Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Murder in the Gateway City

A commenter on The Other McCain asked me about the homicide rate in St Louis; we had been discussing the homicides in Philadelphia and Chicago. Why, I’m glad he asked! The Gateway City has had 103 murders so far in 2021, and, unlike other cities, the SLPD divides them up by race. Five whites, two Hispanics, and one Asian have been victims, while 95 blacks — 77 males and 18 females — have been murdered there. With a population of 294,890, and a projected 189 murders, this would give the city a homicide rate of 64.07 per 100,000.

But, as I like to do the math — and we all know that math is raaaaacist, so I must denounce myself in advance — 77 homicides of black males in 199 days works out to an estimated 141 homicides for the entire year. With an, again, guesstimated, black male population of 67,060, that works out to a black male homicide rate of 210.26 per 100,000 population.

Now, if you are a white male, estimated population 67,234, there will be 5.5 murder victims this year; I’ll round up to 6. They are facing a murder rate of 8.92 per 100,000 population.

Now, if the problem is just the availability of guns, and the white-to-black population ration in St Louis is very close, 46.53% to 46.41%, why would black males be 23.57 times more likely to be murdered there?

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It’s being set up again!

As we have previously noted, the nation is being set up, through the spreading of fear, for another imposition of the illegal and unconstitutional COVID-19 restrictions.

And now comes Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY), one of the worst of the COVID tyrants:

    As Delta variant spreads, Beshear recommends return to indoor masking for some

    By Alex Acquisto | July 19, 2021 | 5:07 PM | Updated: July 19, 2021 | 6:01 PM EDT

    Fully-vaccinated Kentuckians who work in jobs with “significant public exposure” should consider wearing a mask again in indoor public spaces, Gov. Andy Beshear recommended on Monday, citing rising case numbers and escalating spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19.

    The governor is also recommending a return to masking in indoor public settings for fully-vaccinated Kentuckians at high-risk of severe coronavirus infection because of pre-existing health conditions. High-exposure jobs include retail and hospitality businesses, as well as any job that requires contact with many different people.

    “The more people you come in contact with, the more exposure you are likely to have, so we believe at this point it is a smart idea,” Beshear said.

    The new recommendations, which apply to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, are necessary because “we are seeing more cases among vaccinated Kentuckians because of the Delta variant,” Beshear said.

There’s more at the original, but the most important word in that article is “necessary.” The Governor argued, after his attorney’s presentation to the state Supreme Court:

    After the court hearing, Beshear told reporters that a governor’s emergency powers certainly “have to be large enough with a one-in-every-hundred year pandemic that creates the deadliest year in our history, it has to be significant and strong enough to do what’s necessary there.”

    “You look back at different things that this legislature has tried to do in the midst of this pandemic and they would have not had the courage to step up and mandate masks, which we know from the experts is absolutely necessary,” he said. “We would have looked like the Dakotas and not what we looked like here in Kentucky.”

Mr Beshear believes that he just has to have these powers, because they are necessary, regardless of the General Assembly putting restrictions on them.

Oral arguments were made to the Court on June 10th, which was 5½ weeks ago, and the Court has not yet issued its ruling. The last time this issue came before the state Supreme Court, prior to the last legislative session, which changed the laws, the Court took from September 17th until November 12th, to issue its decision, 56 days, an even 8 weeks, so, if the Court uses the same timetable, it wouldn’t issue its decision until Thursday, August 5th.

Of course, the Governor has only issued recommendations, and not tried to impose another executive order. I would like to think that this is because he has already been notified by the justices that they aren’t going to come down on his side, and he knows that the General Assembly would never approve an extension of a mask order, but the state Supreme Court has a decidedly liberal leaning:

    The last three years in Kentucky should provide an equal awakening concerning the Kentucky Supreme Court. Over and over in the past three years, the state’s highest court has upended legislation after legislation passed by the General Assembly, often appearing to seek legal justification after it had decided what it wanted to do.

