Email About a ‘Witch Hunt’ (Or LESBIAN TEACHER SEX SCANDAL UPDATE)

Posted on | April 2, 2020 | 3 Comments

The following correspondence is lengthy, but self-explanatory:

Thursday, April 2, 8:41 a.m.

Dear Ms. W_____:
When I received your email requesting that I take down a March 2017 post about your court case, saying that your conviction had been overturned, and asserting that my blog post was “hurting my ability to rebuild my life,” my natural instinct was to answer with two words, the first of which begins with “f,” and the second one being “you.” The implied threat of offering to put me in touch with your “Manhattan attorney” did not intimidate me. Having worked as a journalist since 1986, I am sufficiently acquainted with libel law as to be certain that I had no legal vulnerability in this case, as all I did was to summarize articles published by the Binghamton (N.Y.) Press, which are still extant.
Nevertheless, your email caused me to research further and determine that, indeed, your charges were dismissed in February 2019 by a state appeals court which found procedural flaws in the indictment, which the Binghamton Press described as a “technical error” by prosecutors.
Well, this did not affect the accuracy of my March 2017 post, and if I had failed to notice the appeals court’s ruling, this was simply because I habitually work in “file-it-and-forget-it” mode. I had completely forgotten about your case by the time the appeals court ruled, and thus did not revisit your case to update the story. So your email requesting a takedown put me in a bit of a quandary. I am always averse to “unpublishing” anything I’ve posted, because to do so would invite a tsunami of similar demands by anyone who felt harmed by my coverage and commentary. Almost without exception, such demands get my standard “f– you” response, or no response at all. People who make such threats of legal action, in which I am certain they could never possibly prevail (because truth is the ultimate defense against any claim of libel), are usually just blowhards and bullies who can be ignored.
Nevertheless, in consideration of the circumstances, I have decided to take down that March 2017 post, not because I believe I was in any way vulnerable to litigation, but rather because of my sense of justice and mercy. Permit me to explain my reasons at some length.
In court, the Binghamton Press reported, you “adamantly maintained that [you were] innocent and the subject of a ‘witch hunt,'” and that “the accusations were concocted by [your] ex-husband.”
Revenge? Was your ordeal the result of your ex-husband’s vindictive spite? This reminded me very much of certain cases of alleged sexual assault on university campuses, in which accused students asserted that they were victims of falsehoods inspired by the hurt feelings of an ex-girlfriend. Beginning in 2014, a real “witch-hunt” climate was evident in our nation’s universities, and the political motivations of that vindictive spirit was clearly apparent to me: Seeking to build support for the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, activists had whipped up a climate of feminist fury on campus, with The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault leading the way. One can trace a straight line of causation from the formation of that task force in February 2014 to the University of Virginia rape hoax in November 2014, the chain of causation involving Emily Renda and Catherine Lhamon.
During the three years when this “witch-hunt” hysteria was at its peak, more than 100 lawsuits were filed by university students who claimed to have been falsely accused of sexual assault, but were denied due process in campus tribunals where these accusations were adjudicated.
In regard to those lawsuits, it must be asked, can we ever know whether any particular plaintiff was truly innocent or guilty? I don’t think so. The problem in such cases is that they are almost always “he said, she said” situations, where corroborating evidence is lacking. This makes the lack of due process in campus disciplinary tribunals very problematic, because accused students were being expelled on the basis of accusations unsupported by evidence, in cases that never would have stood a chance in any court of law. The most vile criminal in our prison system at least had the right to cross-examine his accusers during trial and to be represented by an attorney, rights denied to students at some of our nation’s most prestigious universities!
You see, then, why your claim of being the target of a “witch hunt” inspired by a vindictive ex-husband struck a chord with me. It would be wrong of me to, on the one hand, extend sympathy to these accused college students and to deny such sympathy toward you.
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 7:1-2 KJV). This scripture, I think, is too often misconstrued, even by sincere Christians. Of course, all people must form judgments about human behavior, to admire virtuous behavior and deplore wrongdoing. What Jesus was telling His disciples was that they should be merciful, to avoid the hypocritical legalism of the Pharisees: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27 KJV). The Christian should strive for an attitude of moral humility, being conscious of his own sinfulness, and thus being hesitant to suppose himself in any way superior to others.
If we have faith in God, we must eschew any pursuit of revenge. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19 KJV). Thus, it is a mark of Christian character that, when we suffer unjustly from the wrongdoing of others, we do not contemplate reprisal. We do not brood over the wrongs we have suffered, harboring grievances and seeking to repay our injuries eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth.
Well, “judge not,” eh? Certainly I have fallen short of that mark on occasion and, in condemning the spirit of vengeance, I condemn my own sin when I have succumbed to such temptation, repenting and striving to avoid such sin in the future. At least I am aware of my sinful nature, and being conscious of my own sins gives me pause when, in such a case as yours, I am called on to be merciful toward a fellow sinner.
