This is today’s celebrity class:

This video is Wuhan Virus for your eyes.pic.twitter.com/AaUfgBuzqQ

— Carpe Donktum🔹 (@CarpeDonktum) March 19, 2020

The TL:dw version: A bunch of entitled, overpaid people blessed/cursed with fame, are virtue-signaling the rest of us by “singing” the worst song in pop music history [1] – a mewling paeon to socialism and atheism from a singer who himself became so embittered and disconnected from the world by his fame and wealth that it had become something of a cultural punch line before he was murdered and became the icon for the death of every baby boomer’s innocence – as they hole up in their Manhattan condos, California estates and rural getaways…

…as millions of people wonder how long their paychecks are going to keep coming, or if they will, and the rest of the country waits to see if the army of homeless that crowd California’s streets get completely ravaged by this new plague.

Imagine, indeed.

I’ve never been a hugeLarry the Cable Guy fan, but for today, I am totally on board.

[1] This may be a reach – but work with me, here.

I think “ex-Beatle preference” is a key dispositive indicator of political outlook and personal attitude.

I suspect “progressives” prefer John Lennon. He was the angsty, prickly one, the one who seemed most prone to have a penchant for Sylvia Plath He died tragically, relatively young, and in the grand romantic tradition, illustrating and confirming the progressive’s innate hopelessness.

I’m going to guess conservatives trend toward the sunny, optimistic, irrepressible McCartney.

Me? I’m a guitar player. I’m with Harrison.

On Friday, when Minnesota had 14 cases of the virus, Governor Walz announced schools would remain open because health care workers needed daycare so they could go to work and fight the virus.
 On Sunday, when Minnesota had 35 cases of the virus, Governor Walz closed the schools except for children of health care workers who need daycare so they can go to work to fight the virus.  Everybody else’s kids, stay home. But not to halt the spread of the virus – no, it’s to give administrators time to figure out how to teach kids who aren’t in school. 

Basically, this is another “in service” week, when teachers and administrators try to recreate the wheel that Phoenix University already invented, what every home-schooled parent already uses: distance learning.

Now.  In the middle of the pandemic.  Now, you start thinking about the possibility of doing something different.  Now, after all those years of criticizing and belittling home-schoolers as ignorant and fearful racists, afraid their kids will catch cooties from The Other; now, you’re adopting their methods without admitting they were right all along.

And the Twin Cities media praised keeping the schools open as bold leadership on Friday; and praised the decision to close the schools as bold leadership on Sunday; without ever mentioning the two decisions made two days apart are completely contradictory.

Here’s an alternate possibility.  St. Paul teachers were on strike last week.  If the governor had closed the schools, they wouldn’t have been paid.  So they quick settled the strike and now they’re back to work at full pay when the schools close.  Lucky for them, they settled.  Almost as if they were tipped off.

Joe Doakes

The DFL and the Teachers Union…connected?

Say it isn’t so!

That’d be like saying “progressive” journalists had a sub rosa agenda or something.

And that’s just crazy talk.

As the city of Baltimore notches it’s fifth COVID-19 case, it’s mayor, Jack Young, has issued a plea to some of his most notable constituents; the city needs hospital beds for victims of the public health crisis, so please stop shooting each other.

No, seriously.

He really, really means it:

“I want to reiterate how completely unacceptable the level of violence is that we have seen recently,” Young said. “We will not stand for mass shootings and an increase in crime.”

“For those of you who want to continue to shoot and kill people of this city, we’re not going to tolerate it,” Young implored. “We’re going to come after you and we’re going to get you.”

I am no expert – like, the mayor of a city that’s been controlled by the Democrats for three generations – but something tells me that this should’ve been a priority before the city had a public health emergency, and if the city wasn’t “coming after and getting, criminals when times are relatively easy, the job is going to be just a little…

… well, Captain Obvious is going to skip straight over Major and jump straight to Lieutenant Colonel if he finishes that sentence, isn’t he?

Is offended by government ham-handedness – even in an emergency (although conservatism recognizes the tension between liberty and public order).