    To name a handful, regardless of the policy merits of the 2018 pension reform bill, the Court invalidated the law based on a procedure that has been used by the General Assembly for decades. The Court threw out Medical Review Panels, blocked Marsy’s Law[1]Hyperlink added by editor; not included in cited article., and perhaps the most head-scratching of all, had three justices dissent in the case that ultimately upheld Kentucky’s right-to-work law.

    Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who studies methods of selecting judges, looked at the ideological makeup of state Supreme Courts compared to the electorate they serve in a 2017 study. Kentucky, he found, is entirely out of whack. The commonwealth had the eighth highest liberal skew in the country, versus the federal electorate in the state, during his studied period.

Well, the Kentucky Supreme Court was certainly out of tune with the electorate in Kentucky. On November 3, 2020, the voters in the Commonwealth rewarded Republican state legislative candidates, who had campaigned against the Governor’s restrictions, with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, giving the GOP a 75-25 seat advantage,[2]Don’t scream, “Gerrymandering!” because when the House districts were redistricted following the 2010 census, Democrats controlled the state House. and 2 additional seats, out of 17 up for election, in the state Senate, for a 38-10 GOP margin.

The state Supreme Court has long been a friend of Mr Beshear’s, particularly when it came to the then-Attorney General filing lawsuit after lawsuit to frustrate Governor Matt Bevin (R-KY). And while I would like to think that the Governor has already been clued in to his legal position failing, it’s just as possible — and perhaps even more possible — that the state Supremes have come down in his favor, and he’s just setting the table to change recommendations into requirements.

References

References
↑1 Hyperlink added by editor; not included in cited article.
↑2 Don’t scream, “Gerrymandering!” because when the House districts were redistricted following the 2010 census, Democrats controlled the state House.
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How is this justice? How is this right? A crime victim faces a more serious penalty than the criminal

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met him, but still — Robert Stacy McCain noted my “Hold my beer” remark concerning Philadelphia’s higher murder rate than Chicago’s. One of Mr McCain’s internal links was to a Fox News story, Philadelphia police keep getting shot at while responding to shootings.

    Philadelphia police are facing difficulties — from uncooperative victims to suspects shooting at officers — as the city deals with another weekend of violence.

    Officers have found it difficult to provide assistance in recent weeks when responding to incidents across the city. The city surpassed 300 homicides for the year as of Friday, highlighting the strain the Philadelphia Police Department under to handle the high level of crime in its city.

    An unknown suspect started shooting in the direction of police as officers loaded a 19-year-old with a gunshot wound in his chest into a police car a few weeks ago, setting off a difficult July.

    Three teens shot at officers responding to reports of a shooting Sunday night. The officers did not return fire, but the teens were injured: An 18-year-old was shot once in the leg, a 17-year-old was shot once in the wrist and a 16-year-old was shot in the buttocks, FOX 29 reported.

    All three victims were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

One would think that perps shooting at Philadelphia Police officers would be a big story, right? It is, I suppose, always possible that The Philadelphia Inquirer, to which I subscribe and whose website I check every day, did report that story, a story of criminal suspects shooting at the Philadelphia Police, but if the newspaper did, I missed it. Site searches for “shooting at police“, “shot at police” and “fired at responding officers” did not return any stories. Since this occurred last night, I suppose that it’s possible that the Inquirer will have something on it later today.

But it was an internal link to the Fox News story that really caught my attemtion:

    Carjacking victim in Wisconsin who shot suspect, 13, charged with recklessly endangering safety

    Kenosha police say a 13-year-old attempted to carjack a vehicle but the owner opened fire

    by Danielle Wallace | July 19, 2021

    Wisconsin authorities said Sunday that a 13-year-old female carjacking suspect, as well as a driver who shot at the girl attempting to make a getaway, will both face criminal charges.

    The shooting happened around 5:30 p.m. Friday, after Kenosha Police say a person left a vehicle running and unattended at a gas station at 50th Street and Sheridan Road. A female juvenile allegedly stole the car and was driving away when the owner fired shots at the car, striking the girl, police said.

