Archive for May, 2020

Trump and the ivory tower

Posted: May 5, 2020 by chrisharper in culture
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Nearly two dozen of my former and current colleagues have endorsed a call to eliminate live coverage of President Trump because he “uses [it] as a platform for misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19, [and] they have become a serious public health hazard–a matter of life and death for viewers who cannot easily identify his falsehoods, lies, and exaggerations.”

The call continues: “We ask that no speech, rally, or press conference involving the president be covered live anymore. The risk of passing along bad information and harmful advice is too great. 

“News organizations need to attend carefully to what he says and only share information that they can independently verify. By asking themselves ‘is what he said something we should be amplifying?’ news organizations can offset the damage these briefings are producing.” 

The open letter, which was sent to a variety of news organizations, underlines how out of touch the ivory tower is. 

First, the letter assumes that people are so stupid they can’t possibly understand errors or sarcasm. 

That’s one of the reasons the media and their academic companions have become so distrusted. When Gallup measures the most respected professions, journalists rank near the bottom, way below auto mechanics, lawyers, policemen, and military officers. 

Second, I know two of the leading lights of the anti-Trump movement: Todd Gitlin of Columbia University and Jay Rosen of New York University.

Gitlin, who was called “Todd the God” at NYU when I taught there, is the former head of the Students for a Democratic Society and has been a political organizer much of his life. He opposed the Gulf War of 1991 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars of the 2000s. He’s called for Harvard to divest from companies that develop fossil fuels or support Israel.

Rosen created a website called Press Think, which has become a darling of academics and press folks and has been a frequent critic of the Trump administration. One of his main collaborations is with billionaire Pierre Omidyar, one of the most significant contributors to the Democrat Party. 

My favorite memory of Rosen occurred one winter break when he opened his office window to hide the smell of his cigarette. He forgot to close the window, which led to the pipes freezing throughout the building and left a colossal repair bill for NYU. If the shoe of absent-minded professor fits, then Rosen definitely should wear it.  

Third, the list of signatories supposedly includes professors of communications, journalism, and media studies. But after a quick look through the online letter, I found partial names, health workers, and members of the public. So much for being an “exclusive” group of knowledgable educators.

I don’t think objectivity, fairness, and balance exist in the media anymore, but I think transparency should play a significant role in the press. 

That’s why I suggest that all of the signatories who teach journalism should make their anti-Trump sentiments publicly available to their students—as I have made my conservative views known. 

More important, I hope my former and current colleagues keep their politics out of the classroom—as I have done for more than two decades. 

A Man’s Got to Die of SOMETHING

Posted: May 5, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

There is an old story about a Samurai Lord who was sentenced to be executed by the order of the Shogun of Japan. The night before his execution he was with some of his retainers and he was offered a drink of Sake (rice wine). He declined saying that it tended to upset his stomach the next day. This drew some odd glances from his retainers as the next day was scheduled to be his last, so he replied that he was a warrior, and he’s alive until he isn’t and while he’s alive he’s going to take care of his body.

That is really what freedom is like. When you call yourself a free man that comes with responsibilities. One of them is to assert that freedom even in the face of society and authority and be willing to pay the consequences for that assertion.

For the last month we have accepted a lot of restrictions on our freedom because of the Corona/wuhan/ccp virus and there dangers therein. We have by and large accepted these restrictions for the sake of the public good and with the understanding that said restrictions were mandated in good faith. That the governments, state and federal were doing their best to contain the spread of the virus for the sake of public health and to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed. I do not blame said governors nor the President for launching these restrictions. As a rule governors and presidents do not count infectious disease as an area of expertise and given the models they were presented with and the advice they had from experts on the subject they have acted as best they could in the situation.

But now we have many weeks of data and the patterns and risks of this virus are clear. It’s also becoming more and more apparent that it’s been around longer than we realized and that we likely have more herd immunity that we realized.

The President has offered a phased reopening plan that give flexibility to the various governors. While it is prudent to be cautious It’s become apparent however that there are quite a few Governors and mayors them who have found that they like the idea of absolute power over their people and are using this flexibility to maintain it for political reasons despite the facts on the ground.

In those states where this is the case people are going to have to decide how they are going to react to this. Are we going to assert our freedom or submit? Furthermore state and local police need to decide if they serve and protect their people or if they are going to be an arm of oppression.

It’s time to let the society function as normal and I say this as an overweight man closer to sixty than to fifty whose father had a history of heart attacks. Life is risk and I think it’s time for a free society to live with those risks. The bill has come due for living free I believe Americans in general (with the exception of a few Karens) and myself in particular are willing to take the risks to live that way. As Bill Hoge put it:

The time has come to begin moving to more targeted responses to the pandemic. There are probably communities and activities that still should remain locked down, but most of the country is ready for less heavy-handed measures.

Or as I say often: “A man’s got to die of something“

Report from Louisiana: Reopening Discontent

Posted: May 4, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – We broke quarantine yesterday and crossed the border into Texas.  With Louisiana still shut down and under stay-at-home orders for another two weeks, Texas looks pretty good right now.

For weeks the border has been closed to Louisiana residents, but now that has been lifted and Texas shops and restaurants are open, so we headed west.

