Monthly Archives: April 2020
April 30, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The 1619 Project is the New York Times’ attempt to make Americans view their country as evil. Its race-centric view of American history has drawn criticism from both sides of the political spectrum of academia. Much of the criticism has centered around the Project’s claim that the American Revolution was, in significant part, the result of a desire to preserve slavery in America. The short answer to this claim is
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April 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
In California, Governor Newsom has closed all beaches and state parks. There is talk of massive civil disobedience. We will see. Here in Minnesota, the temperature neared 70 degrees today, as our long-delayed Spring is finally kicking into gear. People across the country are getting restive. The shutdowns, many think, have gone on long enough and (in my opinion) have proved to be both unnecessary and horribly destructive. The phrase
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April 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
There’s not much new to report on the fuss on the left over the Michael Moore anti-renewable energy film “Planet of the Humans,” but as a public service I just have to share the agony of The Nation magazine, which today published this delicious headline and primal scream: Meet the New Flack for Oil and Gas: Michael Moore Like many of Moore’s fans, I thought, “Cool, how timely!” Trump is
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April 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
• Krazifornia’s Governor Gavin Newsom has announced that he is closing all the beaches in California this weekend, to which I say, Good luck with that. Here’s to hoping there is massive civil disobedience—a vivid demonstration of what self-government looks like, and the limits of diktats. Newsom seems to be out of step with even the worst governors of other states. Even New York City, the most hard hit area,
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April 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
In what seems a counterintuitive finding, Rasmussen Reports finds an unusually high level of enthusiasm among voters for next year’s presidential election, especially among Republicans: Sixty percent (60%) of Likely U.S. Voters say a choice this November between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden is one they are excited about. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 34% will simply be voting for the
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April 30, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Former Senator Chris Dodd has been named co-chairman of the committee that will help Joe Biden pick a vice presidential nominee. Dodd resigned from the Senate after a string of favor-trading scandals. David Harsanyi reminds us: Most scandalously, Dodd had slipped an amendment into the 2008 “stimulus” bill ensuring that AIG executives would get their bonuses paid by taxpayers. AIG, not incidentally, had donated more to Dodd, who initially lied
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April 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Please join your fellow VIPs for our next VIP Live event, tonight. The event will begin at 7 p.m. Central time (5 Pacific, 8 Eastern). If you are a VIP member, you will get an email with a link to a live address where you can watch the event and submit your own comments and questions. Some have called the present moment the era of coronavirus; others say it is
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April 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The Tara Reade story won’t go away quietly, partly because Joe Biden refuses to deal with it himself. There are several new stories in the mainstream media over the last 48 hours that exhibit great latent anxiety among Democrats over the story. The New York Times ran with a story that is a model of ventriloquist journalism and a memo to their candidate telling him to get his act together:
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April 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Dr. Fauci announced yesterday that Remdesivir, an antiviral drug originally developed to combat ebola, has been found to be effective against the Wuhan virus in a randomized, international 1,000+ patient study. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it isn’t all that effective: In the study, which was a “gold-standard” randomised controlled trial, those taking the Gilead Sciences drug recovered after 11 days, compared with 15 for those
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April 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The sealed documents produced by the government to counsel for General Flynn this past Friday were unsealed last night. They include handwritten FBI notes documenting internal discussion on the day of the interview of Flynn by agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka. The author of the notes (identified elsewhere as assistant counterintelligence division director Bill Priestap) questioned whether the goal of the Flynn interview was “Truth/Admission” (regarding Flynn’s supposed violation
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April 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday’s daily state briefing on COVID-19 (audio recording below) concluded with a shocking revelation. It was set up by Minnesota Department of Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm’s opening comments on the 18 new deaths attributed by the authorities to the virus. As usual, Malcolm stated, over half of the new decedents were residents of “long-term care facilities.” Of the 18 new decedents, Malcolm reported, three were in their 90’s, six were
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April 29, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Byron York asks this very good question. So far, Biden doesn’t really have an answer. Biden has set forth three vague conditions that he says must be met before the country reopens. First, “we have to get the number of new cases of the disease down significantly.” Second, there needs to be “widespread, easily available, and prompt” testing. This means “we should be running multiple times the number of diagnostic
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April 29, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Sky News of Australia has several excellent television programs. One is hosted by my friend Andrew Bolt, whose show I have appeared on a number of times in recent years. In the last couple of months I have been on another show, Outsiders, twice. It has three hosts and is also excellent. I was on Outsiders last Saturday night, which is Sunday in Australia. Coincidentally, a friend emailed me this
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April 29, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Tara Reade’s allegation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her now has more than minimal corroboration, and certainly more corroboration than allegations, such as Christine Blasey Ford’s, that Democrats and feminists concluded were true and disqualifying. This state of affairs is highly embarrassing for Democrats and feminists, and will amount to a major blow for the MeToo movement — a blow that’s well deserved given that movement’s overreach. But will the
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April 29, 2020 — John Hinderaker
From studies in prisons in four states comes a remarkable conclusion: as many as 95% of COVID-19 cases may produce no symptoms: As mass coronavirus testing expands in prisons, large numbers of inmates are showing no symptoms. In four state prison systems — Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — 96% of 3,277 inmates who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic, according to interviews with officials and records reviewed
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April 29, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Please join your fellow VIPs for our next VIP Live event, tomorrow evening. The event will begin at 7 p.m. Central time (5 Pacific, 8 Eastern). If you are a VIP member, you will get an email with a link to a live address where you can watch the event and submit your own comments and questions. Some have called the present moment the era of coronavirus; others say it
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April 29, 2020 — Steven Hayward
I truly did lose track of what day it is. It know it is a day that ends in “-day” but that’s no excuse. The surprise of the day is that the economy “only” fell at a 4.8% rate in the first quarter, which is way less than I was expecting (and in any case the economic hit didn’t start to come until late in the quarter), but the reason
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