Another circumstance in your case that reminds me of the campus sexual assault “witch hunt” is the years which elapsed between the alleged crime and the time when charges were brought against you. This was one of the most frustrating aspects of so many cases that led to lawsuits against universities: The accused student hooked-up with his accuser (typically, after a party) and several months later — in some cases, more than two years later — he found himself accused of sexual assault. Bad enough to try to defend yourself in such a “he said, she said” situation, but how could anyone be expected to prove his innocence in the case of a drunken hook-up two years earlier? The obvious question must be asked: If the accuser actually was raped, why didn’t she go to police when it happened? If you were raped your freshman year, why wait until your alleged rapist was just a few months away from graduation to file a complaint?
That scenario of belated accusation played out over and over in cases of false accusation claims that led to lawsuits during the 2014-2016 peak of the campus sexual assault hysteria, and was also evident during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in 2018. Kavanaugh, whose reputation was previously untainted by any accusation of sexual impropriety, found himself accused of having participated in gang rape more than 30 years earlier, when he was a high school senior. How can anyone so accused be expected to defend himself? This is why we have statutes of limitation, because it is so difficult to determine the facts when years elapse between the alleged wrongdoing and a criminal proceeding. At least, if someone said they were raped in a certain location last Wednesday night, the accused might be able to provide an alibi, proving that he was not there at the time. But when someone claims in 2018 that they were raped at a party in the summer of 1982, well, how could Judge Kavanaugh alibi himself? Fortunately, he had kept a calendar of his activities that summer, and this made it possible to narrow down the possibilities in such a way as to cast doubt on Kavanaugh’s accuser’s story, but this was a harrowing lesson in why we don’t customarily give credit to accusations of wrongdoing that emerge so long after the alleged events.
This has relevance to your case. According to the Binghamton Press, your accuser claimed to have been molested at age 6, and was 18 when the trial reached its conclusion in 2017. While I would not presume to know the truth of the matter, one way or another, I am reminded of the McMartin Preschool case and other such cases where theories of “repressed memory” were part of a witch-hunt hysteria, with suggestive questioning: “Show me on the doll where he touched you.” To this day, there are some people who believe that child molestation may have occurred in some of those cases, and I can’t rule out the possibility, but during the height of the witch-hunt hysteria, certainly the criminal justice system was hijacked in ways that violated the rights of the accused.
A couple of years ago, I read Spectral Evidence, an account of the ordeal suffered by Gary Ramona, a successful California businessman who found himself caught up in the “repressed memory” trap. His teenage daughter developed an eating disorder, and her therapist (following a theory that was then much in vogue) evidently decided that this emotional problem was proof that the girl had been a victim of incest. This ultimately led to a landmark trial in which Gary Ramona was exonerated, but this did not undo the damage done by the discredited accusation. He lost his family, lost his business and spent a fortune on attorneys all because a professional “expert” believed she was “helping” his teenage daughter with an eating disorder! If every teenager who thinks her thighs are too fat were deemed a victim of child abuse — for such was the theory this therapist seemed to embrace — our court system would be swamped with prosecutions. As Gary Ramona learned, even if the accused is exonerated in such a case, the criminal-justice process itself is a sort of punishment.
The same, I suppose, could be said in your case. While having your conviction overturned because of a flaw in the indictment is not necessarily an exoneration, even if one were to presume your guilt, it cannot be denied that you have suffered punishment. Two trials, the loss of your employment, the destruction of your reputation, however much jail time you served, attorneys’ fees, etc. — yes, this has been going on since 2011, and no one could say that you have not paid a high price already. Considering all this, then, I have removed my March 2017 post about your case, but I have not yet explained why your case came to my attention in the first place.
One of the basic purposes of my blog — the raison d’être of what I do — is to provide some small measure of balance to the obvious biases of our national news media, by calling attention to stories that contradict the prevailing narrative. Beginning in 2014, when it became obvious that the media were engaged in battlespace preparation for Hillary Clinton’s expected presidential campaign, feminism became a special focus on my blog. It’s a long story of how that happened, but as I have sometimes had to explain, I don’t call myself a “men’s rights activist” because I think that the concept of group rights is a fundamental error which divides society into hostile factions. Identity politics is a scam devised to enhance the power of self-appointed leaders of “social justice” movements, and I want no part of it. I’m not an “activist,” I’m just a guy trying to make a living writing stories, and the story I saw emerging in 2014 was how a campaign of feminist rage was being fomented in hopes that this would carry Hillary Clinton to the White House. Well, it failed in its ultimate object, but this campaign inflicted deep harm on our culture, and the news media were complicit in that harm.
At a time when feminists were staging “Slut Walk” protests proclaiming that every man on the planet was a potential rapist, and that all women were victims of male sexual evil — and when this “rape culture” theme was being echoed and amplified by major media outlets — it seemed to me that something should be done to counter-balance this message. Thus began my habit of collecting accounts of lesbian teacher sex scandals:

