Morning already, Sea Dog?
I guess I have to admit that I don’t bounce back from travel like I used to…incidentally,the original voice of Captain Crunch was the great Daws Butler, who was Hanna-Barbara’s answer to Mel Blanc, and every bit as versatile as the voice of Bugs, Porky and Daffy. He was Fred Flintstone, Huckleberry Hound, Quickdraw McGraw (and Baba Looey) Yogi Bear and Elroy Jetson, just to name a few of his 459 characters.
1. Enemy of the people…the Coronavirus situation is a perfect example of how the news media’s inability to avoid partisan bias does tangible harm. It is literally impossible to get straight reporting. The left-biased news media wants to make the situation seem as dire as possible, wants disruption of the financial markets, wants to undermine trust in the federal response, all because they so, so want to see President Trump defeated in November and they can feel that objective slipping away. The conservative media is determined to bolster the administration, and give the cheeriest spin on the pandemic possible. You either have to choose what you want to believe, or, like me, resign yourself to uncertainty because we have a corrupt and unethical journalistic establishment.
After the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated the global mortality rate of the coronavirus to be 3.4%, President Trump said on Fox News that his “hunch” was that it was much lower.
“I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number, and this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly, they don’t even see a doctor, they don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about these people.”
He was immediately attacked in the press and mocked on social media, because, you know, he lies, he’s an idiot, and he doesn’t believe in science. His “hunch,’ however, is almost certainly right, and for exactly the reason he talked about. From The Hill:
“Experts warn that the figure from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus comes full of caveats and is likely to change as more people get tested and undergo treatment for the virus. ‘I think it’s lower because we are missing mild cases,’ said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. ‘We should be preparing for [the worst] cases, it’s true, but also going out to see what the real number is….Folks want to be able to understand what the true risk is. They want to know just how deadly is it, how deadly is it to me? The challenge is, we don’t totally know.'”
Joe Biden, meanwhile, noted that the outbreak occurring during The Great War made it hard to separate the Real McCoy from the malarkey.
Oh, lighten up! I’m just having a little fun.
2. This, however, is not a joke, unfortunately: This goes right into the Ethics Alarms “Is we getting dummer?” file. MSNBC’s Brian Williams and New York Times Editorial Board Member Mara Gay demonstrated the level of intellect Americans rely on to enlighten them about world events yesterday. “Somebody tweeted recently that actually with the money that he spent, he could have given every American a million dollars,” Gay said. “I’ve got it. Let’s put it on the screen,” said Williams said. “When I read it tonight on social media, it kind of all became clear.” Williams then read the tweet: “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. Population, 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and have had lunch money left over.”
“It’s an incredible way of putting it,” Williams commented. Yes, incredibly stupid, you morons. 500 million dollars divided by 327 million people is about a dollar and 56 cents. [Pointer: The Daily Wire]
3. This might also belong in that file: Williams College apparently suspended a male student based on his failure to pursue a relationship with a female student after “kissing and touching” her, according to a lawsuit against prestigious institution.
I fear that the #MeToo revolution will result in both sexes being more confused about what acceptable conduct is than they already were.
4. Bill Clinton is finally heard from, and not in a good way. I enjoyed Prof. Turley’s reaction, especially since he appears to have exactly the same opinion of Bill as I do:
“The new documentary on Hillary Clinton has been panned by many as yet another attempt to rewrite history for the Clintons. However, few expected Bill Clinton to come up with yet another explanation for the affair that led to his impeachment. Clinton explained in an interview that it was all an effort “manage my anxieties.” The problem is that his anxiety management included committing perjury as well as recently disclosed alleged witness tampering. He was of course never charged with perjury despite a court later saying that he clearly lied under oath. Of course, he would never lie to Hulu.
Clinton added that that he thought “there’s something that will take your mind off it for a while.” Of course, he also omits a long list of women who have accused him of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape as both Arkansas Governor and as President. That goes back decades and, with each woman, the Clintons crushed the accusers, including Hillary Clinton referring to them as “bimbos.” None of that was apparently relevant in this “documentary” which seems like four-hour exploration of historical revisionism.
However, it must be a great anxiety reliever.
