OJ Simpson Is Dead — Ron and Nicole Are Unavailable for Comment

As to the double murder case against O.J. Simpson, there was so much evidence that his guilt was obvious. This evidence included, but was not limited to, blood at the crime scene and on and in Simpson’s white Bronco; a bloody glove found at the crime scene and a matching glove found at Simpson’s home; a knit cap, with hair that resembled that of Simpson, found at the crime scene; footprints matching Simpson’s foot size found at the crime scene; blood found in Simpson’s home; blood on socks found in Simpson’s home; and the limo driver, scheduled to pick up Simpson on the night of the murder, buzzed Simpson’s intercom and got no response. There was other evidence, including the infamous low-speed Bronco chase, not used against Simpson. Evidence was not used either because the prosecution elected not to use it, the judge refused to allow it, or certain things, like Simpson taking and flunking a polygraph, were inadmissible. One piece of evidence not used was testimony from a witness named Jill Shively. On the night of June 12, 1994, Shively saw a white Bronco driving quickly and recklessly from near the scene of the crime and around the time of the crime. The driver of the Bronco nearly hit Shively’s car. When she learned about the murders, she called the police, described what happened, gave them the Bronco’s license plate and identified the driver as Simpson. One would consider this a crucial piece of evidence placing Simpson near the crime scene on the night of the murders. Why did the prosecution choose not to use this eyewitness? Shively sold her story for $5,000 to one of the tabloids. Lead prosec utor Marcia Clark believed this tainted Shively’s credibility, and Clark decided against putting her on the stand to face cross-examination. Besides, the prosecution reasoned, there is so much evidence pointing to Simpson’s guilt, why bother with an iffy witness? Simpson, without a lawyer present, was interviewed by the police the day after the murders. The detectives saw cuts on Simpson’s hands. Simpson claimed he sustained them “when I was rushing to get out of my house,” but in his pretrial deposition he claimed the cuts came from a glass he broke in anger when he heard about the death of his ex-wife. The jury consisted of eight blacks. Given the jury’s unwillingness to apply reason and common sense, none of the evidence really mattered. Years after the trial, one of the jurors, a black woman named Carrie Bess, in an interview admitted she ignored the evidence. Interviewer: Do you think there are members of the jury that voted to acquit O.J. because of Rodney King? Bess: Yes. Interviewer: You do? Bess: Yes. Interviewer: How many of you do you think felt that way? Bess: Oh, probably 90% of them. Interviewer: 90%. Did you feel that way? Bess: Yes. Interviewer: That was payback. Bess: Uh-huh. Interviewer: Do you think that’s right? After that question, Bess just put up her hands and shrugged. During the trial, an inner-city New Jersey high school teacher wrote an article called “Race, O.J., and My Kids.” It was published in a center-left magazine called The New Republic: “No more than four of my 110 students (most of whom are black) think O.J. Simpson is definitely guilty and few are willing to admit the possibility that he might be. This faith in Simpson is strongest among black girls. ... “One student suggested that Ron Goldman killed Nicole before killing himself and then throwing away the knife. Another believes the dog did it. Shenia suggested that Al Cowlings, Simpson’s best buddy, did it. Bryant believes the killer is O.J.’s son. Philip blames ‘that (gay) dude who wants to marry O.J.’; that would be Kato Kaelin, Simpson’s houseguest. ... “Jon, a bright student, had his own scenario: O.J. was shaving and cut himself. Kato took the blood from the shaving cut, brought it to the crime scene and dumped it.” What can one say other than this? O.J. Simpson has died. Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were unavailable for comment.

The NPR-Listening ‘Elite 1%’

