In The Mailbox: 04.03.20

Posted on | April 3, 2020 | 1 Comment

For your Friday enjoyment, Calgary Sunshine Girl Katie.

Could be outstanding in her field.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Florida Man Has Competition
EBL: Flashback Friday – Pelosi In Chinatown, 2/24/20
Twitchy: Laura Ingraham Triggers Occasional Cortex So Badly She Triples Down On Fish Tank Cleaner Story
Louder With Crowder: PETA On Coronavirus – Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop Protesting
According To Hoyt: Screaming In The Forest
Monster Hunter Nation: This Week’s Episode Of The Facebook Hunter, also, Choose Your Freakout! NOW FIGHT!
Vox Popoli: Never Trust The Banks, also, Is There Nothing She Can’t Do?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: The Blob Sucked Away Your Public Health & Gave You War Instead
American Greatness: Payback Time For Red China, also, Companies Busted Selling Critical Equipment To Overseas Buyers For Cash
American Thinker: Will Trump Betray Us After Corona?
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Signs Of Life Friday
Babalu Blog: Krauthammer Turned Out To Be Right About Obama & Cuba
Baldilocks: My March 2020 Post Digest For Da Tech Guy Blog
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For April 3
Cafe Hayek: Reality Isn’t Optional, #778
CDR Salamander: The Law Of Gross Tonnage Applies
Da Tech Guy: DaTechGuy’s AM Court Livestream – The China Syndrome, Putting God To The Test, & Baseball
Don Surber: Media Lies Cost Lives
First Street Journal: Reichskanzler Andy Beshear Assumes More Dictatorial Powers, & The Sheeple Love Him For It
The Geller Report: George Soros Groups Pushing Democrat Scheme For Mail-In Voting, also, Pelosi Made Millions On Amazon Stock Bought After Coronavirus Hearings Before U.S. Retailers Forced To Close
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, I’m So Old…
Hollywood In Toto: Jon Savage Draws Strength From Fan Recognition, Veterans, also, Shooting Heroin Director – Andrew Breitbart Was Right About The Culture
JustOneMinute: Mask Up!
Legal Insurrection: Word Police Strike Again – Grammarly Complains About “Wuhan Virus” Usage, also, Evidence Suggests Wuhan Death Toll Sixteen Times What Red China Reported
Megan McArdle: Here’s Why It Won’t Work To Just Isolate The Elderly & Vulnerable
The PanAm Post: Maduro & His Ministers Are Running A Narcostate, also, From Noriega To Maduro – Drugs, Money, & Power
Power Line: A Letter To Chuck Schumer, also, Who Is Dying From COVID-19?
Shark Tank: Ted Deutch Pushes Coronavirus Awareness & Grows His Beard
Shot In The Dark: #CancelRent
The Political Hat: That’s Racist! Free Speech, Parents, & Intellectual Diversity, also, Firing Line Friday – The Place Of The Treaty In International Affairs
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, Hydroxychloroquine Rated “Most Effective Therapy”
Victory Girls: Sen. McSally Says WHO Director Should Resign
Volokh Conspiracy: Masks For All – Sensible & Helpful
Weasel Zippers: Trump Sends Letter To Sen. Schumer That’s An Instant Classic, also, House Majority Whip Clyburn Sees Coronavirus Crisis To Call For “Restructuring Of Government”
Mark Steyn: Pandemics, Panderers, Poems, & Policemen

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

N95 Mask Supply: 3M Is Not the Bad Guy (and Neither Is President Trump)

Posted on | April 3, 2020 | 3 Comments

Yesterday, President Trump invoked his executive power as Commander-in-Chief to put an American corporation under federal orders:

