Demand the investigation, Morning Joe

Ahead of Joe Biden's softball interview with Morning Joe tomorrow, it's time to review Joe Scarborough's many strident tweets about Brett Kavanaugh.  Gonna be a good time.

What is the GOP afraid of?
If Kavanaugh’s accusers are not telling the truth, give them the FBI investigation they are asking for and put them under oath.
If they lie, they go to jail.
Again, why are Republicans scared of an FBI investigation?

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) September 24, 2018

Sick

Hot Air: "Gulp: Q1 GDP Plunges 4.8% In COVID-19 Economic Meltdown."

This is an amazing stat, though:

This is stunning: Nearly half of the Q1 decline in GDP can be attributed to healthcare, which is presumably delaying of elective procedures.

It's a strange reality that in the midst of a pandemic, we have a healthcare-led recession.

Healthcare is such a huge part of our economy, a little slowdown in hip replacements (I guess) makes for a big dip.

I'm journalisming!

Federalist: "Politico Effectively Retracts Entire Trump China Article."

Trump’s “tens of millions” in debt held by the bank however, is non-existent, and was sold off by the China-owned financial institution shortly after the deal. Even worse, Politico admitted their reporters never reached out to the bank to inquire about the loans.

Professionals.

Democracy dies in darkness

This might be the all time worst Washington Post headline ever published. pic.twitter.com/ivZJNoao2v

— Ken Webster 🇺🇸🌎 (@KenWebsterII) April 28, 2020

Taking the gold medal in hypocrisy

When I quoted Kirsten Gillibrand last night, I had no idea she would go full-retard.  Never go full-retard.  Hot Air: "Sen. Gillibrand: ‘I Stand By Vice President Biden…He Has Vehemently Denied This Allegation’."

Many, many, many previous statements from her are here.  Now we need Mazie Hirono to speak up and take the crown.

If Joe Biden is innocent, he'll call for an FBI investigation

That's how it works, right?  "Gillibrand: Kavanaugh Not Calling for FBI Investigation of Assault Charge Is Not Reaction of ‘Innocent Person’."

Amy Klobuchar: "Most Republicans and Kavanaugh hadn't called for an FBI investigation, a move Klobuchar said was motivated by fear.  "They're afraid of what they're going to find out," she said."

Ditzy Mazie Hirono: "When he kept saying 'I didn't do it' then why wouldn't he call for an FBI investigation?"

Crazy Joe and his black helicopters

The Hill: "Joe Biden fuels election conspiracy theory while the media keeps quiet."

Here's the hot take at Hot Air:

In other words, this is Art Bell territory, but the media seems intently looking in every direction but at Biden’s jump into nuttiness. The same national media outlets that have a decided disinterest in Biden’s paranoia wasted no time shredding Senator Tom Cotton for suggesting the possibility that the COVID-19 virus might have leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology a few weeks ago for supposed paranoia and racism, only to get veeeeerrrrrryyyy quiet when the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin published a 2018 State Department memo citing WIV’s safety issues and predicting that it would trigger a pandemic similar to what we’re seeing now, specifically related to their work with bat-originated coronaviruses.

That’s precisely the double standard that Turley highlights. Cotton got ridiculed for merely suggesting the possibility of a lab accident even though the media had no evidence that would have contradicted it. Biden spouts off an easily debunked allegation against Trump, and … *crickets*.

Meanwhile, the media keeps trying to disappear the Tara Reade story but stuff just keeps on turning up:

This is by no means proof that Reade is telling the truth, and the fact that she changed her story as recently as a year ago continues to be a valid justification for maintaining healthy skepticism. But everyone who took Ford, Julie Swetnick, Deborah Ramirez, and (separately) E. Jean Carroll at face value—including the television networks that aired these women's claims immediately—should explain why this time it isn't good enough.

You guys set the standard to #Believeallwomen.

Nancy "C'mon down to Chinatown!" Pelosi clarifies again

Federalist: "Pelosi Now Says U.S. Should Have Stopped Americans Coming Back From China."

Hot new narrative: why couldn't Trump be more of a fascist?

Broken arrow in North Korea

Hot Air: "What’s Next For North Korea If Kim Jong-Un Is Dead?"

