Sunday, March 29, 2020

New Yorkers flee Gotham

Fox News: "Cuomo threatens lawsuit over Rhode Island crackdown on virus-fleeing New Yorkers."

I have family in the Hudson Valley of New York and they say the area is being overrun by people from New York City, getting out of town and staying at vacation homes or B&Bs.

Extra - Hot Air: "The Hamptons Is Seeking A Travel Ban… From NYC."

Saturday, March 28, 2020

All is proceeding as foreseen

David Harsanyi: "Will Biden live up to his own principles?"  With regard to Tara Reade, that is.
Surely, as with Kavanaugh, the existence of the accusation is disqualifying?

Apparently not, for ideals of justice seem to be quite malleable these days. Journalistic norms, too. The same media that relayed every unsubstantiated and tawdry rumor during the Kavanaugh confirmation, and that happily transmitted the Michael Avenatti–produced gang-rape smear, is treating Reade’s story quite differently. Why, we might ask, isn’t Reade receiving the same coverage as E. Jean Carroll, a woman who accused Donald Trump of assaulting her in 1995 or 1996 at a Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan? Virtually every major news organization let Carroll tell her story. Reade has been trying to tell hers for decades. Believe women?
This was all predicted during the Kavanaugh smear: that a Democrat would be accused and the mainstream media would shrug it off.  We are not surprised.

For the record, I don't believe this allegation at all.  But I don't get to make that decision.  It was Biden and the Democrats who decided that the mere presence of an allegation in this #MeToo world was enough.  As Harsanyi notes in detail: these are the rules the Democrats set.

Friday, March 27, 2020

Here comes the relief

Legal Insurrection: "House Passes $2 Trillion Wuhan Coronavirus Bill, Heads to Trump’s Desk."

One interesting detail from this story: members of the House were sitting in the gallery so that there would be proper distance between everyone.

Thursday, March 26, 2020

This is a mistake

Twitchy: "Tough guy Joe Biden’s latest shot at Donald Trump isn’t the slam-dunk he thinks it is."  Long story short, Biden is blaming the spike in unemployment claims on Trump.

This is never going to fly because there's no way that Biden can explain what he might have done differently to limit job losses.  Let's see if the deeply unpopular American media will ask him or keep on pretending he's a viable candidate with all his marbles.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

It's the New York Times, of course

What happened to this paper?  When I was younger, I read the Times pretty regularly.  It's a sham now.  Power Line: "Our garbage media in one story."

Monday, March 16, 2020

Damn...Dow minus 3 large

Fox Business: "Dow drops 2,997 points on word coronavirus crisis could extend until August."

Until today, I thought the coronovirus threat was overblown but apparently everybody else disagrees.  In the morning, I got an email from Planet Fitness saying they're closing down and in the afternoon my company - the place where I make a living - said they were reviewing options.  Suddenly the old saw that when your neighbor is unemployed, it's a recession but when you're unemployed, it's a depression.

Now I'm scared.  This feels like a black swan event.

Saturday, March 14, 2020

Hoisted by our own petard

Is the response to coronavirus causing much more damage to health and wealth than the virus itself?  Heather MacDonald: "Compared to what? - Our misguided response to Covid-19"
The number of cases in most afflicted countries is paltry. As of today, 127 countries had reported some cases, but forty-eight of those countries had fewer than ten cases, according to Worldometer. At this point, more people have recovered from the virus than are still sick. But the damage to people’s livelihoods through the resulting economic contraction is real and widespread. Its health consequences will be more severe than those of the coronavirus, as Steve Malanga shows in City Journal. The people who can least afford to lose jobs will be the hardest hit by the assault on tourism. Small entrepreneurs, whether in manufacturing or the service sector, will struggle to stay afloat. Such unjustified, unpredicted economic havoc undermines government legitimacy.
Instapundit posts an email about how restaurants are barren, hurting the livelihoods of the wait staff, busboys, hosts, and cooks.  Panic has already erased trillions in the stock market for fewer deaths than a week in Chicago.

Sundown Joe in a crisis

Politifact: "“During the 2009 swine flu outbreak, Biden made reckless comments unsupported by science & the experts. The Obama Admin had to clean up his mess & apologize for his ineptitude.”

Verdict: Mostly true.

This part made me laugh:
The Obama administration did not issue a formal apology about his comments.
Being a Democrat means never having to say you're sorry.

