Reporting on the second COVID wave

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve noticed a smattering of headlines lately in the MSM that seem to be saying that ending the lockdown has produced a spike in cases. I haven’t done more than skim a couple, because spikes in cases are meaningless to me, as I’ve said many times. The important stats involve hospitalizations and deaths.

So I was pleased to see this:

Democrats cite a spike in cases in Florida, Arizona and Texas as evidence of a virus resurgence. But more testing, especially in vulnerable communities, is naturally turning up more cases. Cases in Texas have increased by about a third in the last two weeks, but so have tests. About a quarter of the new cases are in counties with large prisons and meatpacking plants that were never forced to shut down…

Liberals and the media demanded more testing before states could reopen, yet now are criticizing states because more testing has turned up more cases. Keep in mind that New York has reported about the same number of new cases in the last two weeks as Florida, though it ramped up testing earlier so the relative increase appears less significant.

A more important metric is hospitalizations. In Arizona the weekly rolling average for new Covid-19 hospitalizations has been flat for a month. Emergency-room visits for Covid-19 have spiked this week, but the number of ER beds in use hasn’t changed since late April. Hospitals in Arizona (and California) have reported an increase in cases from U.S. citizens and green-card holders returning from Mexico where hospitals are overwhelmed. But with 22% of ICU beds and 62% of ventilators available, Arizona hospitals should have capacity to manage an increase in patients as it reopens.

Texas has also recently reported an uptick in Covid-19 hospitalizations, mostly in the Houston and Austin areas. Current Covid-19 hospitalizations are up about 20% since the state began to reopen, but Gov. Greg Abbott says hospitals aren’t overwhelmed and much of the increase is tied to nursing homes.

The above is actually from an article in the WSJ, to which I don’t have access. If you do, you might want to read the whole thing.

It doesn’t sound alarming, although I suppose that could change. And opening up business is the right thing to do, and in fact it was overdue.

But at this point I think very few people are paying attention to these statistics anymore. The medical authorities and the politicians who did what they said no longer have much if any credibility. They richly earned our lack of trust, and next time they won’t be believed. It’s possible that may even end up backfiring on all of us, I suppose. But that’s the way it is.

Seattle’s mayor is looking forward to the Summer of Love in CHAZlandia

The New Neo Posted on by

Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan:

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan downplayed the six-block autonomous zone in the city on CNN last night after President Donald Trump demanded she restore order to the city.

Durkan claimed the zone is “not an armed takeover” and “more like a block party.”

Yet, the police chief said their “calls for service have more than tripled.” Videos show tension within this zone.

But it’s a block party – a rather large one that encompasses six or seven blocks, but a block party nonetheless. More from Mayor Jenny:

The best part came when Cuomo asked Durkan how long she thinks this will last in Seattle.

Her answer: “I don’t know. We could have the summer of love.”

Video at the link.

Durkan a lot of time railing against Trump; that’s really the most important thing, isn’t it? She also said this:

We will make sure that we can restore this. But we have block parties and the like in this part of Seattle all the time. It’s known for that.

Lest you think Durkan is simply an ignorant stupidhead, she’s nothing of the sort. She went to Catholic schools and graduated from Notre Dame, she’s a lawyer who spent five years as United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington – appointed by Obama, of course – and was a favorite for the post of Obama’s AG when Holder left, although she obviously didn’t get the job.

My point is, this woman is no dummy, and she’s well aware of the law. I doubt she stayed away from Property class. But she’s obviously a leftist (as all Democrats seem to have become), although in Seattle she actually was considered the more conservative establishment candidate for mayor when she ran. That says more about Seattle politics and the choices there than it does about Durkan.

