PRESS SECRETARY KAYLEIGH MCENANY TURNS BRIEFING ON ITS HEAD, DEMANDS ANSWERS FROM THE PRESS:
“It’s a long weekend,” McEnany concluded. “You guys have three days to follow up on those questions and I certainly hope the next time I ask, some hands go up. Because Obama’s spokesperson should be asked those questions, because President Trump’s spokespeople certainly would be.”
With that, McEnany closed her folder and walked out of the briefing room.
Read the whole thing.
THE GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU AND KEEP YOU SAFE: How States Turned Nursing Homes Into ‘Slaughter Houses’ By Forcing Them to Admit Discharged COVID-19 Patients.
New York isn’t the only state to adopt a policy ordering long-term care facilities to admit COVID-19-infected patients discharged from hospitals. New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California—three states also hit particularly hard by the novel coronavirus—passed similar policies to free up hospital beds to make room for sicker patients.
The practice is coming under increased scrutiny by health experts and family members of deceased patients who say the orders needlessly put the most susceptible populations at risk.
“The whole thing has just been handled awfully … by everybody in regard to nursing homes,” said Kathleen Cole, a nurse who recently lost her 89-year-old mother who lived at Ferncliff Nursing Home in Rhinebeck, New York. “It’s like a slaughterhouse at these places.” . . .
These results are not surprising to some. Health experts and trade associations had warned early on that forcing nursing homes to take on newly discharged COVID-19 patients was a recipe for disaster, noting that such facilities didn’t have the ability to properly quarantine the infected.
Huh. What do these states have in common?
DOUBLE STANDARDS: Democrats Suddenly Worried About “Politicized” Investigations.
Some Senate Democrats are complaining about Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s plan to have the Homeland Security Committee, which he chairs, investigate the ties between Joe Biden’s son Hunter and the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The Hill reports that “Democrats have warned for weeks, both publicly and privately, that GOP senators are using the panel to target President Trump’s political rivals.” Whatever the merits of that accusation, Republicans will say: After the Mueller investigation and the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees’ impeachment investigations, are Democrats really going to warn anyone about using investigations to target political rivals?
Sheesh.
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CHINA TIGHTENS THE SCREWS: A Huge Blow to Hongkongers’ Freedoms: New legislation proposed in Beijing signals the likely end of the “one country, two systems” policy that has allowed Hong Kong to flourish.
Also: The End of Hong Kong.
Related: China’s Path To Self Destruction Starts in Hong Kong. “The real threat from China remains not its rise, but rather its collapse. Freedom is contagious. Xi’s actions against Hong Kong may, in hindsight, appear like treating a chest wound with a band-aid.”
We should be isolating China for this, as well as for its coronavirus misbehavior.
UPDATE: A reader sends this, indicating that the Hong Kong protest movement isn’t going to take this lying down.
DR. FAUCI NAILS DOWN ALL THE ANGLES:
More on the latter item here: Dr. Anthony Fauci says staying closed for too long could cause ‘irreparable damage.’
When does Dr. Fauci announce, Simpsons-style that “My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball. But tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!”
HILLARY WAS AN AMATEUR TAX HIKER COMPARED TO BIDEN: The former Vice President will confiscate an estimated $4 trillion from our pockets. The former First Lady only targeted $1.5 trillion in her 2016 presidential campaign, according to CNBC’s Robert Frank. Frank apparently doesn’t know such comparisons just aren’t done by Mainstream Media reporters.
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ROD DREHER ON HONKY CAT BIDEN’S UGLY TRUTH:
Obviously nobody thinks that this gaffe will cause black voters to flip to Trump. But it did bring out an interesting comment from Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones, stating that blacks can only think one way politically and be authentically black. She later deleted the tweet, but Mollie Hemingway captured it, and made the correct political point:
Hannah-Jones tweeted, “There is a difference between being politically black and being racially black. I am not defending anyone but we all know this and should stop pretending that we don’t,” to which Hemingway replied, “Pulitzer Prize winner appears to support how whites are allowed more freedom of thought than blacks. If you’re white, you’re allowed to be liberal or conservative. If you’re black, you will be marginalized and demeaned unless you think the way the powers that be say you must.”
More from Dreher:
So, Biden’s gaffe was meaningful — not that it’s going to move votes to Trump, but because it revealed an ugly truth about how black liberals police opinion among black folks. If you don’t agree with the left, then you’re not only wrong, you’re a race traitor.
If Donald Trump said in a Sean Hannity interview that if you’re white, and can’t figure out why you should vote for him, that you ain’t really white, he would be crucified in the media — and rightly so! When he said last year that Jews who vote Democratic are being disloyal to the tribe, he was justifiably waylaid. But see, we have this double standard. Pulitzer Prize-winner Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times looks like she is affirming this double standard.
