Archive for 2020

A WINDSHIELD MADE OF AIR.

CUOMOVIRUS UPDATE: Where New Yorkers Moved to Escape Coronavirus.

Read the whole thing. This New York Times map could be misinterpreted merely as travel, but as the article notes, it’s based on the “56,000 mail-forwarding requests from New York City” received by the United States Post Office in March, “more than double the monthly average. In April, the number of requests went up to 81,000, twice the number from a year earlier. Sixty percent of those new requests were for destinations outside the city.”

Also at the Gray Lady: Coronavirus Is Hitting Nursing Homes Hard. How We Treat the Elderly Made It Inevitable. The passive use of “inevitable” in the article’s metatitle to deflect the blame away from Andrew Cuomo is quite a tell.

Rep. Elise Stefanik calls for fed probe of Cuomo’s nursing home policy.

Andrew Cuomo Reveals The Danger Of Praising ‘Tone’ And ‘Norms.’

New York City beaches will NOT open on Memorial Day and Bill de Blasio threatens to close them off with fences as he also hits out at partygoers congregating outside bars on the streets of Manhattan.

NYPD will stop people from partying outside NYC bars: de Blasio.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Unmasking? The Real Story Is When Flynn Was Not Masked in the First Place:

Don’t get me wrong. This week’s revelations about unmasking are important and intriguing. They should be thoroughly examined. In fact, they are only a snapshot of the unmasking issue — involving just one U.S. person (Flynn) over a period of less than three months. It is highly irregular for government officials on the political side of the national-security realm to seek the unmasking of Americans. It is eye-opening to learn that Vice President Biden and President Obama’s chief-of-staff (McDonough) unmasked the incoming Trump administration’s national security advisor. It is downright scandalous that Samantha Power, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had little reason to seek unmasking, reportedly requested 260 unmaskings . . .  and then told Congress that she did not make the vast majority of requests attributed to her — though it remains unclear, years later, who did make them.

But let’s not miss the forest for the trees. This is not just about unmasking. It is about how pervasively the Obama administration was monitoring the Trump campaign.

Read the whole thing.

Related: Sally Yates Hid from Congress that Obama Told Her about Flynn-Kislyak Calls But Confirmed It to Mueller.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: In “Their Happiness Hurt My Feelings,” David Thompson asks, “Attention woke citizens. During the current lockdown, do you feel a need to ‘challenge microaggressions’ – those ‘verbal, behavioural or environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative racial slights’? Specifically, those committed during video conferencing?”

Read the whole thing.

HE’S RIGHT. THE CDC HAS BEEN A PANTLOAD OF FAIL ALL ALONG: White House aide says CDC ‘let the country down.’

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “really did set us back” in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak by keeping testing within the bureaucracy and providing a faulty test, White House adviser Peter Navarro said Sunday.

“The CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space, really let the country down,” Navarro, the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator, told NBC’s Meet the Press.

Among other errors.

STARLESS AND BIBLE BLACK: During the 1970s and 80s, King Crimson’s Robert Fripp was one of progressive rock’s most innovative guitarists, despite being perhaps the only electric guitar player who played live sets exclusively while perched on a stool. But no more! Here he is with his wife, singer Toyah Willcox, and he’s off the stool and showing off his dance moves! Toyah & Fripp: Swan Lake Sunday Lockdown Lunch.

The black shirt and black tie coordinating with the tutu really demonstrates total fashion commitment, another Fripp trademark.

NEWS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS: Knox County Health Department reports 46 active COVID-19 cases, no patients currently hospitalized. “The Knox County Health Department reported two new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, to bring the county’s total to 308. Knox County reported 46 active cases on Sunday, down from 55 active cases on Saturday. The total number of recovered cases moved to 257. . . . There are no Knox County patients currently hospitalized due to COVID-19. Of the 308 cases, 37 of them have resulted in hospitalization at any point during the illness and five deaths.”

In other news, the Insta-Wife and I went out to brunch today, for our first meal out in two months. The place wasn’t crowded; all the outdoor seating spaces were full, and maybe half of the indoor ones. But I predict that will change as word spreads that it’s open and as people get used to going out again. We also went walking around downtown Knoxville yesterday, and while it wasn’t as busy as a usual pretty Saturday, it was a far cry from the ghost town of three weeks ago: People were walking around and shopping, restaurants were open, etc. Steps toward normality.

STACY MCCAIN: “Partisan affiliation correlates with lifestyle differences, which is why Democrat-dominated areas of Florida have high COVID-19 infection rates, and why Republican-leaning Naples can’t re-open its beaches without being overrun by people trying to escape from Miami.”

Plus: “We were told by Democrats like Uhlfelder that DeSantis’s decision would certainly result in thousands of COVID-19 deaths, but guess what? It hasn’t happened. Three weeks ago, during the week of April 18-24, Florida reported an average of 825.7 new cornavirus daily, and 45.7 deaths daily. For the week of May 9-15, the average daily number of new cases was 644.7 — a 22% reduction — and the average daily number of COVID-19 deaths was 31.7, a reduction of 31%. Florida’s per-capita death rate from the virus is still 94% lower than New York’s.”

BIDEN WOWS MSM!

It is far too early for Democrats to panic over Biden.

—Karen Tumulty, Washington Post, Friday.

Biden’s Virtual Campaign Is a Disaster.

—Andrew Ferguson, the Atlantic, Friday.

Biden campaign doesn’t consider Latinos ‘part of their path to victory,’ political operatives say.

—Kathryn Krawczyk, the Week, Thursday.

Unlike Roger Simon, I think it’s way too soon, given the craziness that is 2020, to go with “Why Joe Biden and the Democrats Are Going to Lose Big” headlines. Or to even assume Biden will be on the ticket come November. (Bob Torricelli, tanned rested and ready!) But the above headlines are a far cry from the hagiographic prose that Obama and Hillary were receiving about this time in the election cycle.