April 5, 2014: Lesbian Sex Crime: Florida Dance Teacher Guilty of Molesting ‘Hot’ 15-Year-Old Girl
June 12, 2014: Police Arrest Teacher, Accused of Four-Year Lesbian Affair With Teen Student
Sept. 2, 2014: Police: Lesbian Coach and Teenage Girl ‘Had an Ongoing Sexual Relationship’
March 28, 2015: Police: Middle School Teacher Had Lesbian Sex With 14-Year-Old Girl
April 23, 2015: Lesbian Teacher Pleads Guilty to Criminal Sexual Conduct With Teenage Girl
Jan. 30, 2016: Police: Louisiana Teacher and Teen Girl Had Year-Long Lesbian Relationship
March 4, 2016: N.C. Teacher, 30, Charged in Lesbian Sexual Affair With Female Student, 17
May 14, 2016: Police: Lesbian Teacher Had Sex in Cemetery, Spent the Night With Teen Girl

That is a partial sample of maybe two dozen such cases I featured on the blog, and this was, as I say, intended to counter-balance the bias of the mainstream media which, at that time, was promoting the idea that women everywhere were being victimized by rape culture — oppressed by the patriarchy! — and LESBIAN TEACHER SEX SCANDAL was one obvious means of putting some weight on the other side of the scale.
Considering your own particular circumstances, you can see how your case came to my attention in March 2017. And at risk of belaboring the obvious, I must explain how difficult it can be to find these LESBIAN TEACHER SEX SCANDAL stories. The prevailing bias of the media is such that, if someone within the LGBT community is ever accused of a sex crime, it is apparently forbidden to specify their sexual orientation in news accounts. There is no such thing as a “gay pedophile” in the liberal journalism lexicon, and when a female teacher is accused of molesting a female student, the word “lesbian” will never appear in newspaper stories about the case. So a certain skill in selecting Google search terms is required to find LESBIAN TEACHER SEX SCANDAL stories, and I could probably teach a seminar on the subject by now. However, once President Trump was inaugurated, other controversies emerged to capture my attention, and it’s been a while since I’ve done any of those stories.
My point, ma’am, is that I never bore any personal malice against you, nor do I hate lesbians generally. What I was doing was an effort to provide balance to the media’s one-sided treatment of these issues, and I doubt that being mentioned on my blog was the worst of your problems. Nevertheless, as your conviction has been overturned on appeal, I have decided to remove that March 2017 post from the blog, because this seems what justice and mercy would require.
We live in evil times, and I am often reminded of what the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, when he spoke of the pagans being “filled with all unrighteousness,” so that they became “implacable” and “unmerciful” (Romans 1:29, 31 KJV). The spirit of cruelty we see everywhere now is unmistakable evidence of the sinfulness that pervades our society. Lately I have been quite busy writing about the coronavirus pandemic, which some might interpret as evidence of “the wrath of God . . . against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Romans 1:18 KJV). Far be it from me to claim any special prophetic insight, but I should hope that you will seriously contemplate your experience, and consider what lesson might be learned.
My apologies for all my faults and failures, as it is my wish ever to remain

Your most humble and obedient servant,

Robert Stacy McCain

+ + + + +

One of my rules is, I write for money, so if I’m going to expend the time it takes to write more than 2,500 words in an email, you better doggone believe I’ll publish that correspondence for the edification of my readers.