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Now I've seen it all

Sarah Palin was unmasked on "The Masked Singer" tonight after singing "Baby Got Back".

Wut.

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Here comes the gaslighting

Ace: "Media Rushes In to Defend Old Sick Demented Man."

It was only a couple of days ago that Joe Lockhart was aghast at suggestions of Joe Biden's obvious cognitive decline. Then, today, we were treated to this:

Saturday, March 07, 2020

The class warfare two-step

Charles C.W. Cooke: "The ‘Million Dollars Per Person’ Affair Is Telling."
This, right here, is why so many left-leaning Americans think that “the billionaires” can pay for everything. It’s why Elizabeth Warren was enthusiastically boosted by the media despite her ridiculous pretense that she could pay for a series of gargantuan initiatives without raising taxes on anyone but the extremely rich. It’s why Democrat after Democrat promises not to raise “middle class taxes” while promising programs that require the raising of middle class taxes. How did this bad tweet make it onto TV to be endorsed? Why did Mara Gay agree with it? Why didn’t Brian Williams notice? Because the people involved in this clip thought it was true. This is how they see the world.
That's correct: everybody on the Left views the rich as swimming in rooms of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.  Then they convince themselves those billionaires "don't really need/deserve that money" and all bets are off, opening up spectacularly stupid and unconstitutional ideas like the wealth tax.

I forget who said it - P.J. O'Rourke maybe - but some wag once noted that when you boil it down the motto of the Democratic Party is "gimme a dollar."

Thursday, March 05, 2020

Nevertheless, she desisted

I've been waiting months to make that joke.  But remember: it's not that Elizabeth Warren was a singularly bad candidate.  It's that Democrats are sexist and insecure:
That's right, Democrats. If you didn't support Elizabeth Warren for whatever reason -- her ridiculous policies, her established pattern of brazen lying about her own history, her off-putting personal affect, the awful grating sound of her voice as she hectors you for trying to live your life -- it's because you're insecure.

Please note that none of this applies to any woman who has ever run for political office as a Republican. It's not insecure to vote against those women for any reason. After all, they're Nazis!
Warren was, to borrow a phrase, a congenital liar.  She lied about her heritage, her son's private school, getting fired for being pregnant and almost certainly for Bernie's alleged comment about saying that women couldn't win.  Her public policies bent towards tyranny whether it was the wealth tax, throwing Americans off their health care, or eliminating the filibuster (somehow).  It's not misogyny to state that an unlikable candidate with terrible policy proposals should lose.

Wednesday, March 04, 2020

Tuesday, March 03, 2020

The end of Warren

Well, I can't stay up for the fireworks and what looks like a good night for Sundown Joe.  But we can all laugh at Liz Warren who is heading towards a third place finish in Massachusetts.

What a horribly inept campaign.  In October she was sky-high and then she threw it all away with boundless pandering and fuzzy math.

Choose your destroyer

Reason Online: "On Super Tuesday, Dems Pick Between a Biden Restoration and a Sanders Revolution. Both Are a Disaster for Liberty." 

Sunday, March 01, 2020

Pete is out

This is surprising considering he was just on "Meet the Press" this morning saying he was hopeful for Super Tuesday.  I know the guy has money (a lot more than Biden) so I wonder why the sudden departure.  Maybe it's one of those plays for a future cabinet position.

The fightingest fighter who ever fought is gonna fight and fight

Warren is going to stay in the fight to the bitter end.  Fox News: "Warren declares contested Democratic National Convention the 'final play'."
In a head-turning memo Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren's campaign declared that "the reality of this race" is that "no candidate will likely have a path to the majority of delegates" at the July Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis. -- setting out in stark terms the possibility of a bruising convention that party leaders have long feared, and outlining Warren's strategy for winning the presidential nomination there in a dramatic "final play."
Also from the anti-Warren Legal Insurrection: "Warren Goes #StopBernie – Lashes Out After SC, Vows Convention Fight."  So now she's going after Bernie after burning up all her ammunition on Bloomberg in the last two debates.

The fact that Warren is now planning to stretch out her zombie campaign all the way to the convention doesn't surprise me at all.  Her whole schtick - first in Massachusetts and now nationally - is that she's a fighter who fights.  She couldn't possibly stop fighting until the fight is fought.