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New Floyd Murder Charges Will Be Tough to Prove and May Imperil Good Cops By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/new-floyd-murder-charges-will-be-tough-to-prove-and-may-imperil-good-cops/

In a politically charged case, it is more important, not less, to get the charges right.

Prosecutors in Minnesota have filed an amended complaint against Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd, adding a second-degree “felony murder” charge. This dangerously flawed theory could be used to portray any police restraint of a resistant suspect as criminal assault.

The amended complaint against Chauvin also re-alleges the two homicide charges originally filed last week: third-degree “depraved indifference” murder and second-degree manslaughter, both of which better fit the facts of the case while posing no risk of criminalizing the legitimate use of force by good cops.

Separately, the other three fired Minneapolis police officers involved in the killing have been charged, after a week of demands by the Floyd family, as well as intense anti-police rhetoric (and worse) by Black Lives Matter activists and protesters.

Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane are charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder (the new charge against Chauvin) and manslaughter. Weirdly, under the circumstances, the three are not charged with the “depraved indifference” murder count; nor are they accused of committing manslaughter as principals — they are charged only as aiders and abettors, a theory that does not jibe with a negligence charge such as second-degree manslaughter (which is negligent homicide under Minnesota law).

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Covid vs. Climate Modeling: Cloudy With a Chance of Politics By Eric Felten

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

COVID-19 has proved to be a crisis not only for public health but for public policy. As credentialed experts, media commentators, and elected officials have insisted that ordinary men and women heed “the science,” the statistical models cited by scientists to predict the spread of contagion and justify the lockdown of the national economy have proven to be far off-base.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York complained this week about the “guessing business” experts had presented to him dressed up as scientific fact: “All the early national experts [said]: Here’s my projection model. Here’s my projection model,” Cuomo said. “They were all wrong. They were all wrong.”

Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, whose computer modeling of the coronavirus predicted up to 2.2 million U.S. deaths. He has since resigned.

A computer model produced by statisticians at Imperial College London had an outsized effect on government policy, predicting up to 2.2 million American deaths from the new coronavirus and as many as 9.6 million people requiring hospitalization. Instead, emergency rooms and hospital beds in all but the few hardest hit cities remained empty; rather than being overwhelmed by cases, many doctors and nurses found themselves out of work.

As the staggering social and economic costs of shutdown have become painfully clear, the failure of the models to accurately anticipate what would happen is raising questions about their use to justify life-altering public policies.

If computer models projecting the near-term future of an epidemic were so wrong, what does that mean for the far more complicated computer models predicting the far-off future of the entire planet?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Isn’t Letting a Pandemic Go to Waste By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/coronavirus-pandemic-china-beijing-becoming-authentically-belligerent/#slide-1

No more nice-guy façade.

George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis last week when a police officer used brutally excessive force to arrest him. It was the latest in a string of high-profile cases nationwide in which citizens, most of them African Americans, died from reckless police force. Once again, protests over police brutality turned violent and rioting ensued.

The U.S. is torn apart over the national mass quarantine. Liberal blue states accused red opened-up states of recklessly endangering national health by allowing their populations to go back to work before the virus has left.

Red states countered that blue states were hypocritical in wanting federal money to subsidize their locked-down residents while expecting other states to generate needed federal revenue. They also contended that there was no longer scientific evidence to justify the lockdown.

The nationwide protests and rioting have inadvertently adjudicated the issue: States cannot jail the law-abiding barber who wears a mask at work but allow the arsonist without a mask to roam the streets, burning with impunity.

There is mounting evidence that an array of federal officials had plotted to disrupt Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and his presidential transition, leaving Trump supporters furious.

Meanwhile, likely Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is sequestered in his basement. He often appears confused. Yet Biden seems content that the more people do not see or hear him, the more they like the idea of him as president. Indeed, the more inert Biden has become, the higher his poll numbers have risen against Trump and his tweeting.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Why Some Tiananmen Protesters Support Trump By Rong Xiaoqing

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/united-states-china-relations-some-tiananmen-protesters-support-president-trump/#slide-1

‘Many American politicians are too close to Beijing. Finally, we got Trump, who is vehemently anti-the Communist Party.’

 L ast March, I attended a Chinese Trump supporters’ gathering at a karaoke bar in Flushing, N.Y., for a story I was writing. Two participants really grabbed my attention. Before pouring out their admiration for Trump, they revealed their involvement in the Tiananmen democracy movement in China in 1989.

One of them, Cai Guihua, was a leader of the Shanghai workers’ protests back then; the other, Chen Liqun, was a mobilizer of supporters for the movement in Hangzhou. Both paid a high price after the bloodshed on and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4 that year.

Cai was jailed for nearly two years, and Chen fled the authorities and wandered across China for 17 months before things calmed down. Both were involved in the founding of the dissident Democracy Party of China in 1998 and came to the U.S. not long after, amid a brutal crackdown.

Now they are cheering for Trump with the same passion they devoted to China’s democracy movement.

Conservatism has been rising among Chinese immigrants in recent years. The Chinese community in the U.S. is no longer locked into voting Democrat. Still, discovering a whole slew of Trump supporters among Tiananmen-era protesters surprised me.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Advice from a Professor for College-Bound Freshmen in 2020 Ten things students should consider before enrolling in college this fall. By Adam Ellwanger

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/03/advice-from-a-professor-for-college-bound-freshmen-2020/

If you’re starting college this fall, you probably just finished high school. Congrats! If you will begin attending a college or university in the fall, you have some major changes on the horizon. I have enormous sympathy for all of you who graduated high school this year. You got screwed: screwed out of what was supposed to be the most carefree period of high school, screwed out of prom, screwed out of graduation. Let me join all the other adults you know in saying that I’m sorry for what you’ve lost from COVID-19.

