In The Mailbox: 05.18.20

Posted on | May 19, 2020 | 2 Comments

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Cops Wouldn’t Lie To Get A Warrant…Would They?
EBL: Phyllis George & Fred Willard, RIP
Twitchy: Jill Filipovic Attempts To Rewrite #MeToo History, Gets It All Wrong
Louder With Crowder: Mike Rowe – COVID-19 Has Exposed How Expensive & Unnecessary College Is

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Our Mothers Are Only Worried That People May Die, also, Podcast #143 – The Stupidity Episode
American Conservative: Time To Break Up The FBI?
American Greatness: John Brennan & The Plot To Subvert An American Election, also, Morning Greatness – No Spike In Coronavirus Cases For States Ending Lockdowns
American Power: Reopening Las Vegas, also, Fearmonger Fauci
American Thinker: Unmasking The Illegalities Of The Obama Administration, also, Flynn Judge Ignores SCOTUS & The Constitution
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Pope John Paul II Was Born 100 Years Ago Today
BattleSwarm: Joe Rogan On Biden And Leftist Hate For Liberals, also, BidenWatch For May 18
Cafe Hayek: “Socialize Medical Care”? also, The Value Of The Price System Is Priceless
Camp of the Saints: US Soft Fascist Hardening – On The Permanent Emergency State
CDR Salamander: Post-COVID-19 Red China With Dean Cheng On Midrats, also, Why Listen To Jim Webb?
Da Tech Guy: My Wuhan Virus Regimen, also, Masks Dehumanize Us
Don Surber: No, Everyone In Wisconsin Will Not Die Of Coronavirus, also, Bring On The Next Hoax, Democrats
The Geller Report: Ramadan In India – Muslims Poison Sole Water Supply For Karnataka State, also, NYC Mayor De Blasio Floats Fences To Keep New Yorkers Off Beaches
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Unmasked Intelligence
Hollywood In Toto: Surrogates Has Never Been More Relevant, also, What My Hero Academia Learned That Birds Of Prey Forgot
JustOneMinute: Sunday Guest Post
Legal Insurrection: Surprise! Mask-Shamers In WH Press Corps Turn Out To Be Hypocrites, also, Red China Openly Backing Democrats In November
The PanAm Post: Militarized Mexico Starting To Look Like Venezuela, also, Sinaloa Cartel Threatens To “Blow Up” Mexican Newspaper For Criticizing AMLO
Power Line: Obama’s Treasury Department Spied On Trump Associates, also, Rural America Rebels Against The Madness
Shark Tank: Progressive Perelman Fixes Bayonets Against Wasserman-Schultz
Shot In The Dark: Government By Slogan
STUMP: Moneypalooza Monstrosity! Looking At The SALT Cap Provisions
This Ain’t Hell: Holding Russian Collusion Hoaxers Accountable, also, Trans Waiver In The Navy
Victory Girls: Tax For Thee, Not For Me, Says AOC
Volokh Conspiracy: Lawsuit Against Fox News Claims Cable TV Not Protected By The First Amendment
Weasel Zippers: Schumer Whines That Trump Is Picking On Red China Over WuFlu, also, Andrew Cuomo Washes His Hands – “Older People Are Going To Die No Matter What”
Mark Steyn: It Happened Here, also, With A Song In My Heart (But Nowhere Else)

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Category: Linkagery

Trust the Health Experts!

Posted on | May 18, 2020 | 1 Comment

Last week, I was shocked to hear that Los Angeles was planning to be on coronavirus lockdown until August. Even if that was your plan, why would you announce more than two months of onerous restrictions so far in advance? Just extend it by two weeks now, see what happens and, if the number of new cases doesn’t meet your target, keep adding two-week extensions until you’re satisfied with the numbers. But no — August!

Trying to process this information was difficult, and then yesterday, Instapundit informed me that the person in charge of coronavirus policy Los Angeles is a former high-school principal who got a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from Brandeis. “Doctor Ferrer” is not a medical doctor, and has no real scientific expertise. She got her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a major in “Community Studies.” A few years ago, when she served as executive director of Boston’s Public Health Commission, “Doctor Ferrer” was featured in a CBS News program as an expert in — wait for it — teen dating violence.

Is she really the person you want running your epidemiology operations?