According to this analyst, it's not out of the realm of possibility that China rushes into North Korea to secure nukes before they start ending up in the hands of local warlords.  Crazy.

Sounds about right

Babylon Bee: "Majority Of Americans Would Rather Risk COVID Death Than Endure Any More Skype Lectures From Celebrities."

Extra - Hot Air: "The Video Normal People Have Been Waiting For: Thanks, Celebrities." 

Consider them marked

Hot Air: "Biden: “Mark My Words” — Trump Will “Try To Kick Back The Election Somehow” From November."  "Mark my words: This is sheer idiocy, and anyone propagating it is either an idiot or someone pandering to idiots. Maybe the media should ask Biden to clarify to which of these categories he belongs."

The media doesn't do that...to Democrats. 

Deeper underwater

Reason: "The COVID-19 Economic Collapse Is Absolutely Wrecking State Pension Systems" - "With some investment returns likely falling as far as 15 percent, states are going to face a cumulative pension debt of between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion by the end of the year."

As the article notes, many of these pension plans were deeply underfunded before Covid-19.  Watch for Detroit as the new standard here.

You've gotta be kidding me

Daily Caller: "Dossier Author Testified His Emails Were ‘Wiped,’ He No Longer Has Documents Related To Primary Source."

The ol' Bleach Bit excuse.

Listen to the scientists

Reason: "Happy Earth Day: A Reprise of Failed Doom" - "A trip down memory lane of failed Earth Day predictions past."

Scientific American, March 1998: "The End of Cheap Oil" - "Global production of conventional oil will begin to decline sooner than most people think, probably within 10 years."

Whoops.

Gronk want touchdown!

ESPN: "Rob Gronkowski joining Tom Brady in Tampa Bay brings out memes and more."

Gronk has been teasing this for so long, I was sure it was a long con. 

Oh that's different, continued

Federalist: "Don’t Let The Washington Post Get Away With Memory-Holing Its Anti-Kavanaugh Campaign" - "Ruth Marcus and others at the Washington Post who led the effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh's life based on unsubstantiated allegations know that what they did was evil."

Whoopsie!

Minuteman on the Steele dossier and FISA courts: "I do love the word "botched" in this classic NY Times sentence. As if misleading the FISA court was just a stray accident rather than their specific intent."

Forget it, Jake.  It's the NY Times.

The garbage media

Ginia Bellafante has blood on her hands. I don’t make the rules. The New York Times does. https://t.co/F7HXowiErT

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) April 19, 2020

Backstory here at Instapundit.

Somber music playing in these unprecedented times

Hahaha, no Illinois, no.

Daily Wire (quoting the NY Times): "Illinois Pleads For Multi-Billion Dollar Pension Bailout In Federal Coronavirus Request."

The Times noted that state’s pension problems “far predate the coronavirus,” noting that the unfunded liabilities are one reason credit rating firms place the state “one notch above junk territory.”

"The Rona done ate our pensions" is not gonna fly.

Throwing darts at the wall

This headline is misleading: "Top coronavirus model significantly lowers total estimates of US deaths in new projection."

Here's why:

The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) lowered its projection of total deaths from 68,841 (with an estimate range of 30,188 to 175,965) to just over 60,308 (with an estimate range of 34,063 to 140,381) in an update published Friday.

So the range of the estimate here is roughly -50% to +>100%.  That's like saying a gallon of milk costs between one and eight dollars.  It's good to know we've backed off from earlier projections of 100-250 thousand deaths, but this headline minimizes the guesswork.

#Timesup but not really

Hot Air: "Washington Post Columnist On Biden Allegations: ‘Sometimes We’re Left With Coming To Our Own Conclusions’"

I don’t know if Tara Reade is telling the truth about an alleged assault by Joe Biden. I’m fine with the nuance that exists between ‘He definitely did it’ and ‘She made it up.’ But what I do know for a certainty is that the media’s handling of this, with cues from celebrity #MeToo activists, has been an absolute train wreck of hypocrisy and motivated reasoning. Major papers have published piece after piece after piece about how this allegation is different from the one leveled at Judge Kavanaugh and all of them have been really awful and embarrassing.

Let's face it: observers of the news (like me) have been waiting for this moment of come-uppance where the bias of the media was laid bare for all to see.  It's been glorious.

