of center. One suspects that part of what makes the left so angry is the fact that, like him or not, Donald Trump is naturally charismatic and funny, and he does it on his toes.

MSNBC’s wig mistress in chief Joy Reid is having none of it, thank you very much. You can tell just by the look on her face.

What turned Reid’s smile upside down recently was a quip from Trump to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The light-loafered “former” drama teacher made a trip to Trump’s Florida home Mar-a-Lago recently in an apparent attempt to dissuade the president-elect from enacting a 25 percent tariff on imported Canadian goods. According to Joy Reid, Trump “threatened” Trudeau and Canada. 

With what? An off-the-cuff (and funny) retort that if Canada didn’t like the tariff, maybe they should just become the 51st U.S. state. While the exchange was not recorded, and the joke was relayed to Fox second-hand by unnamed sources, Trump probably did jokingly “threaten” to annex Canada – and we can all picture him doing just that.

Yet, Joyless Reid can’t see the humor in it.  

Come on. Is Joy Reid truly that literal-minded, or is it all a pretense? It’s hard to say, but easy to see that the vast majority of sane adults would recognize Trump’s remark as verbal play (key word: sane). The idea of the United States forcibly invading Canada is even more laughable than the liberal media’s apparent belief that Trump meant to threaten a ground war on our northern cousins. 

Fortunately X/Twitter users have a healthier funny bone than our MSNBC hostess.

LGBTQ+

Woman Calling Herself a Man Will Tell SCOTUS to Allow Child Sex Changes

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The issue of child sex-changes is finally coming before the Supreme Court. Of course, you’ve probably not heard the procedure described that way. There’s a reason for that: Doesn’t “gender-affirming care” sound nicer? That’s what transgender activists think, and that’s why they’ve chosen a euphemism to disguise the chemical and surgical castration of minor children. 

The case before the high court is called U.S. v Skrmetti, and the court will hear oral arguments on December 4. At issue is a law in Tennessee banning so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors. The U.S. federal government is suing Tennessee. That’s right: The Biden administration wants to allow this extreme child abuse, as it has been completely captured by obviously mentally unstable activists who believe that there are children born in the wrong sex’s body. 

One of the most dangerous of these activists is a woman who calls herself “Chase Strangio” (birth name: Kate Strangio). She is a slight, thin woman who has taken hormones to give herself what she believes is the appearance of being a man. Strangio is the lead transgender lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU, once a free-speech organization, has been defending this kind of abuse against children for years. 

As X/Twitter commentator Brad Polumbo points out, Strangio’s extreme ideology is in fact mainstream. This is not the fringe we’re talking about. The dominant, socially acceptable position in American public life is that not only is it OK to practice chemical and genital mutilation on children, but it’s a moral imperative. Why, these children will kill themselves if they’re not allowed to become their “true gender,” according to activists. 

You have to see and hear Chase Strangio in her own words to believe them. During this spot on CNN before her upcoming argument before the court, Strangio says that children as young as two years old know “exactly who they are.” Yes, she means that actual toddlers can “know” that they’re born in the wrong body. Can they also know that they are dinosaurs or robots? 

“These are not doctors being forced to provide this medication,” Strangio said. “These are doctors who are wanting to treat their patients in the best way that they know how, based on the best available evidence to us. And these are young people who may have known since they were two years old exactly who they are, who suffered for six or seven years before they had any relief.”

Give it a watch below:

Let’s see if social media users are buying what Strangio plans to sell the court. 

How did this user figure out that Strangio is a woman? Was it the female voice coupled with the woke valley girl accent? 

This one gets right to the heart of it:

Democrats, Woke

New Jersey Town Council Bans American Flag, Ejects Resident From Public Meeting

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The anti-Americanism of the modern left would be unbelievable to a typical American from the mid-20th century. Since the hippies of the 1960s, anti-U.S. sentiment has grown to the point where it’s considered normal for half the country to hate its own nation. Leftist academics, policy wonks, and news anchors regularly call the United States an evil global colonial empire. To them, everything the U.S. does is wrong and causes “harm” to someone, somewhere. 

And under no circumstances are you allowed (if you’re anywhere on the left) to show allegiance or patriotism to your own country. Does that sound like an exaggeration? The town council in Edison, New Jersey, just voted to ban American flags during public meetings. Oh, of course, they gave themselves plausible deniability by claiming to ban the use of “props” by speakers from the public. But American flags are considered a “prop,” too, and is anyone truly buying the claim that the signs or charts that speakers might use were some kind of distraction from public business? 

