Op-ed by Jennifer Rubin @ WashingtonPost.com, March 25

After weeks of whining, the White House press corps got its first official Biden presidential news conference on Thursday. President Biden used the event to pledge that 200 million covid-19 vaccinations would be administered by the end of his first 100 days, double his original goal. (The administration will reach 100 million shots on Friday, Day 58.) He also announced that a survey showed nearly half of K-12 schools are open full-time for in-person learning. (He expressed confidence it would be more than half by the 100th day, consistent with his goal.) Certainly, that should be near the top of any news coverage.

Asked how “hard” he would work for his policy goals, he responded that “all my focus” so far has been on covid-19 and the economic recovery, but he promised he would get to other issues such as guns, immigration, climate change and voting rights. “I think my Republican colleagues are going to have to determine whether or not we’re going to work together … [or] continue the politics of division,” he said.

On immigration, he made clear that crowded facilities at the southern border are not the result of a policy change from his administration or the fact that migrants see him as a “nice guy.” He pointed out that there was a higher surge under his predecessor last spring, which certainly was not because migrants believed the former president was a “nice” guy. “It happens every single solitary year,” Biden noted. In his lengthy responses to questions on the border, he showed his skill in de-escalating issues. One message came across loud and clear: “We’re building back up the capacity that should have been maintained and built upon that [Donald] Trump dismantled. It’s going to take time.”

One reporter mentioned a 9-year-old she had seen at the border and asked if Biden’s messaging was contributing to the problem. No, he responded, again offering a detailed answer about the problems refugees face in their home countries that create the outflow. Prodded with a question about whether overcrowding was “acceptable,” he responded, “C’mon.” Of course it was unacceptable, he said, listing steps he is taking to find more beds for unaccompanied minors. The repeated questions on the same topic were tiresome and a poor use of precious time [....]

The paradox of someone like J.D. Vance: someone grows up in an environment where you need a car to survive, everyone is working a minimum wage job, and there are no social safety nets and, after making it enough to be living the life on an educated elite, then comes to the conclusion that it's too much socialism causing it..

This is why people don't listen to such people. It's not that they didn't come from a rough environment. It's that they then rationalize keeping it rough.

• Link to ATLANTA SHOOTING NEWS THREAD
• Link to related thread on Attacks on Asian-Americans
• Link to news thread on other VIOLENT CRIME.

(time stamp change due to later editing to correct cross-link) 

By Homer de la Fuente @ CNN.com, March 19

Four new lawsuits have been filed against Houston Texans star quarterback Deshaun Watson alleging sexual assault.

The additional claims come from four women who say he contacted them for services like massage therapy.

That brings the total of lawsuits against the Pro Bowl quarterback to seven. They were filed in Harris County, Texas, this week by attorney Tony Buzbee, who is representing the seven women. After the first suit was filed on Tuesday, Watson denied those allegations in a statement posted to Twitter [....]

so yet another story that counters the whole idea that guns should not equal power-

The uptick in homicides seen in many U.S. cities during the Covid-19 crisis has left criminologists with several possible explanations — and lots of new questions. 

By Jake Blumgart @ Bloomberg City Lab, March 19

[....] What’s not clear is why violence in so many American communities surged in 2020. Comparable previous calamities did not seem to trigger similar spikes. The flu pandemic of 1918, the Great Depression and the Great Recession were all associated with declines in violence. Academic criminologists tend to be a scrupulously modest bunch, especially in the short term, and few make strong cases for any single reason for year-to-year fluctuations in crime. There isn’t even a widely accepted reason for the great violent crime decline of recent decades, when the murder rate fell by half between its early 1990s peak and 2014. 

One popular explanation for 2020’s violence places some causation on the protests for racial justice that erupted in many U.S. cities in June, after the police killing of George Floyd, which further delegitimized law enforcement in many communities. The so-called Ferguson Effect suggests that protest activity either results in fewer calls to the police to report crime and moderate disputes, or in police pulling back from their street-level duties. But the fact that several other categories of crime went down in 2020 complicates that narrative, as CityLab’s Brentin Mock wrote in September. And NCCCJ commission director and study co-author Thomas Abt has instead cited a “perfect storm” of factors driving the 2020 homicide trend, rather than one major trigger. 

Bloomberg CityLab talked to a variety of experts and practitioners about what drove the rising homicide rates of the past year — and 2021 so far as well. They offered multiple observations and possible theories — including some surprisingly counterintuitive ones — for the deadly turn that 2020 took [....]

further excerpt in first comment