BOOM: Kayleigh McEnany Dropkicks Chris Wallace Over Suggestion That Journalists Shouldn’t Be Questioned.
Related: CNN Analyst to McEnany: How Many Deaths Are Okay for WH by November? “I answered your question once. But if you ask it twice, it doesn’t make it any better of a question, so I’ll respond in kind.”
THE PANDEMIC SEEMS TO BE HITTING TRUMP’S ENEMIES — HOLLYWOOD, COSMOPOLITAN BLUE STATES AND CITIES, MULTINATIONALS, HIGHER EDUCATION — HARDEST: The Price of a Virus Lockdown: Economic ‘Free Fall’ in California. California’s strengths — as a hub for commerce, tourism and education in the Pacific Rim — have become liabilities in the pandemic. “California has a hugely diversified economy, and many of the industries that have made it so strong are also the ones getting hit the hardest. By many measures California, which has the nation’s largest tourism industry, public university system, entertainment industry and port system and produces far more food than any other state, stands to lose more in the coronavirus-induced recession than anywhere else.”
If a single event hits so many of your industries at once, maybe you’re not as diversified as you think. Or maybe you’re measuring diversity along the wrong axis.
Plus: “With the state mandated by law to balance its budget, experts and officials are urging the federal government to step in and shore up the state’s finances with an immense bailout, a matter subject to partisan bickering across the nation, including in Washington, where many Republican lawmakers are opposed to it.”
Nope. Gavin Newsom has been talking about California as an independent “nation state.” Let him live the downside for a while.
KARENS GENERALLY ARE; IT GOES WITH THE GENERAL SENSE OF RECTITUDE AND ENTITLEMENT. It looks like Amy Cooper, the white woman in the viral Central Park video, is a liberal. That’s important. “In response to the video, many on social media began to speculate and insist that Amy Cooper was a Trump supporter and a member of the ‘MAGA’ movement.”
Nope. White liberals are the most racist people around. And the most entitled and officious.
OPEN THREAD: The old regime is falling.
NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS: Starving, angry and cannibalistic: America’s rats are getting desperate amid coronavirus pandemic.
HMM: According to Reddit, Cultural Revolution style banners popped up in Hong Kong.
Xi may not want to let that particular genie out of the bottle. Mao controlled it, but only barely. And Xi isn’t Mao, however much he wants to be.
KURT SCHLICHTER FLASHBACK: Oh Good, We’re Doing The Civility Thing Again.
See, here’s the problem. Appeals to things like “civility” or “decency” require that those things be values so strongly and widely held that people will abide by them even when it costs them something important in the way of short-term political advantage. As we’ve seen, there’s literally nothing that Democrats won’t sacrifice in order to obtain short-term political advantage. Thus . . . .
ANALYSIS: TRUE.
I HOPE THE WEATHER HOLDS: SpaceX, NASA Go For Wednesday Dragon Astronaut Launch.
NIALL FERGUSON: Dim lights, big city.
My mother and I rarely disagree. Last Christmas, however, we got into an argument about where she should live.
Me: Living in this little Oxfordshire village is not giving you enough stimulation. You should move to London. Think of how much easier it would be to go to the theater and to art galleries.
Her: No, no. I am very happy here. In London, I would need to have a smaller place, whereas here I have my garden.
Me: But soon the garden will be too much work for you. Some of my elderly friends in the United States opted to retire to New York precisely because they didn’t need so much space. And it’s in the nature of a big city that you get to see more people.
Her: I don’t want to see more people.
She won the argument, needless to say — and thank God she did. I wake up at night in a cold sweat, imagining where we would be now if (for the first time in her life) she had given in to me and moved to London shortly after that conversation. For nothing could have illustrated with more shocking clarity the perils of big city life — especially for someone in her 80s — than the coronavirus pandemic.
As Michael Lind writes in “Back to the Future:”
In the last generation, cities like New York, San Francisco and London were revitalized by the influx of the rich and glamorous and the price-driven expulsion of their working-class and poor residents. But the romance of early 21st-century megalopolitan life is gone for all but the hardiest bohemians. Yesterday’s buzzing hipster neighborhood is today’s simmering Petri dish.
If you are rich and you assume that future pandemics or variants of COVID-19 could sweep the world at any time, that house in the Hamptons may look better as a permanent residence than the overpriced sliver apartment in ultra-dense New York City, which to date has accounted for about a third of all US coronavirus deaths. You don’t share an air-conditioning system and elevator with neighbors, and there is room in the garage for an extra freezer stocked with emergency supplies and a small arsenal for dealing with plague-mutated zombies.
At least in New York, there will always be some members of the urban wealthy elite who will refuse to move no matter what. The coronavirus could accelerate the hollowing-out trend that has been happening for decades in blue cities and states: a wealthy elite, a poor underclass, and a middle class that flees. Better get going on those Welcome Wagon kits, conservative and libertarian billionaires.
DON’T GET COCKY: Biden Reelected Trump Last Friday — The former VP’s patronizing remark was no jest and it was fatal to his campaign.
Biden is opening up multiple fronts in the culture wars: Joe Biden’s campaign has set feminism back decades.
INSTANT CLASSIC FROM @MSNBC:
ANCHOR: “Are the people there just not worried about it? Are they not worried about their personal safety?”
REPORTER: “I haven’t met anybody who is… you can see here, nobody’s wearing them [masks].”
GUY ON STREET: “Including the Cameraman.”
Videos at link of both Perry’s segment, and the footage from the man who walked by with a cell phone camera showing that two of Perry’s three crewmen weren’t wearing masks.
AFTER RUNNING DEATH-PORN ANTICIPATING THE DEPOPULATION OF DEPLORABLES WHO LACK ANDREW CUOMO’S LEADERSHIP, THE NYT ADMITS THE TRUTH: The Coronavirus Is Deadliest Where Democrats Live: Beyond perception and ideology, there are starkly different realities for red and blue America right now.
AT AMAZON, save in Blu-Ray and DVD.
Plus, deals in Car Care.
AS TIME TICKS AWAY ON THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: The publication of my most recent law review article has been (understandably) delayed on account of the lock down. You can still read the draft– with the long title Title VII Disparate Impact Liability Makes Almost Everything Presumptively Illegal … It Gives the Federal Bureaucracy Extraordinary Discretionary Power, But What Does It Do to the Rule of Law? And Who Benefits? But I am getting pessimistic about whether it will catch the eye of anyone with a prayer of affecting this area of the law (in either large or small ways) … unless Trump gets re-elected.
UPGRADING the Glock G48 Pistol.
(Typo corrected. — Charlie)
YOU KNOW WHO OWNS YOU BY WHAT YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO SAY: YouTube Censorship and That Which May Not Be Said About Chinese Propaganda.
Just for future reference, the magic words are 五毛党 or just 五毛. They mean “paid commenter”.
UPDATE: (Charlie) YouTube got back to me. A spokesperson said: “This appears to be an error in our enforcement systems and we are investigating. Users can report suspected issues to troubleshoot errors and help us make product improvements.”
BOLD CLAIM, OR LOW BAR? The Lincoln Aviator Is the Best American Luxury Car in a Generation.
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