Monthly Archives: July 2019

Alexander Acosta Did Not Need To Fall On His Sword

Constitution, Justice, Law, Sex, The West

The lynch mob against Alex Acosta, Trump’s former labor secretary, is just that: a lynch mob. Jeffrey Epstein is the slimy sleazebag here, not Mr. Acosta.

I don’t usually agree with broadcaster Michael Medved, who leans heavily left. However, today, Mr. Medved did a bang-up job defending the rules of evidence. Or, what Joe Biden once denounced as Western jurisprudence.

The girls involved with Epstein did not wish to testify. And who can blame them?

And while “[t]he evidence in the original case appears overwhelming—in an interview with the Miami Herald the lead detective recounted phone records, flight logs and instructions for delivering flowers to one of Mr Epstein’s young fixations, alongside her high-school report card”—Epstein’s “original defense team included Alan Dershowitz and Kenn Starr, two lawyers skilled in defending the indefensible.” (The Economist.)

Epstein hired the best lawyers who were unmatched by the prosecution and the limits of the law.

“… his star-studded lawyers,” reports the Daily Beast, “threatened to go to trial in a case prosecutors feared was unwinnable, in part because Epstein’s team dredged up dirt on the victims, including social media posts indicating drug use.”

Dershowitz (who has defended President Trump with his usual legal élan), “told The Daily Beast that his accuser, Virginia Roberts, “has committed perjury and will continue to commit perjury in federal court.”

“I am asking the FBI to come to this trial because perjury will be committed in front of a federal judge and in a federal courtroom,” Dershowitz added. “And I will prove it is she who is committing perjury.”

Even the Economist concedes that it was not at all “obvious that the top federal prosecutor who negotiated the deal, Alexander Acosta, had better options available.”

“… [T]he difficulties of securing convictions in cases of rape or sexual abuse are well known.”

Alex Acosta, whose address to the public I found credible, had to ultimately defer to police and prosecutors in Palm Beach, Florida.

Black Men In America Are Living Almost As Long As White Men

America, Crime, Healthcare, Race, Racism

With the constant complaints about the perils of being black in America, the following data will come as a surprise to some:

“The chasm in life-expectancy that once existed [between blacks and whites] has nearly closed.”

“Criminologists still do not know why violent crime and homicides began to decline [for blacks]in the mid-1990s. A wide array of theories have been proposed.” A strong contender: “mass incarceration actually working as intended.”

In fact, “the emergence of the opioid epidemic, which kills whites at higher rates than other races, has also hastened the racial convergence.”

BACK IN 1980 when Harlem was still a byword for poverty, criminality and the decline of New York City, black men in the neighbourhood had a worse chance of living to the age of 65 than men in Bangladesh did. At that time Harlem’s residents—almost all of them black, and many of them poor—died of heart disease at double the rate of whites. They died of liver cirrhosis, brought on by alcoholism or hepatitis, at ten times the rate of whites. And they were 14 times likelier to be murdered.

BUT,

… the persistent gap in life expectancy between whites and blacks has closed substantially, and is now at its narrowest ever. In 1900, … the life expectancy for black boys at birth was 32.5—14.1 years shorter than for white boys. Put another way, the typical black boy had 30% less life to live. Incremental progress, however fitful, was made for the next century, but epidemics of crack, HIV and urban violence threatened to reverse [progress]. By 1993, a peak year for violent crime, the life-expectancy gap between black and white men had widened again by nearly three years, to 8.5 years.

… But then it began a sustained, steady fall. In 2011 the black-white gap had narrowed to 4.4 years for men (5.7% less) and just 3.1 years (3.8% less) for women. Though progress then levelled off until 2016, the most recent year available from the CDC, the trend is stable and not reversing.

… A wide array of theories have been proposed: the eroding appeal of crack cocaine, mass incarceration actually working as intended, legalisation of abortion, less lead poisoning of children and the improving economy. But the public-health consequences are abundantly clear, particularly for black men who were and remain the most frequent victims of murder. …

….

MORE: “Black Lives Longer.”

