May 21, 2020

I listened to about 3 minutes of CNN this morning as I drove home from my sunrise vantage point...

IMG_5381

... and I feel like I can sum up what cable news will be saying over and over today on the topic of ending the coronavirus lockdown in the various states:

Democrats are saying that we're all in this together and this is beyond politics but Republicans are playing politics. Republicans are saying that we're all in this together and this is beyond politics but Democrats are playing politics.

The audio from CNN was imperfect — some home-based line? — and I could hear a man mumbling in the background. At one point, I believe I heard Mr. Mumble say "Jesus Christ."

37 comments:

Kevin said...

Which is the party of “never let a crisis go to waste”?

Hint: it’s the one accusing the other party of “playing politics with a crisis”.

Mike Sylwester said...

We are all in this together!

Milo Minderbinder said...

And we mere mortals have the temerity to ask why we pay politicians and media hounds so much....

Howard said...

The sun is shaped like the start of one of those bikini atoll tests of the hydrogen bomb.

Leland said...

Exactly why I quit watching any network news. I still listen from time to time to local radio news, which carries national coverage, but ugh. I'm finding Podcasts to be the way to go. The podcast content providers usually pride themselves in coming up with NEW content, much like this blog.

grog said...

A little surprised that CNN was evenly balanced.

Ray - SoCal said...

Amazing photo. Nicely framed, great color.

Wince said...

The origins of Federalism.

TV Tropes: This Is My Side

If two characters who don't like each other, or who happen to be angry with each other at the moment (especially in a Feud Episode), live in one house or apartment, one of them will be eventually seen painting a white line in the middle of the residence, explaining: "This is my side; this is yours. Don't go on my part!" Naturally, it's Serious Business.

Eventually complications will begin to show up, like how long the line is expected to be maintained, guests being forced to follow those rules, or necessities like the fridge or bathroom being available only on one side.

Related to This Is My Chair, which is usually a throwaway gag. See also Property Line, which is the same plot on a larger scale. Truth in Television, as those who have ever had an argument with a sibling, roommate, or Soviet Bloc can attest to.

RichardJohnson said...

Numbers support easing up. As many prominent Democrats appear to be innumerate- which includes most of the media- numbers don't matter for many Democrats.The 7-day average peaked on April 15-21, at 2,208 deaths. In nearly a month, to 14-20 May, the 7-day average has fallen 39%, to 1,351 deaths. That tells me that easing up is appropriate.

Selective 7-day average of COVID-19(Winnie the Flu) deaths
15-21 April 2,208
22-28 April 1,961
29 Apr-5 May 1,858
6-12 May 1,632
7-13 May 1,532
8-14 May 1,481
9-15 May 1,469
10-16 May 1,439
11-17 May 1,456
12-18 May 1,448
13-19 May 1,402
14-20 May 1,351

Corona virus USA

roesch/voltaire said...

Yesterday showed an increase in confirmed Covid 19 cases so we must be doing something right. I would encourage Trump voter to get out in public, not wear masks or keep social distance to show the rest of us what freedom means,

Michael K said...

Democrats want to keep the economy down in hopes of another Great Depression which kept them in power 50 years.

Republicans want to go back to work.

The Ratchet Effect is the Democrat hope.

The Covid-19 lockdown measures are supposed to be temporary, but Higgs expects them to endure due to another consequence of the negativity effect: because bad events have more impact than good ones, people strive harder to avoid losses than they do to achieve gains. As a result, any new government program typically creates a powerful coalition committed to its preservation: an “iron triangle” consisting of a legislative committee, an administrative bureaucracy, and a group of special interests reaping benefits from the program.

“Attempts to eliminate or diminish emergency programs,” Higgs wrote, “run up against a fundamental principle of political action: People will fight harder to keep an established benefit than they will fight to obtain an identical benefit in the first place. This asymmetry assists every effort to hang onto iron triangles created or enlarged during a crisis.”

wendybar said...

We're not all in this together no matter who says it. Governor Whitmer is telling people they can't go to their summer houses, yet there were cars outside of HERS!! Chris Cuomo (CNN) had corona virus, supposedly hid in his basement,(until he didn't and drove with family and nanny to home under construction in The Hamptons) and then pretended to come out of the basement for the first time..(he lied) Then there was the transgendered lady, who took her Mom out of the Nursing Home she was in in Pennsylvania, before forcing the Nursing homes to take infected. They all suck. These are Democrats. The Republicans are doing the right thing. Desantis deserves an apology because the only ones killing Granny are on the left.

I'm Not Sure said...

"We're all in this together"...

