AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Seattle Protesters Abolish Police, Replace With Squads Of Armed Individuals Tasked With Enforcing Set Of Agreed-Upon Rules.
Archive for 2020
June 11, 2020
“AFTER STATES ROLL BACK LOCKDOWNS” IS THE NARRATIVE, NOT “AFTER MASSIVE PROTESTS VIOLATED SOCIAL DISTANCING RULES.” Alarming rise in virus cases as states roll back lockdowns.
Back in March, of course, the promise wasn’t that the lockdowns would eradicate the virus, but that flattening the curve would keep hospitals from being overloaded. That was successful. The lockdowns won’t last because they can’t. That they were broken by masses of people yelling cheek-by-jowl can’t help, of course, but there was never a promise that lockdowns would stop people from getting sick. That just became a new reason later, and one that never made sense.
UPDATE: From the comments: “This is about creating the pretext for nation-wide vote-by-mail, and the fraud associated with it.” Well, the press has several agendas here, but that’s probably one of them.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Estrogen and testosterone therapies may decrease severity of COVID-19. “Previous research shows that the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone could help protect people from diseases that involve inflammation, which is what damages the lungs in COVID-19 infection. So when people get older, their sex hormone levels decrease, and they have a greater chance of becoming more severely ill with COVID-19 infection.”
SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76: Did Joe Biden Just Spit in the Face of MLK, Jr. with his George Floyd Remarks? “Even Dr. King’s assassination did not have the worldwide impact that George Floyd’s death did,” Biden said.
Related: Flashback: Joe Biden Once Said A Pro-Confederacy Group Was Made Up Of ‘Many Fine People.’
COSTLY MYTHS: Certain myths are so commonplace on the left that I really don’t know how to bring them back to reality. One is that crimes rates are equal across all racial groups and that if arrest rates differ it must be due to police officer racism. A variation on that concedes that crime rates are different, but has an unusual explanation for it: The claim is that African American children misbehave in school no more that Asian students, but they get punished more due to teacher racism. This is turn causes the students to miss school due to suspensions. They get behind in their studies and end up turning to crime when they get older. I know it sounds like I must have simply misunderstood the argument, but that’s really not the case. I dissented from a Commission on Civil Rights report that made that kind of argument here.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Boston to reassess future of Columbus statue beheaded in North End.
In other news from the land of John Kerry, Berklee College Bans Boston Cops From Restroom: “Berklee President Roger Brown said in a letter to the school community that allowing the officers inside on Sunday, May 31, perpetuated ‘feelings of oppression, silencing, and marginalization.’ Brown, who is stepping down from his post at the Boston music school next year, added: ‘Let us assure you, this should not have happened, and going forward, it will not happen again.’”
PREDICTION: EVEN THE “TOO OPTIMISTIC” 18-MONTH TIMETABLE MEANS IT’LL BE TOO LATE TO MATTER EVEN IF IT WORKS. Quest for COVID-19 vaccines: Where they stand.
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, Who Opposes Trump’s ‘Racist’ Border Wall, Erected Wall Around City Hall.
PANDEMIC SHUTDOWN FALLOUT: Starbucks to close 400 stores. Prediction — many, perhaps most, of these closed stores will be in urban areas where there has been unrest and looting. Big losers: Poor urbanites and minorities who need a safe place with free wi-fi to work and study.
OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH BASIL FAWLTY: Fawlty Towers ‘Don’t mention the war’ episode removed from UKTV.
GETTING AOC AND THE REST OF THE SQUAD ELECTED WAS ROGER STONE’S GREATEST POLITICAL DIRTY TRICK EVER: ‘Dingus, you realize you’re a Democrat, right?’ AOC lecturing Twitter about ‘slaveholder’ statues goes very, very wrong.
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Lady Antebellum Change Band Name: “We Are Deeply Sorry.”
COMMIES GOTTA COMMIE: China’s Communists Aim to Rewrite the Bible to ‘Create a New Version of Christianity.’
JOEL KOTKIN: Serf’s Up.
WELL, MORE ACCURATELY THEY CAME FROM CHINA BY WAY OF SPAIN, FRANCE, AND ITALY: Covid-19 news: UK infections mostly came from Spain, France and Italy.
AND NOW A WORD FROM MRS. BANE: NYC First Lady Chirlane McCray on Abolishing Police: ‘That Would Be Like a Nirvana.’
As Jim Treacher asks, “If you live in New York or Minneapolis or Seattle or any other riot-ravaged city right now… why? What’s keeping you there? Civic pride? If your own city won’t defend itself against the lunatics burning it down, why should you stick around? If you can work from anywhere, why not move to a place where you’re less likely to get beaten up and robbed, and much less likely to then be scolded for your ‘privilege’?”
CHARLES LIPSON: Police and Race: Hard Problems and Hard Truths.
In the midst of head-spinning talk about defunding police or abolishing them entirely, it’s important to step back and take a sober look at the debate. The racial dimension of policing is vexing because the racial dimension of American life is vexing. It is the deepest scar in our history. We treated it indecisively in forming our new nation and finally confronted it, at gruesome cost, in a great Civil War. We confronted it again a century later, after the failure of Reconstruction and decades of Jim Crow laws, during the Civil Rights Movement.
Despite those efforts and significant progress over the past half century, we never eliminated racism completely. We are facing it again today. The laws of the mid-1960s ensured de jure equality. Since then, the struggle has been to create a more equal society in practice. It’s difficult to even agree on the meaning of that term, much less achieve it. For some, equality refers to outcomes; for others, opportunities. Whatever the meaning, it must mean equal treatment by police.
Read the whole thing.
HOWARD WOLOWITZ TAKE NOTE: We Can Do Better Than Human-Like Hands for Robots.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Bitter Irony of Revolutions.
Social distancing and mandated lockdowns for months have been the source of endless fighting between the people and their governments. Red and blue states often adopted diametrically opposite policies.
But the massive demonstrations and rioting saw hundreds of thousands of protesters jammed together and often without masks. That mass disobedience to quarantining will teach us, better than any university modeling, whether the virus spikes or is indifferent to thousands who congregate in the streets.
The lockdowns were politically weaponized during this election year. Blue states thought the sinking economy would hurt President Trump’s reelection bid. Red states wanted to open up as quickly as possible to get the economy back and running before November.
Yet the mass progressive protests and violence forced an unplanned end to mass quarantining — and thereby inadvertently helped jumpstart the country back to business. Those who despise Trump may have done the most to help him.
It’s VDH, so read the whole thing.