The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Blue-State Media Continue Wishcasting Coronavirus Epidemic in Red States

Posted on | May 2, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

Since mid-March, at least, we have seen endless reiterations of this narrative: “Oh, sure, the virus is devastating Democratic-controlled urban areas now,” the media keep saying, “but just you wait — eventually those Trump voters out in the sticks will pay the price!”

Two assumptions are baked into this narrative:

  1. Trump is to blame for the COVID-19 catastrophe. Despite the fact that the U.S. coronavirus per-capita death rate is far below the rate in many European countries — Belgium, Spain, France, etc. — liberals want Americans to believe that it’s actually worse here, and that this is Trump’s fault.
  2. Contagious diseases are a sort of political karma. If you vote Republican, you deserve to die, according to the media elite.

Of course, these assumptions are never expressed overtly, but what else can explain this gleeful desire to see rural America devastated?

Rural Counties Seeing Faster Growth in COVID-19 Cases, Deaths
The coronavirus was slower to make an impact in much of rural America, but cases and deaths have risen significantly in recent weeks, a new analysis shows.
The toll of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has shocked urban areas like New Orleans and New York City. But concerns abound that the virus could devastate rural communities, where populations tend to skew older and sicker and where there are fewer intensive care beds. Since 2010, more than 120 rural hospitals have shuttered altogether.
The new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that while rural communities have fewer COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people than urban areas, rates of both coronavirus cases and deaths have surged at a faster pace in more rural counties in the last two weeks. The average number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people rose 125% in non-metro counties — or those that are largely rural, according to the analysis — and by 68% in metro counties between April 13 and 27, according to the analysis. Deaths rose 169% in more rural areas and 113% in the more urban counties, reaching respective rates of 4.4 and 17 per 100,000.

There is some statistical voodoo involved in this claim, which I’ll address in a minute, but notice how the headline and lead portray this study: “Finally, the Red State COVID-19 Apocalypse has arrived!”

One can imagine the MSNBC producers grinning at this news that — at last! — those Fox News-watching rubes in the hinterlands are finally getting the karmic retribution they deserve. Except . . .

No, it’s not really happening. This is statistical voodoo, based upon a simple fact: When you are starting from near zero, a fast rate of increase is not difficult to achieve, but this does not mean that the tortoise, who has just taken his first step, will soon overtake the hare. What is embedded in this “watch out, rural America” theme is a message in support of more or less permanent quarantine lockdown orders.

It has not escaped the notice of our media class that the pressure to end these orders — to “re-open America” — has been strongest in areas where infection rates and death rates of COVID-19 have been low. Therefore, they must scavenge around for some kind of “evidence” to suggest that ending the lockdowns will produce catastrophic rural outbreaks.

Let’s disambiguate the data. Obviously it is true that a rural community that has had very few COVID-19 cases thus far could suffer a disastrous outbreak, as has happened in Dougherty County, Georgia, and a few other cases. By and large, however, the disease has mainly affected urban areas where higher population density enables the disease to spread faster. However many new cases emerge as a result of ending the lockdown in Tennessee or Texas, it is impossible that these states will ever eclipse New York as the “epicenter” of the pandemic, in terms of per-capita death rates, simply because (a) the conditions enabling transmission of the virus are not equal and (b) New York has such an enormous head start in the cumulative death toll. Here are the highest per-capita death rates, expressed as deaths per million population:

New York ………………….. 1,227
New Jersey …………………. 849
Connecticut ………………… 653
Massachusetts ……………. 544
Louisiana ………………….. 422
Michigan …………………… 388
District of Columbia …… 337

And here are the rates for other selected states:

Georgia ……………………. 113
Ohio …………………………. 86
Florida ……………………… 64
North Carolina …………… 41
Tennessee ………………….. 31
Texas ………………………… 30