President Trump blasted the company 3M in a tweet Thursday evening, after invoking the Defense Production Act to force the company to produce face masks. N95 face masks are critical for health care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, and there have been issues with mask shortages.
“We hit 3M hard today after seeing what they were doing with their Masks. “P Act” all the way. Big surprise to many in government as to what they were doing – will have a big price to pay!” Mr. Trump wrote, referring to the Defense Production Act.
Mr. Trump announced during the White House coronavirus task force briefing on Thursday that he had signed an order for 3M to produce face masks.
“Hopefully they’ll be able to do what they are supposed to do,” Mr. Trump said, without offering details.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro also said during the briefing that there had been “issues” with 3M not providing enough masks to American buyers.
“We’ve had some issues making sure that all of the production that 3M does around the world, enough of it is coming back here to the right places,” Navarro said.
In a statement responding to the president’s announcement, 3M said that “3M and its employees have gone above and beyond to manufacture as many N95 respirators as possible for the U.S. market.” The statement added that there would be “significant humanitarian implications” if the company followed the White House’s order to stop exporting masks made in the U.S. to Canada and Latin American countries.
“In addition, ceasing all export of respirators produced in the United States would likely cause other countries to retaliate and do the same, as some have already done. If that were to occur, the net number of respirators being made available to the United States would actually decrease. That is the opposite of what we and the Administration, on behalf of the American people, both seek,” the statement said.
3M said it was working to combat the “unethical and illegal” price gouging and unauthorized reselling of company products.
Jared Moskowitz, the head of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, said in an interview on Fox News Thursday evening that he had learned 3M distributors were sending face masks to foreign countries and had refused to send him essential equipment.
“We are chasing ghosts. I just decided to turn up the heat and tell people what is actually happening in the N95 mask space,” Moskowitz told Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. Moskowitz said 3M “decided to make a globalist decision and not put America first.”

Permit me to clarify the political image game being played here. Do you see the word “distributors” in what Moskowitz said Thursday? Like every other manufacturing company, 3M distributes its output via wholesalers who, in turn, deliver the product to retailers and other vendors and clients. Your local hospital orders their masks through a medical supply company, which obtains them through this wholesale distribution supply chain. All of this is a matter of contracts and purchase orders and if, in January or February, 3M signed a contract to deliver X-million number of N95 masks to a vendor on April 10, the manufacturer’s obligation to fulfill that contract cannot be disregarded simply because, in the meantime, authorities in New York City or Florida developed an unexpected shortage of N95 masks.

Well, what about “price gouging”? If you’re a wholesale distributor of a product that suddenly is in high demand, are you under some kind of moral obligation to pass up the opportunity for extra revenue that such a situation offers you? Nonsense! The market is what the market is, and if you get an offer of $4 per mask for a shipment of 100,000 masks that you normally would sell for $1 per mask, you take that extra $300,000 with the clear conscience of a Christian holding four aces.

Yet the New York Times blames “shady middlemen” for their city’s shortage of equipment, which is simply an excuse for the failure of Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo to plan ahead for this crisis:

The next task was undertaking the vast production and allocation of masks, other protective gear and ventilators. Instead of centralizing this task, President Trump said from the White House lectern, “Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work.” He added, “You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”
But governors can’t invoke the Defense Production Act, which allows the federal government to order businesses to manufacture necessary medical equipment. Nor can they enlist the Federal Emergency Management Agency to manage the giant project of distributing the equipment. The vacuum left by the federal government forced states to compete for scarce equipment like ventilators, driving up their price and benefiting shady middlemen while causing fatal delays.

Those middlemen aren’t “shady,” they just happen to be in the medical supply business at a time when demand for medical supplies is high. And the New York Times led the media chorus with this idea that the “giant project” of distributing these supplies should be centralized under federal authority, making Trump the fall guy for failures of planning on the part of state and local officials. Day after day for the past three weeks, we have watched nationally televised press conferences in which Gov. Cuomo incessantly talked about the alleged shortage of masks, ventilators and other supplies. The media treat Cuomo as a saintly hero when, in fact, his pleas for more supplies reflect his own failure to prepare for this emergency. If he wasn’t signing contracts in February and March to purchase however many N95 masks the city needs now, how is that Trump’s fault? Or how is 3M to blame for not producing six weeks or two months ago whatever number of masks Cuomo says he needs now?