However, any talk of domestic travel restrictions that keeps these morons sequestered away from the general public works juuuust fine for me.,

I could just scream.

But more of this, faster:

BREAKING: There is an anti-malaria drug called Hydroxychloroquine that looks to be highly effective at treating Coronavirus.

Initial tests show that on a dose of 600mg, 90% of infected COVID-19 patients tested negative in just 6 days. pic.twitter.com/XXDamhYmvn

— Michael Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) March 18, 2020

It may turn out all for naught. But on the other hand, a very timely advance like that – almost deus ex machina, if not a maguffin – would be a wonderful break for the economy, wouldn’t it?

On the slower and steadier front – US Health and Human Services will waive HIPAA regulations for “Telecare” consultations, even for HIPAA infractions committed “In good faith“:

Secretary Azar:

“Thanks to the Public Health Emergency I declared in January, more older Americans will be able to access healthcare they need from their home, without worrying about putting themselves or others at risk during the COVID-19 outbreak. Providers will be allowed to use everyday technologies to talk to telehealth patients, more telehealth services will be covered for millions more Medicare beneficiaries, and providers will be allowed to offer these telehealth benefits to Medicare beneficiaries at a lower cost than traditional services. From the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, President Trump has been knocking out every bureaucratic obstacle possible that stands in the way of a rapid and effective response. We are grateful to the hard work of those across HHS who put together these actions, and we’re grateful to American healthcare providers for working to take advantage of these options and continue their heroic work serving patients during the outbreak.”

What a week: liberals buying guns, people appreciating going to work, kids wanting to be back at school?

I’ve been saying for years – after a disaster, everyone becomes a conservative. Who knows?

From our First World War series [which we’ll get around to finishing someday], a look back at the “Spanish Flu”:

The Seventh Seal

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gas on Sunday at Sam’s Club was $1.98 per gallon. That’s the lowest I’ve seen in a long time.

Sure, it puts a couple extra bucks in my pocket. It also makes it possible for people to drive more, which creates global warming gases to kill the planet. 

I’m saving money and have more freedom. That’s a bad thing.

 I blame Trump

Joe Doakes 

This, and especially the ongoing slashers in regulation, certainly have their upsides.

It’s a shame it takes an international crisis to discover it.

First prediction: there will be a Coronavirus vaccine.

It may arrive sooner, it may arrive later. Probably somewhere in between. I have no idea.

But it’ll come rom a country with a relatively free market for healthcare. The US? Norway? Germany? I don’t know – but it’ll be someplace that hasn’t nationalized healthcare.

Feel free to mark my words on this.

Beyond that ?

Last week on Twitter, Scott “Dilbert” Adams wrote:

In the next two weeks we will witness a breathtaking degree of human ingenuity. It’s starting to bubble up now. The most capable among us are now fully engaged. That virus doesn’t know what’s coming for it. #WuhanVirus

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 13, 2020

The shortage of ventilators is the thing that’s terrifying people. The stories from Italy about doctors choosing who lives and who dies are pretty mortifying, especially if you have older relatives and family with lung conditions.

So people are innovating:

The doctor stresses this is a last ditch measure – to be used in cases where doctors are making life or death choices among 2-4 people at a time.

But it’s a start.

Despite the ongoing pandemic, spring break regulars are crowding beaches, bars, and other vacation hotspots along the gulf coast.

Many of them, being 20 somethings and ergo knowing everything, I have heard that people in their 20s always recover, and rarely get sick, from Covid19.

So they cavort about the gulf coast and the south Atlantic, doing what 20 somethings (who can afford to travel to the gulf coast for spring break, which for some reason was never something I or anyone I knew could actually do, and when the hell did this actually become a thing?) on vacation tend to do; hang out in bars, hang out in crowds, and jam together like a colony of penguins.

I saw the footage from Florida, South Padre Island, and New Orleans showing throngs of drunken, loudmouthed, teeming hordes of addlepated bobbleheads. The footage didn’t focus on the bartenders, hotel workers, Uber drivers, Airbnb hosts and retail and hospitality workers in the area, of course. But they will be catching the virus from the throngs of idiots they serve.