Let me just briefly amplify the point I was making to this lady: Court proceedings are a matter of public record, and no journalist can be accused of libel or defamation for accurately reporting an arrest or a trial. Print publications like the Binghamton Press cannot “unpublish” a news article, nor do I have any obligation to unpublish a story about an arrest if the suspect is subsequently acquitted. The arrest itself is a matter of public record, whatever the outcome of subsequent prosecution.

So if anyone else involved in a LESBIAN TEACHER SEX SCANDAL thinks I’m going to make a habit of removing posts from the blog, they’ve got another think coming. If any lesbian teachers were to ask my advice in this regard, I’d tell them they’d better avoid any behavior that might put them in jeopardy of such an accusation, because who knows when I might decide it’s time to do another Google search for some more LESBIAN TEACHER SEX SCANDAL headlines?

It’s a thankless job, but somebody’s got to do it, and I remind readers that The Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Category: Crime, Education, Gays, Media Bias

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | April 1, 2020 | 1 Comment

Coronavirus terrorism in a Maryland hospital:

A Hagerstown man has been charged with Threat of Mass Violence in connection to an incident at Meritus Medical Center.
On Tuesday, March 24, 2020, at approximately 4:30 PM, a Deputy, assigned to work at Meritus Medical Center, assisted hospital security with an aggressive male. The male, identified as Michael Palani Smith, 32, was in the Emergency Department. It was learned that Smith had been tested for COVID 19 prior to his arrival at the hospital. When asked to wear a protective bandana, Smith refused and became combative with staff and security. Smith yelled that he didn’t care if he infected others because no one cares about him. During the incident, Smith pulled his bandana down and forcefully coughed several times in the direction of the Deputy and Security Officer.
After being moved to another room, Smith continued to be combative and attempted to harm himself. The medical staff was finally able to gain control of Smith.
During the incident, the deputy was wearing proper personal protective equipment; face mask, gloves, and glasses.
On April 1, 2020, a warrant was served on Smith for one count of Threat of Mass Violence and two counts of Assault 1st degree. Additionally, Smith was charged via criminal summons for two counts of Assault 2nd degree.
Smith is currently being held at the Washington County Detention Center on no bond.

Did the virus cause this, or was he already crazy before he got the virus?

Category: Crime, Health Care, Maryland

In The Mailbox: 04.01.20

Posted on | April 1, 2020 | 1 Comment

– compiled by Wombat-socho

Well, judging from the responses to yesterday’s “poll”, it sounds like people want more of the same plus some Rule 5 content. I think I can manage that. From the pages of the Toronto Sun, here’s Sunshine Girl Kate.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #943
Red Pilled Jew: Whittle Wednesday
357 Magnum: California Was Too Cool To Stay Prepared
EBL: White House Coronavirus Briefing For March 31
Twitchy: Drew Holden’s Got a Pretty Good Idea Why The Chicoms Are Using American Media For COVID-19 Propaganda
Louder With Crowder: Trump Shuts Down CNN’s Acosta For Asking Whether He Gives “False Hope”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Great Boomer Plague
American Conservative: The World Health Organization Is Out Of Control
American Greatness: Mainstream Media Ignore Former Biden Staffer’s Rape Allegations
American Thinker: How A Police State Is Born
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: The USNS Comfort Projects American Strength & Humanity
BattleSwarm: Tucker Carlson On Mask & Hydroxychloroquine Lies
Cafe Hayek: Whatever It Is, It Isn’t Economics
Camp Of The Saints: #WUHAN – On The Natives Getting Restless & Virtue Signaling
CDR Salamander: April – Mensis Horribilis
Da Tech Guy: My Favorite Screwtape Quote, Journalists, & #learntomanufacture, also, Candidate Cuomo
Don Surber: The April Fools Of The Press
The Geller Report: Comrade Obama Links Chinese Virus To Climate Change, Blames Trump, also, Hypocritical Media Downplayed Wuhan Virus For Weeks
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, What’s Up For April 2020
Hollywood In Toto: Haunting Shooting Heroin Goes Where Hollywood Won’t, also, Hollywood’s “Trump Is Hitler” Argument Even More Pathetic Now
JustOneMinute: Grim Forecasts
Legal Insurrection: Kennedy Center Lays Off Staff, Fires Musicians Despite $25 Million Stimulus, also, Drs. Birx & Fauci Dispute Claim U.S. Didn’t Act Quickly
Megan McArdle: COVID-19 Is Going To Do To Businesses What It’s Doing To People
Michelle Malkin: Questions About State Department’s “China First” Shipment
Power Line: Don’t Let Red China Off The Hook, also, The Intolerant Left
Shark Tank: DeSantis Announces Statewide Stay-At-Home Order, also, Rep. Frankel Dismisses Bipartisan Coronavirus Request From Laura Loomer
Shot In The Dark: Like “We Didn’t Start The Fire”
This Ain’t Hell: Wednesday FGS, also, USS Theodore Roosevelt Has COVID-19 Outbreak
Victory Girls: FISA Abuse Goes Beyond Carter Page Case
Volokh Conspiracy: District Court Finds Bump Stock Ban May Constitute A Taking
Weasel Zippers: Biden Says Trump Should Form A Coronavirus Task Force With Someone In Charge, also, Pelosi Says She Has No Regrets On Delaying Coronavirus Aid
Mark Steyn: Making Red China Pay, also, Creatures Round The Black Lagoon