Consider this proposition: “Suppose that your favorite candidate loses a close election. However, people on the campaign know that they can win by cheating without being caught. Would you rather have your candidate win by cheating or lose by playing fair?” Just 7% of Americans said, “Win by cheating.” This is from a startling new Scott Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen then put this question to those the pollster calls “the elite 1%.” They make over $150,000 per year, have a postgraduate degree, live in densely populated areas, and give President Joe Biden an 82% approval rating. Why poll this group? Rasmussen said: “A heavy concentration of them went to one of 12 elite schools. ... [H]alf the policy positions in government, half the corporate board positions in America, are held by people who went to one of these dozen schools.” Thirty-five percent of this group said they would rather their candidate win by cheating than lose by playing fair. It gets worse. Rasmussen put the question to a subset of this elite 1%, whom the pollster calls the “politically obsessed,” defined as those who talk about politics every day. Among this group, the number who would rather win by cheating jumps to 69%. Rasmussen said: “Most Americans think we don’t have enough individual freedom. Among the elite 1%, about half say, ‘No, we’ve got too much freedom.’ And among that politically obsessed group, about 7 out of 10 say, “There’s too much individual freedom in America.” As for why they think this way, Rasmussen said: “... part of the reason is because they trust government. In America, it’s been 50 years since most voters trusted the government to do the right thing most of the time. But among the elite 1%, 70% trust the government. ... They really believe that if they could just make the decisions and get us out of the way, we would be a lot better off.” This brings us to National Public Radio, whose mostly white listeners consist of the more affluent and those more likely to have college and postgraduate degrees. (Let us reserve for another time the question of why, in an information overload internet world full of radio and television channels, podcasts, numerous news outlets, etc., we still  have taxpayer-supported public television and radio.) Now this elite 1% absolutely, positively loves NPR. Uri Berliner, senior business editor and reporter, is a 25-year NPR veteran. He insists NPR “lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.” In a strikingly candid article, Berliner writes: “It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding. “In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population. ... “By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals. ... “At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff. “Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports. “But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming. “It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. ... What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection.” Who is listening to NPR? Berliner says: “Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America. It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.” You know, kind of like the elite 1%.

Liberals Love the Minimum Wage — Though It Hurts People Liberals Love

On April 1, the new California $20-per-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers went into effect. In signing the bill, California Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the view that such a wage hike — 25% above the state’s current minimum wage — hurts teenagers who disproportionately benefit from fast-food jobs and for whom this becomes their entry into the job market. Newsom said: “That’s a romanticized version of a world that doesn’t exist.  We have the opportunity to reward that contribution, reward that sacrifice, and stabilize an industry.” In 2019, The New York Times editorial board echoed the theme: “The simplistic view that minimum-wage laws cause unemployment commanded such a broad consensus in the 1980s that this editorial board came out against the federal minimum in 1987, calling it ‘an idea whose time has passed,’ and citing as evidence a virtual consensus among economists.’ The old critique is still put forward regularly by the restaurant industry and other major employers of low-wage workers ... “A groundbreaking study published in 1993 by the economists David Card and Alan Krueger examined a minimum-wage rise in New Jersey by comparing fast-food restaurants there and in an adjacent part of Pennsylvania. It found no impact on employment.” The 2019 New York Times editorial board has done a 180-degree turn from what its board wrote in a 1987 opinion headlined “The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00": “... there’s a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed. Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price working poor people out of the job market ... “A higher minimum would undoubtedly raise the living standard of the majority of low-wage workers who could keep their jobs. That gain, it is argued, would justify the sacrifice of the minority who became unemployable. The argument isn’t convincing. Those at greatest risk from a higher minimum would be young, poor workers, who already face formidable barriers to getting and keeping jobs.” In a 1973 interview, Nobel Economics Prize winner Milton Friedman said, “I’ve often said the minimum-wage rate is the most anti-Negro law on the books.” Now the “groundbreaking” Card-Krueger study referred to in The New York Times 2019 editorial did refute the consensus among economists that government-imposed minimum wage increases cause unemployment and higher prices and give added incentive to cut labor costs through automation. But about the study, The New York Times’s own columnist, economist, and Nobel winner Paul Krugman, wrote: “Indeed, much-cited studies by two well-regarded labor economists, David Card, and Alan Krueger, found that where there have been more or less controlled experiments, for example when New Jersey raised minimum wages, but Pennsylvania did not, the effects of the increase on employment have been negligible or even positive. Exactly what to make of this result is a source of great dispute. Card and Krueger offered some complex theoretical rationales, but most of their colleagues are unconvinced; the centrist view is probably that minimum wages ‘do,’ in fact, reduce employment. ...” (Krugman now supports a minimum wage.) Other economists attacked the “groundbreaking study” noting that its researchers simply asked employers whether they hired more or fewer workers post the minimum wage hike. When, however, the same employers were asked to provide payroll records, it turned out that the state with the higher minimum wage saw lower employment relative to the adjacent state that did not raise its minimum wage. This confirmed the consensus view that those hurt the most are the so-called unskilled, and that many of these would-be workers are the very black and brown liberals like The New York Times editorial board purports to care about. Ohio University economist Lowell Galloway examined the study and denounced it: “The Card-Krueger study is still cited because it is useful politically. ... It still has legs because the minimum-wage notion is an idea that just will not die. You cannot put it to rest by any amount of evidence demonstrating its problems. Whenever people want to believe something strongly enough, any study that supports that belief -- no matter how bad it is -- will be accepted.” But enough about Gov. Newsom and The New York Times.