    The girl, who has not been named by authorities, was transported to Children’s Hospital. She remained hospitalized as of Sunday, the Kenosha Police Department said in an update shared on Twitter, also announcing the 13-year-old will have charges referred to juvenile court.

    The adult who shot her remained in custody as of Sunday on a single charge of first degree recklessly endangering safety. Police did not disclose whether that individual was male or female.[1]As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not use the silly formulation “he or she.” In English, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine. This means that, in cases … Continue reading

Given that he was not charged with illegal possession of a firearm, a crime the police just love to levy, I assume here that he had his weapon legally.

So, a 13-year-old juvenile delinquent committed a crime, and will be put into the juvenile justice system, where I’m pretty sure that her wrist will hurt from a very severe slap! At 13, she is too young, under state law, to be tried as an adult. Regardless of how severe that wrist slap is, as a juvenile her record will be sealed, and she’ll have no criminal record following her as an adult.

Meanwhile, the victim of her crime is being charged under §941.30(1), “First-degree recklessly endangering safety. Whoever recklessly endangers another’s safety under circumstances which show utter disregard for human life is guilty of a Class F felony.” A Class F felony in Wisconsin is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000, a state prison sentence of up to 12 years, or both.

In other words, the crime victim faces a far more serious punishment than the criminal!

The Kenosha Police referring the charge does not mean that the prosecutor will not drop the charges, but he’s already spent at least two days locked up; he is already being punished for being a crime victim. Unless the prosecution drops the charges immediately, he’ll wind up having to pay an attorney.

How is this justice? How is this right? This victim was defending his property and himself, yet he’s the one facing the more serious penalty! He could wind up with a felony record, something which would follow him for the rest of his life, a possibly impoverishing fine — the story does not tell us the economic status of the victim — and up to a dozen years in the state penitentiary, when he ought to get a medal for taking a criminal off the streets, albeit temporarily.

References

References
↑1 As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not use the silly formulation “he or she.” In English, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine. This means that, in cases in which the sex of the person to whom a pronoun refers is unknown, the masculine is properly used, and does not indicate that that person is male, nor is it biased in favor of such an assumption. The feminine pronouns, on the other hand, do specify that the person to whom they refer is female, and not male. The victim is referred to, properly, by the masculine pronouns in this article, and this does not imply that the victim is male.
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Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen! Max Boot wants to see your papers!

What is fascism? The term is bandied about so much, but it does actually mean something. From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Fascism

Robert Soucy
Professor Emeritus of History, Oberlin College. American historian specializing in French fascist movements (1924-39), European fascism, and 20th-century European intellectual history; French fascist intellectuals…

Fascism, political ideology and mass movement that dominated many parts of central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and that also had adherents in western Europe, the United States, South Africa, Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East. Europe’s first fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, took the name of his party from the Latin word fasces, which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome. Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.

Max Boot, the Washington Post columnist and well-known neo-conservative, has stated, explicitly, that he believed Donald Trump was a fascist, and Mr Boot is educated enough to know just what fascist means:

Might we then conclude that the distinguished Mr Boot believes that individual interests should not be subordinated to the good of the nation? Well, if we did conclude that, we would be wrong.

Stop pleading with anti-vaxxers and start mandating vaccinations

by Max Boot | July 19, 2021 | 2:53 PM EDT

It’s time to get serious about coronavirus vaccinations. Stop pleading and start mandating.

For the past six months, President Biden, joined by every public health authority in the land, has been begging Americans to get vaccinated. The “pretty, please” approach isn’t working. According to The Post’s covid-19 tracker, in the past week, daily reported covid-19 cases rose 66 percent, covid-related hospitalizations rose 28 percent, and daily reported covid-19 deaths rose 20 percent. With the delta variant spreading across the country, every single state has seen an increase in cases over the past seven days.