You see that, for example, the death rate in Georgia is about 79% lower than in Massachusetts, and Tennessee’s rate is 95% lower than Connecticut’s. What would it take for the low-rate states to “catch up” with the high-rate states? Whatever hypothetical scenario of a catastrophic rural epidemic you imagine, is it really likely, at this point in the pandemic, that such an outbreak will happen? The fact is, our awareness of how the virus spreads, and who is most vulnerable, has increased a lot since mid-March and, even if all the lockdown orders were rescinded tomorrow, this awareness would have a protective effect, in terms of people taking precautions. Yet the media will not let go of their prejudices, believing that somehow this virus will act as an instrument of “social justice” revenge against those stupid Trump voters in rural areas.

It hasn’t happened yet, nor is it likely that it will happen in the future, but because this belief is rooted in a basic prejudice of the media class, they will continue writing stories reflecting this fantasy narrative.




 

Category: Media Bias

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Did This Feminist Just Endorse Holocaust Denial?

Posted on | May 2, 2020 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous: Did This Feminist Just Endorse Holocaust Denial?

 

Let me start by saying that I am not sure Lux Alptraum is actually a woman, considering her interest in transgenderism and homosexuality, but that’s scarcely relevant to her decision to reinterpret the Holocaust from a perspective that views Jews as possessors of “white privilege.”

On the other hand, perhaps it is relevant whether Lux Alptraum is transgender, in terms of how Third Wave gender theory relies on the postmodernist ideology of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, et al, insisting that there is no such thing as a natural structure of human society. The postmodernist can argue that up is down, black is white, male is female — anything can be made its opposite, if you believe that no binary is valid.

So the problem of anti-Semitism in black culture ceases to be problematic when, by the prestidigitation of Third Wave “intersectional” theory, Lux
Alptraum invokes “institutional power” as an excuse. Thus black violence against Jews — which has become widespread in New York City — isn’t really dangerous because the “proximity to whiteness” means that Jews deserve to get bashed in the head, or something. Lux Alptraum never provides a coherent syllogism, instead walking away with the declaration that “terrible takes” on Twitter make further discussion impossible.

Notice that Lux Alptraum falls back on identity politics, saying that as a descendant of Holocaust survivors, her argument could not possibly be viewed as excusing anti-Semitism or being disrespectful of Holocaust victims. In other words, she’s invoking her Jewishness as a privilege, saying that because she is a Jew, she should be exempt from criticism for making arguments that are offensive (and possibly dangerous) to Jews.

This is a GPS-coordinated trip to insanity. By making membership in an identity group the determining factor in the validity of arguments, the “social justice warriors” undermine basic moral truth, so that whether an action is right or wrong depends on who is doing it. This is an adaptation of Lenin’s notorious formula for terror: “Who, whom?”

No one can advocate this totalitarian worldview without risking the consequence that their enemies will turn it against them, but young fools like Lux Alptraum are ignorant of this lesson of history.

UPDATE: In case you’re wondering how “Anne Frank Is a Becky” got started, a black nationalist who goes by the name of Gazi Kodzo began it with a rant that got him suspended from Twitter.

 

What does it say about Lux Alptraum that she was trying to engage seriously with such hateful craziness? Birds of a feather . . .

Oh, and if want more of this? Vote Democrat!




 

Category: Racism

Stick a Fork in Joe Biden

Posted on | May 1, 2020 | 1 Comment

He is done:

New Biden Accuser: He Complimented
My Breasts When I Was 14 Years Old

Can she prove this? She says there were witnesses:

“When it was Biden and my aunt’s turn to say hello he quickly turned to me and asked how old I was. I replied with my age and he replied with the comment ‘Fourteen? You’re very well endowed for 14!’ I was confused but it was definitely weird, he looked me up and down and hovered his eyes on my chest so I had some clue [about] the notion of his comment but didn’t fully understand at the time. We quickly separated from his area after the encounter.”