Extra fun - Babylon Bee: "Dems Rush To Defend Kavanaugh After He Puts On Joe Biden Mask."

The shifting face of commerce

Nasdaq: "Here's What Americans Are Buying More -- and Less -- of During the Coronavirus Crisis."

Disposable gloves: +670%
Luggage and suitcases -77%

China lied

Associated Press: "China didn’t warn public of likely pandemic for 6 key days." 

The NY Times beclowns itself twice

Once in execution and again in explanation.  National Review: "The New York Times Knows Nobody Believes It about Biden, Kavanaugh, and Sexual Assault."

A remarkable thing happened Monday: The New York Times executive editor, Dean Baquet, actually had to answer questions about his paper’s very different coverage of sexual-assault allegations against Joe Biden and Brett Kavanaugh. It did not go well. It is simply impossible to read the interview and the Times coverage of the two cases and come away believing that the Times acted in good faith or, frankly, that it even expects anyone to believe its explanations. The paper’s motto, at this point, may as well be “All the News You’re Willing to Buy.”

The media has been hoisted upon its own petard with their scandalous treatment of Kavanaugh.

Extra - Federalist: "Media Treated Joe Biden’s Assault Accuser Differently Than Brett Kavanaugh’s."

Holy...cow

Reason: "Budget Deficit Now Expected To Near $4 Trillion This Year" - "And more coronavirus stimulus spending could send that number soaring higher."

"There's the real risk, of course, that we might be teeing up a public debt crisis on the other end of this," Boccia told Fox. That, she added, would likely mean higher taxes, reduced government services, inflation, and economic stagnation.

Will it though?  I've been ringing that alarm on debt levels (mostly with regard to entitlement spending) and the government keeps expanding with no perceptible drag on the economy.  Where is the sting of high public debt?

Let's pause to appreciate the greatest bass line of all time

It was either this or "Peg" from Steely Dan.  I chose this.

Listen to the NY Times

Link via Hot Air: "Biden Should Pick Stacey Abrams As VP."

Yes!  Do it, Joe.  Pick a failed State Representative from Georgia to almost certainly replace you once dementia takes hold.  Choose the person who still hasn't conceded the GA governor's race.

No fact-checkers at the New Yorker

Here's a piece of trivia from the 1988 movie "Bright Lights, Big City":

"Gotham", the fictitious New York magazine for which Jamie Conway works as a fact-checker, is clearly an unflattering caricature of "The New Yorker", where author/screenwriter Jay McInerney had also worked as a fact-checker.

Looks like Jamie Conway isn't the only person incapable of checking facts there: "Shocker: Jane Mayer’s new New Yorker hit job on Mitch McConnell is anchored by a totally bogus narrative."

Shocking, I know.

What we doing already but better-er

American Thinker: "Biden’s ideas for re-opening America are painfully obvious and insipid" - "If Joe Biden weren’t such a corrupt, dissolute, politically vicious man, one might feel sorry for him as he simultaneously battles irrelevance and dementia while locked away in his home in Delaware."

Stealth edit mode at the NY Times

Legal Insurrection: "NY Times deletes sentence about Joe Biden’s “hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable”

Because of course they did.  The NY Times wants to provide Biden with the same cover that the Boston Globe did for Elizabeth Warren, when she ludicrously claimed that she garnered no preferential treatment for claiming American Indian status.  Now, for the rest of the campaign, Touchy Joe can say "I was cleared by the Times."

None of Christine Ford's friends could corroborate that she and Kavanaugh had ever met each other. Tara Reade literally worked for Joe Biden and told her friends about the incident at the time.

The difference in the way the media covered each situation should infuriate you. pic.twitter.com/Zff4eavd1e

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 12, 2020

Happy Easter!

This is the first time I can remember where I didn't go to church on Easter morning.  Weird.

That'll show him!

Babylon Bee: "Liberal Treated With Hydroxychloroquine Hopes He Still Dies Of COVID-19 To Prove Trump Is Stupid." 

Oh that's not news

PJ Media: "Biden Sexual Assault Accuser Files Complaint with D.C. Police."

This is just a ploy for attention since the alleged crime is way past the statute of limitations.  But in filing a report, Tara Reade has done something that poor Christine Blasey-Ford has never done.  Can the media keep ignoring this story, given the oceans of ink spilled over Brett Kavanaugh?

