Daily Digest |  |
- Death Rates Plummeting
- Kristen Clarke’s ugly tweets
- Creighton basketball team defies woke PC pundits
- The Boulder Murderer
- Chauvin trial day 12
| Posted: 24 Mar 2021 05:01 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) In my opinion, the covid lockdowns in Europe, the U.S. and some other countries have been one of the worst public health fiascos in recent history. I don’t know whether the true story will ever be written, but we have devastated the lives of our young people and destroyed countless businesses–in other words, people’s lives–in a vain attempt to reduce the death rate among the elderly and frail. The Wuhan bug is a disease, and as such a bad thing. But its fatality is concentrated, to an even greater extent than a typical seasonal flu, among those who are not only elderly but are already sick. This implies that a large majority of those who died from covid in 2020 or 2021 in all likelihood would have died relatively soon in any event–later in 2020 or 2021, or in 2022, and so on. In the U.S. and Europe, overall death rates have in fact been elevated over the past year. But if this hypothesis is correct, we should see lower than normal death rates over the next couple of years. If that happens, it will put the Wuhan epidemic in quite a different light. The U.K. is ahead of the U.S. on the covid time line, and now, for the first time, total death rates there are falling below the historic average:
Exactly. The same thing appears to be happening in America, as this chart shows. This is the CDC’s tabulation of total deaths from all causes. You can see that, contrary to what some have suggested, the Wuhan epidemic did indeed cause a significant increase in total fatalities:
It is too early to tell for certain, since reporting of deaths lags somewhat. But it appears likely that within the next few weeks, total deaths in the U.S. will, as in Britain, fall below demographically predicted levels. Over the next two or three years, demographers will follow these numbers, and we will be able to tell whether, as I suspect, the main impact of the coronavirus was to accelerate deaths among the extremely vulnerable by a few months, or a year or two. If that proves to be the case, the devastation wrought by governors’ shutdowns will be weighed in the balance and, I think, found to be the result of a disastrous miscalculation.     |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2021 02:46 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) Kristen Clarke is Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. She’s an odd pick, or would be in a normal administration, given her history of sponsoring anti-Semitism and advancing the idea that Blacks are superior to Whites. Clarke will argue that this happened long ago, during her college days. However, she is on record as holding another nominee to what he said while in college, and insisting that he not be confirmed because of it. Clarke’s problems are hardly limited to her college days, though. She’s been active on Twitter in very recent years, and some of her tweets are problematic, to say the least. For example, in January 2019, Clarke promoted Jussie Smollett's bogus hate crime allegations in posts on Twitter. She also criticized the Chicago police department for seeking access to Smollett's cell phone. Are Senators like Joe Manchin, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski comfortable turning the Civil Rights Division over to someone who uncritically accepts dubious hate crime claims and attacks law enforcement officials for trying to determine the truth of such claims? We’ll see. There is reason to believe that these Senators are uncomfortable with nominees who attack them, personally. Neera Tanden found that out the hard way. Clarke checks that box, too. In February 2017, she blasted Sen. Manchin for voting to confirm Jeff Sessions as attorney general. When Manchin praised Martin Luther King, Clarke accused him of uttering "hollow words." As for Sen. Murkowski, Clarke called her "shameful." Murkowski’s sin? She voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported on Clarke’s problematic tweets earlier this month. It now reports that Clarke has restricted access to her Twitter account. But her tweets stand as evidence of her intemperance and contempt for even moderate politicians who don’t fully subscribe to her radical agenda. She cut no slack to Manchin and Murkowski when they voted to confirm respected conservative nominees (including their former colleague, Jeff Sessions). Now, these Senators should cut Clarke no slack, regardless of how apologetic she pretends to be at her confirmation hearing.   |