5. From the annals of Rationalization #22, “It’s not the worst thing,” we learn that the the deficiencies of American teachers could indeed be worse than they are. In Nottinghamshire, Great Britain, newly-qualified teacher Joshua Brandon Lewis resigned from his teaching position at Carlton le Willows Academy in 2018 after joking in class about a pupil’s vagina. Then a subsequent investigation showed that he also shot at students with a staple gun, placed one or more in light-hearted headlocks, and pulled chairs out from under them. He was just banned from the profession by the Teaching Regulation Agency, which ruled that he egregiously breached teaching standards. I’d say that was a fair verdict.
To be honest, I could see myself making the comment that got him fired. One pupil described a drawing as looking like her friend’s vagina, and Lewis quipped, “If your vagina looks like that, you’ve got a problem.”
Ethics Alarms 
RE #1: Yes, the politicization is appalling. But let us remember that regardless of ideological stripe, the news media’s primary bias is towards its own bottom line. FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) are long-standing mechanism by which marketers and the media stir up the general population and get ’em to watch and/or buy stuff. The news industry has known this for a very long time.
If you can also drive a political agenda while making the cash register ring..? That’s just gravy.
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” Malcolm X
A lot of the death rate depends on the quality of the care. The initial death rate was about 50%, but fell very rapidly. This was probably due to the fact that only the serious cases were noticed and treatment protocols had not been established. The rate has continued to fall due to (1) better diagnosing of the illness and probably (2) the disease has mutated to be less virulent. The death rate between countries illustrates the point. The death rate for coronavirus in Iran is over 8%, but it is 0.7% in South Korea.
I keep hearing that, but when you consider that for 15 years, fox news has been pulling double the ratings, it just isnt so. As the other other news channels slid to the left, they hemorrhaged viewers. And they continued to slide, even as they watched the advertising dollars just float over to fox news. If it were truly money that motivated them, they would be far more interested in emulating the successes of their competitors.
They’re all making money, Aaron. Even CNN.
I’m not saying that ideology isn’t a factor. But look at what CNN and MSNBC (and others) have been doing in the past few days – skewering a crackpot leftie in favor of a crackpot “centrist.”
Not all of the dough is short-term. Yes, the Coronoavirus stuff is. But access and relationships to those in power – what most corporations would value as “goodwill” – still matters to these folks.
What a pity that most of ’em are too dumb to understand that by constantly encouraging their dogs to shit on their own carpets, they’ve significantly reduced the re-sale price.
5. I think the Coronavirus merits inclusion in the alphanumeric list of plans to remove Trump.
Yeah, when the State Department employees overrode Trump’s decision to only fly uninfected people back from Japan, that hinted at using this to hurt him in the polls, no matter how many people they had to kill. The further decisions to spread those infected patients out across the country and only quarantine people for 1/2 the incubation time were further indications. The plot was revealed when ‘whistleblowers’ reported that the workers on the ground (who were supposed to be dealing with uninfected people only, remember) did not have the equipment and training to deal with infected people when they arrived in the US. Pretty good setup.
Ooops.. 5.
Re2
Statements like that prove my point that calculators are tools to that people who lack basic math skills use to get the wrong answer faster. Basic inspection would tell the person with proficient sixth grade math skills that dividing 500 million by 335 million would be about a buck and a half.
It would cost 335 trillion to give everyone 1 million dollars Just take 335,000,000 multiply by 1 and add six six zeros to the result 335,000,000,000,000.
I like the logically consistent view that most Americans have been killed by guns (as Biden said), so there are less than 550 Americans left. The rest of these people are illegal immigrants and that is why we need open borders.
Remember, this must be true because they are the smart people.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cnns-don-lemon-and-guests-mock-trump-supporters-as-uneducated-and-illiterate
I got this from someone in WhatsApp. Thought it made sense:
¡Recuerden el Alamo!
(Thanks, MW. Just in time…)
I can’t not say it: Alan Reed voiced Fred Flintstone, and Mel Blanc was the most common voice for Barney Rubble. Daws Butler did some substitute work and supporting roles, but wasn’t a mainstay of The Flintstones.
Now, back to politics and pestilence….
No, that’s a fair correction, but Butler did do Fred (and Barney) in one of the Flintstone specials.
And Mel Blanc also did Barney, when Reed was doing Fred. Butler was a great mimic, and his Alan Reed wasn’t bad at all.
I included Fred (and Elroy) because I know most people aren’t the Hanna-Barbara cartoon character buffs I am.
El Kabong was a GOD…
Now you’re talking. Cue the swinging guitar!