MSNBC: One Man’s ‘Election Denier’ Is Another Man’s TV Host

MSNBC, the “news” outfit on which the Rev. Al Sharpton has a show, briefly hired former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, at $300,000 per year, to serve as an on-air pundit. Why did the rabidly anti-Trump, anti-Republican network make her the offer? MSNBC likely did so because 2024 is an election year; McDaniel was available, having been pressured into leaving her post by former President Donald Trump, the inside story of which MSNBC viewers would salivate over; her ouster from the RNC suggests bad blood between her and Trump and therefore, from MSNBC’s point of view, a welcome willingness for a high-profile Republican to dish some anti-Trump dirt; or because McDaniel could bring a different perspective to MSNBC’s lineup of hosts and guests who unanimously parrot the narrative that Trump is a “racist” and “election denier” who, on Jan. 6, 2021, committed “insurrection.” “Why,” likely went MSNBC’s thinking, “we are, after all, a ‘news’ organization -- and maybe McDaniel could increase ratings by attracting some non-Trump-hating viewers.” The better question is why McDaniel accepted the offer. While Trump wanted her out, she cheered him on during his presidency, supported Trump’s claim of 2020 election fraud and characterized what happened on Jan. 6 as “legitimate political discourse.” How will that sit with an MSNBC lineup that routinely compares Trump to Hitler and deems Trump an existential threat to the republic? Immediately after McDaniel’s hiring, former NBC “Meet the Press” moderator and current NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd said, “There’s a reason a lot of journalists at NBC News are uncomfortable with this.” Todd proceeded to accuse McDaniel of “gaslighting” journalists and engaging in anti-media “character assassination.” In what turned out to be McDaniel’s first and only on-air interview as a pundit, MSNBC host Kristen Welker asked McDaniel, “Why should people trust what you’re saying right now?” Welker also asked, “Did you not have a responsibility as the RNC chair to say before Jan. 6, ‘The election is not rigged’?” Days later, MSNBC terminated McDaniel. To the MSNBC hosts who rioted, the McDaniel hiring crossed the line. But isn’t this the same MSNBC that hired Sharpton, American’s preeminent race card hustler, to host a show? Sharpton is the Tawana Brawley-lying, Crown Heights riot/Freddy’s Fashion Mart incendiary, tax deadbeat and would-be cocaine dealer who has made anti-white and antisemitic slurs. After McDaniel’s hiring, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said he and his “Morning Joe” co-host would not allow McDaniel to appear as a guest. But Sharpton, Scarborough’s colleague, regularly appears on the show. In 2000, when Scarborough served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he proposed a resolution called “Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton.” It read in part: “Whereas the Congress strongly rejects the racist and incendiary actions of the Reverend Al Sharpton; “Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as ‘bloodsucking [J]ews’, and ‘Jew bastards’; “Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as ‘white interlopers’ and ‘diamond merchants’; “Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton was found guilty of defamation by a jury in a New York court arising from the false accusation that former Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, who is white, raped and assaulted a fifteen year-old black girl; ... “Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton’s vicious verbal anti-Semitic attacks directed at members of the Jewish faith, and in particular, a Jewish landlord, arising from a simple landlord-tenant dispute with a black tenant, incited widespread violence, riots, and the murder of five innocent people; ... “Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton led a protest in the Crown Heights neighborhood and marched next to a protester with a sign that read, ‘The White Man is the Devil ...’” Apparently, all is forgiven. Sharpton is also, to use MSNBC’s parlance, an “election denier,” and an egregious one at that. About the 2016 election, Sharpton said: “There’s no question that the process that elected (Trump) was not legitimate. When you look at now the evidence from the intelligence agencies that there was the influence from the Russians ...” So, McDaniel out, Sharpton in. One man’s “election denier” is another man’s MSNBC host.