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Category: Uncategorized

Non-Essential Worker Update: #Coronavirus Crisis Boomerang Edition

Posted on | April 1, 2020 | Comments Off on Non-Essential Worker Update: #Coronavirus Crisis Boomerang Edition

Florida is now under a statewide “stay-at-home” order because journalists kept whining about the Republican governor not doing it:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday ordered his 21 million residents across the state to stay home for 30 days because of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the “national pause” dictated by the White House pushed him to limit movements to essential activities like grocery shopping.
The Republican governor had resisted such an order even as Florida’s COVID-19 cases doubled in recent days, reaching about 7,000. He said Broward and Miami-Dade counties accounted for the majority of Florida cases, while other parts of the state saw very low transmission.
He changed his mind after President Trump decided to extend social-distancing guidelines until April 30. While the guidelines didn’t mandate a stay-at-home order, it signaled that things wouldn’t return to normal anytime soon.

DeSantis is a Republican, Florida is a swing state with a lot of elderly residents who are worried about the virus, and so the media in Florida kept interviewing “experts” (eye roll) who urged the importance of a statewide shutdown order. All the while, of course, municipal and county governments (including the Democrat-controlled cities and counties where the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is worst) always had the power to order local shutdowns, and most of communities did. But the screeching hysteria from the media continued, because how dare Republican-voting people in rural parts of Florida be allowed to go about their normal lives while there was an EMERGENCY HEALTH CRISIS underway.

Let’s talk about the “crisis”: Statewide, the known COVID-19 infection rate in Florida is 32 cases per 100,000 residents, and the death rate so far is below 1 per 100,000 residents. Florida’s risk level is about 90% lower than in New York (430 cases per 100,000 residents).

But, but, but … SEVEN THOUSAND CASES!

Right, in a state of 21 million people where, every day for the past week, thousands of people have been tested for COVID-19 — March 24-30, more than 45,000 Florida residents were tested for the coronavirus, and more than 80% of those tests were negative. Thanks to the panic-mongering media, every fear-stricken hypochondriac with a case of the sniffles is demanding a COVID-19 test, wasting precious time and resources. The escalating number of cases was a predictable result of the advent of widespread testing, but fewer than 900 of those testing positive for coronavirus (about 12% of the total) have been hospitalized.

And, yes, exactly as Ron DeSantis kept saying, most of Florida has scarcely been affected by coronavirus: Of the 6,741 cases in Florida as of Tuesday, 3,893 cases (58% of the statewide total) were in three counties on the state’s southeast coast: Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. If you’re in Polk County — Lakeland, Winter Haven, etc. — you’ve got 73 cases in a population of more than 600,000. There has been exactly one coronavirus death in Polk County, a 60-year-old man who died March 21. The greatest risk for Polk County residents is that the next county over, Hillsborough (Tampa/St. Petersburg) has had more than 300 cases with four deaths so far. But Hillsborough County approved a “state-at-home” order March 26, so as long as people in that urban center had obeyed the local order, they wouldn’t have been traveling to Lakeland to put residents of Polk County at risk. If there was any political pressure from Polk County for DeSantis to issue a statewide order, I imagine, it was only because those damn city folks in Tampa wouldn’t stay home.