Always looking for an angle

NY Post: "Democrats opt for blackmail over small-business money — and the media covers for them."  Because of course they will. 

What day is it?

I'm so confused.  I'm working limited days on site at work so Tuesdays are my new Monday and Thursdays are my new Friday.

Bernie is out

Fox News: "Sanders suspends presidential campaign, rendering Biden presumptive Democratic nominee." 

Where is the media now?

I said I wasn't going to talk about Alyssa Milano anymore.  But I will ask about the media response to the #MeToo claim against Joey Fingers:

Yet it's difficult to see the media's treatment of this story as anything other than blatant hypocrisy because there's nothing novel about the Biden accusation when compared to the Kavanaugh accusation. At the time of Milano's tweet in support of Ford, there was no evidence of Kavanaugh's guilt beyond what Ford had claimed in her statements (and little corroborating evidence of Ford's claims ever materialized, given how long ago the incident had unfolded). The Reade allegation is at exactly the same stage: She is speaking up about what happened to her, and asking to be believed. But this time, Milano—who attended an anti-Kavanaugh rally while draped in a banner that read, quite literally, "believe women"—thinks it's not enough.

Just a reminder: there is no evidence that Blasey-Ford and Kavanaugh even met.  Tara Reade, on the other hand, was a staffer working for Biden.  The media breathlessly reported Deborah Ramirez's account, which magically appeared 35 years later after a hypnosis session revealed hidden memories.  But, ya know, that's real news. 

Encouraging

Hot Air: "CDC Chief: The Actual Death Toll Could Be “Much, Much, Much, Much Lower” Than The WH Model, Thanks To Social Distancing."

So the question is: were the "experts" way off or did they scare Americans into the right behavior to limit the spread of coronavirus? 

Alyssa Milano surrenders

Caught in a trap of hypocrisy of her own making, Alyssa retreats:

This will be my last statement on this issue. Please be well and take care of each other. Hold each other tight.

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) April 6, 2020

Turning the corner?

Red State: "Still Stuck At Home, But Good News About COVID Coming In From Around The World." 

Listen to the stupid experts

PJ Media: "Experts Give Wyoming an 'F' for Social Distancing, Which Is All You Need to Know About Experts."

This is, of course, moronic. Living in Wyoming is the definition of social distancing. It's a place where you need to drive 50 miles just to get a Snickers bar. If anybody gets through this mess, it'll be places like Wyoming. Any competent grader would give the state an A+++, not an F.

Anybody who gives the matter even a moment's thought realizes this. But "giving it a moment's thought" isn't the media's business and never will be. Guys like Ken Dilanian don't get paid to think. They get paid not to.

For the record, it took all of five seconds to confirm that Wyoming is ranked 49th for population density (vast Alaska is 50th), and a rational person would smell out that this story is bogus.  But thinking is not in the wheelhouse of journalists, most of whom who are merely stenographers itching to push the narrative that the red America is stupid. 

In his defense, Biden has dementia

Washington Free Beacon: "Biden Has Earned 11 Pinocchios From Fact-Checkers During Coronavirus Crisis." 

This is my shocked face

Legal Insurrection: "Wuhan cover-up: Evidence suggests real death toll “16 times the official number” reported by China."

It was impossible that the epicenter of the original virus, in the most populous country on Earth, with a secretive and dictatorial government could contain this secret.

Extra - Paper from 2007:

The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.

China, you say?  Oh my.

Yeesh

Hot Air: "-701,000: March Jobs Report Craters, With Worse To Come." 

The unemployment rate jumped almost a full point to 4.4% and this report doesn't even account for the bulk of the job losses in March.

This is terrible news

NPR: "Fountains Of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger Dies At 52 After Contracting COVID-19."

Fountains of Wayne will be forever known for "Stacy's Mom" but they had a fantastic discography from Utopia Parkway to Sky Full of Holes. 

This is a great song from their magnum opus "Welcome Interstate Managers":

Morning Joe is a hero

Hot Air: "Joe Scarborough: Unlike Trump, ‘Everybody Saw This Coming In Early January’."

Here is actual footage of Joe remembering how he tried to warn us all in early January: