Wednesday Potpourri

First, we cannot resist the normal human effort to discover what motivated Luigi Mangione to murder the CEO of United Healthcare.

Now we have learned that he was suffering chronic back pain. Treatments had not been entirely successful, so, why not blame the insurance company.

@Proteinwisdom offers this summary, which is as good as anything else:

Posit: A rich kid likely got denied for certain healthcare procedures — perhaps more cutting edge treatments for chronic back pain — and because he’s wanted for nothing in life, he was irate that he’d been denied. 

Nobody denies the Gilman valedictorian and Ivy League graduate! Certainly not some corporate bean counter who went to a state school! 

As a way to justify his anger at being told no — likely as part of a business strategy to reduce claims, sure — he rationalized the rejection as part of a greater corporate problem in need of his moral fixing ; this allowed him to think of himself as an avenging anti-capitalist rather than an assassin who killed a husband and father in cold blood because for once, the world didn’t bend to his wishes. This guy is no hero. He’s a coward and a spoiled prick. Thoughts?

Second, speaking of saying No to children, Nell Frizzell has addressed the issue in the Guardian. Some modern parents have decided never to say No to a child. They are in permanent rebellion against authoritarianism. They do not care whether their children learn discipline.

She wrote:

Does saying no to a child squash their self-esteem, or make them feel cared for? Does it inhibit their natural curiosity, or invest them with a sense of secure boundaries within which to explore? Is it an example of unfair adult authority, or simply another care-giving duty alongside heat, food and hygiene? Or is it just a basic part of keeping children safe?

So, children grow up without discipline. They might even decide that prohibitions and taboos are unnecessary interferences in the manic will to express their feelings and emotions and instincts.

Third, everyone knows that the cure for homelessness is building more homes. 

But then there is this, from the San Francisco Chronicle, via Jeremy Kaufman:

The SF Chronicle covered what happens when you just give the homeless housing:

 - They live in squalor 

- They fight and kill each other 

- They die of drug overdoses 

- They get evicted for failure to follow basic rules

 - They threaten and abuse staff

Other than that, it’s an excellent idea.

Fourth, we are seeing something of a consensus, that New York City would be a much better place if we no longer had Alvin Bragg as district attorney.

The Free Press remarks:

Bragg’s approach to enforcing the law—or rather, not enforcing it—has been a disaster, as has been true of every city that voted in a so-called progressive prosecutor. 

As of November 2024, according to the New York Post, there were 27,122 reported felonies, up 16.9 percent from before Bragg took office. 

Meanwhile, rape has jumped 7.4 percent across Manhattan, robbery 8.9 percent, felony assault 16.8 percent, and grand larceny 29.8 percent. 

These are crimes that overwhelmingly affect the poorest New Yorkers.

Fifth, as for Daniel Penny, happily found not guilty of negligent homicide, Sen. Ted Cruz has an idea, via Newsmax:

Penny Should Sue for 'Malicious Prosecution'

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is urging Daniel Penny to file a lawsuit against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg after the 26-year-old Marine veteran was acquitted on Monday in the New York City subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely.

 

Sixth, over in Once-Great Britain the Labour government is cracking down on speech. If you say the wrong thing they will throw you in jail. But, if you do the wrong thing, like grooming high school girls, you will not have a problem.

Ian Miles Cheong reports:

In Britain you can and will be arrested for "misusing" social media by leaving comments about migrants that some Karen finds offensive. They won't arrest you if you're part of a grooming gang. Good to know what their priorities are. Two-tiered policing.

Seventh, Heather Mac Donald offers some extended reflections on the Panny case:

Now that Daniel Penny has been acquitted of the absurd homicide charges against him, perhaps New York City and State officials can be put on trial. They are responsible not only for the death of Jordan Neely, the drug-addicted schizophrenic whom Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused Penny of recklessly killing, but for the assaults on and killings of hundreds of New Yorkers by mentally ill vagrants whom politicians allow to roam the streets. Yet according to Bragg and his office, it was Penny who needed to be imprisoned, for the safety of city residents, for having protected his fellow citizens from a potential murderer.

At a time when the nation has been asking itself what it means to be manly, Mac Donald points out that Daniel Penny did well to represent the manly virtue of protecting people.

For now, the heroic male virtues of chivalry, self-reliance, and initiative have been vindicated, in the face of government’s effort to snuff those values out. How much longer those traits will survive under elite pressure remains to be seen. 

As for the race angle, the Penny case was designed to obfuscate the reality-- blacks commit more interracial crimes than whites, by a large margin.

Blacks commit 76 percent of all non-lethal interracial violence between blacks and whites despite being just a fifth of the white population.

And finally, 

Penny was worse than white, however. He was the nightmare of every Women’s Studies major: a blond, tall, former Marine. If Hollywood still made traditional Westerns, Penny would be the sheriff that introduces order to the wild frontier. Penny was not defending himself; he was defending those weaker than himself. Such self-sacrifice is the essence of male chivalry, which must be eradicated to pave the way for the nanny state’s monopoly on human action.

Amen.

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