Clown Show: After Just 4 Days, Philly Drops New Mask Mandate

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

Walking defiantly bare-faced through the Reading Terminal Market yesterday afternoon, I noticed that I had plenty of company.

The guys tucking tender roast pork into seeded Sarcone's rolls at DiNic's were going maskless; so were the guys hawking boneless and skinless chicken breasts and thighs at Godshall's Poultry. 

Inside the crowded terminal, a clear majority of customers and tourists that I passed were also going barefaced. In Jim Kenney's kingdom, the peasants were in open rebellion.

"It's not being enforced," a cashier at Iovine Brothers Produce told me when I asked about the city's laughable decision to try and reimpose the mask mandate.

Just hours later, the Kenney administration caved. In advance of having to defend itself in a lawsuit in Commonwealth Court against a group of angry restaurant and business owners who were seeking an immediate injunction, our clown of a mayor decided after just four days to wave the white flag on that mask thing.

“Due to decreasing hospitalizations and a leveling of case counts, the City will move to strongly recommending masks in indoor public spaces as opposed to a mask mandate," Kevin Lessard, a spokesperson for Kenney wrote in an email last night to the faithful Democratic apologists at The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

"Given the latest data, the Board of Health voted tonight to rescind the mandate,” Lessard told the Inky publicists.

In seeking to reimpose the mask mandate, our buffoonish mayor was guilty of really bad timing. Not only was Anthony Fauci and the CDC saying mask mandates were no longer necessary, but Sixers fans by the thousands were going maskless at televised playoff games. And on late night TV, Stephen Colbert turned Philly's mask mandate into a national joke. 

The same day Philly's mask mandate went into effect, a federal judge in Florida struck down the federal mandate on masks for passengers on public transportation and planes. SEPTA officials quickly followed suit, saying they saw no reason to enforce a federal requirement that no longer existed.

And then, after Kenney ordered everybody in Philly to mask up again, the governor of Florida reminded us that Kenney the hypocrite was photographed going maskless down in Florida on a vacation in May, 2021, with his faithful fiancee at his side. 

“The lockdown libs are back on the road for another nationwide tour,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign team tweeted. Then they ripped Kenney for "now reinstating the mask mandates he fled when vacationing mask free in the Free State of Florida."

Here's the fun part. Lessard, Kenney's mouthpiece, is full of crap. Although city officials attempted to hide their real reasons for caving on masks by wrapping themselves up in Covid math, the numbers on hospitalizations and case counts were actually going up, rather than down. 

On Monday, when the city announced it was reimposing the mask mandate, Philadelphia was reported to have a seven-day average of 142 new Covid cases a day, and 44 people were reported to be hospitalized with Covid.

Four days later, on Thursday, the day the city announced it would rescind the mask mandate, Philadelphia was reported to be averaging 242 daily cases, a 70% increase, and 65 patients were reported hospitalized with Covid, a 47% increase. 

But by that time the city had already become a national joke, and so the Covid math didn't mean anything any more. Because even our thick-headed mayor realized he had blown it.

A typically petulant Kenney was left to do nothing but grouse to his faithful media apologists, whom, he was reasonably confident, would never dare to call him on it. Because they work for The Daily Democrat, and can't do basic math. 

“I just think that we’re in this environment where people will complain about just about anything that we do or that a government does to keep people safe,” Kenney groused.

No, you fat, drunken woke fool who's been on the public dole your entire life, people are just plain sick and tired of the Nanny State. And after two years of chafing under your woke dictatorship, people are telling you to go stuff your emergency powers, thank you, because they can think for themselves. 

But Kenney was still whining to his apologists, who, of course, were uncritically letting him drone on, for the amusement of the rest of us.

“This nation has devolved into a selfish bunch who want what they want for themselves,” Kenney lectured us last night. And sometimes these same selfish citizens, Kenney pontificated, "are sometimes not willing to help each other out as Americans.”

Hey Jimbo, we've got bigger problems than Covid. In case you haven't noticed, from Holy Thursday until Easter Sunday, a total of 54 people were shot in your city, 15 of whom died.

The murder count stands at 148, and carjackings are through the roof.

Kensington is an open drug market; North Philly is a shooting gallery. Criminals around town have free reign.

And your incompetent diversity hire of a police commissioner is presiding over a department that doesn't have a clue about how to stop the bleeding.

You've got cops running around town collecting stolen shopping carts. 

Your police commissioner just wasted $160,000 on a new diversity and inclusion officer who never wore a badge, and last worked for Kenny Gamble's Universal Company, which the feds say was allegedly bribing city council member Kenyatta Johnson.

And our national disgrace of a D.A. is planning a "Bikes Up Guns Down" bicycle ride on Saturday, as if that's somehow going to stop the armed and dangerous criminals he routinely lets out of jail from shooting each other.

We need a police commissioner, Mr. Mayor, who knows how to fight crime.

We need a D.A., Mr. Mayor, who will actively work on behalf of the citizens and crime victims, rather than criminals.

If you really cared about your fellow citizens who made the mistake of electing you as mayor, you could save lives by firing Danielle Outlaw today and replacing her with somebody who actually knows what they're doing.

You could save countless more lives by climbing up in your bully pulpit today and blasting Larry Krasner for the blood he has on his hands, the blood that runs in the streets of your city every day.

You could call a press conference every day, read a list of Krasner's most recent outrages, and call on him publicly to resign.

You privately tell people how much you hate Krasner. But instead of doing anything about it, you're just a cowardly, lazy lame duck who, with two years to go on his term, has already checked out.

You prefer to hide on a barstool, protected by your bodyguards. And when you rarely do venture out in public, it's only to do more pandering, pontificating or virtue signaling. 

Well, Mr. Mask Up Philly, one of your prime virtue signals just went up in smoke. 

And now that your mask is down, everyone sees what a clown you are, and they're all laughing at you.