WAIT, WHEN TRUMP PRAISED THIS WE WERE IMMEDIATELY TOLD IT WAS DEADLY AND UNPROVEN: Small study supports donor plasma therapy for severe COVID-19.
Archive for 2020
September 16, 2020
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: DOJ to announce charges in computer intrusion campaigns tied to China.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Meet ‘Captain No’: The City Commissioner Waging War on Corporate Welfare.
Politicians often brag about all the things they’ve accomplished while in office. But often overlooked is an aspect of governance that’s equally important: stopping bad policy proposals and preventing the waste of more taxpayer dollars. Here’s where local politicians like Fargo City Commissioner Tony Gehrig, known as “Captain No,” deserve more spotlight and credit than they typically receive.
A captain in the North Dakota National Guard, Gehrig also uses his perch on the Fargo, North Dakota City Commission to vote against any and all corporate welfare proposals put forward. He has earned a reputation for voting “no” on the tax subsidies and government carve-outs that municipalities often offer businesses to try to lure economic activity to their area.
It’s an idea so crazy, it just might work.
JOE ROGAN: ‘Biden Has Dementia.’ “Rogan is interesting because he says what he actually thinks without caring about toning it down due to fear of condemnation from the Social Justice Warrior set.”
DOES TRUMP HAVE BIDEN ON THE ROPES? Bill Powell at Newsweek thinks so. Me, not so much, though a landslide could be lurking out there if pollsters are again missing the actual depth of Trump’s support as they did in 2016.
IF A BLACK STUDENT HAD BEEN SHOT IN THE HEAD BY A 60-YEAR-OLD WHITE GUY, IT WOULD BE NATIONAL NEWS: Murder charges filed after killing of UC Berkeley student. Meanwhile, I just heard of this, weeks later, after a reader sent the link.
CALIFORNIA CHURCH CAVED OR CONQUERED? North Valley Baptist Church faced more than $50,000 in fines for holding indoor services in defiance of Gov. Gavin Newsome’s draconian Covid restrictions.
Now the church is meeting outdoors in its parking lot and its senior pastor praises the health official who enforced the fines against his congregation. Some would say the church caved, others that it’s just being prudent. What do you think?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION: Amidst 75% Enrollment Decline, Thomas Cooley Abandons Naming Rights To Minor League Baseball Stadium.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Suppose They Made Peace But Democrats Wouldn’t Come?
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Remember when Democrats were for peace the Middle East?
Answer: ORANGE MAN BAD, hater!
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Pennsylvania judge goes nuclear on mostly violent rioters.
- John Kerry blows it. Again.
- Meet Kim Cast, Oregon’s citizen-hero.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
“DOING THE INNER WORK OF ANTI-RACISM“: Teaching about anti-racism in a state university Intro to Communications class is one thing. Telling students they have to do “inner work” on their beliefs as college classwork sounds a lot more like thought reform than education. Maybe this isn’t what it looks like, but if you can’t make a grammar school kid say the Pledge of Allegiance during World War II, there’s no way a professor can mandate psychological therapy for his or her adult students.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Black Student Alliance demands Catholic university hire more black queer professors.
HMM: Air Force Shocks Defense Sector As Secret Fighter Jet Takes Flight. “The NGAD has come so far that the full-scale flight demonstrator has already flown in the physical world. It’s broken a lot of records.”
It’s an educated guess that whatever they end up naming the sixth-gen fighter — I like the sound of F-51 in honor of the WWII P-51 Mustang — it will be able to fly and fight either manned or unmanned.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Columbia marching band, ‘founded on the basis of racism,’ votes to ‘dissolve’ itself. “The move comes after anonymous social media users made allegations of racism against unnamed band members.”
UPDATE: A reader whose daughter attends Columbia sends a warning that this may be a prank, and not a genuine story. Maybe so. Who can tell anymore!