This is a preventable tragedy. Over 99 percent of covid-19 deaths in June were among the unvaccinated. Yet even as evidence grows that vaccines are safe and effective, resistance to them is also growing. A recent Post-ABC News poll found that 29 percent of Americans said they were unlikely to get vaccinated — up from 24 percent three months earlier. Only 59 percent of adults are fully vaccinated.

Translation: “individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.”

Persuasion, something one would think an OpEd columnist would favor, does not seem to be something Mr Boot accepts, at least not if some people don’t agree with him:

This is madness. Stop making reasonable appeals to those who will not listen to reason. (According to an Economist/YouGov poll, a majority of those who refuse to get vaccinated say vaccines are being used by the government to implant microchips.) It’s a waste of time. Start mandating that anyone who wants to travel on an airplane, train or bus, attend a concert or movie, eat at a restaurant, shop at a store, work in an office or visit any other indoor space show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test.

We must show proof of vaccination or a negative test? Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!

Boy, it sure is a good thing Mr Boot does not use the term “fascist” loosely or often!

One would think that the son of Russian Jews, who fled oppression in the Soviet Union in 1976, when the iron-fisted Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev ruled, would understand the need for individual liberty. but, again, if one thought that, he would be wrong.

For months, Republicans have been caterwauling about vaccine passports, even obscenely comparing them to the Holocaust. All this sturm und drang obscures the fact there has been far too little use made of vaccine passports. I downloaded a New York state app on my iPhone months ago to verify that I’m vaccinated, but I’ve never once had to show it. Instead, many stores have signs saying that vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks — but they don’t verify vaccination. That provides no incentive to get your shots. Los Angeles County is also treating vaccinated and unvaccinated alike by again requiring masks for everyone. Why not just mandate proof of vaccination or a negative test

If New York state provides an app to certify that someone has had the vaccines, and Mr Boot has voluntarily chosen to use that, hey, that’s great, and an exercise of his individual liberty.

Sturm und drang, huh? The expression refers to an artistic movement in the late 18th century, characterized by the expression of emotional unrest and a rejection of neoclassical literary norms. To use this expression, the esteemed Mr Boot is telling us just what he thinks of individual thought.

Or at least it would if the distinguished columnist for The Washington Post actually understood the meaning of the term he used, a fact not in evidence.

In the United States, the authority of state governments to mandate vaccinations is clear — it goes all the way back to a 1905 Supreme Court case that upheld a Massachusetts law requiring vaccinations for smallpox. More recently, governors have used their public health powers to mandate mask-wearing and social distancing to fight covid-19. They ought to now take the logical next step and mandate vaccinations for the use of indoor spaces outside the home.

Except, of course, the public have rebelled. In the Bluegrass State, Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) mask mandate was so hated that when Republican candidates ran on the platform of ending his dictatorial powers in November of 2020, the voters rewarded GOP candidates with 14 additional seats, increasing the Republicans’ state House majority to 75-25.[1]The state House districts were set, following the 2010 census, by a House which was then controlled by Democrats. Mr Boot has been all about democracy, in his condemnation of President Trump and his vociferous insistence on supporting Joe Biden, but it seems that when the will of the people isn’t what he thinks it should be, democracy isn’t that great a thing anymore.

The distinguished Mr Boot suggested that President Biden should mandate vaccinations (not just negative COVID-19 tests) for:

  • Airline travel;
  • Amtrak travel;
  • All federal employees;
  • Everyone who enters a federal building (which would include a post office)[2]We have a post office box because the United States Postal Service will not deliver to our house. I have no idea how many people living out in the sticks as we do have the same problem, but Mr Boot … Continue reading; and
  • Order all military personnel to be vaccinated.

Mr Boot wants President Biden to use his authority to order people to get vaccinated, but he said that it was President Trump who was the fascist! And remember: it isn’t a term he uses loosely, or often!

Granted, there are limits to the United States’ ability to mandate vaccines because many red-state governors are unlikely to go along. But even Republicans want to fly on airplanes and visit blue states such as California, Hawaii, Nevada and New York. Vaccine mandates will prove controversial, to put it mildly, but, like seat belt laws, drunken driving laws and motorcycle helmet laws, they will save lives. We should not grant an unreasonable minority the power to endanger public health.