Well, that’s all over now. Statewide lockdown, because of the media, and maybe it will save some lives, but the media will blame DeSantis for the whole thing, because demonizing Republicans is their job. The good news is, the pandemic is causing layoffs at media companies, because it turns out their jobs are not essential. Here’s some more good news:

Trump Was Right: Coronavirus Death Rate
Much Lower Than Previous Estimates, Study Says

The media mocked Trump for saying he had a “hunch” the mortality rate was lower than the 3.4% widely cited three weeks ago, and now it turns out the rate is less than 1%. (Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Here’s a March 6 headline from CNBC:

People are stealing masks and other
medical equipment from hospitals,
New York Gov. Cuomo says

Here’s a March 30 headline from ABC:

Cuomo and New York hospitals
reject Trump’s claim masks
‘going out the back door’

Do these “journalists” know anything about actually reporting facts? Three weeks after Cuomo said medical equipment was being stolen from New York hospitals, suddenly he pretends to have amnesia when Trump makes the same point, and “journalists” can’t be bothered to check?

Let me offer a prediction: Some time in the next month or so, the FBI will arrest people in New York and New Jersey who have made hundreds of thousands of dollars by stealing medical equipment and re-selling it. Some of these people might have Italian names, IYKWIMAITYD.

Speaking of Italian-named people in New York:

Why didn’t the city at least stock up on masks and hand sanitizer, which are cheap—or were cheap, before global demand created a shortage? It isn’t as though Mayor de Blasio is unconcerned about emergencies—he talks obsessively about climate change and its “existential” threat to the city. He has initiated major lawsuits against energy companies, attempted to prohibit glass buildings, banned plastic bags, and plans to extend the shoreline of Manhattan into the East River in order to protect New York City against the possibility of rising ocean levels over the next century.
Yet at the same time, de Blasio—and New York’s governors—closed hospitals and care centers, turning their sites over to well-connected developers, without replacing capacity or building in redundancy. He signed six bulging budgets that increased spending by tens of billions of dollars, and he lavished money on anything that advanced his political agenda or benefitted his allies. But he clearly didn’t allocate enough money to buy the necessary staples of emergency preparedness. Now that disaster has arrived at the city’s door, the mayor is blaming everyone but himself.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) Today, for the second day this week, I’m watching MSNBC (so you don’t have to) and what amazes me is how much news they simply ignore. Like, the bungling of Mayor de Blasio? Didn’t happen, as far as MSNBC is concerned. They entirety of their coverage — hour after hour, 24/7 — is about blaming Donald Trump for coronavirus. And because their coverage is completely devoted to this political blame-game, MSNBC’s viewers are missing out on coronavirus news that’s far more important than politics. For example:

Carroll County, Maryland, is largely rural and, like the rest of rural America, had little reason to fear the coronavirus pandemic — until last week. Eighteen residents of a nursing home in Mount Airy were hospitalized, 77 of the facility’s 95 residents tested positive for COVID-19, and five have already died. This single-site outbreak dramatically increased Carroll County’s total number of coronavirus cases from 15 to 92 and was a key factor in Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan issuing a statewide stay-at-home order Monday.
It’s about 7,000 miles from rural Maryland to Wuhan, China, where this worldwide pandemic began late last year, but more importantly, Mount Airy is just 40 miles away from two major urban centers: Baltimore to the east and Washington, D.C., to the south. This proximity almost certainly played a role in the deadly viral outbreak at the Carroll County nursing home. The spread of COVID-19 across the United States has been very uneven, heavily concentrated in urban areas, leaving most Americans outside the danger zones, at least so far. Protecting the “safe” parts of the country from the contagion may require strict measures that many conservatives would normally oppose, and disparities in the impact of this pandemic are likely to exacerbate America’s partisan divide. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.

Category: Health Care, Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 03.31.20

Posted on | March 31, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.31.20

– compiled by Wombat-socho

Since I can’t find the WordPress widget that lets us do polling, please answer in the comments.
In The Mailbox needs:
1) less news about the Wuhan Flu/Bat Soup Fever/Corona-chan
2) all Corona-chan all the time
3) more Rule 5
4) Comedy option

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: “Professional Journalism”
EBL: President Trump’s March 30 Press Conference
Twitchy: Thread About Why The Media Is All But Cheering Corona-Chan Is Infuriatingly Spot On
Louder With Crowder: The MyPillow Guy Is Making Surgical Masks, And The Media Is Pissed, also, James O’Keefe Visits COVID-19 Testing Center, Talks To People On The Frontlines

