Daily Digest

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• Career criminals and gang lords released from prison thanks to First Step Act
• Gareth gets it right, again
• More Evidence of the Uselessness of “Green” Energy
• A Reminder of How Stupid Our Media Is
• A New Low in Leftist Fanaticism

Career criminals and gang lords released from prison thanks to First Step Act Posted: 08 Jul 2021 06:06 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) Daniel Horowitz points to an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times showing that judges are signing off on the release of gang leaders and other notorious criminals. They are doing so pursuant to the First Step Act, the bipartisan, pro-criminal sentencing act that Donald Trump supported and signed into law. Local prosecutors reportedly are at wits’ end over this development, as they should be. Chicago has been plagued by a surge in violent crime. Over the July 4 weekend, 22 people were killed and 90 wounded in the city. A 20-year-old college student was killed by a stray bullet that smashed through a window while he was sitting on a train. How can violent criminals obtain release under the First Step which, its advocates assured us, would apply to drug felons, not violent ones? The answer stems to a large extent from the fact that drug charges are the tip of the iceberg for many violent felons. Horowitz points to the case of Gustavo Colon: Colon was sentenced to life in federal prison 21 years ago for running a multimillion-dollar narcotics operation. While that is certainly not a low-level drug charge, some might believe that life in prison is too harsh for any drug crime. But that’s not really why he was given life in prison; the drug laws were just used as prosecutorial tools. As WGN-TV reports, Colon served 25 years in state prison for the 1971 murder of Glenn Burr when he was a teen gang member. He was also accused of putting a gun to a girl’s head during the gang attack, but the gun failed to fire. . . . While he was in state prison, the feds saw that Colon had risen to the rank of “corona” in the violent Latin Kings and was calling all the hits and murders from behind bars. Of course, he only served 25 years after being sentenced to 30-60 years, and the feds realized in 1997 that they must do something to keep him off the streets. So they convicted him on 20 counts of running a drug operation, and he was sentenced to life. Thanks to the First Step Act, Colon is eligible to file a petition for his release. We don’t yet know whether the court will order Colon’s release. But we do from the Chicago Sun-Times analysis that judges are releasing major criminals and gang leaders. We also know from our experience in the 1960s and 1970s that liberal judges are prone to do that. It was for this reason that members of both parties supported tough sentencing legislation. And it was that legislation that helped reduce violent crime dramatically. For some reason, many Republicans, including Donald Trump, forgot this history or chose to ignore it. Perhaps the horrific spike in violent crime in cities throughout America will bring Republicans to their senses.

Gareth gets it right, again Posted: 08 Jul 2021 02:38 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) Denmark’s national soccer team accomplished little of note until the early 1980s. In 1983, a strong Danish team had a great campaign attempting to qualify for Euro 1984. Qualification turned on a match against England at Wembley Stadium. In the build-up to the match, one English soccer pundit commended Denmark for its qualification efforts but predicted that, after England thrashed them, the Danes would return to doing what they do best, “drinking lager, making sandwiches, and watching English football on the telly.” But it was Denmark that qualified for the tournament and England that watched on the telly, as the Danes made it to the semifinals where they lost a thrilling match to Spain on penalty kicks. England finally avenged that 1983 defeat yesterday. It squeezed past Denmark, 2-1 after extra time. As he has all tournament, England’s manager, Gareth Southgate, got his tactics right. He played his usual 4-3-3 formation with the ten players that have populated it throughout the tournament (availability permitting), plus Bukayo Sako in the rotating right-wing position. This was the set-up I thought Southgate should use against Germany to counter Robin Gosens, the dangerous German left wing-back. But Germany posed a threat down both wings, so Southgate wisely matched up in that game, abandoning the 4-3-3 and using two wing-backs. The Danes, by contrast, only posed a serious problem down the left wing, through Joakim Maehle. So Southgate, taking advantage of Sako’s wing-back traits, deployed him on Maehle’s side, but as a forward in the 4-3-3. It worked. Maehle was basically a non-factor in attack. And Sako assisted on England’s first goal. Southgate also got his substitutions right, mainly by not making many of them. Throughout this tournament, I’ve been puzzled by decisions of other managers to pull off high-quality forwards. In the Italy-Spain semi-final, the Italians replaced all three forwards, two of them before the overtime period. Spain replaced two of its three forwards (though in Spain’s case, the replacements had both been starters during much of the tourney). Switzerland also replaced all three of its forwards in regulation time of its quarterfinal match with Spain (decided on penalty kicks), as did Spain in that match. Denmark had pulled its two most lethal attackers, Kasper Dolberg and Mikkel Damsgaard, at around the hour mark in both of the team’s previous knockout stage matches. Yesterday, its manager pulled the two after 63 minutes. Denmark never looked like scoring after that. Southgate, by contrast, stuck with his two best attackers, Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane, for the full 120 minutes. Sterling, who never seemed to tire, rewarded him by drawing a (borderline) penalty with another great run into the box in extra time. Kane converted, albeit only after Danish goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel saved the spot kick. And even though Denmark used all six of its substitutes, compared to four by England (and only one in the first 90 minutes), the English were the fresher side from about the 70 minute mark on. Every manager at the Euros knows his team far better than any outsider can. There may be good reasons for substituting one’s best strikers. However, managers rarely do this during the regular league seasons unless there is an injury or the outcome of the match has been determined. Strikers are expected to go 90 minutes. And when one goal is likely to decide the match, as was the case after the first hour of both semifinals, common sense militates strongly in favor of allowing them to do so, even if they might be a bit tired. That’s what Southgate did and what the managers of the other semifinalist did not. Once again, Gareth got it right.