In typical modern leftist fashion, the council went even farther.

When a local lawyer with a small American flag took the podium, the council had him removed from the building by security. That lawyer, Joel Bassoff, tried to warn them during the removal that they should really consult a competent lawyer because what they were doing was going to find them on the losing end of a lawsuit. But leftists have not yet experienced enough consequences for their behavior to take that sage advice seriously.

The election of Donald Trump is just the beginning; serious punishments have to be carried out on public officials who violate the constitution. They’ve had free rein to abuse conservative Americans for so many years that leftist politicos (rightly, unfortunately) believe they’re above the law. 

Basoff said, “I’m holding an American flag to represent the constitutional values” as an increasingly annoyed Council President Nishith Patel banged his gavel in frustration. Then like the petty dictator he is, Patel announced to the security officer, “his time is forfeited.” The compliant police officer was happy to carry out unconstitutional orders and made sure Basoff was kicked out of the room. 

Check out this video of the incident below: 

Users on X/Twitter were not any happier than the angry audience in the Edison, New Jersey, meeting room:

That tweet above is from Scott Pressler, a conservative activist who made huge gains in Republican voting this year, persuading thousands of normally non-political Pennsylvania Amish to go to the polls this year. 

Woke

Corporate Wokeness is Dying Right Before Our Eyes as Wall St. Abandons DEI

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There’s a scene in the classic comedy 9 to 5 in which the three main characters are having a fantasy about liberating their coworkers from an oppressive boss who steals all their ideas and never gives the workers credit. It happens during an “old-fashioned ladies’ pot party” where the characters get stoned and we’re whisked away to a magical world where the good guys win. 

At the end the three women in medieval princess costumes address the joyful crowd as bells peal while the iron shackles fall off the peasants and sun peaks into the dungeon. 

It feels a bit like that when looking at the death throes of woke ideology in corporate America:

Besides, it’s pretty cool that someone took the time to listen to the quarterly earnings calls of more than 9,000 publicly traded companies just to figure out how many times they said annoying words like “diversity” and “inclusion” (perhaps AI helped a bit). The chart was put together by liberal outlet Axios based on data from AlphaSense. It peaked at over 300 mentions during the height of the post-George Floyd hysteria, and has since fallen like a rock – though it’s still above pre-Floyd levels.

Even more delicious is this quotation from the president of the consulting firm Gravity Research. Luke Hartig says companies are getting scared of being sued by the incoming Trump administration. “The legal risk could only continue to escalate in this administration,” he said. 

Good. They should be sued. What has been passed off as just a “nice” and “caring” way to help those poor systemically oppressed ethnic minorities was always just naked—and illegal—racism against white people. No, American law does not permit companies to preferentially hire based on race, but that’s exactly what DEI initiatives pushed companies into doing for the past four hysterical years. It looks like Wall Street is finally learning that racism against whites is just as illegal as racism against blacks. 

Even more delicious is the news that conservative activist Robby Starbucks’ relentless hounding of racist companies has paid off, as they say, “bigly.” Starbuck has helped stop companies like Tractor Supply and Walmart to stop cooperating with bigoted nonprofit groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, and to stop subjecting their employees to lectures about hard-left political issues. 

Look at that list, and marvel at the power this lunatic “woke” craze has exerted. Could you ever have predicted that all-American companies like Harley Davidson would have fallen sway to a cultish politics that called men and maleness “toxic” while applauding stripper drag queens who perform for children? 

The reaction on Twitter/X is pretty jubilant. 

This user made a mock-up of House Rep. Nancy Mace, who demanded successfully this week that men calling themselves women be barred from using the ladies’ room at the Capitol. 

Here’s an interesting idea:

Big Government, LGBTQ+

Scottish Government Tells High Court Men Can Too Get Pregnant

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Oh, Scotland. You were once a kingdom celebrated in legend and song for your marauding men and bonnie lasses scrapping it out on the border with England as you fought to maintain your culture. Your border reivers were the forerunners of the outlaws and cowboys in the American West. You gave the world James I (of England), who gave the world the most revered translation of the Bible. 

Now, you’re in court making asses out of yourselves. And for what? “Pregnant men” and “male lesbians.” 

That’s right. There is a case before the Scottish Supreme Court right now to settle the issue of whether men and women actually exist, or whether bureaucrats with tick-boxes decide the biological reality of humans. Ministers from the Scottish National Party are donning their wigs to argue that there is such a thing as a male lesbian, and a pregnant man. 