This business of credentialed “experts” claiming authority to run our lives has become intolerable, and the promotion of such phony expertise has become a disgrace to the profession of journalism:

Everyone in the media was horrified last month when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced he would begin reopening the state’s economy. An April 21 headline in The Week denounced Kemp’s reckless “experiment,” and on April 22, MSNBC bemoaned the Republican governor’s “dangerous gamble.” Dana Milbank of the Washington Post declared: “Public health experts fear coronavirus will burn through Georgia like nothing has since William Tecumseh Sherman.” The Atlantic’s Amanda Mull went so far as to call Kemp’s move an “experiment in human sacrifice.” Yet perhaps the most memorable media condemnation of Kemp was from Ron Fournier, former Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, who proclaimed on Twitter: “Mark this day. Because two and three weeks from now, the Georgia death toll is blood on his hands. And as Georgians move around the country, they’ll spread more death and economic destruction.”
Well, everyone did mark the day and, after Fournier’s “two or three weeks” elapsed, they called attention to how badly wrong his prediction had been. . . .

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

Category: American Spectator, California, Georgia, Health Care

An Appeal From Bear Creek

Posted on | May 18, 2020 | 2 Comments

An affair, a divorce, a bitter custody dispute — a blogger friend seeks help from readers via a Go Fund Me account. Please contribute.

Category: Blogging

Rule 5 Sunday: Sarah Rose McDaniel

Posted on | May 17, 2020 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Good heavens, it’s been over a month since I did the last Rule 5 post. Time to get caught up! But first, the lovely Sarah Rose McDaniel, model and “investigative reporter” whose main claim to fame is appearing in a couple of music videos, being the cover girl for the first Playboy without nudes (March 2016), and of course, her eyes.

Good advice.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick Of The Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #958, Morning Mistress, Girls With Guns, (Week 2) Hot Pick Of The Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #965, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Fiscal Disaster Friday, Saturday Gingermageddon #284, Rule Five 1776 Friday, Saturday Gingermageddon #285, Rule Five 1776 Friday II, Saturday Gingermageddon #286, Rule Five 1776 Friday III, Saturday Gingermageddon #287, Rule Five 1776 Friday IV, and Saturday Gingermageddon #288.

EBL: Nina Hagen & Lene Lovich, Pieces Of April, The Merry Widow, Gene Tierney & Jeanne Crain, La Traviata, Court Yard Hounds, Katherine LaNasa, La Cenerentola, Met At Home Gala, Anna Bolena, Patti Smith, Maria Stuarda, Ivanka Trump, Waco, Kim Yo Jong, Elina Garanca, Julie London, Isabel Leonard, Leontyne Price, Kayleigh McEnany, Katee Sackhoff, Luisa Miller, World Naked Gardening Day, Social Distancing Cinco De Mayo, Marlis Petersen, Lusty Month Of May, Upload, Madrigirls, La Boheme, El Dorado, Sophie Koch, Ariadne Auf Naxos, Joan Sutherland, Emalie Savoy, and Phyllis George.

A View From The Beach: Ana Alexander – Chemistry in the Land of the Lost, Fish Pic Friday – Two are Better than One, Right?, Tanlines Thursday, Another Wet Wednesday, WuFlu and Fishing, Some Tats for Tuesday, Masked Monday, RIP: Stirling Moss, Some Easter Morning Russiagate, The Luther Affair – Ruth Wilson, Mysterious Illness Killing Blue Tits, Bullet Proofing?, All the News That’s Fit To View, Let ’em Eat Ice Cream, Tuesday Tanlines, Mired in Monday, Palm Sunday?, Nicole Eggert, Fish Pic Friday – Hannah Barron, Tattoos for Thursday, More Wednesday Wetness, WuFlu Killing Fish, Tuesday Tunes from Lola Astanova, A Different Sort of Muddy Monday and Palm Sunday.

Proof Positive: Bettie Page and Dorothy Malone

Red Pill Jew: Friday Women

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious linkagery!

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Category: Rule 5

‘Out-of-Towners’ Blamed for ‘Mayhem’ After Florida City Re-Opens Beach

Posted on | May 17, 2020 | 2 Comments

Florida’s COVID-19 response has been a tremendous success story. Much like Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp resisted the Cult of Eternal Lockdown, the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, delayed issuing a statewide lockdown order and was one of the first governors to lift the order. As I have explained elsewhere, most Florida counties were handling their own coronavirus outbreaks with local policies, so DeSantis didn’t feel a statewide lockdown was necessary, especially because there were so many counties with very few cases, but finally he gave in to the political pressure. And as soon as May 1 arrived, DeSantis was ready to go back to business. Democrats demonized DeSantis, with activist Daniel Uhlfelder touring Florida beaches dressed as the Grim Reaper to promote the message that the Republican governor’s decision would kill people.

