NRO's The Corner: Obamacare ‘like a house on fire’ with more flammable parts yet to come

The hypocrisy of Democratic officials who enthusiastically backed mass protests even as they continued to ban larger outdoor gatherings for religious services has been outrageous.

But, as Jim Geraghty points out in today’s Morning Jolt, hypocrisy doesn’t mean the virus has gone away. We thankfully have not seen large outbreaks attributed to the protests — perhaps yet another sign that the virus doesn’t spread easily outside, particularly in the summer when many people are wearing masks. Yet we know the risk persists, especially at larger indoor gatherings.

“Personally, I wouldn’t attend a large gathering right now, especially one indoors. Certainly things held indoors are less safe than things held outdoors,” President Trump’s former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb said this week.

Asked about President Trump’s upcoming rally in Tulsa, Okla., Dr. Anthony Fauci tells the Daily Beast that “outside is better than inside, no crowd is better than [a] crowd.”

Despite the warnings and some chatter earlier this week about moving the Tulsa rally outside, the president is pushing forward with the indoor rally on Saturday at an arena that can seat 19,000 people.

I have not seen a good argument that indoor rallies are worth the health risk — or the political risk.

In February, Biden led Trump by seven points among independent voters over the age of 65, according to a Quinnipiac poll. Biden’s lead among independent seniors has now grown to 20 points in Quinnipiac’s latest poll.

Among seniors overall, Trump trails Biden by ten points. In 2016, Trump beat Clinton by seven points among voters over the age of 65.

Older voters, the Americans most vulnerable in this pandemic, are the voters Trump needs to win back to win the election. How is the sight of an indoor arena packed with thousands of Trump fans — many of whom will be chanting and not wearing masks — going to reassure the voters Trump needs most?

How is the sight of an indoor arena packed with thousands of Trump fans — many of whom will be chanting and not wearing masks — going to reassure the voters Trump needs most?

Trump does not admit to needing anyone for anything and the more the media and his advisors try to persuade him that giant rallies full of his most fervent supporters, unmasked, packed together, and yelling full-throatedly in glee may backfire on him, the more determined he will be to publically demonstrate his disdain of such counsel. Even more than the NRO neo-cons, who notoriously dismissed the "reality-based community" prior to the Iraq War, Trump believes in creating whatever reality he prefers and acting as if no other version of reality matters.

many thanks to jim geraghty for pointing out that the virus has not gone away

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbTl_gqUYAAGtT0?format=jpg&name=small

Also right about Sarah Palin!

A face mask is like a national Rorschach test. Some see a tool of oppression. Some see a means of self-protection. Some see a sign of respect for others. Personally, I think a mask is an expression of respect for others. But what a controversial piece of cloth, a face mask is.

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) September 16, 2020

Reminds me of that billy ray cyrus tweet, where he was thinking hard

some say love, it is a river

at least they're practicing saying nothing using fewer words

I would think the American press never recovered from their failure to confront the blatant lies that led to genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan

Lets check in!

Mike Pence Showed Trump How TV Debates Are Won

At some point during last night’s vice presidential debate, perhaps about 20 minutes in, it became clear that Susan Page wasn’t moderating the debate. Mike Pence was.

He obviously knows how to use this medium well. Hardly anyone remembers the moderators’ questions after these debates are over. The only clips that have anything more than an evening-long afterlife are those of the candidates’ soliloquies. The whole point of televised debates is to generate a few of these clips and then fire them around social media and the news networks like a pinball.

Vice President Pence, moreover, generated his own string of debate highlights last night more or less entirely on his own terms. When asked a question, he used the first portion of his time to reply to whatever Kamala Harris had just said before moving on to address the question at hand. Once he ran out of time, he often just kept speaking, though not in the whiny, aggrieved, confrontational manner in which the president treated Chris Wallace last week. Pence simply killed the moderator’s objections with polite deference while continuing to make his point all the while until Page’s protestations ceased.

He would not be rushed and he would not be herded or corralled by the moderator. On the one occasion on which Page put her foot down and forced the debate on to the next topic, the vice president simply waited his turn and then continued where he left off. Throughout the debate, he managed to provide himself with enough time to say everything he wanted in response to Harris and get off most of his own points as well. For all intents and purposes, he was the timekeeper.

Rich LOLwry surpasses himself.

Besides the occasional dissenting academic and brave business owner or ordinary citizen, Trump is, for better or worse, the foremost symbol of resistance to the overwhelming woke cultural tide that has swept along the media, academia, corporate America, Hollywood, professional sports, the big foundations, and almost everything in between.

He’s the vessel for registering opposition to everything from the 1619 Project to social media’s attempted suppression of the Hunter Biden story.

To put it in blunt terms, for many people, he’s the only middle finger available — to brandish against the people who’ve assumed they have the whip hand in American culture.

This may not be a very good reason to vote for a president, and it doesn’t excuse Trump’s abysmal conduct and maladministration.

It may well be that Biden will get over the top by implicitly promising a diminution in cultural strife, by which he presumably means a slower pace of woke cultural change (with the Left considerably less agitated than it has been in the Trump years).

If Trump wins, though, this cultural element will be the subtext, and maybe just the text — he’d be, even more so than now, the president as affront, and he would be felt as such by all the woke progressives and fellow travelers who are accustomed to believing that they represent a steamroller of history.

