Archive for 2020
September 17, 2020
WHEN PEOPLE TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM:
This woman pretty much says it all. These people just want you dead. pic.twitter.com/ZjTZ0gLJzc
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 18, 2020
NOBODY COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING: Thinking twice about law and order: Riots now sway voters.
NO, IT’S SUPPOSED TO LAST THROUGH THE ELECTION: Is The Coronavirus Crisis Finally Over? A Nobel Laureate Says It Might Be.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “After four years of hell as President, Trump looks ten years younger than when he took office. It’s astounding. He’s more energized than 2016. And then there’s Joe.”
ROGER SIMON: Nashville’s Government Lied About The Coronavirus — Does Everybody?
For good and bad reasons, my adopted hometown of Nashville can’t stay out of the news.
The good: Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Boreing and the gang from The Daily Wire are moving their successful conservative media company here for reasons similar to mine. They no longer “love LA.”
They considered Texas but opted for Music City because of the number of “creatives” here. (If you watched Wednesday night’s Nashville-based Academy of Country Music awards, you could see that in action.) Welcome, guys!
The bad: Like many cities across this nation, Nashville’s government has been extremely peremptory—and it now seems worse than that—in its dealings with the pandemic.
Its mayor, John Cooper, issued what amounted to diktats restricting most social activity in a town that relies heavily on tourist income. They were particularly punitive toward the popular honky tonks on Lower Broadway. The owners screamed bloody murder but got little or no response.
Now we know why: Nashville Metro lied. The coronavirus figures for those same honky tonks (country music bars) were nowhere near what the city had said or implied they were in order to keep them shut or semi-shut, Fox 17 Nashville revealed in a series of private government emails uncovered by the station.
The coronavirus cases in the honky tonks were next to zero.
Mayor Cooper is shaping up as a national villain, similar to New York’s infamous Bill De Blasio. (More in a moment)
This should not just be local news, or even national. It should be international for what it tells us about the virus.
Restaurants and bars may not be nearly as dangerous locales for the transmission of the novel coronavirus (known here as the CCP virus) as we have been told. In fact, they could possibly not be very dangerous at all, since the instances of the virus associated with them appear to be minuscule.
That has implications for every city in the world and every country. The hospitality industry has been decimated, in many places, almost beyond repair. Tourism has been wounded globally, possibly terminally. Ditto the airline industry. Tons of employees in virtually every nation have lost their jobs.
You know who hasn’t lost his job? Nashville Mayor John Cooper. Maybe do something about that?
You may recall, I’ve said that trust is the most important thing in public health. I don’t think our leaders have taken that responsibility seriously enough.
ANOTHER UPDATE: So a reporter for the Tennesseee Lookout is saying that there’s less to this story than meets the eye, because he got the numbers about the paucity of Covid cases in bars and published a story back in August. But I agree with his respondents that the story isn’t just the low numbers — although that’s news that, though reported in the Lookout, wasn’t noticed by many — but that the Mayor’s office was actively trying to keep it quiet.
So there are two stories: One is that the city’s own numbers don’t justify closing the bars, which shold be enough to support a lawsuit that will get the closing orders overturned. The other is that the Mayor’s office’s own emails show they were trying to keep this quiet, so as to maintain an order that wasn’t supported by the science in which we’re all exhorted to believe.
OPEN THREAD: Post ’em if you got ’em.
AT LAST, A MOVIE WITH SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE TO HATE: CAIR Hates Netflix’s Cuties — Because It Portrays Islam Negatively.
YESTERDAY, EARTH ORBIT. TODAY, CISLUNAR SPACE. TOMORROW, TRANSLUNAR SPACE. Is Earth-moon space the US military’s new high ground?
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:
● Shot: The big debate: Must we give up our cars?
—Headline, CNN, November 5th, 2007.
● Chaser: CNN Tests a ‘Drive-In’ Town Hall With Joe Biden.
—Headline, Variety, today.
HAPPY NATIONAL GUACAMOLE DAY.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “It doesn’t really feel like the ‘novel’ coronavirus anymore, more like the super-played-out coronavirus.”
EDINBURGH CANCELS HUME: Instapundit readers deserve a little satire today.
(The part about canceling Hume is true, of course. Alas.)
JIM TREACHER: Pelosi Finally Condemns Rioting. “What you just heard was Nancy Pelosi turning on her own base. You know things are looking bad for the Dems when they’re forced to concede to reality, no matter how much their most loyal voters hate it…Hey, maybe that YouTuber who recorded himself dropping a deuce in Pelosi’s driveway did some good after all. Suddenly, she realizes anarchy is no good! Well, that and the $2 billion in damages the rioters and looters have caused so far. And police being beaten and shot in the streets. And restaurant patrons being chased away by table-flipping psychopaths screaming “F*** 12!” And other minor inconveniences.”
NEWT GINGRICH RESPONDS TO FOX: The Soros Cover-Up: Americans can’t let Twitter noise overwhelm political reality.
EMAILS INDICATE NASHVILLE MAYOR’S OFFICE COLLUDED TO CONCEAL COVID INFORMATION FROM PUBLIC:
It should of course be considered good news that so few cases wound up being tied to bars and restaurants. The hospitality industry, which already operated on razor-thin margins in normal times, is in dire straits in big cities across the country and as a result many beloved institutions are shuttering. Here’s a list of places that have permanently closed in Nashville during the pandemic.
The implication of a deliberate plot to conceal information about low spreads from bars and restaurants is a desire to maintain strict restrictions. Thus, these emails represent an agreement between officials, who work to serve taxpayers, to prop up unpopular governing decisions.
Read the whole thing. As Clay Travis tweets:
HOT, HOT, HOT: NEW REPORT RELEASED TODAY: My progressive colleagues on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights apparently are happy to have adults with Down Syndrome lose their jobs. I wish I were teasing.
NEARLY ALL OF WHICH WERE UNNECESSARY: Study: 60% of lung cancer patients saw COVID-19-related treatment delays.
