The only difference in our opinions is that he says he likes Biden, while I never did

“Wife, sister; in West Virginia what difference, really, does it make?”

Tucker Carlson: Joe Biden will not be the Democrat’s nominee

Speaking of the coming “reorder of our politics” due to the coronavirus pandemic, Carlson said, “I am utterly convinced, and would bet money, that Joe Biden will not be the Democratic nominee on election day. I just don’t believe that. I really don’t.”

….

“How does that math work?” asked another co-host.

“Well, the math doesn’t work, but it’s not about math, it’s about will,” said the Daily Caller co-founder. “So the Democratic Party is intent on taking power, period, period, and they mean it, and they’re willing to do kind of whatever they think works. I mean that’s demonstrable.”

Stating that Biden “is not prepared” and “can’t beat” President Trump or “lead the country,” Carlson noted his mental decline.

“He shouldn’t be working still,” he said. “I’m not being mean. I know him. I’ve always liked him. But that’s true. And so, those are two trains traveling toward each other at high speed. Two competing imperatives. We’ve got to win, but we’ve got a guy who can’t win. Therefore, they’re gonna replace him.” 

“This is not the guy I’ve known, and you can ask anybody who knows him or has watched him,” Carlson continued. “This is not him. He’s a completely different person, and he’s in decline and I feel bad about it. That’ll be me someday … I hope somebody loves me enough to not let me run for president.”

….

“If I had to bet I would think Andrew Cuomo would be the most likely to replace Biden,” he said before a discussion about the 1968 Democratic convention, when former Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination despite not winning any of the state primary elections.

Mind you, Mr. “If a Woman Alleges Sexual Assault You Should Believe Her” may quit in shame even before his party dumps him, because of Tara Reade’s charge that he slipped her the finger.

I still think we’ll see Michelle, but I do agree with Carlson that we won’t be hearing an acceptance speech from JoMentum this summer.

Enemies of the People, II

2020 Democrat voters approach the border

Democrats denounce Trump’s closing of the border to non-essential traffic because it affects illegal aliens

Numerous House Democrats criticized the Trump administration Friday for closing the U.S.-Mexico border amid the coronavirus pandemic and demanded a number of answers regarding the order.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which is comprised entirely of Democrats, sent the letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), criticized the administration’s decision to seal off the southern border to non-essential traffic. The members took particular umbrage with the fact that the order forbids the entrance of any illegal aliens.

“We write to request information on the implementation of the Order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that restricts the entry of unauthorized people into the United States for the purported reason of containing COVID-19,” the letter began.

“[T]he Order impacts many categories of people, including those that are particularly vulnerable,” it continued.

The Trump administration earlier this week declared that the northern and southern border would be closed to all non-essential traffic as a means to stop the spread of the coronavirus. While travel for commercial trade and the necessary work would remain permissible, much other travel is forbidden, including illegal immigration.

Enemy of the people

Not so much now: Adoring press, back when they were following the first woman president of the United States

Ibsen used the term ironically. Today it’s the literal truth.

New York Post editorial: Media’s meltdown over Trump’s suicide warning shows the press can’t let its hatred go

Even a pandemic can’t shock the media out of its blinding hostility to President Trump — witness this week’s absurd press eruption after he warned of a likely rise in suicides.

“People get tremendous anxiety and depression, and you have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies,” Trump noted at a briefing, adding that he believes the isolation many Americans face thanks to social distancing will also lead to more mental-health issues.

There’s nothing incorrect — or even controversial — in those remarks. (Though Trump, sigh, went on to be more dramatic.) But media outlets that would normally echo any concern about higher mental-health risks proceed to be outraged.

The New York Times ran multiple pieces that called Trump’s claims “baseless” — despite its own past coverage.

“Increase Seen in U.S. Suicide Rate Since Recession” the paper reported in November 2012, summarizing a study from the medical journal Lancet that found the suicide rate rose four times faster from 2008 to 2010 than in the eight years before the Great Recession. “The finding was not unexpected. Suicide rates often spike during economic downturns,” the story noted.

The year before, in “Study Ties Suicide Rate in Work Force to Economy,” the paper cited similar statistics, noting the rate “has generally ridden the tide of the economy since the Great Depression, rising in bad times and falling in good ones, according to a comprehensive government analysis.”

The Times wasn’t alone in “debunking” Trump. ABC News reported: “Experts also say that there’s no evidence to suggest that the suicide rate will rise dramatically because people are stressed from losing their jobs” — near the top of a story that, nonetheless, later quoted an expert as noting, “The general fact that President Trump cited is, in fact, true that when economies contract suicides do go up.”

An Associated Press fact-check called Trump’s claim “baseless” and insisted suicide rates might “diminish”: “The even higher suicide rate seen during the Great Depression of the 1930s fell sharply with the onset of World War II.” Non-sequitur much, AP?

Back in the real world, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline has reportedly seen incoming calls triple.

Given the choice, would the media prefer millions of Americans dead and a permanently ruined economy over Trump’s reelection? To ask the question is to answer it.

Well this is a relief; they have enough trouble as it is

No hay gripe aquí!

Mexican governor assures his people that the poor are immune from Kung Flu

Gov. Luis Miguel Barbosa of the state of Puebla, southeast of Mexico City, said, “The majority are wealthy people,” after the government revealed three-quarters of the country’s 475 confirmed cases are from people returning from international travel.

By Thursday the country had 110 news cases, according to Reuters.

“If you are rich, you are at risk,” he said in a news conference that was broadcast live on YouTube and Facebook. “If you are poor, no. We poor people, we are immune.”

Not to be outdone, the president of Mexico, and perhaps in a bid for election as the president of the United States or mayor of New York, has spoken:

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, however, has resisted a stay-at-home order that several US states have enacted and Tuesday told reporters the country would be through “the worst of it” within a month, according to The Guardian.