And, inevitably, passing it along to their friends, significant others, similes, people in stores – You know, the usual epidemic thing.

And inevitably, the virus will get past to the other great population along the gulf coast; retirees. People in their 60s through 90s. The people who are far and away the most susceptible to the ravages of Covid 19. 

Sorry to say, I am afraid there’s a solid chance of absolute carnage along the gulf coast. I hope I’m wrong.

But it appears Florida’s governor is more than a little concerned, himself.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

On Friday, when Minnesota had 14 cases of the virus, Governor Walz announced schools would remain open because health care workers needed daycare so they could go to work and fight the virus.

 On Sunday, when Minnesota had 35 cases of the virus, Governor Walz closed the schools except for children of health care workers who need daycare so they can go to work to fight the virus.  Everybody else’s kids, stay home. But not to halt the spread of the virus – no, it’s to give administrators time to figure out how to teach kids who aren’t in school. 

Basically, this is another “in service” week, when teachers and administrators try to recreate the wheel that Phoenix University already invented, what every home-schooled parent already uses: distance learning.

Now.  In the middle of the pandemic.  Now, you start thinking about the possibility of doing something different.  Now, after all those years of criticizing and belittling home-schoolers as ignorant and fearful racists, afraid their kids will catch cooties from The Other; now, you’re adopting their methods without admitting they were right all along.

Joe Doakes

Public institutions, like education, or if nothing even more subject to “not invented here” syndrome than the private sector.

But since we are talking about revising “progressive” assumptions about the world?

Perhaps jamming everyone into “high density housing” isn’t the best strategy for (and yes, progressivism is in the midst of corrupting this term as well) “Resiliency”..

I’m trying to imagine people in long rows of apartment buildings, “socially isolated” from their neighbors but unable to escape them, either.

Dan Crenshaw on the “why” that our media just can’t seem to bring itself to put out there:

Scoring cheap political points is easy, but also dishonest. In the US, our tests for coronavirus have been delayed and difficult to get. We recently addressed the problem by loosening regulations.

But why’d it take so long? Who is really to blame?

WATCH pic.twitter.com/rYjhWNe6PG

— Rep. Dan Crenshaw (@RepDanCrenshaw) March 13, 2020

Crenshaw needs to become a governor or Senator, and start spooling up to run for President. He is almost literally the character I had in mind in this 2005 serial that seems increasingly timely today.

Some people say “the Coronavirus is a very real thing, and it’s going to kill a lot of people, and we’re past the point of no return on a whole lot of misery already [more later today], and we really need to clamp down on social interaction for a while to try to get it under control and save a whoooole lot of lives”.

Others say “The media and left (pardon the redundancy) are using this as one of the crises that Rahm Emanuel told them never to waste, to try to undercut the Administration, draw attention away from the dumpster fire that is their endorsement process, and jam down funding and civil rights restrictions they favor”.

Still others: “Our bureaucracy – which was started neither by Trump nor Obama – has completely crapped the bed on things like developing and distributing tests. And our “elite” media, which seems to be increasingly a PR firm for the establishment, hasn’t done jack to hold them, or the creeping socialism that has presided over this catastrophe, accountable – which is supposedly their mandate”.

Which is correct?

Why choose? They’re all correct.

Read this entire thread.

1/As a San Francisco resident and business owner, I’m wondering—can I trust the health judgments of leaders who let thousands live on the streets in their filth? And if we are now getting homeless into shelter, why couldn’t that have happened earlier? Doesn’t their health count?

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) March 17, 2020

Emergencies happen. Emergency powers exist for a reason (and we will get to that today or tomorrow).

But when citizens – taxpayers, business owners – can expect the government to always side with lawlessness, against them, how is popular self-government supposed to survive?

It can’t.