Meanwhile, Florida residents have begun resuming normal life without a statewide mandate, which means local governments are making their own decisions. Naples, on the state’s southwest coast, opened its beach May 1, but last weekend saw such crowds that they closed it again:

The city of Naples closed its public beaches at 12:01 a.m. Sunday. City leaders said the beaches were overrun with beachgoers to start the weekend, so the move is a continued effort to stop the possible spread of the coronavirus.
According to the city press release, “In an effort to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and alignment with CDC guidance and Governor DeSantis’s Executive Order 20-112, the City of Naples will be closing all public beaches within city limits effective 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, May 10 until further notice.” . . .
Naples Councilman Gary Price told us he visited the beaches during [Saturday, May 9] to get a look for himself. And what he said he saw disappointed him, concerned him and caused him to make a call to the city manager about how to regain control of the beaches in the city.
“We really wanted to make sure that people were safe,” Price said. “And what I saw today is what I believe to be really not safe.”
Price took a picture while checking out the beach, and that’s what prompted him to take action, he said. Price said he saw signs that people were visiting from the east coast of the state since their beaches remain closed.
“I took some pictures of cars that were from Broward and Miami-Dade dealership plates,” Price said. “And so you could tell from the cars.”

See? It’s not the Collier County locals who caused the problem; rather, it was people traveling from the Miami area — more than 100 miles away, where the beaches are still closed — who were the problem. Three counties (Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward) account for about 60% of all coronavirus deaths in Florida, and guess what else we know about those counties? Right — they’re overwhelmingly Democrat. In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton got 57% of the vote in Palm Beach, 64% in Miami-Dade and 67% in Broward. So the lockdown of the entire state was necessitated by the high rates of infection in these Democratic stongholds. Now that the statewide order has been lifted, the beaches remain closed in the high-infection Democrat areas. This creates problems for places like Naples, in Collier County, where infection rates have been low. Would you care to guess how people vote in Naples?

You guessed it — Trump got 62% of the vote in Collier County.

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:

The City of Naples has voted to reopen its beaches again but this time with some limitations.
After a grueling emergency meeting and three failed motions, council members negotiated their way to a fourth and final vote.
Naples beaches will be open sunrise to sunset, Monday through Friday, starting at 7 a.m. May 13. The beaches will have shorter hours on weekends: 7 to 11 a.m. and then closing before reopening from 5 p.m. to sunset. The weekend hours will extend to Memorial Day, too.
Coolers and tents will not be allowed on the beaches, but chairs can be used in the evenings to watch the sunset.
Parking enforcement has been beefed up with fines doubling to $200 with no option to pay early for a discount. Illegally parked cars can also now be towed.
Parking will be limited to those with beach stickers (both city and Collier County stickers are accepted) but the city will not allow parking on residential streets unless they are properly marked parking spaces.
Readers React: Facebook readers react to city of Naples public beach closures, lack of social distancing
Some council members were steadfast in trying to get shorter hours during the weekdays as well as the weekends.
“I am rigidly set on 7-day bifurcation hours,” Councilman Ray Christman said. “It seems to me that opening the beach from dawn to dusk, five days a week and not placing any limitations on activities is just further increasing the risk of having out-of-towners coming in and using the beach and creating a situation that replicated last weekend.” . . .
Only a week after the city opened the beaches to the public, the closure order was issued after a council member witnessed crowds on Saturday not following social distancing guidelines.
“My judgment call was not done hastily,” Mayor Teresa Heitmann said. “It was done with the city manager, the police chief and the fire department to make sure this situation does not get out of control. I heard descriptions of mayhem and a lack of regard to emergency orders of social distancing.”

Democrats come to town? “Mayhem!”

Beyond this problem in Naples, how is Florida faring in its return to normalcy? 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.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Florida, Health Care

FMJRA 2.0: Hocus Pocus

Posted on | May 16, 2020 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Hocus Pocus

— compiled by Wombat-socho

A thin crop this week, but with a Rule 5 Sunday coming up that’s stuffed like Kate Upton’s bikini tops and a full week of linkagery following, next week ought to be back to normal.

