Archive for 2020
May 14, 2020
REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE… VERY SOON AND FROM VERY FAR AWAY: Raytheon Is Developing A Ramjet Artillery Round For The Army’s New Super Howitzers.
ROGER KIMBALL: Andrew Cuomo’s COVID Carnage.
We have a veritable litany of failure, much of it deadly. Cuomo began by downplaying the seriousness of the virus and boasting that New York, being ‘fully coordinated’ and ‘fully mobilized’, was going to handle it much better than many places. That was on March 2. Fast forward two months and New York leads the country in coronavirus deaths, accounting for a third or more of the nationwide total. At some point the governor began to panic, shouting that New York would need 140,000 beds (it needed 18,500 at the peak) and 30,000 ventilators. Soon I expect to see them littering antique stores repurposed as planters.
What made Cuomo’s handling of the situation so bad? Critics point to a host of policies. Waiting until just a couple of weeks ago to pay serious attention to cleaning the subway system was one failure. But the real doozy was forcing nursing homes to take patients infected with the virus. What part of the population is by far the most vulnerable to the virus? The elderly. Who occupies nursing homes? The elderly. Cuomo might as well have sent in a SWAT squad and ordered it to start firing. Not only did he require nursing homes to take infected patients, he made it against the law even to ask if new patients were infected. Thousands died.
Sunday, Cuomo finally admitted, sort of, his mistake, but the damage had been done.
What about the second question? How is it that Cuomo has not only survived but thrived politically? Is he getting help from China? I ask because not only has he praised China’s brutal handling of the disease, he has also taken to referring to it as a ‘European virus‘.
Memo to the governor: Wuhan is not in Europe.
It’s easy to tell who’s on the payroll, or at least on the team.
Plus: “The wretched Atlantic magazine recently described Georgia’s decision to start reopening the state as an experiment in ‘human sacrifice’. That is the current meme of the left. ‘Reopening the country is dangerous!’, they say. But in fact, all the states that have begun to reopen have so far fared better than New York, which really is the epicenter of the disease.”
WELL, THE COMMUNISTS ARE TO BLAME: Most Americans Blame China for Spread of Coronavirus After 83K Dead, Millions Jobless.
Just to be clear, Americans blame the mainland People’s Republic of China and not the well-run Republic of China on Taiwan.
And the second thing that struck me about the governor’s remarks? How sensible they sounded. Seriously. Why was Florida opening its parks? Because, he said, even in a pandemic, open spaces were necessary for peace of mind. And because the evidence showed that the risk of contracting the virus was much lower outdoors than indoors. And because maintaining proper social distancing in parks was not terribly difficult.
Why had Florida decided to keep its restrictions on the three counties encompassing Miami and Palm Beach? Because those were the places with the highest density and the largest number of deaths and hospitalizations. In the rest of the state, the story was much different. He began ticking off the daily number of new cases in Duval County since the beaches opened: 11, 19, 18, 17, 24, 4, 10, 6. One of DeSantis’s mantras has been that Florida should not take a one-size-fits-all approach to coronavirus mitigation. Didn’t these numbers prove his point?
He also made some points that are considered impolitic these days. In the first phase of Florida’s reopening, social distancing will still be enforced; restaurants can’t exceed 50% capacity, for instance. And the elderly will still remain quarantined; indeed, with rare exceptions, Florida doesn’t even allow nursing homes residents to have visitors.
On the other hand, DeSantis said, the virus poses almost no risk for anyone younger than 50 with no underlying conditions. He added that one of the most common underlying factors was obesity. This is a truth many doctors working with Covid-19 patients will quietly acknowledge, but it’s not something they’re saying out loud.
Florida, DeSantis said again and again, was being guided by “facts, data and science.” His many critics disagree, accusing him of playing to Trump in handling the crisis. But if you take even a cursory look at Florida’s numbers, they tend to bear him out. DeSantis is right about how the virus treats the young differently from the old. In Florida, people 65 and older account for 26% of all cases but 83% of the deaths. People younger than 55 account for only 7% of the death toll. . . .
Let me repeat that. In the nation’s third most populous state, fewer than 1,800 people have died of Covid-19. That is .008% of the population. That is extraordinary. The question is why? And what does it suggest about Florida’s effort to reopen its economy?
You might usefully compare his results to say, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania’s, but the press won’t because shut up.
THIS PASSAGE FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS’ DECISION ON THE SALON A LA MODE CASE illustrates where the judicial fight over continuing lockdown orders will take place:
Any government that has made the grave decision to suspend the liberties of a free people during a health emergency should welcome the opportunity to demonstrate—both to its citizens and to the courts—that its chosen measures are absolutely necessary to combat a threat of overwhelming severity. The government should also be expected to demonstrate that less restrictive measures cannot adequately address the threat. Whether it is strict scrutiny or some other rigorous form of review, courts must identify and apply a legal standard by which to judge the constitutional validity of the government’s anti-virus actions. When the present crisis began, perhaps not enough was known about the virus to second-guess the worst-case projections motivating the lockdowns. As more becomes known about the threat and about the less restrictive, more targeted ways to respond to it, continued burdens on constitutional liberties may not survive judicial scrutiny.