Need I even waste time writing about the differences between what’s going on in the Seattle takeover zone and an actual block party? It’s so obvious that even a child ought to be able to list the differences, but let’s just say this: it doesn’t even matter if they’re just wearing flowers in their hair and happily smoking dope together while eating ice cream and dancing in the park to 60s tunes. That’s not what’s happening, but it doesn’t matter because even if it was, we’re taking about taking over part of a city without the permission of every single person who lives there. There was no process here by which such a takeover is okay. It’s not a street fair that lasts for a day and for which people ordinarily get a permit. There’s a little something called the rule of law, and it’s rather important.

Even Chris Cuomo managed to get out the following question for Durkan. Note the way he says “the counter will be,” disclaiming the question as not actually coming from him but as coming from other people who might try to challenge her wisdom:

Host Chris Cuomo then asked, “The counter will be, block parties don’t take over a municipal building, let alone a police station and destroy it, basically thumbing their nose at any sense of civic control. Do you believe that you have control of your city and that you would be able to clear those streets? Because you haven’t.”

Durkan’s answer is essentially that they’re taking it slow, and of course this:

You know, we’re here because the nation saw Mr. Floyd murdered. And that lit a match across this country. And we have to acknowledge and know that we have a system that is built on systemic racism and we have to dismantle that system piece by piece. We have to empower the black community and communities of color. And we have to invest in their health and their safety and their education and opportunity.” She later added that people are protesting “a system of domination.”

Durkan goes on to talk about protecting the right to protest, as though what’s happening in CHAZ is simply a protest. She hits all the buzzwords here, and her listeners in Seattle will nod in agreement. “Systemic racism” – everyone knows that’s the way it is, right? “Empower” the black community. And “invest in their health and their safety and their education and opportunity” – as though that hasn’t been happening in the 60s. And of course, whatever the flaws in Seattle in these respects, wouldn’t it be the fault of the Democrats who have run the city for something like half a century, and the leftists who have run it in more recent years?

I don’t think Cuomo asked her that question.

As for the “summer of love” – Durkan was about nine years old when that happened. That’s about the mental age her response here reflects. It was a fun time, right?

Sixties nostalgia, Sixties envy, but with a twist: the people in charge are the ones who have it, combined with a populace steeped in leftist instruction and MSM lies and propaganda. The last few weeks, although depressing, have been revealing as to the depth and width of the divide between red and blue America, and what it portends.

The takeover of Capitol Hill in Seattle: Just one big happy family, according to the AP

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “MBunge.]

AP stories get very wide circulation. And today, the takeover of a Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle by radical anarchists and other far leftists is covered by the AP as though it’s a party. The headline goes like this: “Trump fumes as protesters stake out festive zone in Seattle.”

If you don’t already know, please get up to speed on who this group really is and what they’ve done and what their goals are: see this as well as this.

If you Google that headline, you’ll get a host of articles (all the same AP piece) appearing in outlet after outlet: ABC, the LA Times, and US News, just to list a few. If it’s covered at all, that’s the way it’s covered. How many people even read past the headline? They get the message: it’s the Summer of Love returned to a “festive zone” that’s been “staked out.”

Please read; here’s the beginning [emphasis mine]:

Following days of violent confrontations with protesters, police in Seattle have largely withdrawn from a neighborhood where protesters have created a festival-like scene that has President Donald Trump fuming.

Trump taunted Gov. Jay Inslee and Mayor Jenny Durkan about the situation on Twitter and said the city had been taken over by “anarchists.”

Words are used there with great subtlety and economy. To those of us who are accustomed to looking for and spotting such things, the twisting of the truth may seem obvious. But it is unlikely to be the least bit obvious to the casual reader.

In the article, the police are the ones having the “violent confrontations” with protesters, not the other way around. The atmosphere of the occupation is light and happy, and yet mean old Trump is fuming. Maybe he just doesn’t like to see people having fun. Not only is he fuming, but he is “taunting” in his tweet, which suggests a nasty sort of teasing about something that’s probably petty. And oh, how silly he is, saying it’s been taken over by – scare quotes – “anarchists.” Pretend anarchists. What a taunting name-caller that Trunp is!

And that’s just the first two sentences, and they’re not especially long sentences at that.