To put it in blunt terms, for many people, he’s the only middle finger available — to brandish against the people who’ve assumed they have the whip hand in American culture.

hmm, i weird way put that, but i guess i have to give rich lolwry the benefit of the doubt here!!

ah, the overwhelming woke cultural tide

that age-old question of american culture: who has the whip hand

The NRO has found the enemy and he is us. But not them. Just us woke progressives who have overwhelmed the nation on a relentless rising tide of cancellations.

Look at Quibi for example. A multi-billion dollar business. Cancelled!! It's madness gone mad.

Next Month: Slaves singing "Go Down Moses": cancel culture run amok?

subhed: Don't assume someone holds the whip hand just because they're holding a literal whip in their hand

A disgusting person, that Kevin Williamson. Dig what he says about AOC and Harris. But this'll piss off what remains of the NRO readership:

Which brings me to the practical case against Trump: He stinks at his job.

This also brings me to a lie that needs to be addressed — and it is not a misunderstanding but a lie, circulated with malice aforethought: that the conservative objection to Trump is only a matter of style, his boorishness bumptiousness and boobishness on Twitter, his gooftastical manner of speaking, his preening, his vanity, his habitual and often dishonest boasting in matters both small and great, etc. These things matter, of course, because manners and morals matter, and they matter more in a free society than they do in an unfree one, because free men govern themselves.

Trump’s low character is not only an abstract ethical concern but a public menace that has introduced elements of chaos and unpredictability in U.S. government activity ranging from national defense to managing the coronavirus epidemic. Trump’s character problems are practical concerns, not metaphysical ones. Trump is frequently wrong on important policy questions (including trade, foreign policy, entitlements, health care, and many others) and frequently incompetent even when trying to advance a good policy. His vanity and paranoia have made it very difficult for him to keep good people in top positions, and this imposes real costs both politically and as a matter of practical governance. Trump’s problem is not etiquette: It is dishonesty, stupidity, and incompetence, magnified by the self-dealing and cowardice of the cabal of enablers and sycophants who have a stake in pretending that this unsalted s*** sandwich is filet mignon.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpYvGU9VgAAUy3m?format=jpg&name=small

update

UPDATE:

Update Two: This proviso also would apply to women. Also, I forgot to mention conscription, because that would further weaken my already fatuous argument.

I see.

lots of things go without saying at the n4tion4l r3vi3w

Rod Dreher's been in Hungary a couple of months and it's really helping him be more comfortable with his fascism. pic.twitter.com/BbvC7mJ3fX

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) June 13, 2021

Champ Biden dies, Major lives on. The Biden family tragedy in miniature.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 19, 2021

🐦[Rod Dreher’s been in Hungary a couple of months and it’s really helping him be more comfortable with his fascism. pic.twitter.com/BbvC7mJ3fX🕸
— Roy Edroso (@edroso) June 13, 2021🕸]🐦

LOL

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/07/12/political-discrimination-as-civil-rights-struggle/

TLDR: Ivy League women won't date Trump supporters, which is a sign that all conservatives will soon be fired/not hired by elite institutions everywhere, and the government must intervene!

This reveals the predilection among many young elite Americans for progressive authoritarianism, a belief system that justifies infringing rights to equal treatment or free speech in the name of the emotional “safety” of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexuality groups. In this left-modernist worldview, conservatives’ resistance to racial, gender, and sexual progressivism mark them as moral deviants. As Millennials take power, this generational earthquake is set to shake the foundations of the cultural elite to its core, leading to pervasive discrimination against, and censorship of, conservative views.

soon only the woke will reproduce

sounds like that JMU econ prof’s suggestion that incels be provided sex

guys

guys

Biden's vaccination mandate is unconstitutional!

somebody had to say it. eventually someone says it about every action taken by government, including the income tax. and mccarthy is just the dope for the job.

Andy McCarthy, in favor of torture and indiscriminate bombing when Bush sat on the imperial throne.

Dang, I kinda liked "St. Elmo's Fire."

it has come to my attention that rod dreher is getting divorced and has moved to budapest; no word on whether this experience will prompt another conversion

lmao of course

I hope he writes a novel

I hope he starts a suicide cult.

Why are these people so dramatic?

I think he’s having the time of his life.

I don’t know how he’s fixed for disposable income but being a weird natl conservative on the internet is key to that flow

I heard that these conservatives moving to Hungary for the fascism usual only last a year or so once they realize that, for instance, you get fines for putting the wrong kinds of plants on your balcony.

i miss these guys

was about to post the same

Even Mona Fucking Charen has joined the resistance:

https://www.thebulwark.com/what-country-is-the-wall-street-journal-living-in/

Hahahahaha https://t.co/nRaZhwvxqt

— noah kulwin (@nkulw) January 3, 2023

Minority opinion on here I'm sure but I kinda like French. I think he's wrong about a zillion things of course, but he's super critical of the current evangelical-political movement, and he and his wife have done legit investigative journalism in exposing some religious sexual abusers. I'll take him over Brooks and Douthat, however low that may be setting the bar.

I don't like French but, yeah, he's better than the others; it's just infuriating, though, that the NYT has a ticker-tape parade every time they add yet another conservative to their op-ed section.

Is there even anyone actually good in the NYT columnist rotation? Jamelle Bouie I guess. So tired of almost all of them.

bouie is excellent. michelle goldberg and zeynep tufekci are good.

check out what you're missing in the washington post op-ed section!

https://i.imgur.com/ze02A1i.png