But I’m not only sad for your class—I’m worried about you.

Academically speaking, college will demand much more from you than high school did. High school seniors often don’t give their full effort in the final year, but all of you have been “going” to school online for the last two months, and I’m concerned that this will make your college transition even more difficult (if we are able to get back to in-person class meetings by the fall). 

You should begin mentally preparing yourselves now for the work of your freshman year. Most of your professors will be eager to help you succeed. I’m a 42-year-old professor and I’ve been working or studying at a college or university since I was 18. Below is some bold advice. I know you didn’t ask for any advice, but please don’t hit me with the “OK, Boomer” thing. As a young member of Generation X, it wasn’t that long ago that I was a student. I hope the suggestions below help you make a smooth transition.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s New Terror Network in Latin America by Con Coughlin

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16085/iran-venezuela-terrorism

The recent upsurge in Iranian activity in Venezuela certainly needs to be taken seriously by the Trump administration if Tehran is to be prevented from strengthening its terrorist activities on America’s southern flank.

To date Mr Trump, having last year threatened to launch military action in support of Juan Guaido, the country’s charismatic opposition leader, now appears to have backed away from any further entanglement with Caracas, a move that might explain Washington’s disinclination to act over Iran’s recent oil shipments.

But that could change if, as now seems likely, the White House comes to realise that Iran’s real intention is to expand its terrorist network in Latin America rather than simply offering economic help to another rogue regime.

The arrival in Venezuela this week of the last of five Iranian tankers carrying gasoline to the oil-starved socialist state is not just about Iran seeking to help a fellow nation stricken by the effects of U.S. sanctions.

It is all about strengthening Tehran’s long-standing terrorist infrastructure in Latin America so that it can be used to expand Iran’s terror operations throughout the globe.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

India to Lead Efforts to Cure the World Health Organization by Jagdish N. Singh

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16061/india-world-health-organization

Fortunately, India’s Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, a physician, is the new chairman of the 34-member World Health Organization Executive Board. He and his colleagues on the board could prevail upon the WHO Director General to take steps aimed at implementing the resolution of the World Health Assembly.

One, however, is not sure if and when [WHO Director General] Tedros will pay attention to implementing this resolution. He does not seem enthusiastic about the probe. He would, he said in his opening remarks at the WHA, “initiate an independent evaluation at the earliest appropriate moment.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping said at the WHA any inquiry should wait until the virus was contained — an outcome that could, of course, take years, if ever. Xi also pledged $2 billion over two years to the WHO, to control the spread of Covid-19, presumably including control of the WHO along with it.

Vardhan and others in the WHO executive board cannot procrastinate. All serious allegations against China and the WHO must be investigated and made transparent to the world without delay.

It is heartening to note the 73rd session of the World Health Assembly (May 18-19, 2020) approved a resolution calling for an independent inquiry into the current pandemic outbreak and the World Health Organization’s role in responding to it.

The resolution — brought forward by the European Union, moved by Australia and supported by more than 116 nations — including India and Japan — demands that WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus “identify the zoonotic source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population…” The resolution also calls for an impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation into the WHO-coordinated international health response to the pandemic.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Lie of the ‘Politics-Free’ Pandemic and Pandemonium Policy Curtis Ellis

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/03/the-lie-of-the-politics-free-pandemic-and-pandemonium-policy/

This entire “no room for politics” shtick is not merely a fraud and a lie, it’s also plainly wrong. You can’t take politics out of politics. And you shouldn’t.

It’s hard to separate the double-talk from the double standards in these days of double trouble, especially since the double trouble is itself doubled.

The pandemic trouble has a double nature, consisting of a public health problem (which, miraculously, has evaporated—but we’ll get to that in a bit) and the economic trouble.

Simultaneously we have that other problem that could be put under the polite heading of “civil unrest.” This is also twofold, if not more-fold. We have peaceful protests calling for political reforms of a largely unspecified nature (we’ll get to that later, too), and on the other hand, we have organized rioting.

All this has our political class and the presstitutes they love serving up double helpings of double-talk.

We have now reached peak 2020. We can now see, with perfect vision, what the Democrats want for us should they ever take power. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Public Health Experts Issue Racist Guidelines In Support of Ongoing Riots By Stacey Lennox

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2020/06/03/public-health-experts-issue-racist-guidelines-in-support-of-ongoing-riots-n487809

Public health experts put a letter online for their colleagues to sign in the wake of riots nationwide occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its contents are hardly based on science, data, reason, or even public health. It is actually a flaming pile of virtue signaling nonsense.

Public health experts’ letter on COVID-19 and riots

For people portending to advance an anti-racist message, I would assert this paragraph is about as racist as you can get. Hey, you white people who support constitutional rights we don’t like. You must be treated differently than protestors, rioters, and looters because… reasons.

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Yes, George Soros Sent Money to Fund the Riots—and So Did Taxpayers By Jeff Reynolds

Posted By on June 4th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/jeff-reynolds/2020/06/03/yes-george-soros-sent-money-to-fund-the-riots-and-so-did-taxpayers-n487939

Ever since the protests turned to riots over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, rumors have flown that George Soros and his Open Society Foundation had to be involved. After all, OSF funded Black Lives Matter in 2015. It didn’t take long to reveal the financial ties to current riots and to show that OSF and George Soros directly support the movement today. Particularly infuriating are the taxpayer-funded grants received in conjunction with the Soros funding.

Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that a group called Freedom, Inc. has received grants from the Wisconsin Department of Justice:

The Madison-based nonprofit has advocated for the release of all African Americans from jail and the defunding of police departments. As for the current protests, the group’s leaders say “all actions against racist state violence are justified.”