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Adding Fuel To The Fire
American Conservative: A History of Sprawl In One Road Trip
American Greatness: Did CDC’s Focus On Social Justice Reduce Its Readiness?
American Thinker: The Coincidental Chinese Virus
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Lively Longevity News
Babalu Blog: COVID-19 Strands Chilean Leftist & Castro Regime Bootlicker In Cuba; She Pleads For Help To Escape
BattleSwarm: President Trump’s March 29 Speech On The Coronavirus Crisis, also, Dispatches From The Texas Lockdown
Cafe Hayek: Ironic
Da Tech Guy: The Corona Holding Action – A WW2 Analogy, also, Report From Louisiana – Unfocused
Don Surber: We Need Press Briefings Without The Press
First Street Journal: Allowing Remote Voting For Congress Is The Right Thing To Do
The Geller Report: NY Gov Cuomo Releases Eight Sex Offenders, Three Of Whom Raped Children, also, Top Hospital Exec Says Trump Supporters With Coronavirus Should give Up Ventilators
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Good Advice – From China
Hollywood In Toto: Why Jane Austen Would Love (And Loathe) Emma, also, Alleged Comedian Mocks MyPillow CEO For Making Life-Saving Masks
JustOneMinute: Derek Lowe On The Latest Chloroquine/Azithromycin Trial From France
Legal Insurrection: If You Claim Calling It “Wuhan Coronavirus” Is Racist, You’re Part of The Red Chinese Coverup, also, #Resistance Media Mocks MyPillow CEO Who’s Producing Masks
The PanAm Post: Venezuela’s Maduro Could Meet The Same Fate As Manuel Noriega
Power Line: Joe Biden Can’t Be President, also, Was It Something He Said?
Shark Tank: Ag Commissioner Nikki Fried (D) Calls On Gov. DeSantis To Shut Down Florida
Shot In The Dark: A Conservative Is A Liberal Who’s Been Mugged (By Reality)
The Political Hat: How To Be A Conservative
This Ain’t Hell: Eleven Veterans Dead, Several Residents & Staff Exposed To COVID-19 At Holyoke Soldoers’ Home, also, First U.S. Soldier Dies From Coronavirus
Victory Girls: John Krasinski Of The Office Is Here To Give Us Laughter And #SomeGoodNews
Volokh Conspiracy: Wake Forest Dean Apologizes For Law Prof Quoting From Supreme Court Case Containing The Word “Nigger”
Weasel Zippers: Trump – “We Will Have A Great Victory. We Have No Other Choice”, also, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta Admits Trump’s Actions Saved Lives
Mark Steyn: Comedy Cops, also, The Preparedness Of The 24/7 Surveillance State

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Category: Linkagery

Worse Before It Gets Better: Statistical Risk and the Wuhan Coronavirus

Posted on | March 31, 2020 | 1 Comment

For three consecutive days, Italy has reported declining numbers of new coronavirus cases, so that Monday’s number (4,050 new cases) was the lowest they have reported since March 17. At the same time, however, Italy reported 812 deaths from the virus Monday. This was the 10th consecutive day with more than 600 coronavirus deaths and Italy’s cumulative death toll is now 11,591. This is happening in a nation of about 60 million people; U.S. population is 327 million; an Italian-scale coronavirus outbreak in the United State would mean more than 60,000 deaths. So far, only 3,175 Americans have died of the virus. The U.S. death toll is certainly going to continue increasing, but it’s got a long way to go before it could reach anything like the impact in Italy.

What is not getting enough attention in the media is how uneven the impact of the Wuhan virus outbreak is spread in the United States. For example, 42% of deaths from the disease (1,342 out of 3,175) are in New York state, and the vast majority of those are concentrated in New York City and its suburbs. Of the 66,497 cases reported in New York state as of Monday afternoon, the city has 37,453 (56%) and four suburban counties — Westchester (9,326), Suffolk (5,791), Nassau (7,344), Rockland (2,511) — comprise another 38% of statewide cases, so the city and its suburbs account for 94% of all cases in New York State.

More than a third (62,425, or 38%) of all coronavirus cases in the United States are in the New York metropolitan region, without even including the cases in the New Jersey or Connecticut suburbs.