Loosely translated into Democrat: "People must do what they're told is best for them by officials, and everybody must do the same thing."

Loosely translated into Republican: "People can do what they think is best for themselves, even if it's not what others are doing."

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Hey how ‘bout a feel good story then! Remember when the covidiots at Liberty University (yes Falwell Jr’s school) decided to reopen after Spring Break on March 16 and everybody in media said PEOPLE WILL DIE at a campus that stays open? Well it didn’t turn out how Karen B and her wife Kenny kept telling us stoooopider people it would turn out. Not at all. Unexpectedly good news! Paul “Karen” Krugman wrote that Mr. Falwell “seems to have created his own personal viral hot spot.”

Ha ha.

ONE student and four staff tested positive over the next 60 days, all asymptomatic. How?

We reality based Americans have been telling the Karens and Cannucks how older people with two or more co-morbidities are in danger. Everyone else less so. Especially children. Closing schools was the dumbest move we ever made. Now today the CDC finally emits a huge OOPS and says in its Emily Litella voice nevermind the virus cannot in fact live on surfaces for days, not even hours. Like all viruses it dies off pretty quickly outside a host.

So it doesn’t spread like they said either. Surprise! Sorry about your economy!





Paul Krugman wrote that Mr. Falwell “seems to have created his own personal viral hot spot.”

rehajm said...

YouTube TV has CNN and some network of that Young Turks guy from the election night schadenfreude videos. So much toddler kicking and screaming on both networks they look like twins.

BoatSchool said...

Best comment on the lockdown was by a barber who was getting ready to reopen his shop despite the martial law governor decreeing that such shops remain closed.

Comparing and contrasting his out-of-work barbers to the regularly paid commentariat and government workers, he stated “We may all be in the same storm together. We are definitely not in the same boat together.”

Josephbleau said...

I see the Democrats as an application of Conquest's Third Law. "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies."

Choirmom34 said...

My favorite sunrise pic ever!

Jersey Fled said...

Just looked at some NJ numbers.

60% of the deaths occurred in five counties near NYC. My home county, Camden County, had 2.7% of the total deaths. Nine counties had even fewer.

Yet idiot-governor Murphy wants the entire state to follow the same plan and same schedule.

Neighboring states of NY and PA are reopening county by county.

Choirmom34 said...

My favorite sunrise pic ever!

Choirmom34 said...

My favorite sunrise pic ever!

MountainMan said...

I have lived through the Asian Flu pandemic of 1957-58 (I had it); a measles outbreak in 1960 that kept me out of school for almost 3 weeks and affected almost every student in my 3rd grade class; the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-69 (I had it); and the swine flu of 2009-10 (I may have had it, got pretty sick but not sure if it was the flu). I don’t recall during any of those events any lockdowns or schools closing.

And I am completely fed up with the “we are all in this together” mantra. No, we are not. They are millions of us with jobs working from home, drawing salaries, or retired and getting pensions, and doing just fine. There are millions more “essential” workers still working - some at risk - and under pressure to keep goods and services going. And there are millions more who have lost their jobs - many forever - and seeing their life savings or a business they spent a lifetime building disappearing, probably for good. And one political party thinks that is just fine.

RichardJohnson said...

roesch/voltaire, any reaction to the 39% drop in in nearly a month for 7-day average deaths?

Sebastian said...

"Republicans are saying that we're all in this together"

Maybe Republican politicians, but ordinary righties? Most of us are saying that we are not in this together in the same way: WuFlu mainly affects sick seniors, and they should be isolated; everyone else should freely assess their own risk and act in their own best interest; and kids not at risk should not be harmed further by school closures--togetherness means doing right by the young.

Hey Skipper said...

@roesch/voltaire:

Yesterday showed an increase in confirmed Covid 19 cases so we must be doing something right.

More testing, perhaps?

I would encourage Trump voter to get out in public, not wear masks or keep social distance to show the rest of us what freedom means,

Here in Idaho, it means showing predictions were at least 97% wrong.

Yancey Ward said...

"Yesterday showed an increase in confirmed Covid 19 cases so we must be doing something right. I would encourage Trump voter to get out in public, not wear masks or keep social distance to show the rest of us what freedom means"

The above is what you get from the innumerate and those who don't bother looking at the relevant data sets. Here are the relevant numbers:

7-day moving average of new cases/day May 20th inclusive= 23,197
7-day moving average of new cases/day May 13th inclusive= 23,894

And here are the 7-day moving averages of the tests run in both periods:

7-day moving average of new test results May 20th inclusive= 379,000
7-day moving average of new test results May 13th inclusive= 312,000

I don't care how you try to slice the above data, new cases/day are falling in the last week- we tested 67,000 more people/day and got 700 fewer new cases/day.