The article goes on for some time, quoting the wonderful leaders of the festive group and criticizing Trump, and suggesting that it’s only an assertion by police that they were being assaulted with projectiles. The truth of that assertion is left unexplored, but the insinuation is that it probably didn’t happen.

It is really quite a document; I suggest you read it, and as you read it please recall that the AP sets the tone and the message and the narrative for nearly the entire nation.

The group’s actual demands? Nowhere to be seen. The article reads as a press release for the occupiers. Those who think an event like this takeover could serve as a wakeup call to America probably haven’t bargained on the propagandists of the AP.

[NOTE: Again, I apologize for my pessimism. But that’s the way I see it at the moment.]

[ADDENDUM: I want to add that the article barely mentions the fact that this is a residential area that has been taken over without the consent of the residents. The assault on liberty is ignored, except for a single sentence that goes like this: “[The police chief] said protesters have set up their own barricades, which are intimidating some residents.” Again, the trick here is that the authors don’t check out the truth or falsehood of the assertion. In fact, the entire story is treated as a “he said, she said” type of thing in which the happy peace-love statements of the occupiers are contrasted with the “claims” of the police, rather than about facts that could actually be verified. Reporters used to do things like actually go to the scene and see for themselves whether there are such barricades and such intimidation. But the AP story merely repeats, uncritically, the sunny descriptions by the occupiers (minus, of course, their actual demands, which would give the game away if the public were to know those), and contrasts them with the claims of the police. Local politicians quoted are on the side of the occupiers. The entire episode is treated as though the occupiers have merely set up a pleasant street fair.]

The demands of the Collective Black Voices at Free Capitol Hill

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are the demands of the radical leftist group that has taken over a neighborhood in Seattle.

The operative word in their document is demand. They demand this and they demand that. To list just a few demands, they demand the abolition of the police and the “attached criminal justice apparatus” (that would be the court system, jail system, prison system). No ICE in Seattle, and the police won’t be getting any pensions, either, when they are prematurely fired.

I’m not going to list all the group’s demands, because the document is long; I’ll just list some of the more interesting. One is that all people of color currently in prison for violent crimes be retried by juries in their own communities. It doesn’t mention whether there will be judges, or lawyers, and who they might be, or whether the rules of evidence will be followed. Pretty easy to guess, though.

Another especially interesting demand is the “de-gentrification of Seattle.”

And then there’s this: “We demand the hospitals and care facilities of Seattle employ black doctors and nurses specifically to help care for black patients.” Note that they haven’t consulted their fellow black citizens, although that omission should come as no surprise.

I’ll skip the rest, but you get the idea.

Some of the responses to the document in the comments are pretty sarcastic. A sampling:

You forgot the demand for separate water fountains for blacks only.

I thought the whole point of being an Autonomous state was to make your own laws / culture? Why are you making demands to a foreign nation (the usa)?

But this is the one that expressed the question I’d like to tackle here: “Or else what?”

How can they demand anything of anyone? What power do they hold over the rest of society? I believe they think their power comes from the following:

(1) They’re used to using accusations of racism to demand things of people who feel guilty and who will acquiesce. We’ve seen a lot of this lately, so I don’t think it’s delusional for them to expect it to work.

(2) They are in Seattle, and they know that a lot of people employed in local government are very sympathetic to them.

(3) Because of (2), they don’t think the police or even the National Guard will be called to clear them out, nor will other sensible approaches such as cutting the electricity be used.

(4) Many of the local residents are sympathetic as well.

(5) What’s more, even if draconian measures were to be used by the Seattle government, it will be documented by the group and word (and photos) will be sent around the world showing them to be the victims of Seattle’s terrible and oppressive leaders.

(6) Likewise, if federal troops are sent in, the same. Plus, in that case, the group can demonize Trump and they know the entire Democratic Party and MSM will leap to their aid.