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Democrats Will Use Mail-In Ballots Scam to Throw Election Into Chaos. “Now, no matter the margin of victory should Trump prevail on Nov. 3rd, the Democrats will be caterwauling about counting the mail-in ballots for weeks, or even months. That’s where all of the fraud magic can be made, naturally.”
I SUPPOSE IT MAKES ME A BAD PERSON, BUT I’M KIND OF ENJOYING THE LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: The Revolution Comes for Oliver Stone.
Remind me again, what was the premise of the short-lived hysteria over Bob Woodward’s book? That Donald Trump, in early February, knew that the virus could kill and was spread through the air?
This was universal knowledge. In the two weeks before Messrs. Trump and Woodward spoke, more than 550 published and broadcast news reports in the Factiva database likened the Chinese viral outbreak to the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. On Jan. 28, a week before they spoke and on the same day Mr. Trump received a White House security briefing on the virus, this column drew the 1918 analogy. It also highlighted an issue that would plague the world for months. Because of the inability of China and other countries to count mild or nonsymptomatic infections, we were operating on data that considerably overestimated the virus’s deadliness.
So if he can’t be accused of withholding knowledge from the American people, can he be accused of causing harm by not emphasizing these facts in February and early March, before the virus reached most of America? As he told Mr. Woodward, he played down the risk because he didn’t want to cause panic.
To believe its own Devil theory of this episode, the press has to forget everything it knows about the pandemic story, including basic chronology, as well as forget that 55% of America doesn’t trust what Donald Trump says anyway.
It has to remove the Woodward quotes from history and context, blast them into some empty corner of outer space, and invite its audience to invent a new narrative around them.
On Earth, every pandemic plan treats panic as a comorbidity. Both need to be managed. Mr. Trump, we’ll find, was sloppily following the advice of his staff: He could do as much harm as good with anything he said, so say little except to assure the public that the government is on top of things. . . .
As fate would have it, Feb. 13, a week after the widely cited Woodward-Trump conversation, saw a rally in Queens, a video of which is still available on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Twitter feed. It involved most of the city’s leaders. They urged against panic, suggesting that racism was the only reason for not shopping in Chinatown.
Mayor de Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would continue in this vein till the third week of March. From the 17th to the 22nd, they engaged in a public spat over whether to introduce emergency measures.
Or take Angela Merkel, whose response has been widely lauded. Until March 11, she warned against overreaction. On that day, she switched tactics and told Germans that they might all be infected.
William Barr has one theory of press behavior. In a media interview last week, the attorney general suggested that the press was a “collection of liars.” I am tempted to reach for psychology—hysteria, groupthink—but we must not underestimate simple commercial incentive. An untold story of our time is the symbiosis of Mr. Trump and, especially, CNN and MSNBC. Editorial meetings took place, I guarantee it, in which the only discussion concerned how to play the Woodward tidbits for the highest shock value. This works fine for Mr. Trump too. He wants the universe revolving around him. He can run not on his record (good, bad or so-so) but against the media’s palpable, absurd lies.
They do give him a lot to work with.
COMMUNIST FRONT CORPORATIONS: Chinese Communist Party Document Reveals Plans for Greater Party Control Over Companies.
At the top of the CCP’s list of how to compel tougher adherence to the party line, the CCP hopes to “improve the selection mechanism” for supporting business leaders and investing in their enterprises.
“We will raise and strengthen private enterprise figures and teams who staunchly and steadfastly walk together with the party, and develop as one heart and one mind,” the document reads.
The phrase “one heart and one mind” is standard CCP language used frequently throughout party speeches and documents. It is used to emphasize unified thought and action in Chinese leadership, shutting the door to differing opinions.
That sound you hear is the death rattle of innovation in Communist-run mainland China.
PLEASE, MR. PRESIDENT, DO NOT ‘GROW’ IN THE OFFICE: Two recent decisions by The Donald provide worrisome signs the Swamp may be sneaking up on the chief executive who has wracked up more conservative achievements than even Ronald Reagan.