Good heavens! You know, people can get to California, Nevada and New York without flying. It’s not that long a drive for me to get to New York or New Jersey or Virginia. Perhaps Mr Boot thinks that the state police in those blue states should stop all travelers at the border, and demand to see their papers. Sound far fetched? In March of 2020, then Governor Gina Raimondo (D-CN) ordered the Rhode Island State Police to pull over drivers with New York plates so that National Guard officials can collect contact information and inform them of a mandatory, 14-day quarantine. She also ordered the state’s National Guard to go door-to-door in coastal communities to find out whether any of the home’s residents have recently arrived from New York and inform them of the quarantine order.

Ve need to see your papers!

For a man who does not use the term “fascist” loosely, or often, the esteemed Mr Boot sure seems unable to recognize just how much he wants to subject the rights of the individual to the police power of the state. Or, perhaps he actually does recognize it, but just doesn’t care, not as long as that police power is being used for something he thinks good.

References

References
↑1 The state House districts were set, following the 2010 census, by a House which was then controlled by Democrats.
↑2 We have a post office box because the United States Postal Service will not deliver to our house. I have no idea how many people living out in the sticks as we do have the same problem, but Mr Boot would require us to be vaccinated just to receive our mail.
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Will other bishops and priests have this kind of courage?

Among all of the talk about denying the Eucharist to (purportedly) Catholic politicians who support abortion, I have very, very rarely heard of it actually being done. From the Catholic News Agency:

    Diocese responds after state senator says he was denied Communion

    By Kate Scanlon | July 19, 2021 | 2:30 PM EDT

    Washington, DC: After a New Mexico state senator said he was denied Communion this weekend because of a political matter, his diocese responded that it had privately warned him he should not approach for Communion, due to his obstinate support for a pro-abortion bill.

    In a tweet on Saturday, July 17, New Mexico state Sen. Joe Cervantes (D) wrote he “was denied communion last night by the Catholic bishop here in Las Cruces and based on my political office.”

    “My new parish priest has indicated he will do the same after the last was run off,” Cervantes added. “Please pray for church authorities as Catholicism transitions under Pope Francis.” The senator represents New Mexico’s 31st district, around Las Cruces.

    In response, Christopher Velasquez, director of communications for the Diocese of Las Cruces, told CNA on Monday that it is “unfortunate that a pastoral issue with a member of the local church be publicized.”

Mr Velasquez stated that Senator Cervantes was notified, several times, by both the Most Reverend Peter Baldacchino, Bishop of Las Cruces, and his local diocesan pastor, that if he voted for Senate Bill 10, which Mr Cervantes cosponsored, repealed a 1969 state law criminalizing abortions, he should not present himself to receive the ERucharist. That law has not been enforced since the odious Roe v Wade decision, but if the Supreme Court ever overruled Roe v Wade, the New Mexico law could come back into effect. The Bishop, Mr Valasquez said, had not received any reply from Senator Cervantes. The article did not specify whether Mr Cervantes had responded to his diocesan pastor.

It’s good to see a Bishop with the courage of his convictions and his faith. If only more bishops and priests would show the same mettle.

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Well, what do you know? The Lexington Herald-Leader finally published a mugshot of a dangerous criminal on the loose

I published this tweet at 8:06 AM this morning:

That was true then; I got the mugshot from another source. But now, the Lexington Herald-Leader has done the right thing:

    Teen escapes Lexington juvenile jail. He faces charges in deaths of his mom, sister

    By Jeremy Chisenhall and Rayleigh Deaton | July 19, 2021 | 7:01 AM | Updated: 3:45 PM EDT

    Officers searched Monday for a teen accused of killing his mother and 12-year-old sister after he escaped the Fayette County Juvenile Detention Center, according to Kentucky State Police.