The media isn’t asking those questions, because the media wants to scapegoat Trump for the whole shebang. This blame-game in turn compelled Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act, telling 3M to make more of the masks they were already making as fast as they can.

Cuomo’s problem is not 3M’s fault. Cuomo’s problem is not Trump’s fault. But the media won’t hold Cuomo accountable for his failures.

It's not as if we weren't warned (CDC, Feb. 29) about the N95 mask supply. https://t.co/QTEokw8ZFz pic.twitter.com/q9tXX6wVq8

— Don't Eat Bats OK? (@PatriarchTree) April 3, 2020

Category: Health Care

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | April 3, 2020 | Comments Off on Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty

From time ago far past,
Sprang a galaxy so vast,
Infinity did strain it to contain.
And though man be alone,
Contemplation skill to own,
Still weighed it heavily upon the brain.

Into its depths he peered,
(Predators so deeply feared),
Devices all around, data to glean.
To algorithms fed,
The danger off to head,
And puzzle out what all of this could mean.

Yet with advancing age,
Came a rather frigid rage:
Intellect failed all meaning to bring forth.
And then his eye did score,
Wisdom handed down from yore:
The prophets had the right of life’s full worth.
—
via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

MSNBC’s Doomsday Crisis Theme

Posted on | April 2, 2020 | Comments Off on MSNBC’s Doomsday Crisis Theme

Today, I watched MSNBC (so you don’t have to), and it is difficult to find the words to describe how bad their coverage is. What is obvious — if you could just stand to watch MSNBC for a few hours, you’d see it — is that they are invested in the idea that the coronavirus is the ultimate “Walls Closing In” moment that will doom Trump’s presidency. From this idea flows two basic themes in their coverage of the pandemic:

It’s a Doomsday Crisis that threatens to kill us all;
and
BLAME TRUMP!

Never mind the blame game just now, the greater problem in MSNBC’s coverage is that they are so heavily invested in hyping up the severity of the pandemic that they ignore all contrary data. And if you are capable of doing basic arithmetic, contrary data is not hard to find.

The first thing to point out is that the three states with the largest number of coronavirus cases — New York (92,506), New Jersey (25,590) and Michigan (10,791) — have a combined total of 128,887 cases, which is 53% of all U.S. cases. As I have previously explained, even within these states, the overwhelming majority of cases are in urban areas — New York City and its suburbs, Detroit and its suburbs. So if you live in the more rural parts of those states, you’re not really at very high risk from the coronavirus outbreak. At the very minute I’m writing this sentence, Rachel Maddow is telling her audience that Florida’s Republican governor is an irresponsible idiot who has put lives at risk because he didn’t issue a statewide lockdown order earlier. As I write this sentence, Maddow has just finished telling her audience that a hospital in North Carolina has declared it will need an extra 3,000 beds for expected overflow coronavirus cases. And nobody on MSNBC will speak a word to the contrary. It’s all Doomsday Scenario 24/7, and this theme requires MSNBC to completely ignore some very important data.

Start with North Carolina. They report fewer than 2,000 coronvirus cases in a population of 10.4 million, 39 cases per 100,000 population. Compare this to New York, which has 476 cases per 100,000 population. Does anyone expect a 12-fold increase in North Carolina’s COVID-19 caseload, and if so, why? Is there some particular reason that this stratospheric increase is expected to hit North Carolina? Nearly 30,000 residents of North Carolina have been tested for the virus so far, and 93% of those tests were negative. The state has fewer than 200 coronavirus patients hospitalized, and only 16 deaths so far. So why the fear of hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients? “The Murray model”:

North Carolina will be short hundreds of hospital beds and intensive care units at the state’s peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still weeks away, according to a model touted by a leading expert on Sunday.
Developed by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the model estimates that there will be dozens of COVID-19-related deaths daily during the virus’ projected peak.
The model projects 79 COVID-19 deaths in North Carolina on April 22, with about 2,400 people in the state dying from the disease by Aug. 4.
North Carolina could face a shortage of hospital beds from April 17 until April 27, according to the model, which shows the need for beds for COVID-19 patients peaking at 7,774, including 1,173 intensive care unit beds. . . .
In a post describing the study, Christopher Murray, the institute’s director, wrote that the goal was to determine when people across the nation are likely to die from COVID-19 and when hospitals could run out of resources.