We headed to Jefferson, Texas, a small, historic town in East Texas. Residents of Marion County supported Trump heavily in the last presidential election with a 71% strong vote over Hilary Clinton (27%).  Many of the people there are thrilled to see Louisiana customers back in Jefferson; the town has a quaint historic district filled with antique shops, specialty fudge shops, and eateries that have suffered financially since the closure. There are a couple of old, historic hotels and at less than an hour away from Shreveport, Jefferson is a popular day trip destination. People in Louisiana spend a lot of tourist dollars in Jefferson, so opening the state back up to travelers was a welcome move. They have been hit hard by the COVID closure.

Shopkeepers, bartenders, servers, residents, literally everyone we talked to, was thrilled that the state is open and people are coming back to spend money and browse the shops. We talked with several people who praised Trump’s COVID response and others who were firmly rooted in the belief that Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards is keeping Louisiana closed only for federal dollars.

The rhetoric in Louisiana circles is becoming more and more divided over the Edwards response. As it turns out, his stay-at-home order was very non-specific and would have allowed many businesses to stay open in some capacity, significantly reducing the large numbers of people forced into unemployment. The original stay-at-home order, issued March 22, specifically closed salons, gyms, tattoo shops, among others. Businesses not specified could stay open with restrictions, however that was never clear. As a result, places like Barnes and Noble, Ulta Beauty, sporting goods stores, craft stores, among others, closed when all along they could have stayed open with restrictions.

It has all been very murky and now the discontent is rising:

The catalyst is Gov. John Bel Edwards’ decision to extend Louisiana’s statewide stay-at-home order through May 15. The Democratic governor said the move is rooted in science and public safety. Republicans are bristling, preferring a parish-by-parish approach to loosening restrictions that have shuttered businesses and forced hundreds of thousands into unemployment.

At stake is “hundreds of millions of federal dollars in disaster aid for businesses and the state.”

Is Edwards playing it safe and only looking out for the health of Louisiana residents? Or is he parlaying the entire situation into a federal dollar windfall for the state? Has he been intentionally vague about his stay at home order? The answers depend on who you ask.

The bottom line is that the longer Louisiana stays closed, and with neighboring states returning to normal, the pressure on Edwards to reopen the state will increase. Louisiana dollars will be spent in the shops, restaurants, and hotels of other states.

Louisiana legislators return to Baton Rouge today, reconvening their session after a COVID hiatus and even the timing of the legislative return has been contentious.

Looks like the new normal in Louisiana is a lot like the old normal.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

Joe Biden’s “Shoot Someone on 5th Avenue” Moment for Democrats

Posted: May 4, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I remember a while back when the Billy Bush tape came out during the 2016 campaign old friend Stacy McCain wrote that Trump was finished “This election is over. Write “–30–” at the bottom and file it.”. If it had been a regular election year with a regular establishment milquetoast candidate facing a standard Democrat candidate he might have been right. However as it was Donald Trump facing Hillary Clinton he turned out (thanks be to God) to wrong be that day.

I mention that because he now has a piece about Joe Biden being finished:

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.

Now it’s natural that Stacy thinks this, after all we’re reached a point where Kathleen Parker is hitting Democrats in general

In the aftermath of the Kavanaugh hearings, Ford became a symbol of women’s empowerment. She appeared on the cover of Time magazine and received awards and praise for her courage. She also suffered vicious social media attacks and threats, as did Kavanaugh and his family.

She has largely kept to herself since, which is surely good for her soul but is also a reminder of another lesson in the decades-long culture war over sexual harassment. Once the feminist power brokers are finished with you, they move on to slay other monsters. Unless it’s one of their own monsters.

And Andrew Sullivan hitting Joe Biden in particular

Joe Biden has been practicing “sexual violence” for decades: constantly touching women without their prior consent, ruffling and smelling their hair, making comments about their attractiveness, coming up from behind to touch their back or neck. You can see him do it on tape, on countless occasions. He did not stop in 2014, to abide by the standards he was all too willing to impose on college kids. A vice-president could do these things with impunity; a college sophomore could have his life ruined for an inept remark.

Biden is now claiming simply that he never did what Tara Reade said he did. Let’s posit that he didn’t. Too bad. If he were to attempt to defend himself, by his own campus logic, he would be barred any knowledge of what he was precisely accused of, even the identity of his accuser;

as hypocrites, but we haven’t reached a point where Parker or Sullivan has called him to drop out, in fact Sullivan declares bluntly he will vote for him “because Trump” which frankly doesn’t surprise me.

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Furthermore it’s almost quaint to think that Gloria Allred or any of the various “woman’s” groups are going to vet or illustrate any of the existing woman or new women who come out concerning Biden, after all as soon as the Biden interview was done Jake Tapper was already pivoting to use it as an attack on Donald Trump and the LA Times actually ran a piece stating: “He’s not perfect but he’s not Donald Trump“

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2020/05/01/expert-smoke-screening-cnns-jake-tapper-shifts-focus-away-from-biden-to-ask-question-about-allegations-against-trump-as-whataboutism-detectors-overheat/

And we already have one Biden guy out there playing the classic Bill Clinton line from the 1990’s

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These “woman’s groups” don’t get their funding from women who like Reade until a few months ago, believed they were fighting for their rights, their bills get paid by big foundations acting as conduits for Democrat money to push the message of the day.

I’ll give the final word to Miss Allred’s daughter Lisa Bloom with my reply.

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At least she’s honest about it.

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