Daily Archives: 12 May 2020

Economic Reopening, Resistance, and Perspective

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As States reopen for business, and as increasing numbers of businesses reopen and customers patronize them against State government encouragements or outright diktats to the contrary, Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is nattering on that President Donald Trump’s policies are undermining the core pillars of our economic strength. In the meantime, the NLMSM is focusing ghoulishly on body counts and not mentioning any other relevant information.

The following table looks at some data for three States mentioned in one Wall Street Journal article, another State mentioned in a different WSJ article, and two States mentioned by Fox News.

State Wuhan Virus Deaths Wuhan Virus Recoveries Ratio of Wuhan Virus Recoveries to Deaths
Illinois 3,406 Not Reported
California 2,719 Not Reported
New York 26,682 58,006 2.17
Georgia 1,441 Not Reported
Michigan 4,555 22,686 4.98
Texas 1,095 21,022 19.20

Wuhan Virus data are from Johns Hopkins University’s CSSE Dashboard and were current as of 11 May.

Carefully ignored by Biden in his meandering and by the NLMSM in their panic-mongering are those recovery rates and ratios. Check the CSSE data—all of the States reporting recovery rates are reporting recovery-to-death ratios of at least 2:1, and generally much larger.

Progressive-Democrats in charge of their States, despite these favorable trends though, want to keep their States locked down and having no economic activity—all in the claimed name of safety. Of course the longer States stay shut down, the deeper will be the economic recession we’re facing at the end of summer and into the November elections.

Note, though, that wanting a recession explicitly as a means of defeating President Donald Trump in this election has been a key part of the Progressive-Democrats’ playbook for two years.

Be very heads up this November.

Credibility

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As the journalism guild’s complicity in the General Michael Flynn travesty becomes steadily more apparent, some questions arise—again—about what an honest journalism industry (not guild—that’s beyond redemption) needs to do to have any credibility.

  1. identify at least some the sources, rather than hanging an article’s thesis exclusively on the claims of anonymous sources
  2. if an anonymous source refuses to be identified, show with concrete, measurable evidence the following:
    1. the source actually exists
    2. if the source exists, then
      1. why the source should be believed, given that by speaking publicly, even if anonymously, he’s likely violating his terms of employment if not his oath of office
      2. why the source should be believed, given that by hiding behind anonymity, he’s displaying his cowardice—and cowards will always and only say what they believe will be personally beneficial
  3. if representing the anonymous source as a whistleblower, provide concrete, measurable evidence that the source has used up all of his employer’s internal whistleblowing channels before he decided to leak

All of this is best done in the opening paragraph(s) of an article, ahead even of the Who, What, Where, When that used to form the lede of quality journalism. That unavoidably will make for a clumsy opening to what’s being represented as a factual news article (rather than an opinion piece), but that’s the cost incurred of a guild’s prolonged, insistent dishonesty.

Even more importantly, though, the press used to have a standard that required two on-the-record sources to corroborate the claims of a journalist’s anonymous sources. The industry’s Editors-in-Chief—every single one of them—must explain:

  1. why they have chosen to walk away from that standard of integrity
  2. what standard of integrity they’re using in its stead