Could it be argued that this is defensible? Were her breasts so unusually large that Biden’s expression of astonishment was justified? I mean, in the interests of bipartisanship and, uh . . . due process rights, should we give the old guy a break if she was sporting 38DDs in ninth grade?

Never mind. I suspect my Republican readers are not in a mood to be tolerant of Biden’s idiosyncrasies, but the question is whether Democrats believe it’s OK for a U.S. Senator to remark on the size of a 14-year-old’s breasts, no matter how astonishingly large they might be.

My hunch is that this is just one more shoe dropping, in what will quickly become an avalanche of accusations against Biden. It’s kind of like what happened with Roy Moore. The guy had been in public life in Alabama for decades, and I’d followed Moore’s career since the 1990s, and never heard a word of any inappropriate behavior by him. Then all at once, Moore was accused by a half-dozen women of having harassed them when they were teenagers in the 1970s and ’80s. This avalanche effect has toppled many prominent men in the #MeToo era; once the first accusation of misconduct is made, the accusers seem to come out of the woodwork. One day you’re a senator or a movie star or a network news anchor, and next thing you know Gloria Allred’s holding a press conference with weeping “survivors” and your career’s over.

Once someone becomes a target of this machinery of destruction, the result is never really in doubt. If indeed Biden made the remark attributed to him, isn’t it likely he’s made similar remarks to other large-breasted girls? Of course it is, and now that the starting whistle of the #MeToo Accusation Derby has blown, every other woman who was ever an object of Biden’s interest will soon come forward to tell her tale.

Cui bono? Of course, we know the answer to that question.




 

Category: Joe Biden

Biden Accuses Tara Reade of Lying

Posted on | May 1, 2020 | Comments Off on Biden Accuses Tara Reade of Lying

 

Joe Biden expects us to accept that the #BelieveAllWomen standard that applied to Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers does not apply to Democrats:

Former Vice President Joe Biden explicitly denied the sexual assault accusation against him during an appearance on MSNBC Friday morning. Speaking publicly about the matter for the first time, Biden maintained that he never sexually assaulted Tara Reade and doesn’t remember her at all.
“This never happened,” said Biden. “It’s as simple as that.”
Biden was expertly grilled by Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, who questioned him about the whereabouts of his Senate records, which may contain additional information regarding Reade. But the most important exchange occurred when Brzezinski asked Biden to square his current defense with his previous claims that women should be believed when they come forward as sexual assault victims.
Biden then denied that he had previously advocated such a standard.
“From the very beginning, I’ve said believing the woman means taking the claim seriously, and then it’s vetted, looked into,” said Biden. “Women have a right to be heard, and the press should rigorously investigate claims they make. I’ll always uphold that principle. But in the end the truth is what matters. And these claims are false.”
The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate is misrepresenting his past statements. He absolutely did not take the position that “believing women means taking the claim seriously.” (And if that‘s what believe-all-victims means, why not just say that instead?)
Brzezinski wasn’t having it. She repeatedly reminded Biden that he had advocated believing Christine Blasey Ford, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser. She even read his own words back to him: “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time.” Brzezinski also called out several of Biden’s high profile supports — Stacey Abrams, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.), and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) — for participating in the Kavanaugh double standard.
Caught in an obvious contradiction, Biden then tried to say that victims should be believed until contrary evidence emerges.
“Women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt,” said Biden. “If they come forward and say something happened to them, they should start with the presumption they are telling the truth. Then you have to look at the facts.
“What I said during the Kavanaugh hearings was she had a right to be heard,” Biden continued. “And she came forward, the presumption would be she’s telling the truth unless it’s proved she wasn’t telling the truth, or unless it’s clear from the facts surrounding it that it isn’t the truth.”

 

For some reason, Biden seems to think his denial constitutes proof that Reade is lying, whereas in 2018, Kavanaugh’s denials proved nothing.