Is Obama Living in an Alternative Reality?
A View From The Beach
EBL

Headline of the Week
EBL

R.I.P., Little Richard
EBL

Georgia on My Mind
EBL

Tater Tots With Russia Sauce
357 Magnum
EBL

Ahmaud Arbery: Focus on Media Bias, Because ‘The Issue Is Never the Issue’
EBL

The ‘Deep State’ Unmasked: Joe Biden Targeted Trump Aide Gen. Flynn
357 Magnum
EBL

The Cult of Eternal Lockdown
BattleSwarm Blog
EBL

Early Release
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.14.20
357 Magnum
EBL
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive

Transgender Person Stabbed to Death
EBL

Democrat Concedes in CA-25 Special Election: Not Close Enough to Steal
EBL

She Befriended the Man Who Killed Her Mother. Guess How That Turned Out?
357 Magnum
EBL

‘Science-Denying Grandma Killers’
Pushing Rubber Downhill
Bacon Time
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.15.20 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.15.20 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Top linker for the week ending March 15: EBL (16)

Thanks to everyone for the linkagery! We appreciate your support!

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Category: FMJRA Award

Remember How Everybody Was Going to Die Because Georgia Ended Lockdowns?

Posted on | May 16, 2020 | 4 Comments

The headlines last month were scary:

Georgia’s dangerous coronavirus experiment
— Joel Mathis, The Week April 21

Georgia’s Kemp neglected to warn people
about his dangerous gamble
— Steve Benen, MSNBC, April 22

Kemp poised to lift restrictions,
despite warnings of renewed outbreak
— Alan Judd and Greg Bluestein, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 29

It was a “gamble,” an “experiment,” and the media all agreed it was “dangerous” for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to do this “despite warnings.” You would have thought, based on the coverage, that Kemp’s plan was so reckless and irresponsible as to guarantee a “renewed outbreak” that would kill thousands. But what actually happened?

Georgia’s daily COVID-19 deaths had already peaked by the time Kemp announced he would begin re-opening the state’s economy. On April 16, Georgia recorded 52 deaths from the virus, concluding a week (April 10-16) in which the state recorded 205 deaths, an average of 35.7 deaths daily for that week. For the seven day period ending Thursday (i.e., May 8-14), Georgia recorded a total of 105 coronavirus deaths, an average of 15 daily. In other words, comparing these two seven-day periods, there was a 58% decrease in Georgia’s COVID-19 deaths. The number of daily new COVID-19 cases reported has likewise declined more than 50% since April, even as the number of tests performed has increased.

COVID-19 is a new disease. Everything we know about this virus, we’ve learned in the past six months. However, something Michael Fumento remarked last month bears repeating: Epidemics are always subject to Farr’s Law, in which cases rise and fall in a bell-curve pattern. The death toll peaks and then recedes because, in the early stages of the outbreak, the disease “grabs the low-hanging fruit” (the most vulnerable population), but eventually runs out of such victims. While quarantine policies can “slow the spread” and “flatten the curve,” ultimately no human intervention matters more than the effect of Farr’s Law.

By the time Governor Kemp announced his “gamble” in the third week of April, the number of COVID-19 deaths in Georgia had already peaked. While the number of reported cases was still continuing to rise (it did not peak until April 27, when 937 new cases were reported), this was an artifact, the result of more widespread testing, which identified asymptomatic or mild cases. Throughout the course of Georgia’s coronavirus outbreak so far, there have been 1,557 deaths and, with the daily death toll still decreasing steadily, it seems unlikely the state will experience the “renewed outbreak” that Kemp’s critics warned about.

As of 10 a.m. today, Georgia’s per-capita death rate from COVID-19 (measured in deaths per million residents) was 150, which was 88.5% lower than the state of New York’s death rate of 1,417.

Oh, and just for your information, the daily number of U.S. coronavirus deaths nationwide peaked at 2,683 — on April 21, which was 25 days ago. The highest daily number of deaths in the past week was 1,772 on Wednesday (May 13), and that number was 34% below the April 21 peak.

UPDATE: Earlier this week, Stacey Lennox said, “Dear Media, Governor Kemp Will Accept Your Apology Now.” Don’t hold your breath.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Hope you will remember that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!