| Creighton basketball team defies woke PC pundits Posted: 24 Mar 2021 11:45 AM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) I have been following Creighton basketball ever since our friend Dave Begley, with the help of a very nice man in the athletic department, gave me a tour of the school’s basketball facility. That was in November 2015. Earlier this month, Creighton suspended its outstanding coach Greg McDermott. He had told his players, after a tough loss: “Guys, we got to stick together. We need both feet in. I need everybody to stay on the plantation. I can't have anybody leave the plantation.” It was an unfortunate comment that bothered at least some team members. However, as I wrote here, the players backed their coach. They know he isn’t a racist. Creighton lifted the suspension before the Big East tournament (yes, the Omaha school plays in the Big East). The players responded with 31 point victory over Butler. They followed this up by defeating a very good Connecticut team, 59-56, to reach the Big East Final. In that game, though, Georgetown blew Creighton out, 73-48. Still, Creighton had made it to the conference tournament final and was rewarded for its excellent season with a #5 seed in the NCAA tourney. However, the basketball punditry took Creighton’s loss to Georgetown as evidence that the Bluejays were in turmoil and disarray after McDermott’s “plantation” remark. On several tournament preview shows, I heard “experts” identify Creighton as primed for an early exit because something was wrong with the program. This analysis struck me as lame. The best evidence of the state of Creighton basketball was (1) the players’ support of their coach after his “plantation” comment and (2) the way they played in McDermott’s first game back from suspension. The blowout loss to Georgetown had to be considered, of course. But good teams sometimes get blown out. We’ve seen it happen in the early rounds of this year’s tournament, including to Georgetown. In fact, I was present when a mediocre Georgetown team blew out a good Creighton squad a few years ago in Washington, D.C. Now, Creighton has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen. The Blue Jays rode their luck in a tight first round game to avoid an upset against UC Santa Barbara and then easily handled Ohio, which had upset #4 seed Virginia. In the Sweet Sixteen, Creighton will face Gonzaga, the #1 rated team in the nation. It would take a brave man to pick the Bluejays. I’m not that man. Still, Creighton has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 1974, when it took only one win to make it that far. So, this is the first time ever that Creighton has won two games in the NCAA tournament. The players and their coach are to be congratulated. I can’t prove that the hoops pundits who pegged Creighton for an early exit due to “disarray” reached their erroneous conclusion due to political correctness. And, to be fair, their prediction could easily have come true if the ball had bounced differently in Creighton’s opening game. Nonetheless, it’s my belief that politics did skew the way some analysts evaluated Creighton. Why else conclude that a team that had just made their conference final by defeating a team that received a #7 seed in the NCAA tournament was in turmoil? The blowout loss to Georgetown wasn’t a sufficient basis. Political correctness has distorted the way many view the world. The pundits’ evaluation of Creighton looks like a small example of this sad phenomenon.   |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2021 07:26 AM PDT (John Hinderaker) The 21-year-old who murdered ten people at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado has been identified as Ahmad Al Issa. He is a refugee from Syria who came to the U.S. as a child. Based on what has emerged so far, Al Issa had anger issues and a paranoid streak. He might have been a paranoid schizophrenic, but so far nothing has emerged that suggests he was insane in a legal sense. Al Issa’s social media accounts have now been deleted (by whom?). But based on screen shots that were taken before they disappeared, he was a virulent Trump-hater who swallowed the Left’s “racism” narrative:
Joe Biden has already called for a ban on “assault rifles,” presumably because the one that was enacted in the 1990s worked so well. An “assault rifle” is semi-automatic, like many rifles sold nowadays, and like the large majority of pistols. Those classified as “assault weapons” are usually relatively low-power rifles and are distinguished by features that people who know nothing about firearms consider scary, like barrel shrouds. According to FBI data, rifles remain among the most unpopular of all murder weapons, ranking well below knives, blunt objects and bare hands. Nevertheless, we are in for another tiresome round of fruitless “assault rifle” hysteria.   |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2021 03:30 AM PDT (Scott Johnson) In part 11 of this series yesterday I concluded that juror 116 — the deer hunter — filled out the profile of the optimal juror for Derek Chauvin. The prosecution exercised a peremptory challenge to strike him, as it has the few other prospective jurors who turned up with a neutral view of Chauvin and a a mind open to his defenses. Juror number 127 proved even better for Chauvin than the deer hunter. He was so good that Judge Cahill upheld the prosecution’s challenge to him for cause. He is a former over the road trucker who made a career change at age 50. Having found an apprentice program that served his needs, he now works in construction as a pipefitter. He is hostile to the media based on their political agendas of one variety or another. He emphasized how “put off” he is by the media “trying to influence him.” He also emphasized his impartiality. “The evidence,” he said, should “stand on itself.” As I guessed at this point, he is deeply in tune with the reality principle. He would have worried about the threat to his personal safety posed by jury service. Why? “After