(7) The minute any violence is used against the group (they have weapons, by the way, which they will claim they only use in self-defense), they’ll spread the word that “the whole world is watching” (Chicago, 1968), and they think the world will be on their side. And perhaps it will, the way things have been going these days.

Right now, government at all levels seems to be waiting. And yet how can this be allowed to go on? Perhaps the idea is to allow the area to descend into chaos, hoping the group will self-destruct. However, I think this sets an absolutely horrendous precedent.

If you want to read the whole story of how the group managed to secure this area in the first place, please see this.

[NOTE: Even though the method and scope were very different, I am reminded of the kidnappers of Patty Hearst, the Symbionese Liberation Army, who made some demands, too, when they first held Hearst hostage in 1974:

According to testimony, the group’s main intention was to leverage the Hearst family’s political influence to free two SLA members who had been arrested for Marcus Foster’s killing. Faced with the failure to free the imprisoned men, the SLA demanded that the captive’s family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy Californian – an operation that would cost an estimated $400 million. In response, Hearst’s father took out a loan and arranged the immediate donation of $2 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area, in an operation called “People in Need.” After the distribution descended into chaos, the SLA refused to release Hearst.

You have some of the same elements: a demand for prisoners to be released, another demand couched in social justice language, and resulting chaos.

But the SLA was small, and society as a whole hadn’t yet been sufficiently radicalized to consider them heroes. In the end – although it took a long time to play out – most members of the group lost their lives in a gunfight with the government.]

The war on STEM: when post-modernism says that there is no real truth…

The New Neo Posted on by

…then why not erase history, ignore facts, and create your own truth? Especially in the cause of fighting whatever is defined as racism these days. The definition has become extraordinarily broad amidst the paroxysms of rage and the demands for special treatment that we currently see.

I’m not just talking about pulling down monuments. STEM is a focus at the moment:

Professors, researchers, and students in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics field from around the country are taking part Wednesday in the #ShutDownSTEM movement to combat what they say is systemic racism in academia. They argue that the STEM field itself creates technology that is “weaponized against black people.”

One scholar and self-proclaimed “leading expert on wokeness,” James Lindsay, who is best known for his participation in a project that exposed the faulty review process of academic journals by submitting hoax papers that were ultimately published by such publications, tweeted, that “one point of #ShutDownSTEM is to find out who doesn’t do it (maybe they’re working on a Covid-19 vaccine?) and to use that against them later, just like happened at Evergreen State College with its Day of Absence.”…

Members of the science academic community are “call[ing]on people who are not Black to spend a day undertaking discussion and action that furthers this work, while providing Black scientists with a day of rest.”

It will be a day where they “#ShutDownAcademia, #ShutDownSTEM, and #Strike4BlackLives.”

Scientists and researchers subscribing to the movement will not do any work for the entire day, and any class or research group meetings “should be cancelled [sic] or replaced with discussions with colleagues about anti-Black bias in the world and in academia.”

I don’t know how big this movement is, but it will probably grow if it’s not big enough right now to get what it wants. One of the goals – as was the case at Evergreen and so many other schools (such as Harvard against Larry Summers as far back as 2005), and not limited to academia – is to make you come forward and declare yourself part of the movement, as well as to serve as a warning about how science can be used and how it must not be used. Join the movement or a campaign might be mounted against you. If not today, then at some future date when it’s more useful to the left.

The crocodile gets fed periodically, but then it gets hungry again. After all, silence is violence, which is one of the most pernicious mottos of the movement so far.

It’s ironic – but again, not at all unexpected if you study history – that the universities that once championed (or pretended to champion) liberty and freedom of speech as vital values stopped teaching that some time ago, and have become centers for tyranny. Someone my age has seen the enormity of the change from a time when it really was the basic stance of almost everyone in academia to defend different points of view, to a time when expressing a view that wasn’t to the extreme left could get you fired. That’s why freedom of speech and liberty are so important to guard and nurture – because the human race has a strong pull in the other direction, a force that must be resisted actively or people will succumb to its siren call.