Of course she is. This is who the Democrats are. Stacey Abrams herself said so. The failed black Georgia gubernatorial candidate, said in a speech a year ago that identity politics are “who we are” as Democrats, and that the party should openly embrace them to win.Lately Abrams has been in the news, openly campaigning for the No. 2 slot on Biden’s ticket. Maybe you saw the recent worshipful profile of her in the Washington Post Magazine.
If Biden picks Abrams, there won’t be any pretense any more from the Democrats about identity politics. Biden’s gaffe this morning was more than anything a gaffe in the Michael Kinsley sense: when a politician inadvertently discloses the truth.
At the Dallas Morning News, we have the inevitable Republicans pouncing: “Hours later, he apologized. By then, the Trump campaign had pounced, arguing that this was no ordinary gaffe but an outrageous instance of race-baiting and condescension from the likely nominee of a party that both relies on black voters and at times takes that support for granted.”
They’re jumping at the New York Times! Kevin Williamson of National Review notes that the Times Tries Very Hard Not to Talk about Biden’s Latest Gaffe:” “The bombshell line is mentioned in the lead and then followed by . . . paragraphs of tax-policy details,” followed by “the inevitable ‘Republicans pounce!’ angle (‘conservatives jumping on Mr. Biden, 77, for acting as the arbiter of blackness’) and the ‘But, Trump!’ angle, too.”
Meanwhile, at the L.A. Times, Republicans are seizing, and the L.A. Times plays the “botched joke” defense of Biden: “A top campaign aide said Biden was joking, but Republicans quickly seized on the statement and some black Democrats expressed concern that the remark could turn off a crucial voting bloc for the presumptive Democratic nominee.”
Keep rockin’! Or as Jim Treacher likes to say, “When Republicans screw up, that’s the story. When Democrats screw up, the Republicans’ reaction is the story.”
THE LOCKDOWN HAS DONE UNTOLD DAMAGE TO ENGLAND:
The role of the citizen in the Covid dystopia is to applaud the state, not question it. Every Thursday night, on your doorsteps or your balconies, you must clap for the benevolent state and its gracious health service. Big Brother loves you and you must love it back. Vast propaganda billboards remind us of this duty. From Wembley Stadium to motorway hoardings to the front windows of the most respectable citizens’ houses, the same three words loom, like an omnipresent reminder to the masses of the only opinion you’re allowed to hold in Covid Britain: ‘Thank you NHS.’
The despotic instinct runs riot. We have seen police officers telling people to get out of their own front gardens, to stop walking in the Peak District, to get off park benches and return to their house arrest. Snitching is the only thriving business. By the end of April, British police forces had received 214,000 calls from Covid Britain’s willing army of spies. ‘Always the eyes watching you’, as Winston Smith put it.
New rituals ensure order and obedience. A face mask, like a burqa in Afghanistan, signifies your fealty to the new religion: social distancing. ‘Stay two metres apart’, the relentless propaganda instructs, even though the medical benefits of such distance are far from clear. People do the awkward pavement dance to avoid getting too close to passing strangers, and take their place in long, silent, fractured queues outside supermarkets, keen not to displease any lockdown fanatic who might be watching.
Not only is work strictly regulated in this one-ideology nation – so is play. There will be no hugging of people from outside your household until autumn at the earliest, says Matt Hancock, the secretary of state for human touch. A survey found that some people (possibly as high as one in five) are breaking lockdown to have sexual intercourse. Sex is an illicit activity in Covid Britain, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Hancock is our one-man Junior Anti-Sex League keeping a watchful eye over citizens and their wandering hands. In Orwell’s dystopia, ‘the sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion’. Same here. Just ask Neil Ferguson. He lost his job for having sex (when it should have been for his dodgy models).
According to Wired magazine’s UK Website, England won’t complete its easing procedures until (ironically enough) the Fourth of July:
Alongside the alerts are three steps the government is introducing to ease the lockdown. The first of these steps commences on May 13 – when some restrictions on who can go to work are being eased, as well as the ability to meet one person from another household and the allowance of unlimited exercise.
There are no confirmed dates for steps two and three of easing the lockdown but the government has set out its ideal timings. Step two could being from June 1. This step would allow a phased return for schools, with pupils from reception, year one and year six being allowed back into classrooms. “The government’s ambition is for all primary school children to return to school before the summer for a month if feasible, though this will be kept under review,” the government says.
Also in step two could be the reopening of “non-essential retail”. The government has not outlined the types of businesses that it considered to be non-essential retailers in any detail but it is not thought to include pubs and similar firms.
Step three, which may happen from July 4, would see the reopening of some of the hospitality industry and other public places. When this point is reached, many of the remaining lockdown measures would be eased. This may include the reopening of hairdressers, beauty salons, pubs, hotels, and leisure facilities such as cinemas.