I do, sincerely, wonder how this nation can carry on as one big entity. Either it needs to re-embrace federalism (and neither major party is really on board, at least not nationally) or confront the notion that authoritarianism is creeping in (and no, not from the Bad Orange Man) in ways that this small-d democracy was never supposed to allow and decide if we’re OK with that…

…or re-evaluate the whole “unbreakable union of 50 states” thing.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed (late last week):

On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control recommended elderly patients stock up on medicine in case the virus causes a supply chain disruption.

I called my pharmacy to stock up. The insurance company won’t let me, it’s too early, I still have pills left.

Yes, but I’m trying to get ahead of the supply chain disruption. I need a refill now. Plus stay on my existing refill schedule. This 30 days supply is just to put in the back pocket for emergencies

The doctor is reluctant to write the prescription, since I already have one and an additional 30 days supply now does nothing to solve the supply chain problem, it’s simply empties the warehouse and moves the problem forward in time.

The experts recommend it, she doesn’t want to write it, he doesn’t want to pay for it, and they don’t want to fill it.  Gee, I can’t imagine why the public is confused about who to believe, and in a panic over what to do about it.

Looks like I’m going online. How do you spell metformin in Mexican?

Joe Doakes

While some of the administration’s moves on regulation over this past few days have, perhaps helped this, the bureaucracy – private and especially public – has not covered itself in glory so far during this crisis.



Thanks to everyone that’s donated so far! I appreciate it more than I can express.

———-

After 18 years of doing this blog, I’m continually humbled and amazed that people keep coming by. I say I’d keep doing it even if I still had five readers a day (as I did, back through most of 2002) – but seeing people actually keep coming back certainly makes it even more fun.

I thank you all.

I am passing the hat, as I usually do every year about this time – and am gratefuil for any support you might be able to spare.

UPDATE – Don’t like PayPal?

We can sure try iWallet, if you prefer:

Update 3/19 – Thanks, all!

I stopped by the Roseville Target yesterday morning on my way back from another errand. It was 7:50 AM.

I don’t need toilet paper – a 12 pack tides me over for good long while,  now that I have no kids at home – but I took a stroll past the paper products aisle. There were maybe a couple dozen packages of toilet paper scattered about the place.  Call it 95% empty.   

I thought “must’ve been a busy night“.

Then I talked to one of the girls at the coffee stand. She said trucks came in mid-evening last night and completely restocked the toilet paper (and the produce, which was picked pretty clean last night). And they sold out again before closing at midnight.

But but but but there would be shortages in a socialist economy pic.twitter.com/vnYEFUaIVq

— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) March 14, 2020

I tried to ask Mr. Ackerman if stores in Venezuela were upstocking several times a day between bouts of empty shelves. For some reason – dare I say, “unexpectedly” – I haven’t heard back.

The bad news? There are a lot of panicky ninnies out there.

Mayor of Champagne, IL, “responding” to Covid19….

...bans gun sales?

According to a local report from WAND 17, Champaign Mayor Deborah Frank Feinen has issued an executive order that would give her office “extraordinary powers.” She has issued the order despite the town and surrounding area not having a single case of the disease. 

“The executive order allows the city to be flexible to properly respond to the emergency needs of our community. None of the options will necessarily will be implemented but are available in order to protect the welfare and safety of our community if needed,” Jeff Hamilton the City of Champaign’s Communications Manger told WAND-TV.

Here is the list of other items from the declaration/executive order, which also includes the ability to ban the sale of “food, water, fuel, clothing, and/or other commodities, materials, goods, services and resources,” in addition to alcohol and gasoline. Additionally, government agents or officials have the ability to seize private property and to cut off the city water supply. The mayor justifies everything “in the interest of public safety and wolf.”

The declaration goes a lot further than that. The woman is a Mussolini wannabe.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If warm weather kill viruses, is global  warming a good thing?

True, it hasn’t been conclusively proven that warm weather kills this particular virus. But can we afford to take the chance? The time to act is now.

I’m cranking up the thermostat.

Joe Doakes

I don’t want to miss any bets, myself.

Diane Napper is running for MN State Senate in SD63 . Check out her website. Help out if you can.