UPDATE: Ace points out that Joe Biden’s Morning Joe performance was damaging not only in terms of his failure to justify a double standard between what he said about Kavanaugh’s accusers and what he’s saying about his own accuser, but Joe also suffered from embarrassing mental lapses during his interview with Mika.




 

Category: Joe Biden

Flynn Won Twitter

Posted on | April 30, 2020 | Comments Off on Flynn Won Twitter

by Smitty

Category: Uncategorized

Joe Biden’s Partisan Media Protection Bubble Has Finally Begun Collapsing

Posted on | April 30, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Let’s be clear what’s going on here: If the liberal media really believed that Joe Biden could beat Trump in November, they would have stonewalled Tara Reade’s accusations forever. But as partisan as they are, they are not blind, and anyone who watched Biden stumbling in every media appearance the past two months can see he’s hopelessly addled. The man cannot speak a coherent sentence, and would self-destruct in the fall debates, so the Democrats won’t really be sacrificing anything if this sexual assault accusation takes Joe down. All of that is preamble to what Chris Hayes did on MSNBC Wednesday night:

Is the dam breaking on the Joe Biden sexual assault case? . . . On Wednesday night, liberal host Chris Hayes featured the story in depth for over eight minutes. . . .
Hayes admitted that during #MeToo there have been moments “when we have heard about accusations against someone that we find ourselves desperately wanting not to believe.” Like, presumably, the Tara Reade case. The host struggled and stammered in parts of the segment, but he admitted that the credibility of Reade is “rising” . . .

One of the things that happened in #MeToo, and a piece of evidence that has risen in how I evaluate these stories is a somewhat contemporaneous disclosure to a trusted person who then tells a reporter about it. That is what has happened here. And to me, that has been, in terms of what the evidentiary record is, has raised it a bit in terms of my own view of this. . . .

Hayes began the segment by essentially admitting that liberals are struggling in how this brewing controversy impacts their “side”:

Throughout the entire #metoo era there have been moments I think for many of us, all of us, when we have heard about accusations against someone that we find ourselves desperately wanting not to believe, whether that is because we have some personal admiration for the individual or their work, or political admiration, someone on our quote, unquote “side.”

He added, “Part of the difficult lesson of the #metoo era is not that every accusation is true, and everything should be believed on its face, but that you do have to fight yourself when you feel that impulse. And that is the case with the accusations by a woman named Tara Reade against Joe Biden.”

 

Of course, no one wants to believe someone on “our side” is guilty of scandalous wrongdoing. Politics is a team sport that way. Conservatives who care about “family values” have had to grit our teeth and endure embarrassing revelations about people on “our side,” which always makes me angry because, hey, how hard is it to keep your zipper zipped? Like, you get elected to Congress — a pretty damned important job — and you’re going to mess that up by chasing a piece of side action? That’s childish and irresponsible, and you never should have run for public office if you wanted to behave that way. Of course, in this case, Biden is accused not merely of adultery — Democrats don’t give a damn about that — but rather of non-consensual sexual aggression. And the question is not so much about guilt or innocence — because who can say with any degree of certainty what happened in 1993? — but rather about whether Democrats are willing to judge Biden by the standard they applied to Brett Kavanaugh. If the rather flimsy claims of Christine Blasey Ford were enough to justify the public smearing of Kavanaugh, then how can Democrats defend Biden against Tara Reade’s accusation, which is infinitely more plausible? Keep in mind that no one, not even Ford’s own friend, could so much as verify that the party she described had happened. Even if you were willing to believe Ford’s account, this was when Kavanaugh was teenager in high school, whereas Biden in 1993 was chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.

As I say, it will be easier for Democrats to throw Biden under the wheels of their #MeToo bus because he’s doomed anyway.

“My son’s business dealings were not anything where everybody that he’s talking about, not even remotely, number one.”

That is an actual sentence from a Biden interview this week. It’s incoherent gibberish, as is practically everything coming out of Biden’s mouth nowadays. The man is non compos mentis.