“Still More Evidence That Lockdowns Were A Massive Waste Of Time, Money, And Lives,” Issues & Insights, a spin-off from Investor’s Business Daily, argues: “This isn’t to say that no action was needed to cope with this uncharted virus. That’s not the argument any of these researchers are making. What they are saying is that the lockdowns weren’t based on sound science, and that far less intrusive measures would likely have been just as effective, if not more so, without destroying the economy. To be sure, there are studies claiming that the lockdowns reduced infections and saved lives. But as JP Morgan’s Kolanovic noted, ‘Unlike rigorous testing of potential new drugs, lockdowns were administered with little consideration that they might not only cause economic devastation but potentially more deaths than COVID-19 itself.’ Where’s the ‘party of science’ when you need it?”
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why are US shares performing so well when the economy isn’t?
OMAR EXTENDS LEAD IN RACE FOR ‘MOST CORRUPT CONGRESSMAN:’ Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar blew by a huge field of competitors to take the lead in the race for 2020’s “Most Corrupt Congressman of 2020.” It appears she may have a concealed book advance giving her a supercharged boost just when she needed it.
FLASHBACK: AT ACE OF SPADES, some thoughts on why so many talking heads are anti-Pam Geller even when she’s being targeted by jihadists.
This is about class. This is all about class.
This is about, specifically, the careerist, cowardly, go-along-to-get-along mores of the Upper Middle Class, the class of people whose parents were all college educated, and of course are college educated themselves; the class that dominates our thought-transmitting institutions (because non-college educated people are more of less shut out of this industry).
It is a class which is deathly afraid of social stigma, and lives in class-based fear being grouped with the wrong people, and which is more interested in Career, quite frankly, than in the actual tradecraft of that Career, which is clarity of thought and clarity of expression.
Thus, our institutions of thought propagation are dominated by the very people who can be easily cowed by the Social Justice Warriors, and who will, therefore, adjust their speech in order to not run afoul of the thoughtless — and frequently lunatic — thugs of the censorious left.
The very people we need to be most immune to the menaces of stigma, and the blandishments of career advancement, are, due to the absolute primacy of the Upper Middle Class imperative of advancing one’s career and avoiding scandal, stigma, and controversy, the very people most sensitive to such distortions.
Yes, that’s exactly right. And, of course, it’s only gotten worse since Trump beat Hillary.
FROM FRANK J. FLEMING: Superego: Fathom.
There are two ways to be a hero.
One is more violent than the other. And the universe needs a hero, because a mysterious entity known as the Fathom is terrorizing the known universe and seizing control. But they’ve made one mistake: They woke Rico, the universe’s greatest killer, from a coma. And he’s decided he might be the good guy this time.
But being a hero isn’t easy. Rico has to work with others (not his favorite), and the impossible odds means it’s going to take an insane scheme or two (more to his liking). Still, Rico won’t let anything get in his way on his mission to destroy the Fathom… even though there are like a ton of things in his way — militaries, trained killers, a planet-devastating weapon or two.
Once again, it looks like Rico is going to destroy a lot of things and kill a lot of people.
But hopefully this time in a good way.
UN-POSSIBLE! California doctors say they’ve seen more deaths from suicide than coronavirus since lockdowns.
Ark, for I was the voice crying in the desert. And while I know Cassandra didn’t get half the beating she deserved, in this case I didn’t need the power of prophecy. Just thought, open eyes, and common sense.
SKIN COLOR IS NOT CULTURE. RACE IS NOT CULTURE. THOSE COLORS MIGHT BE MULTI-RACIAL. THEY ARE NOT MULTI-CULTURAL. ALL OF THOSE COLORS ARE IN THE US, AND PRESENT ACROSS CULTURES: Crayola launches multicultural ‘Colors of the World’ crayons.
I don’t want to say Hitler also confused race and culture, but guess what? Hitler also confused race and color.
WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN SMOKING? Scientists believe cannabis could help prevent, treat coronavirus.
After all that’s happened, apparently the right we retain is the right to cry “victim!” as hard as we can.
WELL, YES, I IMAGINE. THOUGH MY FANS SEEM TO PREFER THE PLAGUE DOCTOR MASK: Bane masks selling out amid the coronavirus pandemic.
And if the “authorities” don’t get they’re being mocked, it’s even more fun.
GREAT NEWS ABOUT MASKS. IF YOU’RE READING THIS, AND YOU’RE A HAMSTER, YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY WEAR ONE: Hamsters help to show just how effective masks can be in stopping coronavirus transmission.
FYI, no hamster ever covered his sneezes. I also imagine they’re all much more familiar with each other’s poo than sane humans.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY TEACH IN PUBLIC SCHOOL. I KNOW IT’S NOT ANYTHING WORTH KNOWING: Most Americans have no clue why we celebrate Memorial Day.
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