And if I can’t convince you to “socially distance” yourself for the duration of the public health crisis, hopefully this excellent article will. It’s a long, it’s a long, technical read – but the uphot is, the difference between a flu-like .5% death rate, and Italy/Iran/Wuhan-like 3-6%, is keeping the rate of infections down to what the health system can handle. That means lowering the number of infections at any given time, so the heatlh care system can keep up.

It’s literally a matter of life and death.

Wash your hands – often. Wash down surfaces. Don’t sneeze on people – sneeze into a hanky or your elbow or anything but open air. Enjoy some alone time. Stay home from work if you can, and keep your distance if you can’t.

… how many mulligans does a democrat get before people start actually calling them on there, well, “inconsistencies”?

The answer, of course, provided they are progressive enough, is “as many as they want”

“Authenticity”.

This is not the Babylon Bee. 

The article itself is a moderately interesting read, if only to (try to help sort of maybe kinda) understand the minds of those whose entire frame of reference begins and ends with progressivism filtered through the lens of identity feminism.

It’s easy to laugh at the medias predilection for hysteria mongering.. I mean, I get it – it sells papers and gets people to tune in, to newspapers who sales are in death spirals and television stations and networks who’s ratings are in free fall.

And laugh, we certainly are.

But there is a very, very dark side to the squandering of trust that happens every time the media over blows a snowstorm, or a dossier, or an attorney generals report. 

Famine is one of the key markers, and sources for the legends, in human history. It’s been the sabertooth tiger outside the campfire light for most of humanities history.

But never in that history has there been a famine in a society that had two things:

1. A relatively free market
2. A relatively free media – Defined as a media that is free to ask questions and report on the answers it gets without government interference.

Those two advances have combined – and I do mean combined, because you don’t get the benefits of the one without the other – To illuminate famine, at least on a widespread, society destroying basis, so every time they have ever been combined. No society with a free market and a Free Press, even relatively speaking, has ever had a famine. Those two factors also combined it to bring other, perhaps even in calculable, blessings to humanity – but let’s stick with famine for right now, since it’s appropriate to today’s situation.

So what happens when you have a Media that is Free – but nobody trusts it?

Who do you trust, these days?

Its’ not an idle question.   One is completely justified in thinking the media is whipping up a certain amount of hysteria to sell papers and to smear the President – which isn’t to say Trump’s been covering himself with glory in this particular crisis, but the “elite” media made it very well known they were in the bag against Trump to the point changing the rules of the trade to “denormalize” the President; in that context, a pandemic is just another crisis not to waste.

Self-government depends on institutions we can trust – not just the  media, but the courts, law enforcement, the bureaucracy, everything.

And we just can’t anymore.  Not when the issue is more political than a car crash or soybean futures.

I’ve seen a few Democrats on me on social media saying they thought Joe Biden’s performance with the auto workers the other day it was a good episode, and a sign of strength.

I was truly, truly not convinced.

I think I have really, really good reason not to be:

If Biden now has a reputation as a champion of gun confiscation — and if construction workers in Michigan are asking him about it, it suggests he does — he is going to have a hard time winning back the voters that Trump peeled away from the Obama coalition. Barack Obama didn’t say much about guns at all until his second term had begun, and, once he did, he presided over the loss of the Senate, the loss of the White House, and a record-breaking period of civilian firearms sales. Judging by their rhetoric, Democrats seem to believe that the center of gravity has changed on this question since then. But the evidence for this is scant. The State of Virginia is run solely by Democrats — Democrats who were bankrolled by Michael Bloomberg and who promised to pass restrictive gun control as their first priority. They failed, and sparked a massive backlash in the process. Do we think the playing field looks different in Michigan?

In a way, Biden‘s outburst serves as a Rorschach blob; Democrats see a Trump like outburst a candidly unguarded rhetoric; conservative to see a working stiff cornering a candidate with wildly contradictory messages on the issue, and the candidate flailing.

I’m going to stick with “flailing“.

America’s left, sotted as it is with Urban Progressive Privilege, has little doubt that it is the the smart crowd.

Of course, you don’t have to be a conservative in Saint Paul, or on social media, to know that that’s just not so. This has been bouncing around for a while, but it’s worth a read.