    The escaped inmate was identified as Luke Craig, 16, according to state police. Craig was charged in September with murdering 33-year-old Tefani Noe and 12-year-old Brooke Goggin in Anderson County, Sgt. Bernis Napier told the Herald-Leader Monday. Noe was Craig’s mother and Brooke was his younger sister, according to family obituaries.

    Craig is considered “dangerous and a threat to public safety,” state police said.

There’s more at the original.

When I found the article, earlier this morning, then dated at 7:01 AM, no mugshot was included, even though several other local news sites had it. Checking the Herald-Leader’s website at 3:48 PM, I saw that the mugshot had been added. The article was last updated around 3:45 PM, but I do not know if that was when the mugshot was added. But, better late than never; the newspaper has done the right thing.

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If the news doesn’t fit Teh Narrative, the left try to ignore it to death.

At some point, people have to admit that Amanda Marcotte is simply not a serious writer. Now, it could be said that I am not, either, given that no one is paying me to write, and I certainly do not have her audience, but for a political writer, living in Philadelphia, to not have mentioned — did she even notice? — that her adopted hometown had just hit, and then quickly passed, 300 homicides for the year, seems pretty unusual. Heck, even The Philadelphia Inquirer noticed! The image to the right, on which you can click to enlarge, is her Salon article archive, and, two days short of half a year after President Trump left office, it’s pretty much all Donald Trump, all the time.

But, her pain is understandable, because it has been shared by so many other leftist writers. The COVID-19 restrictions, on which so many on the left blamed the surge in homicides, are now almost all in the past, and the evil reich-wing Mr Trump is out of office. The Democrats control the White House, the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. In Pennsylvania, the Governor is a Democrat, as is the Mayor of Philadelphia, as is the City Council, and as is the city’s District Attorney, a man who greatly resists “mass incarceration,” and is so soft-on-crime that it ought to embarrass those who are soft-on-crime. The city’s only serious newspaper is an “anti-racist news organization,” and, let’s face it, virtually every liberal municipal policy imaginable has already been put into force in the City of Brotherly Love.

And yet, and yet, the good people of Philadelphia continue to shoot each other at a prodigious rate. At least 303 murders through 198 days yields a homicide rate of 1.5303 per day, and that works out to 558 or 559 (558.56, to be exact, but you can’t kill half a person) projected homicides for 2021. The record is 500 set in the crack cocaine wars of 1990, with last year’s 499 taking second place.

With all of the liberal policies that one could reasonably imagine being enacted, being in force, in Philadelphia, Miss Marcotte’s fellow city residents are still gunning each other down at appalling rates.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Mindless carnage continues in Chicago

The Windy City has seen more total murders. The Chicago Tribune listed 364 homicides as of July 6th, while the Chicago Sun-Times listed 33 more people bleeding out their life’s blood in the city streets between July 7th and July 17th. That’s 397 homicides in 198 days, 2.0051 per day, on pace for 732 for the year. Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s very liberal policies, combined with the completely Democrat controlled state government, don’t seem to have helped much.

However, if Chicago has seen more homicides than Philadelphia, with a population of 2,679,080, Chicago is 68% bigger than Philly, with 1,591,034 souls. Using the projected killings, Chicago projects to a homicide rate of 27.32 per 100,000 population, while Philly basically says, “Hold my beer!” 558 projected murders divided by 15.79 yields a homicide rate of 35.34 per 100,000!

But, pointing that out doesn’t fit Teh Narrative[1]Not a typo: “Teh Narrative” was intentional. for the left, does it?

So, what is Teh Narrative? That this is a gun control issue, that it’s all about too many guns available, and so we must restrict the rights of law abiding citizens, as though the gang bangers are going to obey such laws.

But, if they tell the truth, that this isn’t a gun control problem, but a cultural problem, a specific cultural problem, virtually everything the left say about ‘racial justice’ and ‘systemic racism’ just falls apart.

References

References
↑1 Not a typo: “Teh Narrative” was intentional.
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Oops! Amanda Marcotte jumps the gun . . . again!