America Is Moving Leftwards

Democrats, Donald Trump, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Economy, Politics, Republicans

We know the Democrats are rapidly radicalizing, but what about Republicans? What about the country as a whole?

Well, according to The Economist, “AMERICANS ARE more in favour of ‘big-government’ policies today than at any point in the last 68 years. That is the conclusion of James Stimson, a political scientist, who has analysed long-running polls from the Universities of Chicago and Michigan to come up with annual estimates of the ‘public mood.'”

The magazine blames—you guessed it—“Donald Trump’s presidency,” rather than demographic changes over the corresponding decades.

Mr Stimson estimates that the last time America was feeling this left-wing was in 1961, when the civil-rights movement was full-steam ahead and Alan Shepard became the first American to be launched into outer space.

Public opinion is contradictory: many more Americans describe themselves as conservative than as liberal; yet Americans prefer left-leaning policies to right-leaning ones, even when these are accompanied by the promise of higher taxes. Mr Stimson’s data show a steady leftward shift in Americans’ views on the scope of government since 1952. And according to data from the Policy Agendas Project, an academic research group, the public also holds views that are more tolerant than ever on social issues like same-sex marriage; worries more about the environment; and is more enthusiastic about immigration and giving a helping hand to African-Americans.

MORE.

UPDATED (7/22/019): NEW COLUMN: The Donald’s Peculiar Problem: Ivanka

Donald Trump, Ethics, Family, Feminism, Intelligence, Kids, The Zeitgeist

NEW COLUMN is on the Unz Review, exclusively. It’s “The Donald’s Peculiar Problem: Ivanka.”

An excerpt:

It’s obvious who the odd one out is in this embarrassing clip of Ivanka at the G20 Summit.

Allow me to set the scene:

Two mature women are in the thick of a policy discussion. The two heavy hitters are British Prime Minister Theresa May and International Monetary Fund Director Christine Lagarde.

Their buttoned-up, officious attire fits the occasion. It’s how Theresa May and Christine Lagarde, both born in 1956, have always dressed. The pearls, the tweed and gingham suits: These are as old-school and as dear as Margaret Thatcher’s made-in-Britain, “ten-a-penny” “humble handbag.”

Whether you like their politics or you don’t—and I don’t—Theresa May and Christine Lagarde are sharpshooting, politically hefty women.

May graduated from Oxford, which has a “jealously-guarded admissions process.” In other words, May was not admitted to that elite school for being a woman, and she did not make her way in the word of politics because she was the daughter of a celebrity.

While the French, foolishly, have begun to dabble in American-style affirmative action, France’s constitution disallows such discrimination. Its people won’t tolerate quotas and set-asides for dummies with a perceived genital or pigmental burden.

“Any kind of discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity [and, presumably, gender] in French higher education would be contrary to all French tradition.” The French speak as one on this typically American preoccupation.

Rest assured. Unlike American lightweights Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the sibilant Kirsten Gillibrand, and first daughter Ivanka Trump—Christine Lagarde, a former anti-trust and labor lawyer who now heads the IMF, has risen to her position because she’s able; she’s an impressive woman.

Again, I have no Fabian fondness for the economic planning and centralization that defines the European supra-state. But you don’t have to like the office (I dislike it) and the office-holder’s role in it (ditto) to appreciate her cerebral ability and drive: Lagarde holds 4 masters degrees. (Yet, these still failed to give her admission to France’s elite university!)

So, who elbows her way into the orbit of these high IQ, distinguished ladies? Why, Ivanka does! The grey-haired, unadorned women form part of circle deep in discussion, when a big-bosomed, lanky woman, in a floral frock butts in, silicone appendages first.

Ivanka has elbowed her way into the May-Lagarde tight circle of interlocutors. She is dressed like an overgrown Lolita. During the G20 Summit she could be seen constantly smoothing her rigid hair down vainly. Now, she is gesticulating affectatiously, as do all America’s tele-twits.  …

… READ THE REST. “The Donald’s Peculiar Problem: Ivanka” is now exclusively on the Unz Review.

* Image courtesy of The Unz review.

UPDATE (7/22/019): Not again.