Pullquote:

In the 2018 GSS, respondents were asked for whom they voted in 2016 (PRES16) or for whom they would have voted if they had voted (IF16WHO): Clinton, Trump, someone else, or no one.

On the verbal ability test (WORDSUM), not surprisingly the median number of vocabulary questions correct was the same for both Clinton and Trump supporters: 6 out of 10 words correct.  The mean verbal ability score for Trump supporters was 6.15 words correct, while the mean verbal ability score for Clinton supporters was 5.69 correct, a difference of nearly a half a question on a 10-question test.  This moderate difference is statistically significant at p<.0005.

Further, Trump supporters score significantly higher on verbal ability (6.15 correct) than the rest of the public combined (5.70 correct), whereas Clinton supporters score significantly lower on verbal ability (5.69 correct) than the rest of the public combined (5.98 correct).

I know, I know – another self-service social science survey that makes one side feel good and jabs at the other. Notify the media.

Wait. I am the media.

Big Left’s smug superior self-image is…irrationally exuberant.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Teachers say they’re striking because the schools are unsafe, not just for money.  But the solutions they propose don’t address the root causes of the problem.

Society painted itself into this corner a little at a time, each new initiative sounding good but each one sacrificing a little, too.  In every aspect of life, when there isn’t enough to go around, society must practice triage, must decide who gets the scarce commodity and who is robbed of it.  I suggest we’ve been making the wrong decision.

Child 1 has autism.  He needs special education, extra attention from teacher, additional time on tests but we’ve mainstreamed him in the classroom with average and smart kids.  While teacher is working with him, the other 29 students are bored, learning nothing.

Child 2 doesn’t want to be in school but is lumped with students who do.  He acts out, picks fights, talks back, disrupts class but we can’t remove him because of his race.  While the teacher is dealing with him, the other 29 kids are bored, learning nothing.

Child 3 has mental health problems.  You get the idea.

Two kids might have better lives, the disruptive one probably will drop out soon.  27 kids fail the reading and math test for their grade level.  Which is understandable, since they’ve been sitting in class learning nothing all year.

The solution may not be hiring mental health counselors in the main office or racism monitors in every building.  The solution may be removing the three who need special attention so the 27 can thrive.  No amount of teacher salary raises will solve that problem.

Joe Doakes


All very true – if the goal is to actually educate children.

And for many, probably most, teachers that is the goal. But for the administrative class, and a public employee unions that really control the whole situation, it’s really about power and transfer of wealth. If any children actually get educated, chalk it up to collateral benefits achieved by pure happenstance.

Joe Biden tells 2nd Amendment supporter he’s, er, “full of shit”.

“You are actively trying to end our Second Amendment right and take away our guns,” the worker said to Biden, according to video captured by CBS reporter Bo Erickson.

Biden immediately interjected, saying “You’re full of shit,” and implored those gathered to listen to his clarification.

Then, he shows that he is, indeed, full of…

…well, you know. Specifically FOS bits are emphasized by me:

“I support the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment — just like right now, if you yelled ‘fire,’ that’s not free speech,” Biden continued. “And from the very beginning — I have a shotgun, I have a 20-gauge, a 12-gauge. My sons hunt. Guess what? You’re not allowed to own any weapon. I’m not taking your gun away at all.” [Which is it? Ed.]

The man cited “viral” videos surrounding his claim that Biden is against the Second Amendment, saying the former vice president was “trying to take our guns.”

“I did not say that. I did not say that,” Biden repeated. “It’s a viral video like the other ones they’re putting out that are simply a lie.”

“This is not OK, alright?” the man shot back.

Biden replied, “Don’t tell me that, pal, or I’m going to go outside with your ass.”

“You’re working for me, man!” the worker said.

“I’m not working for you,” Biden said. “Don’t be such a horse’s ass.”

But then, Biden has also told us he’s going to put Beto “Hell Yeah, I’m Coming For Your Guns” O’Rourke in charge of gun policy, so it’d seem he’s full of…

…well, you know where this leads, right?