For the lovely Amanda Marcotte, transplanted Texan to Brooklyn to South Philadelphia, jumping the gun is simply de rigueur!

    Great work, useful idiots of the media: Most Americans buy the unsubstantiated “lab leak” theory

    Rapid spread of lab-leak theory shows the right is still browbeating the media into spreading misinformation

    By Amanda Marcotte | July 9, 2021 | 1:00 PM EDT

    Here’s most important thing to understand about the idea that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab: It’s not very likely, and most of the science still points toward natural origins, meaning random transmission from an animal species. As with Saddam Hussein’s mythical “weapons of mass destruction,” which led to the Iraq War, evidence for the “lab leak” theory is mostly right-wing wishful thinking, tied to a couple of thin pieces of not-really-evidence, and held together with the duct tape of speculation. Meanwhile, evidence for a natural origin, while far from complete, is scientifically sound and fits with everything that’s currently known about the evolution of coronaviruses. When you really dig into the competing theories, it becomes clear that while “lab leak” makes for a good TV plot, there’s not much else going for it. The theory of animal-to-human transmission, while less dramatic and perhaps less emotionally satisfying, is the likelier one.

    Yet we now have a Politico-Harvard poll released Friday morning that shows Americans are “almost twice as likely to say the virus was the result of a lab leak in China than human contact with an infected animal.” And while the lab-leak theory has been hyped by Trump apologists looking to distract from the ex-president’s massive mishandling of the pandemic, the buy-in for this unlikely theory is not particularly partisan. Politico reports that “59 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Democrats” believe the lab-leak narrative, while only 28 percent said the virus came “from an infected animal.” This is a dramatic change from March 2020, when only 29% of Americans — basically far-right authoritarians — endorsed the lab-leak theory.

There’s more at the original, and it’s not behind a paywall. Skipping a few paragraphs, Miss Marcotte blames her usual suspects: evil reich wing Republicans:

    It wasn’t evidence that changed people’s minds. It was irresponsible media hype of the “lab leak” theory, brought on by a major push from right-wing conspiracy theorists, and also some gullible pundits and journalists who let themselves be used by the right.

Oops!

    Senior Biden officials finding that Covid lab leak theory as credible as natural origins explanation

    By Natasha Bertrand, Pamela Brown, Katie Bo Williams and Zachary Cohen, CNN | Updated 6:18 PM ET | Friday, July 16, 2021

    Washington (CNN)Senior Biden administration officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins of the coronavirus now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild — a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory.

    Still, more than halfway into President Joe Biden’s renewed 90-day push to find answers, the intelligence community remains firmly divided over whether the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab or jumped naturally from animals to humans in the wild, multiple sources familiar with the probe told CNN.

    Little new evidence has emerged to move the needle in one direction or another, these people said. But the fact that the lab leak theory is being seriously considered by top Biden officials is noteworthy and comes amid a growing openness to the idea even though most scientists who study coronaviruses and who have investigated the origins of the pandemic say the evidence strongly supports a natural origin.

    Current intelligence reinforces the belief that the virus most likely originated naturally, from animal-human contact and was not deliberately engineered, the sources said. But that does not preclude the possibility that the virus was the result of an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where coronavirus research was being conducted on bats — although many scientists familiar with the research say such a leak is unlikely.

I never knew that President Biden and his Administration were vulnerable to “a major push from right-wing conspiracy theorists.” 🙂

One of us thinks that perhaps, just perhaps, Miss Marcotte is herself an entire conspiracy theory, all wrapped up in her one little head.

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The racism of white liberals has made itself clear

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” — Chief Justice John Roberts, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1

We have previously noted the apparently acceptable racial discrimination against Asians in the United States. From The Wall Street Journal:

    A PTA Purge of Asians

    America’s top public high school shows us what discrimination looks like today.