This disparity of impact can be demonstrated by other statistics. Consider the state-by-state coronavirus death tolls. As of this morning, seven states had reported at least 100 deaths from the virus:

New York …………………. 1,342
Washington State ……….. 210
New Jersey ……………….. 198
Louisiana ………………….. 185
Michigan …………………… 184
Georgia …………………….. 102

That is 2,221 deaths, 70% of all U.S. coronavirus deaths. These states have a combined population of 60.6 million, which is less than one-fifth (18.8%) of the total U.S. population of 327.2 million. So 80% of Americans live in states that have suffered less than 20% of COVID-19 deaths, and this explains a lot about political responses to the disease. For example, if you live in Michigan (6,498 cases, 184 deaths in a population of about 10 million), your risk from coronavirus is about six times greater than if you live in Texas (3,184 cases, 47 deaths in a population of about 29.5 million). Yet not everyone in Michigan is equally exposed to the COVID-18 risk, which is highly concentrated near Detroit. Nearly half of the state’s cases are in Detroit (1,801) and surrounding Wayne County (1,394). Add in the suburbs of Oakland County (1,365) and Macomb County (728), and there are 5,288 coronavirus cases in the metro Detroit region, accounting for 81% of Michigan’s total.

If you’re not in one of the “red zones” of this pandemic, the alarmist rhetoric in the media probably strikes you as an irrational panic. The American who lives in eastern Kentucky, northern Texas or upstate New York is not seeing overcrowded local hospitals or reading obituaries of local residents killed by the Wuhan virus. As a matter of statistical probability, your personal risk from the virus is low, and yet every time you turn on TV news, it’s another CORONAVIRUS CRISIS UPDATE, with politicians and medical experts warning that we are approaching a catastrophe, requiring immediate and drastic action.

Part of this disparity, of course, is that the national news media are headquartered in New York, where the coronavirus outbreak is worst. Yet the uneven impact of the disease produces disparities everywhere. Consider the case of Maryland, with a population of about 6.1 million, which currently reports 1,660 cases, or about 27 cases per 100,000 residents. This is far below the level in Michigan (about 65 cases per 100,000 residents), and not even a tenth of New York’s rate (342 cases per 100,000 residents), yet Gov. Larry Hogan issued a statewide lockdown order Monday. Why this drastic action?

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said on Monday that he is taking the coronavirus response seriously as cases in the Washington, D.C. metro area rapidly increase.
“Over the past week, cases have more than quadrupled in the Washington metro area [Washington, D.C. Maryland, and Virginia],” he noted, comparing the trajectory of cases to New York City a few weeks ago.
New York City has now become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, with city hospitals overrun with patients. Citing 66 cases at a Carroll County nursing home, Hogan said that it is a serious issue as cases have doubled in the past two days in the area.

This hits close to home, as my podcasting partner John Hoge lives in Carroll County, which had very few cases of coronavirus before this sudden outbreak at a nursing home there. While we don’t know exactly how this nursing home became infected, the proximity to Baltimore (about 30 miles) and D.C. (about 40 miles) is suggestive of the source.

Look at the county-by-count case numbers in Maryland, and you see that two D.C. suburban counties (Montgomery and Prince George’s) and Baltimore (city and county) have a combined 1,143 cases, which is 69% of the statewide total. In rural Maryland — the Eastern Shore, and from Frederick County westward — there are very few cases. Yet resident of the rural counties are not exempt from the statewide shutdown, and this once again highlights the disparate impact of the pandemic. As much as we might complain about this, the upside is that locking down the “red zones” means that the low-risk areas are more likely to remain low-risk. The upward spikes in coronvirus cases in urban America will continue, while rural America will largely be spared the worst of the pandemic.

Category: Health Care, Maryland, Michigan, New York

Damaged Goods

Posted on | March 30, 2020 | Comments Off on Damaged Goods

Whatever happened to Kendra Wilkinson?

Here we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic, and that question probably hasn’t crossed your mind. In fact, I suspect, the question on your mind now is, “Who the heck is Kendra Wilkinson?”

Well, “reality TV star” might be one way to describe her, but you probably never watched any of the shows she was on: The Girls Next Door (2004-2009), Kendra (2009-2012) and Kendra on Top (2012-2017).

Any of that ring a bell? OK, enough with the hints: In The Girls Next Door, Wilkinson starred as one of three live-in girlfriends of Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner. Wilkinson was only 19 when she became involved with Hefner, who was then 78. Read more

Category: Uncategorized