In order for the 7-day average to not fall significantly in the next two days, we will have to find 27,000 new cases today and tomorrow.

stevew said...

"Jesus Christ" I am sick of the expression "We're all in this together"!

exhelodrvr1 said...

We're all in this together. Unless, of course, you live in a nursing home in a Democratic-run state. Oh, and don't try to stop infected people from NY from entering your state.

bagoh20 said...

I stopped watching network news almost entirely since this began, and I was an avid watcher before, a couple hours a day. I watched a few minutes today, and now I'm contemplating suicide. It was non-stop disaster theater. Item after item of things that are just going wrong all around us. Multiple angles on the virus, but every angle was another way something was going wrong. Lots of talk about masks and staying at home and lock downs, and from watching you got the impression nobody was working at all. I know this is bullshit, from the the employment numbers and from my own experience. A majority have been working all along, and I didn't miss a day of work. I have noticed a very strong increase in traffic over the last month and it's growing every day. Most of my customers never stop asking for product, and even the ones shut down are now ramping back up.

The news is entirely fake. It's a play, theater, narrative, and all negative. I'm not going back to watching it. It's just not healthy. I watched it terrify people around me with unsubstantiated claims and predictions of mass death. Completely irresponsible. So much damage done so fast to so many. What an embarrassment journalism is today. I don't know any profession I have less respect for. Even an abortionist does something helpful on occasion.

bagoh20 said...

"I would encourage Trump voter to get out in public, not wear masks or keep social distance to show the rest of us what freedom means,"

DONE. And the numbers are growing fast. People are starting to ask how this fraud happened and who pushed it.

Masks have been shown to have no statistical effect on influenza-like viral infections.
A lot of social distancing just forced people into smaller more heavily used areas, likely increasing infections.
What we have been shown is who loves tyranny like a warm blanket, and what leaders love to exercise power for it's own sake and nothing more, and how they use the oldest excuses to to do it. Yea, we learned good and hard what freedom is, and how little respect some have for it. We learned how easy it can be lost.

bagoh20 said...

The only people saying we are all in this together are the ones sacrificing little to nothing. If you are losing everything, you know damned well who isn't with you on that ride.

Yancey Ward said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yancey Ward said...

Let's try that again:

When I first heard the phrase "We're all in this together" in relation to COVID-19 and the Assault of the Karens, this is what came to mind immediately, and it has stuck with me since then.

Jim at said...

Yesterday showed an increase in confirmed Covid 19 cases so we must be doing something right.

Yeah. It's called increased testing.

TJM said...

Ann,

If you're listening to CNN, there is no hope for you.

I will sum this up for you since you listen to CNN. CNN, in collusion with other "news" agencies tried to drive President Trump unlawfully through:

1) Russia, Russia, Russia. Professor Dershowitz said from the start, collusion is not a crime, so there is no basis for this. There was no evidence of collusion as it turns out except for collusion by Demtards, like the Clintoons, with Russia.

2) Impeachment. Again, Professor Dershowitz said the Demtard impeachment was constitutionally impermissible since it was based on no standard articulated in the constitution.

3) China Flu. Even while the fake impeachment was underway, President Trump was taking steps to prevent the spread of the China Flu, starting with banning flights to and from China, for which he was called by Senile Joe and Crying Chuck Schumer a racist. Then when his actions proved prescient they backed off but began trying to hang the China Flu around his neck even though it is the Demtards who are in bed with China.

CNN would deny any of the above since they are not fact nor reality based.

ken in tx said...

Hey mountainman, I too had the Big Measles in 60. Except it was right after school was out and I missed several weeks of summer because of it. The world went on without me.

The Godfather said...

I had forgotten the Hong Kong Flu (can I call it that, or am I racist?) was in 1968-69. I graduated from law school in 1968, and in 1969 I was in Army Basic Training at Ft. Bliss, TX and then CST (Combat Support Training -- I was trained to support combat by being a clerk) at Ft. Huachuca, AZ. The Army was on constant alert for any sign of infectious disease among the trainees, but I don't recall anyone who was worried about the flu, or who had it. I do remember that during this period the first human beings landed on the Moon, the Manson murders were committed, and there was a big rock concert at some place called Woodstock in NY State. Why weren't we all ordered to "lock down"? They could have landed on the Moon when the Flu was over, couldn't they?

The "New Normal"? Why doesn't anyone say it should be be like it was in 1968-69? Except for the Viet Nam War, and the Manson murders, that sounds pretty good to me.