These projections are already being proven false.

As of Wednesday, North Carolina was projected to have more than 1,000 hospitalized cases — five times larger than the actual number. So is it really likely that there will be nearly 8,000 patients hospitalized in the state within three weeks? I don’t know. I’m no scientific expert, but if the projection is 400% off-target within a week of its release (the Murray projection was published March 26), call me . . . somewhat skeptical.

(As I’m writing this sentence, Lawrence O’Donnell is ranting about Trump somehow swindling New York out of its fair share of medical equipment — the word “profiteers” was used — while “rewarding” Republican governors like Evil Ron DeSantis of Florida who, according to O’Donnell, did not take “reasonable precautions.”)

You see the Doomsday Crisis theme and the Blame Trump theme require MSNBC to deprive its audience of any information that contradicts the network’s chosen narrative. The fact that the Murray model — the basis of the Doomsday Crisis theme — is being disproven on a daily basis by the actual data simply has no place in MSNBC’s coverage. Meanwhile, what’s happening in Florida, where Evil Ron Desantis is governor?

Well, they’ve got 9,008 reported cases in a population of 21 million, a total which has risen rapidly because they have tested 52,783 people for coronavirus in a single week (March 26-April 1). There were 6,417 positives (12.2%), meaning that 87.8% tested negative. Of the 9,008 cases in Florida, only 1,167 have been hospitalized — about a 13% hospitalization rate — and 144 have died, a 1.6% death rate. So, 87% of coronavrius cases have not required hospitalization, and 98.4% survived.

This is good news, which is exactly why the MSNBC audience won’t hear about it. If you were told that more than 98% of coronavirus patients in Florida survived the disease, and 87% were not even hospitalized, you might stop thinking the Doomsday Crisis was going to kill you. But no, you’re going to die, because ORANGE MAN BAD! Or at least that’s what MSNBC keeps telling their audience, 24/7. (As I write this sentence, Lawrence O’Donnell is interviewing failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris, meaning that he’s mainly just listening while she denounces ORANGE MAN BAD!) So you’re locked down under a stay-at-home order (which was in large part inspired by the Murray model) and you’re probably not watching MSNBC, so you might have realized that the Doomsday Crisis is not really happening, except in a handful of major urban areas, even if I hadn’t told you. You’re somewhere “safe” (most GOP-leaning parts of the county have very low rates of coronavirus infection) and if you watch cable news, you probably watch Fox. So you are better-informed than any MSNBC viewer, and are not deceived by the worst-case scenario mentality prevailing at that network.

Let’s wait and see. Maybe we’ll see huge spikes in COVID-19 cases from Florida and North Carolina, and the Doomsday Crisis will actually happen. So far, however, there’s no reason to expect a viral apocalypse, and within a week, my hunch is that more and more people will be calling attention to the failure of the pandemic to match the scary predictions of the Murray model. Gov. Cuomo will continue to be on TV every day, talking about the need for more ventilators to meet the crisis at the “apex” of the “curve,” but by next Thursday, he’ll be within a week of when the “apex” is actually supposed to hit, and what will the daily numbers look like next Thursday? Today, in his press conference, Gov. Cuomo talked about how some numbers seem to be reaching a “plateau.” The expected upward surge isn’t actually happening, even though New York City has suffered 188 deaths in a 24-hour span. The situation in New York City is bad, and it’s getting worse, but the increase of numbers isn’t accelerating as was feared. But anyway . . .