Does anyone want to bet me? I’ve got $20 that says Biden will not be on the ballot in November, but I doubt anyone would take that wager.




 

Category: Joe Biden, MSNBC

‘They Always Blame America First’

Posted on | April 30, 2020 | Comments Off on ‘They Always Blame America First’

 

One of the decisive moments of the Cold War, in my opinion, was Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention. In the post-Vietnam era, Democrats had adopted a “human rights” approach to foreign policy that tended toward a stance of moral relativism between Soviet-sponsored Marxist-Leninist regimes and their opponents. A sort of guilt complex about American influence — internalizing Communist propaganda claims about capitalist “imperialism” — had become part of Democrat foreign policy, and Kirkpatrick nailed it perfectly:

They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do — they didn’t blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians — they blamed the United States instead.
But then, somehow, they always blame America first.
When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the “blame America first crowd” didn’t blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn’t blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.
But then, they always blame America first.
The American people know better.

Kirkpatrick’s speech put the choice in foreign policy in the clearest possible terms, and when Reagan won in a historic landslide, this mandate empowered him to confront Soviet power worldwide. One might have hoped that the lesson would have been clear, and yet, to this day, liberals still have not gotten the memo:

Bill Weir hates Jesus, America, and the internal combustion engine — not necessarily in that order. His job as Chief Climate Correspondent at CNN gives Weir ample opportunity to express his hatred of America’s petroleum-consuming habits, but it was not until recently that Weir explained how he blames Christianity for the world’s problems.
In a bizarre online essay entitled “To my son, born in the time of coronavirus and climate change,” Weir implies that the pandemic is somehow related to global warming, connected by “stories in a very old book” (i.e., the Bible) to explain why “we burned gasoline for no good reason.” Does that make sense? No, not logically, but Weir’s emotional gestalt pattern connects these dots without regard to logic. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

Category: CNN, Media Bias

The Case of the COVID-19 ‘Black Widow’: Police Are Investigating Wanda Lenius

Posted on | April 29, 2020 | Comments Off on The Case of the COVID-19 ‘Black Widow’: Police Are Investigating Wanda Lenius

 

Last month, I told you about how Wanda poisoned her husband Gary in Arizona — allegedly, I hasten to add, because certainly I myself have no direct knowledge of the matter and wouldn’t want to deal with the hassle of a libel suit. I’m just repeating what Ace said, a defense that would probably stand up in court, because if a genuine blogging legend says it was murder, you can take that to the bank, buddy.

Police in Arizona seem to agree:

The Mesa City Police Department’s homicide division is investigating the death of Gary Lenius, the Arizona man whose wife served him soda mixed with fish tank cleaner in what she claimed was a bid to fend off the coronavirus. A detective handling the case confirmed the investigation to the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday after requesting a recording of the Free Beacon’s interviews with Lenius’s wife, Wanda.
Gary Lenius, 68, died on March 22. Wanda, 61, told several news outlets last month that both she and her husband had ingested a substance used to clean aquariums after hearing President Donald Trump tout one of its ingredients, chloroquine phosphate, from the White House briefing room.
Detective Teresa Van Galder, the homicide detective handling the case for the Mesa City Police Department, confirmed that the investigation is ongoing but declined to provide additional details.
“As this is an active investigation, I cannot go into any details at this time regarding the case,” Van Galder said. The Free Beacon provided a recording of its interview last month with Wanda Lenius.
News of the police probe comes after a series of Free Beacon stories raised questions about the portrayal of the couple in the initial NBC News report that vaulted the story onto the national stage.
Though that report and others suggested the couple mindlessly followed the president’s medical advice to disastrous results, friends of Gary Lenius told the Free Beacon they were skeptical he would knowingly ingest fish tank treatment.

A police spokesman said this is just “normal protocol.”

Routine investigation. Nothing suspicious at all. Nudge, nudge.




 

Category: Arizona, Crime
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