Ideally, these debates would play out in the public square, not in courtrooms. No court should relish being asked to question the judgment of government officials who were elected to make difficult decisions in times such as these. However, when constitutional rights are at stake, courts cannot automatically defer to the judgments of other branches of government. When properly called upon, the judicial branch must not shrink from its duty to require the government’s anti-virus orders to comply with the Constitution and the law, no matter the circumstances.
The courts will let the government move fast in a crisis, but not forever.
BAILOUTS FOR NEW YORK, CALIFORNIA, ILLINOIS — AND MAYBE OREGON AND WASHINGTON — SHOULD BE CONDITIONED ON SPLITTING OFF THE RED PARTS INTO NEW STATES. Bob McManus: Andrew Cuomo has better ways to get federal aid than issuing threats. Background on the conditions justifying a split here.
And do Democrats really want to go into November with all the Blue states broke and all the Red states flourishing?
Related: Coronavirus Cases in Georgia, Florida Continue to Decline Despite Business Openings.
OBAMAGATE IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY: “There’s no reason to ignore the mounting evidence that Obama administration officials were corrupt in their handling of the Trump–Russia investigation.”
Unless you’re a Democratic Party operative with a byline, in which case burying this news is your first impulse: ‘Sad and pathetic:’ Kellyanne Conway and others LEVEL WaPo fact checker’s attempt to downplay list of Obama officials who requested Flynn unmasking.
DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: NYC health head rejected NYPD mask plea: ‘I don’t give two rats’ asses about your cops.’
OPEN THREAD: When the demon is at your door, in the morning he won’t be there no more.
A FRAUD, ON THE COURT: Jonathan Turley sees Judge Sullivan’s action as highly questionable:
Remember, the claim that our institutions have been deeply corrupted by a self-serving partisan mob is just crazy conspiracy theory.
LIKE MY GRANDFATHER SAID, SMOG MEANS JOBS AND JOBS MEAN SMOG: Air pollution levels will bounce back as COVID-19 restrictions loosen, scientists say.
ROGER KIMBALL: Cuomo’s COVID Carnage.
[T]he governor’s approval ratings continue to soar. How is this possible? As Stephen L. Miller noted in these pages a few days back, ‘there is something deeply unsettling about the way Cuomo’s handling of the epidemic has been lionized by the national media, and treated as a reality show by his brother’s network; especially when it’s viewed in tandem with attempts to delegitimize governors in other states who have competently faced down similar challenges.’
Miller hints that the media sycophancy, and, hence, the high poll ratings are in anticipation of a last-minute Cuomo run for the presidency. Perhaps that is so. It would be no surprise if the Democrats, nervous about being stuck with an increasingly senile apparatchik who was handsy to boot, suddenly decided to cashier Joe and put their money behind a popular governor with nationwide name recognition. We’ll see as the summer progresses. There is also H.L. Mencken’s observation that ‘nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people’ to contend with. Moreover, even if the governor does not have nipple piercings, influential people thought he might. Celebrity operates by its own devices, independent of such pedestrian considerations as the truth.
Flashback to one of Glenn’s posts from 2011: UCLA Professor: Without Media Bias the Average US State Would Vote Like Texas or Tennessee. The professor is Tim Groseclose, author of Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.
THE MODELS AND THE MODELERS HAVE NOT EXACTLY DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES IN THIS PANDEMIC: Vanderbilt reduces coronavirus hospitalization estimates from thousands to 300.
GLAD TO SEE JOHN WINGER’S POST-ARMY LAW CAREER IS DOING WELL: ‘BOOM SHAKALAKA’ Is Not Response to Bar Complaint, Court Says.
A Massachusetts lawyer whose response to a state bar misconduct investigation was, “SILENCE. (BOOM SHAKALAKA),” was rightfully suspended for failing to cooperate with the probe, the state’s high court said.
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on May 12 also affirmed a finding of contempt against Ilya Liviz for not complying with that suspension order.
Liviz made “no meaningful attempt to challenge on appeal” the contempt order and focused instead on his claims concerning the order’s validity, the court noted on Tuesday.
After he was administratively suspended in April 2019, the Lowell, Massachusetts, lawyer was prohibited from performing legal work. But a judge concluded that he “rendered legal services” during this time, which is why he was found to have been in contempt, the high court said.
“Boom shakalaka” is probably not the best response to a state bar misconduct investigation, but it’s certainly an excellent way to dazzle the brass into letting you guard the vital EM-50 urban assault recreational vehicle project upon your surprise graduation of basic training.
YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT BABS, BUT, NEXT TIME YOU SEE ME COMING, DON’T ASK FOR A BAILOUT: Los Angeles County announces new ‘Safer-at-Home’ order with no end date.
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