More Evidence of the Uselessness of “Green” Energy Posted: 08 Jul 2021 01:48 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) At AmericanExperiment.org, my colleague Isaac Orr deals a double-barreled blow to the fantasy of “green” energy. First, after all of the hype surrounding wind and solar energy, where did Americans actually get their electricity in 2020? This chart tells the story: All “renewable” sources together account for only 12% of our electricity, but the details make the story even worse: It is very interesting to note that burning wood, which is the oldest form of energy consumption in the country, is still producing more useful energy than solar power, despite the billions of dollars that have been spent propping up the industry. What an utter failure. Second, why does wind power supply so little electricity, despite the many billions that have been spent on it? The most basic reason is that 60% of the time, a given wind turbine produces nothing. The liberals’ response to this fact is to advocate massive overbuilding of capacity, on the theory that the wind must be blowing somewhere. Unfortunately, that isn’t true: Advocates of wind turbines often argue that their unreliability can be offset by building even more wind turbines and transmission lines to distant areas because the wind is always blowing somewhere. But last week, electricity generation from wind turbines was low throughout the entire 15 state power grid to which Minnesota belongs, the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO), even though electricity demand was very high. The graph below shows data from the United States Energy Information Administration for wind generation in the regional electric grid on an hourly basis from June 24, 2021, through July 5, 2021. There is, obviously, an enormous difference between the nominal capacity of installed wind turbines and their actual production of electricity. On windy days, they might occasionally produce nearly as much as their rated capacity, but on other days they may produce nothing at all, even across a broad geographic area. At midnight on June 24, 2021, wind turbines were operating at about 80 percent of their capacity factor, but by 11 am on June 30, 2021, all of the wind turbines in the 15 state regional grid were generating just 0.71 percent of their potential output. If we were so foolish as to depend on wind for our electricity, we would suffer frequent blackouts no matter how many turbines we pay for. But of course we don’t do that. We continue to maintain dispatchable (i.e., reliable) power plants–coal, natural gas and nuclear as well as hydropower. Wind and solar are expensive and irrelevant add-ons to an electric grid that was working perfectly well–better, in fact–before they came along. Isaac Orr concludes: The data above demonstrate an important aspect of wind generation that few people seem to realize: it can provide virtually zero electricity even with massive installations of wind turbines. Becoming more dependent upon an unreliable resource that comes and goes as it pleases is a dangerous way to structure an electric grid, as Texas and California have found out the hard way.

A Reminder of How Stupid Our Media Is Posted: 08 Jul 2021 01:35 PM PDT (Steven Hayward) News out just now that Michael Avenatti has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for attempting to extort $20 million from Nike. What’s his problem: doesn’t he understand that that kind of thing is a job for Hunter Biden? Anyway, keep in mind that Avenatti was only famous because the media made him famous—a perfect example of what Daniel Boorstin called a “pseudo-event,” or perhaps the media equivalent of a self-licking ice cream cone. Or the ultimate fake news. Here’s a highlight reel from the Free Beacon: Really, all of these people should slink off the stage in shame and never return.

A New Low in Leftist Fanaticism Posted: 08 Jul 2021 08:59 AM PDT (Steven Hayward) Politico reports a stunner today: the climatistas are begging President Biden not to be too tough on China for human rights violations, or anything else, because . . . it might be bad for the climate! Biden's new Cold War with China will result in climate collapse, progressives warn As a new Cold War takes shape between the U.S. and China, progressives fear the result will be a dramatically warming planet. Over 40 progressive groups sent a letter to President Joe Biden and lawmakers on Wednesday urging them to prioritize cooperation with China on climate change and curb its confrontational approach over issues like Beijing's crackdown on Hong Kong and forced detention of Uyghur Muslims. . . The progressive organizations, including the Sunrise Movement and the Union of Concerned Scientists, "call on the Biden administration and all members of Congress to eschew the dominant antagonistic approach to U.S.-China relations and instead prioritize multilateralism, diplomacy, and cooperation with China to address the existential threat that is the climate crisis," their letter reads. "Nothing less than the future of our planet depends on ending the new Cold War between the United States and China." . . . Progressives . . .  already see the broader U.S.-China spat bleeding into the climate-change effort. In June, for example, the US banned the import of solar panel material from a Chinese company over forced labor allegations. Human rights? Fuggetabout it. Gotta have those cheap solar panels. Next time you hear a leftist bleat on about “human rights,” you can safely ignore zir.

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