viewing Lake Street and all that, it’s concerning.” Lake Street is the heavily damaged east-west thoroughfare running through the heart of south Minneapolis that was targeted in the riots and looting following the death of George Floyd last year. “I don’t want to be afraid to make the right choice,” he added with respect to the verdict he would render. “It’s not about them, it’s about a person’s life right now.” This was the ideal juror for Chauvin. He respects and appreciates the police. Indeed, on a related point in the juror questionnaire he pungently expressed his hostility to the movement to defund the police as “lunacy.” I could go on, but let me cut it short. His favorable attitude toward the police and the testimony they would give made him the subject of a challenge for cause by prosecutor Steve Schleicher, the outside attorney contributing his services to Chauvin’s prosecution by the State. Judge Cahill upheld Schleicher’s challenge to him for cause under the Minnesota Supreme Court’s Logan case. After Judge Cahill excused him for cause, he announced that he had thought about the defense challenge to juror 121 for cause overnight and revisited the Minnesota Court of Appeals decision in the McKinley case cited by defense counsel Eric Nelson on Monday. Based on McKinley Judge Cahill retroactively restored the peremptory challenge Nelson had exercised to strike him and upheld Nelson’s challenge to him for cause. As it turned out, however, Nelson had no occasion to use it. Juror number 129 is the mother of three. She had concerns about the safety of her family if she were to serve in the case. She was extremely nervous stating her views as a potential juror. Judge Cahill examined her off audio and excused her for cause on his own motion. I inferred that her family responsibilities had something to do with it. Juror number 130 reverted to a profile closer to the norm in this case. He was active in the protests that followed Floyd’s death. The video and “everything [he] saw” affected him. He conceded that he would probably be lying if said he could be fair and impartial to Chauvin. Judge Cahill also excused him for cause on his own motion. I thought we would come away with the fifteenth juror that Judge Cahill wanted before noon. We were running up against my imaginary deadline with juror 131. He is an accountant with plans to move out of the state at the end of May. He is interested in sports. I understood him to have a stake in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. He is familiar with the facts of the case and the video from news accounts. He has a “somewhat negative” impression of Chauvin and his fellow officers during Floyd’s arrest. He thinks the duration of Floyd’s restraint “may have been unnecessary.” He has a neutral impression of Floyd. I assessed him in my notes at this point as a tough juror for Chauvin. At work he has discussed what can be done “to end racism.” He wants to do his part. He started by reading a book on the subject — what book? he couldn’t remember — but he didn’t quite finish it. He thinks that blacks are treated unfairly in the criminal justice system. He holds himself out as an analytical person. He droned on in a monotone that sounded like a parody of an accountant. He stated that he would focus any decision on the evidence produced in court. I have in my notes that I don’t believe him, but I can’t articulate why. Nelson passed him for cause at this point. I think Schleicher and the State’s jury consultant must also have assessed the accountant as favorable to their case. Schleicher’s initial questions to him asked about the new puppy he and his wife have taken on. Schleicher seemed to be killing time until he passed the juror for cause as well. Schleicher elicited the juror’s attitude toward athletes taking a knee during the national anthem. He is not crazy about it. He would prefer the expression of their views in a different form but understands their intention. He is not altogether on board with Black Lives Matter. He doesn’t hold them responsible for the rioting, but thought they may have contributed to it. He strongly disagrees with defunding the police. “They perform a valuable service to society,” he said. As for Blue Lives Matter, “They haven’t done enough to change the conversation” on “equality and gun control.” As I say, I think Schleicher was killing time. Just before my imaginary noon deadline, Schleicher passed him for cause. He is the fifteenth juror Judge Cahill wanted in case any of the first fourteen don’t show up for opening statements on Monday. The courtroom as reconfigured to meet public health recommendations can only accommodate fourteen jurors. Court is adjourned until Monday. Here are the final fifteen jurors — the first twelve are regulars, the others alternates — presented by the court: • No. 2: white male; 20s Court TV has compiled a retrospective on the jurors each side has removed through peremptory strikes. The talking heads of CourtTV are in search of a racial angle. The jurors struck by Schleicher on behalf of the State are all white. The jurors struck by Nelson make up a rainbow coalition adverse to Chauvin in one way or another, but I don’t think that’s quite how Court TV put it. I call the ten-minute Court TV video “A toast to those who are gone.”   |
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