Archive for 2020
April 8, 2020
BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES: Paul Krugman Thinks There’s a Correlation Between Hydroxychloroquine Push and ‘Right-Wing Medical Quackery.’
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Toys & Games.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Six Reasons Why Obama Would Have Botched the Coronavirus Response.
IMPROVISE, ADAPT, OVERCOME. More than 95% of Americans made lifestyle changes for COVID-19.
I HAD BEEN ASSURED VOTER FRAUD WAS A MYTH: Mail-In Ballots Make Voter Fraud Easy. I Know Because I Did It.
ALIENS. OR POSSIBLY MOON NAZIS A LA ROCKETSHIP GALILEO OR SOMETHING: What are these mysterious objects filmed flying close to the moon?
APPARENTLY MASSIVE CUTS IN FEDERAL FUNDING UNDER OBAMA WERE THE CULPRIT: How New York City’s Emergency Ventilator Stockpile Ended Up on the Auction Bloc.
THEY’LL HAVE FACED ENOUGH BACKLASH ONCE THEY’RE OUT OF THE NEWS BUSINESS: NBC faces mass backlash after touting China’s coronavirus numbers to contrast with US.
PENNSYLVANIA HAS MADE IT BOTH DIFFICULT AND DANGEROUS TO BUY LIQUOR:
The state’s response during the COVID-19 pandemic provides both an unfortunate reminder of the folly of giving the state government a near-monopoly over liquor sales—and an object lesson in how the closure of businesses in the name of public health can backfire.
The shuttering of Pennsylvania’s state-run stores meant that for weeks, it was nearly impossible to buy liquor legally within state borders. Only in-state distilleries licensed for direct consumer sales were able to sell spirits.
“By closing all the stores, what they are doing is forcing a lot of people to simply go out of state,” says David Ozgo, the Senior Vice President of Economic & Strategic Analysis for DISCUS, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Ozgo notes that while other states also own and operate liquor stores, Pennsylvania is “the only state in the country that has taken this extreme measure.”
That didn’t just make it harder for Pennsylvanians to buy liquor. It also made it unusually dangerous, as the experience of liquor retailers across the border in New Jersey shows. As Matt Dogali, the president and CEO of the American Distilled Spirits Alliance, told me, “It’s counter to [COVID-19–related] containment measures to force people to travel long distances to crowded stores.”
The entire world is having a rerun of the 1919 Spanish Flu pandemic; Harrisburg piles on with a flashback to 1919’s Volstead Act.
IF THE LEFT REALLY WANTS TRUMP TO TREAT FIGHTING THE CORONAVIRUS AS THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR…Michael Walsh on Lincoln’s Example, and Trump’s Battle With the CCP Virus:
The dishonest Copperhead media might not like the answer, though; if the virus is as deadly as the president and other world leaders say it is, they may soon find themselves in the same predicament as the newsmen of Lincoln’s day: shut down for sedition. And they will have thoroughly earned it.
Read the whole thing.
NEWS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS: Coronavirus in Tennessee: Knox County cases up to 146, one new death reported. “The Knox County Health Department said Wednesday the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Knox County now stands at 146. Knox County reported 20 new positive local cases and one new death Wednesday, bringing the total number of deaths to four. There are now 65 active cases in the county as of April 8. . . . The total number of recovered cases now stands at 77 up from 74 on Tuesday. Recovered refers to those who have been released from isolation. Nineteen of the 146 cases have resulted in hospitalization at any point during the illness. This figure does not reflect the number of patients currently hospitalized in the county. A total of 2213 tests have now been conducted.”
Meanwhile, I was talking to a friend who owns some businesses in Knoxville and mentioned that I’d heard the local SBA office was flooded. His response is encouraging: “Well they have turned over a whole lot of stuff to the banks. And our banks, Truist/BB&T, Regions have been phenomenal. Hell I get notices about stuff coming online and fill it all out. When filling out my application for Payroll Protection Program, at 11:45 pm Saturday night, I had a question, emailed our bank representative and our CPA, and they both responded within 10 minutes!”
He also got a notice that the University of Tennessee is refunding his kid’s unused room & board for the semester, something I didn’t know we were doing, but I’m glad we are.
IS THIS AMERICA’S TURNING POINT? The answers from Robert E. Wright of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) are blunt and likely to anger all the usual suspects. Take this graph for instance:
“As I recently argued elsewhere, America’s educational system has not prepared us for the government power grab because it does not create enough Emersonian independent thinkers or, frankly, even adult thinkers. Due to the extreme Left bias of higher education, many of America’s college graduates remain intellectually infantilized to the point that they can do little more than Tweet ignorant hate at any idea that does not accord with Progressive mantras.”
Too severe a judgement? I think not, but what do other Instapunditites think? And what a neat shot of the shark!
CORNPOP SMILES: Bernie Drops Out of the 2020 Race.
And America’s Newspaper of Record is on it! Bernie Sanders Drops Out Of Race To Spend More Time With His Many, Many Houses.
“STAND YOUR GROUND” LAWS: Former Attorney General Eric Holder has argued that “Stand Your Ground” laws are a dangerous new innovation in the law. But as I explain in my dissenting statement to the Commission on Civil Rights’ new report, “Stand Your Ground” laws are new only if Sir Edward Coke’s Institutes of the Lawes of England is your idea of new.
(Yes, I’m a law nerd. I can’t get enough of 17th century law books. The long history of the “Stand Your Ground” approach to self-defense law is particularly interesting.)
HMM: New York’s Coronavirus Death Toll is Almost Certainly Far Higher Than Reported. “Before the pandemic struck New York City, 20-25 people a day were dying at home according to the city medical examiner’s office. Now, that number is more than 200, raising questions about how many of those who die in their own beds actually died of coronavirus.”
That’s troubling. Hospitals have almost certainly been overcounting COVID-19 deaths, but what else could account for such an increase in in-home deaths?
KATHY SHAIDLE ON ONE OF THE GREATEST ROCK & ROLL DOCUMENTARIES EVER MADE:
That’s the last scene in The Kids Are Alright (1979.)
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry,” Emily Dickinson said. That was the effect watching that rather roughshod documentary about the Who had on me when I saw it at the Broadway in Grade Nine.
The first scene, in particular, was a felicitous choice:
It was 1967, and the show was The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, whose titular twits were your typical self-important 1960s show biz liberal, “anti-establishment” blowhards. The guy on stage with the Who, Tommy Smothers, is a particularly vicious human toothache of long standing.
The Who had considerable, nasty fun at Smothers’ expense, treating this “radical” hipster with far more naked contempt than they did any straight-laced mainstream hosts they’ve ever appeared with.
Read the whole thing. For a brief time shortly after Keith Moon died, The Who finally got to live out their original managers’ dream, and became a film powerhouse: here’s my take on the follow-up to The Kids Are Alright, their 1979 cinematic adaptation of Quadrophenia.
LEGITIMATE CHINA GOVERNMENT ACTS LEGIT: Taiwan shows up China, sending hard-hit countries lifesaving coronavirus supplies.
THAT THIS IS EVEN UP FOR DISPUTE IS A DISGRACE: Academic freedom expert sides with law prof who said ‘n-word’ while reading SCOTUS case.
His dean’s act of throwing him under the bus was a disgraceful dereliction of decanal duty.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Snopes Recommends Shutting Down Internet To Prevent Spread Of Satire.