As I write this sentence, the discredited Brian Williams is complaining that not all states have “stay-at-home” orders. This is a pony the national media — headquartered in New York and D.C. — is going to keep riding, because it’s unfair that other people out there in the rest of America aren’t doing what the media want them to do.

We must be patient. We are two weeks away from the projected “apex” in New York City, and once that arrives, the size of the actual pandemic — not just in New York, but everywhere — will be compared to what had previously been forecast. At that point, not even MSNBC will be able to conceal the difference between the forecast and the reality. Oh, well, maybe they will, but if they do, they’ll discredit themselves.

Stay home. Stay safe. Stay healthy. Wait and see.

Category: Health Care, MSNBC

In The Mailbox: 04.02.20

Posted on | April 2, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.02.20

– compiled by Wombat-socho

This post doesn’t have a Page Three, but if it did, today’s Page Three Girl would be Zara from the Winnipeg Sun. also, thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links in March!

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: New York Was Also Too Cool To Be Prepared
Red Pilled Jew: Ignoring Hashem’s Wisdom
EBL: RIP Adam Schlesinger Of Fountains Of Wayne
Twitchy: Mayor Bill De Blasio Is “Very Concerned” About Central Park Hospital Built & Funded By Samaritan’s Purse
Louder With Crowder: AOC Encourages Rent Strike, Blames Capitalism For People Owning Property

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Big Bug
American Conservative: Red China’s Cartels – Those Who Control The Medicines Control The World
American Greatness: San Francisco Bans Reusable Grocery Bags, Orders Return To Plastic Bags, also, Infectious Disease Specialist Says Coronavirus Drugs Touted By Trump “A Game Changer”
American Thinker: Red China Preparing For War With America
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Groper Joe News
Babalu Blog: Canadian Tourists Trapped In Cuban Apartheid Hotels face Huge Bills, Beg For Loans From Ottawa
BattleSwarm: Coronavirus Economic Resources – Texas & Elsewhere
Cafe Hayek: More On So-Called “Price Gouging”
CDR Salamander: CO Of CVN-71 Makes The Call & Goes Public
Da Tech Guy: Thoughts On When It Ends Under The Fedora, also, President Trump’s Deregulation Efforts Have Saved A Lot Of Lives
Don Surber: People In COVID-19 Hot Zones Sure Are Smug, also, Blankenship’s Revenge
The Geller Report: Ilhan Omar Praises Mass Deaths Of Americans From Coronavirus, also, CNN Has No Shows In The Top 20 During Q1 Of 2020
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Ummm, OK
Hollywood In Toto: YouTube Star’s “Epic Hand Washing Parody” Goes Viral, also, Child’s Play – A Perfectly Awful Remake
Legal Insurrection: Pelosi Forms Committee To Investigate Trump’s Handling Of Coronavirus Crisis, also, Sean Ono Lennon – “Official Media Have Lost Their Credibility”
Megan McArdle: This Is The Scary Part, But Americans Will Get Through This
The PanAm Post: America’s Carrot & Stick Policy Towards The Maduro Regime
Power Line: Are People Catching On? also, The Wuhan Virus – Six Notes & Queries
Shark Tank: Miami Beach PD Ignoring Media Over Andrew Gillum OD Incident
Shot In The Dark: Lessons Learned
This Ain’t Hell: Engineer Tries To Crash Train Into Hospital Ship, also, Navy Fires Aircraft Carrier Commander
Victory Girls: Gretchen Whitmer – Possible VP Pick, Derping Loon
Volokh Conspiracy: The Right To Unmarry
Weasel Zippers: Valerie Jarrett Claims Obama “Would Have Handled This Better”, Gets Blasted By Dan Crenshaw, also, MI Gov Who Threatened Doctors Who Prescribed Antimalarials Now Begging For Trump-Touted Drugs
Mark Steyn: The Two Most Non-Essential Professions On The Planet

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

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.