The Founding Fathers knew this. They knew it in their bones. But our generation either forgot to teach it or didn’t even know that it was being so heavily undermined right along. I saw the signs when I returned to school about thirty years ago and they alarmed me, and I did speak out against them in class. But I was met with glazed stares from my younger classmates; they couldn’t be bothered already, that early on. They just didn’t care what the old dinosaur was saying, so I didn’t even have to be answered. I could just be ignored.

I’ll close with this:

[NOTE: Please see Havel’s Greengrocer.]

[ADDENDUM: I’m not the first one to say this, but it’s an important thought: one of the reasons the trend towards closing down free speech often goes unnoticed is that initially the left seems like it’s championing free speech. The leftist does this as long as the left is the beneficiary. When leftist thought is unpopular, the right in the US (not everywhere) lets it have a forum, in the interests of free speech. The left pretends that it would return the favor. Maybe even some people on the left at that point think that really would be the case. But they are sadly mistaken, and when the left has gained majority and control, those people will be shouted down and ostracized themselves if they fight free speech’s curtailment for the right.

It’s a clever game. And it’s the one that’s been played.]

Legal Insurrection: Professor Jacobson’s job at Cornell Law School is threatened by cancel culture

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE: Professor Jacobson will be appearing on the Laura Ingraham show on Fox News at approximately 10:45 Eastern time.]

Professor Jacobson of Legal Insurrection (a blog for which I also write periodically) has announced that there’s a campaign to get him ousted from his post as a law professor because of his critiques of Black Lives Matter:

There is an effort underway to get me fired at Cornell Law School, where I’ve worked since November 2007, or if not fired, at least denounced publicly by the school.

Ever since I started Legal Insurrection in October 2008, it’s been an awkward relationship given the overwhelmingly liberal faculty and atmosphere. Living as a conservative on a liberal campus is like being the mouse waiting for the cat to pounce…

The impetus for the [current] effort was two posts I wrote at Legal Insurrection regarding the history and tactics of the Black Lives Matter Movement:

—Reminder: “Hands up, don’t shoot” is a fabricated narrative from the Michael Brown case (June 4, 2020)
—The Bloodletting and Wilding Is Part of An Agenda To Tear Down The Country (June 3, 2020)

Those posts accurately detail the history of how the Black Lives Matters Movement started, and the agenda of the founders which is playing out in the cultural purge and rioting taking place now.

From Saturday, June 6, through Monday, June 8, over 15 emails from CLS alumni were received by the Dean of the law school, demanding that action be taken against me ranging from an institutional statement denouncing me to firing. I don’t know whether and to what extent that number has increased since Monday. The Dean properly has defended my writings as protected within my academic freedom, although he strongly disagrees with my views…

My clinical faculty colleagues, apparently in consultation with the Black Law Students Association, drafted and then published in the Cornell Sun on June 9 a letter denouncing “commentators, some of them attached to Ivy League Institutions, who are leading a smear campaign against Black Lives Matter.” While I am not mentioned by name, based on what I’ve seen BLSA and possibly others were told it was about me. The letter is absurd name-calling, distorting and even misquoting my writings, to the extent it purports to be about me.

Please read the whole thing. Another article to read is this one.

This is not at all surprising, but it’s tremendously disturbing. If you would like to spread the word, that would be good. Also, letters to Cornell would be good, particular from Cornell alums – but Professor Jacobson has strongly requested that all letters remain polite and kindly. If you’re not going to be polite and kindly, please don’t write.

Thanks!!!

Governor Jay Inslee: useful idiot or mendacious enabler?

The New Neo Posted on by

Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state was interviewed about the crisis taking place Wednesday in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle. This is what he had to say:

That is one of the most shocking things I’ve ever heard a public figure say.

The first duty of government is to secure public safety. Does he literally have no idea what is happening in the largest city in his state, a story that’s been so heavily covered around the nation that even I, on the other side of the continent, made it my first story of the day at around 12:30 PM Seattle time?