The dispute stems from a 2018 decision by the Scots government to define “woman” as “anyone living as a woman.” Astute readers will instantly see that this is a circular definition, therefore it is no definition at all. The feminist group For Women Scotland challenged this definition, sensibly arguing that it was irrational. The observe that the government cannot achieve its goal of equal participation by women in government if it cannot define what a woman is, and if it includes men in the category “women.”

Lawyers for the group are in the unenviable—and deeply stupid—position of explaining to judges that it is not “transphobic” to state “biological sex is real.”

Yes, Wokespy reader, it’s confusing even for this writer as I try to explain it to you. 

The question before the high court now is whether to leave standing a government definition that says anyone, including men, who has a “gender recognition certificate” qualifies as a “woman” under the law. A GRC is sort of like a driver’s license for gender, except it doesn’t indicate anything real. Any man can rock up to the government and do some pro-forma blathering about how he “lives as a woman” and get a GRC. 

The government’s witnesses will be there in court to argue that men can be women, and that men can be pregnant, and that women can be men. It is not clear whether they also believe the moon can be made of green cheese if it so identifies, but we will keep you updated. 

Let’s see what X/Twitter users think of this farce. 

National Affairs

New Texas College Ditches DEI for “MEI”

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The Supreme Court Struck down so-called “affirmative action” in 2023. The policy was a mainstay of U.S. colleges and universities. The idea was created in the 1960s when President John F. Kennedy, in response to growing positive sentiment toward civil rights for blacks, decided to create the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity in 1961. In an accompanying executive order, Kennedy used the phrase “affirmative action” to describe the actions he thought American institutions should take to actively correct perceived or real racial imbalances and discrimination. 

It took off like wildfire in the liberal university world. In practice, affirmative action meant that schools were admitting black and other minority students at higher rates than before, even though many or most could not meet the same standards as other students who were admitted. Yes, meaning white students. Affirmative action became so entrenched in American culture that questioning whether it was right or fair to let academically sub-par students into schools (thereby depriving more capable applicants because they were white) would get a person accused of racism. But then again, what common sense statement doesn’t provoke accusations of racism anymore? 

American colleges were doing the Ibram X. Kendi program long before Ibram Henry Rogers (his real name) came along with his racist agenda that he called “anti-racist.” Kendi famously wrote that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” Yes, that’s right. He really did write that. More surprising is how many millions of allegedly sensible Americans went right along with it, agreeing that it was a moral good to discriminate against white people in order to preferentially advance black people. 

The name for this practice is “racism.”

It will take years before colleges truly end race-based admissions, if they ever really do, which seems doubtful. It’s stupidly easy to get around the ban on affirmative action by relabeling the practice and playing dumb. Robert VerBruggen, writing in City Journal, discusses how universities can easily continue to favor minority-ethnic applicants by using different language, and by tweaking recruiting methods. For example:

 At a minimum, top colleges responding to an affirmative-action ban could be expected to expand recruiting efforts and expand preferences for low-income applicants. More aggressively, they might extensively calibrate their socioeconomic preferences to target blacks and Hispanics—such as giving a boost to kids who come from single-parent families or who speak a language other than English at home.

But at least one new college is taking meritocracy seriously; the University of Austin. Over the weekend on 60 Minutes, they profiled that school, which admits on MEI: Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. 

To quote from 60 Minutes:

In a former Texas department store, the University of Austin, known as UATX, started classes this fall with a say-anything, shout-nothing philosophy. UATX’s motto is “the pursuit of truth.”

The school swaps DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — for what some call MEI: merit, excellence and intelligence. UATX, co-founded by historian Niall Ferguson, launched with a focus on encouraging free speech and open debate. 

“University forms the way you think about the world for the rest of your life,” Ferguson said. “If our universities are screwed up, and I believe they are, then that will screw up America as a whole quite quickly.”

Faculty members and advisers to the school are an ideological mix including Larry Summers, Steven Pinker, Deirdre McCloskey, Leon Kass, Jonathan Haidt, Glenn Loury, Joshua Katz, Tyler Tyler, Richard Dawkins, among many others.

Give the segment a watch for yourself – it’s something you won’t see at any other colleges in America, with few exceptions.

X users were quick to point out that it should not be controversial to have an admissions policy that prioritizes competence and intelligence. 

Most reactions were positive:


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