Whatever Wednesday

TRENDING

• St. Louis couple who aimed guns at protestors charged with felony weapons count" Drudge Report, 7/21
• "Minneapolis police experience surge of departures" Ditto
• "China orders Christians to take down images of Jesus from homes" Ditto

THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE . . . PORTLAND

"It would be one thing if municipal authorities in Portland could legitimately claim that they have things under control. They don’t. The mobs have been clashing with the local cops for months. This longstanding riot is a stark commentary on the misgovernance of Mayor Wheeler, who is better at insulting federal law enforcement than doing his job."  Rich Lowry, National Review Online, 7/21

FAKE NEWS

"Fake news will become more sophisticated, and fake, ambiguous, and spun-up stories will spread widely. Hoaxes will have higher production value. It is, for instance, getting easier and easier to create video of someone saying something he or she never said — a tool both for fake news and false denials . . . 

"A lot of news is like this now, especially on points of political contention or embarrassment relating to the coronavirus pandemic. News outlets have uncritically accepted stories that the early warnings not to wear masks, given by public-health officials, were a “noble lie” to preserve available masks for medical personnel during a shortage. Of course, this isn’t really believable, as those early warnings came buttressed by dubious, preexisting studies assuming improbable things about human nature. But journalists have participated in the retcon anyway.

"At the end of the day, that may be the most troubling thing of all: The journalists themselves don’t seem bothered by the obvious double-standards and shoddy practices that have infected their own work and the wider information environment. They look zealously for evidence of a COVID spike after a single Donald Trump re-election rally. They shrug as New York City’s contact tracers are instructed not to ask COVID-carriers whether they’ve attended the massive “largely peaceful” protests."  Michael Brendan Doughterty, NRO, 7/21

MASK WEARING'The CDC already recommends that everyone “should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public” — though the agency recommended the opposite when the outbreak began — as a way of mitigating the spread of the coronavirus. The media can’t stop talking about wearing masks. Lots of people do. Some people don’t. Businesses are free to force customers to wear them on their private property. As far as I can tell, most do. State governments are free to mandate mask wearing, or strongly suggest it, or not.

"Mask wearing has become just another stupid front in our partisan war. The fact is that whenever Donald Trump fails to engage the federal government in ways that Democrats demand, they claim he is negligent; and whenever he uses the federal government in ways they oppose, they rediscover the Tenth Amendment and accuse him of being a dictator. Trump could no more declare a no-mask mandate than Biden could force the entire country to wear masks. It’s all just political theater."  David Harsanyi, NRO, 7/21

THE GOP

"Bottom line: The pool of Democratic voters is growing inexorably while the largest pool of potential GOP voters is aging, stagnating, and shrinking.

"For the GOP, this is an existential crisis. If demography is destiny, and the party does not either increase its share of the white vote or attract millions more Black, Asian or Hispanic voters, then its national fate and future are sealed."  Patrick Buchanan, Townhall, 7/21

ELECTION 2020

"Several prominent Muslim American elected officials endorsed Joe Biden for president in a letter organized by Emgage Action ahead of an online summit that started MON & featured the presumptive Democratic nominee. Among those signing the letter . . . are MN Rep. Ilhan Omar, MN Attorney General Keith Ellison & IN Rep. Andre Carson, all Democrats."  Omaha World Herald, 7/21