Perhaps that clip is some sort of fake, doctored video. I actually hope that’s the case, because it’s preferable to the alternative.

Our very own Red Guards

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s happening now in the United States, at an ever-increasing pace, is rule by mob. But it’s a special sort of mob. The internet and social media, especially Twitter, facilitates the process. Its main practitioners are leftists, mostly but not entirely young.

History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes, and this movement bears a resemblance to the Maoist Cultural Revolution’s Red Guards.

I believe the first time I made that comparison was in this post from six years ago entitled: “Robert J. Birgeneau is the latest casualty of our embryonic Red Guards.” Six years! Obama was president, and you’d think they’d be happy. And perhaps they were – with the president. But not with anyone with whom they disagreed.

Before I re-read it, I no longer remembered who Robert J. Birgeneau was. But the pattern was familiar and already set – and in this case that includes the subject matter:

Another would-be commencement speaker bows out in response to pressure from students who deem him insufficiently pure for their tender sensibilities.

Birgeneau refused to say sufficient mea culpas, the price he would have had to pay for the privilege of addressing the august students and faculty of Haverford:

“Some students and faculty members at Haverford, a liberal arts college near Philadelphia, objected to the invitation to Mr. Birgeneau to speak and receive an honorary degree because, under him, the University of California police used batons to break up an Occupy protest in 2011. He first stated his support for the police, and then a few days later, saying that he was disturbed by videos of the confrontation, ordered an investigation.

“Those at Haverford who objected to his being honored asked Mr. Birgeneau to apologize and to meet a list of demands, including leading an effort to train campus security forces in handling protests better; he refused.”

I called the movement “embryonic” at the time – after all, it was six years ago. But looking back, I bet it was a lot more developed than I knew. Later in that post I added:

My comparison is hyperbole. The current crop of American students isn’t killing or beating anyone—yet. Nor is their target their professors, but that’s probably because their professors have for the most part already been purged and are pure. In fact, at Haverford and at other colleges where commencement speakers have been recently driven out, the protesting students are joined by professors. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, with professors leading the way.

Note the word “yet.” And note the participation and even leadership of the leftist professors. Some of them have found the movement has come back to bite them, but that’s what always happens when making a tasty leftist omelet.

Then in 2018, two years ago, I wrote another Red Guards piece. This time I made it clear I was not being hyperbolic.

Roger L. Simon isn’t nostalgic for the 60s, either

The New Neo Posted on by

As Roger Simon writes in the Epoch Times:

“Off the pig!” Sound familiar? Not quite “Dead cops now” but close. Marx, almost right for once, famously said, “History repeats itself. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Only this second time isn’t really so farcical and may end up more of a tragedy if we’re not careful.

As for how much fun the first version was, I had the proverbial bird’s eye view. My Dartmouth college roommate was one of Leary’s original LSD test cases at Harvard. A year after graduation, a brilliant grad student in semantics at Columbia, my roomie’s car flew off the road when he and the driver were high on acid. He ended up a paraplegic who, not long thereafter, committed suicide.

Another view came a few years later, when I was a very lucky young screenwriter and—to my shame— in my early version of white guilt became a small financier of the Black Panther breakfast program. I did this until I discovered the two of my contacts were heroin dealers and one was wanted for assault with a deadly weapon.

Please read the whole thing.

On this blog, we had a discussion about nostalgia – or lack thereof – for the 60s here (see the NOTE and the comments).

The politically correct bookshelf

The New Neo Posted on by

When the Red Guards come to your home to inspect your bookshelf, be prepared:

A woke NPR writer tells us to comb through our bookshelves and make sure we have enough books authored by people of color.

So my question is: does Thomas Sowell count? If so, I’ve got plenty.

Yes, I know, I know: Sowell isn’t an actual black person, even though he grew up in the South and then Harlem when discrimination against black people really was systemic, as well as overt.

Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to read Clarence Thomas’ autobiography. Sounds excellent.