RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/new_yorks_big_brother_has_gone_bananas.html

In reading the New York State travel advisory, I am reminded of one of my favorite scenes from a Woody Allen movie, this one from Bananas.  Having ascended to power, the dictatorial rebel leader Esposito announces his new rules for San Marcos:

From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. … In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now…16 years old!

Woody’s character Fielding Mellish cracks, “What’s the Spanish word for straitjacket?”  The Spanish word is camisa de fuerza.  The Swedish word is tvångströja.  In any language, Gov. Andrew Cuomo surely needs one.  It is bad enough that he is running the state by executive order.  Worse is that the orders are nuts.  If Woody Allen were to make a comic version of 1984, he could model “Big Brother” on Andrew Cuomo.

Last week, I flew into Buffalo.  It was my first flight this year into New York, a state in which I have owned a summer cottage for the last 30 years.  Coming from Missouri, a state on New York’s travel advisory, I had to fill out a two-sided form promising that I would quarantine in place for 14 days.  As if.

Missouri has had about 25 COVID-19 deaths per 100,00 people.  New York has had about 165.  In the western part of Missouri where I live, the rate is considerably lower.  No matter.  By some perverse calculation, my return to New York threatened to put the state’s residents at some elevated risk.

To visit my own cottage, I had to promise not to be in public or otherwise leave the quarters that they have identified as “suitable.”  These “quarters” — how quaint — had to have “separate bathroom facilities for each individual or family group.”  More than that, I had to have “access to a sink with soap and water, and paper towels.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/28/the-fatal-attraction-of-faction/

So far, 2020 has been a dystopian nightmare from George Washington’s perspective. He was once “first in war, first in peace, and first in the minds of his countrymen,” as Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee eulogized him. But now statues of Washington are being toppled, damaged and defaced.

Our first president, who paid careful attention to setting precedents that might allow America not to only survive, but to “live long and prosper,” would find such acts nearly a mirror image of his hopes for what could make our experiment in liberty last. How do we know? Just look at his emphatic warnings to do everything possible to avoid the violence of faction in his 1796 farewell address in contrast to the violence of faction that has played out on our city streets.  

Washington offered “sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people.” In particular, he insisted that we keep “indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest.”

One of the expedients of party to acquire influence … is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other[s]. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/28/is-the-coronavirus-crisis-finally-over/

Much of America has been in some phase or another of a lockdown since the middle of March. Most of us want to know when we can return to normal. But the officials who have cooped us up, shut down businesses, ruined personal finances, outlawed gatherings, and created an environment of fear won’t tell us when we’ll be free of their grip. To call our situation discouraging is to understate the case.

Numbers from the Centers for Disease Control’s most recently posted data set are reason for optimism, though. The chart below shows the most current figures available, through the week of Aug. 15.

The blue bars that indicate overall weekly deaths, which have been inflated due to COVID-19 fatalities, have almost converged with the roughly horizontal line that shows the average expected number of deaths. The two are the closest they have been since March 21, right after the pandemic lockdowns. Based on the trend, we should expect the bars and the baseline to fully converge when the newest data set is released next week. In other words, back to normal.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/open-letter-julia-louis-dreyfus-bruce-bawer/

Dear Julia,

To begin with, though I found Watching Ellie stunningly bad, though The New Adventures of Old Christine left a bad taste in my mouth, and though I’ve never been able to get into Veep (which feels to me hopelessly derivative of better one-camera comedy series like Curb Your Enthusiasm), I still have a residual fondness of you based on your performance as Elaine in Seinfeld. So I was dismayed to learn that you were lending your talents to the fourth and final night of this year’s Democratic National Convention. And sure enough, even as the rioters and vandals and anarchists were destroying Portland, Oregon, and other cities under the twin banners of Black Lives Matter and Antifa – the former of which the Democratic Party openly celebrates and the latter of which they refuse to condemn – there you were on our screens, as big as life, flashing a bright smile and acting as if absolutely none of these horrors were taking place.

No, instead of acknowledging the madness in the streets, you stood there, describing yourself as “a loyal union member, a passionate climate activist, and a patriotic Democrat,” heaping hyperbolic praise on Michelle Obama (“joking” that her speech had been so spectacular that there’d be a fifth convention night on which it would be re-run “on a loop”) and Kamala “Lock-‘Em-Up” Harris (“She was fabulous!” you gushed), and implying, with a breathtakingly irresponsible gag about Putin, that the disgusting lies about Trump-Russia collusion, now known to have been concocted by crooked leaders of the Obama Administration in what may turn out to be the most scandalous top-down betrayal of the U.S. Constitution on record, were, in fact, true.

Then there was that special moment that you led up to with this ardent declamation:

Here’s the big question. How much of your time and energy are you willing to devote to elect Joe Biden?