    By William McGurn | July 12, 2021 6:14 pm ET

    When Jeannie C. Riley released “Harper Valley P.T.A.” in 1968, her hit single mocked a parent-teacher association for telling a school mom she was wearing her dresses way too high. Today the real-life sequel is playing out at the Virginia Parent Teacher Association and its chapter at a high-performing public school in Fairfax County. This time, however, parents are complaining about the PTA—that it’s in cahoots with those watering down entrance standards with the aim of reducing the school’s Asian-American population.

    Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is a school for gifted students ranked No. 1 among all public high schools nationwide by U.S. News & World Report. In December the county school board changed its admissions process, replacing a rigorous, race-blind entrance exam with a “holistic” (read: subjective) formula that includes grades but also puts caps on the number of students each middle school could send to TJ—a de facto limit on middle schools with high numbers of Asian-American students.

    The desired result has been achieved. The percentage of Asian-Americans admitted to TJ dropped to 54% this year from 73% last year. Whites, blacks and Latinos all saw their numbers go up. No doubt this is only the beginning.

Were such a program installed to lower the percentage of blacks or Hispanics at a selective high school, the left would be screaming bloody murder. But when it punishes a high-achieving group, even a minority one, you can see what has happened: equality of opportunity has been replaced with “equity,” a ‘progressive’ shorthand for equality of results. I’d really like to just quote the entire OpEd piece, but that’s plagiarism, and a violation of Fair Use standards. Read the entire thing, if you can. Sadly, about half of the article is behind the subscriber paywall.

    One of these coalition candidates is Harry Jackson, a retired Navy officer. In a March 10 piece for The Washington Post, he explained his position this way: “When I see the effort to water down the admissions standards to TJ — and let’s be clear, that effort is led by paternalistic White liberals who are determined to ‘help’ minority students at any cost — I see it for what it is: a tacit admission that they don’t think Black and Hispanic students have what it takes to compete on merit.”

It’s more than just that. Not only do the white liberals not think that black and Hispanic students “have what it takes to compete on merit,” but they dismiss the achievements of students of Asian ethnicity as “white adjacent.”

    Asra Nomani is a Bombay-born newswoman who previously worked as a reporter for this newspaper. She is also the mother of a recent TJ grad, a member of the local PTA and a co-founder of the Coalition for TJ. She describes what’s happening this way:

    “The mostly white Virginia PTA is trying to hijack our all-minority TJ victory because we are an inconvenient minority for them. The woke warriors are so afraid of our mostly immigrant, mostly Asian parents because we defy their narrative of oppressed minorities in a racist America. We’re unapologetic, and that scares them so much that they don’t even realize how they are now perpetrators of a systemic racism and tyranny they claim to oppose.”

It’s more than that. For the #woke to accept the notion that Americans of Asian descent might have achieved the success that they have due to their hard work — this Washington Post article tries to debunk that idea — then the left would have to accept the idea that behavior does influence success, and the lack of it, and that would open the door to the horrible, horrible notion that less successful groups are less successful due to their own behavior.

    It’s certainly not bringing out the best in people who pride themselves on racial sensitivity, Virginia’s education secretary, Atif Qarni, likened Asian-American kids taking test preparation to athletes taking illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

Really? So parents trying to do the best thing for their children, such as giving them the opportunity to practice for admissions tests, is a terrible, terrible thing, but parents who might send their kids to, say, a basketball camp, to try to improve skills to make their high school teams, that’s OK?

You know, that’s what parents do: they try to make life easier for their children, they try to give their kids the best start on life that they can. Isn’t that what sending their children to school is all about in the first place?

William McGurn’s closing paragraph, however, pretty much misses the boat:

    Today’s targeting of successful Asian-American kids lacks the crudity of a Jim Crow lunch counter or a whites-only drinking fountain. But it is no less ugly — and no less racially discriminatory — for being more genteel.

That’s just it: what the ‘progressives’ are doing today does not lack crudity, and is not more genteel. It’s obvious, it’s blatant, it’s visible to anyone with the eyes to see . . . and the willingness to look.