He also told Mexicans to keep “living life as usual” and encouraged them to go out to eat if they can. “I’ll tell you when not to go out any longer,” he said in a video message Sunday, The Guardian reported.

Unemployment claims graphically illustrated

So I’m up here in Maine and see absolutely no reason to return to Greenwich at the moment — better 300 miles from New York than 30, and I’ve watched the small stores and restaurants shut down in waves, like the lamps of Europe one hundred years ago. Will they be lit again in our lifetime? All of America is suffering this devistation, of course, but in a state with such a small population: 1.3 million, the impact of coronavirus is easy to see, and chart.

Unemployment claims soared this week, as shown above.

Of the 622,000 employed, total, in the state, 21, 459 filed unemployment claims in just the past five days. Worse, the state unemployment offices, like those in other states, has been swamped and thousands more claims haven’t been processed yet and added to the official tally. Each day I pass by more stores which the day before were still open and that closed overnight. I did a mental tally of one local gas station/service mart near me that closed yesterday: there were five people employed there each shift, so at least ten jobs evaporated overnight. The book stores and coffee shops of Portland, and there were many, all went dark in the past ten days, as did my favorite tackle shop. Add in the self-employed, and there are thousands of them, and it’s a horribly dark picture.

And so on. Again, I know this is disaster is occurring throughout the country, but the chart I posted above is still astonishing. From a thriving state economy to utter disaster, in days.

What if all you have to offer of yourself is your money, and nobody wants it?

Are we living’, or what?

The Hamptons and points east seek to bar Manhattan refugees who are arriving with cash, coronavirus and no appreciable useful skills. The new arrivals are bound to be capable of whipping together a cocktail party worthy of Page Six coverage but otherwise, what?

Assuming we survive all this, 2020 is going to prove the motherlode of dystopian novel material.

Chick-fil-A throws its advertising muscle against Corona virus

Whatever we can do to help, corporate spokesman says.

That’s progress. On the other hand, we may still have a problem with China

Not surprisingly, a dead day on the real estate market

But there was another 3-day-wonder, 178 Cat Rock, which came on as a rental on Wednesday at $18,000 and closed today, full price.

It’s a nice house, which the owners bought for $2.245 million in June 2012 and made substantial improvements to. It’s been on the market as a sale for some time now, starting at $3.2 and priced at $2.295 before the rental possibility opened up.

Excellent video on covid prevention from a doctor on the front line

Out of stock — check your garage

Gideon forwarded this long: 56 minute, video from a Dr. David Price, Cornell Medical Center in NYC. Price says he is now exclusively treating COVID patients who have been admitted to the hospital and requiring ventilators, so he’s seeing the worst cases. His message, though is fairly reassuring, in that he says the virus does not seem to be transmitted by aerosol contamination but only by infected hands transferring it to the face. Good information on how to prevent that, and how to protect your family when one of you gets sick anyway. I hadn’t intended to watch the whole thing but that’s what I ended to doing anyway.

One point he emphasizes: He’s putting a lot of 30-45-year-olds onto ventilators. “You are at serious risk at any age over twenty, and maybe over 16”.

OKAY, I tried repeatedly and failed just as often to embed the video. But if you’re so inclined, you can head over to it from here.

Ya think? What’s the next hazard to be discovered, car pools?

Lamont lifts plastic bag ban. Because reusables are filthy germ carriers, but you’ve heard that here, many times.He also whacked hunting equipment retailers by requirig them to open to customers on a “by-appointment only” basis, but that’s not surprisng, coming from a petty dictator who hates guns, so we’ll gloss over it, for now. Here’s the relevant portion of his order on bags:

5. Employees Not Required to Bag Items in Reusable Bags. Effective immediately and through May 15, 2020, unless earlier modified, extended, or terminated by me, no employer in a retail establishment shall require any employee to bag any item in a customer-provided reusable bag, provided that nothing in this order shall prohibit customers who wish to use such reusable bags from doing so; such customers shall bag their own items where the employee of the retail establishment declines to do so.

The sudden discovery that reusable bags are dangerous is surprising, in a way, because critiocs have pointed that out for years. But why let science get in the way of political correctness?

Here’s the view from Boston

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh says his temporary suspension of the city’s ban on single-use plastic shopping bags is about “flexibility.” He’s lying.

It’s about “stupidity.” Boston’s anti-plastic-bag mandate was idiotic from the beginning, and now it’s being outed by the coronavirus crisis as the danger to public health it’s always been.

Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday also announced a temporary ban on reusable bags.

…. What’s happened is that workers in grocery stores are complaining about the filthy, germ-infested reusable bags they’re being asked to stick their arms into on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis. As Drew Cline of the New Hampshire-based Josiah Bartlett Center told me, “Research clearly shows that poorly-handled reusable shopping bags are like little Ubers for dangerous microorganisms.”

….[If] Mayor Marty were motivated by data, the plastic-bag ban would never have been imposed in the first place. As we’ve written in this space before, single-use plastic bags are better for the environment than the obnoxious cotton shopping bags woke women get from “fair-trade” vendors on the web.

Paper bags are a lot heavier and take a lot more CO2 to ship. Reusable bags require a lot more emissions to manufacture. One British study found that shoppers have to use a cotton bag 131 times before it had a smaller global warming impact than a lightweight plastic bag used only once. How many times does the average reusable bag actually get reused? Fewer than 15.

As New York Times science writer John Tierney wrote last month, “Single-use plastic bags aren’t the worst environmental choice at the supermarket — they’re the best. High-density polyethylene bags are a marvel of economic, engineering and environmental efficiency.”

Michael Graham is a regular contributor to the Boston Herald. Follow him at IAmMGraham on Twitter.