Monday roundup

The White House is bad-mouthing Dr. Fauci. It's sent sent a document to various media outlets that enumerates several instances in which the administration says he's been wrong about the coronavirus.  But if very many of the examples are like this one, it's pretty weak tea:

One example in the short document is a comment made by Fauci on NBC's Today Show in late February that "at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you're doing on a day-by-day basis."

However, that was not the full statement Fauci made during the interview.

"Right now the risk is still low, but this could change," Fauci also told the Today Show at the time. "When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread."

This woman is on the Seattle city council:

. . . we are coming for you and your rotten system. We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism. This police state. We cannot and will not stop until we overthrow it, and replace it with a world based, instead, on solidarity, genuine democracy, and equality: a socialist world. 

The all-about-me whiner-in-chief:

Callers on President Donald Trump in recent weeks have come to expect what several allies and advisers describe as a "woe-is-me" preamble.

The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying "the greatest economy," one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair "fake news" media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the "sick, twisted" police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president.

Gone, say these advisers and confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations, are the usual pleasantries and greetings.

Instead, Trump often launches into a monologue placing himself at the center of the nation's turmoil. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim - of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country.

In light of the Roger Stone pardon, does Senator Susan Collins still feel, as she did when she voted to acquit the VSG, that he's' learned his lesson?

Quotes from the VSG on the thirteen occasions on which he said the coronavirus would just kind of go away. 

At this rate, the Minneapolis city council may not have to dismantle the police force. One fifth of it is bailing in one fell swoop:

A lawyer who represents police officers has been contacted by more than 150 current officers who seek to file for disability benefits, a move taken before they leave the force. Most of the officers claim they are suffering from PTSD and that the stressful situation since the killing of George Floyd has become the last straw.

I don't really have any skin in this game, since I'm almost certainly not going to vote for Biden or the VSG, but Matthew Continetti says that as cancel culture in post-America proceeds past the general public's tipping point, lots of voters are being driven into the arms of the incumbent. Consider the choice one coffee shop owner is willing to make:

Before Thursday morning I had not heard of Thomas Bosco, and I am willing to bet you haven't heard of him either. He runs a café in Upper Manhattan. From the picture in the New York Times, the Indian Road Café is one of those Bobo-friendly brick-lined coffee shops with chalkboard menus affixed to the wall behind the counter and a small stage for down-on-their-luck musicians to warble a few bars of "Fast Car" as you sip on a no-foam latte while editing a diversity training manual. It looks pleasant enough. "Local writers, artists, musicians, and political activists are regulars," writes metro columnist Azi Paybarah. "And for years, two drag queens have hosted a monthly charity bingo tournament there." Drag queens! You can’t get more progressive than that. Bosco seems like a noble small businessman making his way in a turbulent world.

There’s a problem, though. He once expressed an opinion. Though Black Lives Matter signs are posted throughout the restaurant, and its owner identifies as "a liberal guy who supports almost every liberal cause I can think of," in early June Bosco told MSNBC that he voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and expects to do so again. Omigod no. "The backlash was swift, as you might expect," writes Paybarah. Neighbors denounced Bosco on Facebook. Some vowed not to patronize the café. Randi Weingarten, who as president of the American Federation of Teachers draws close to half a million dollars in salary and benefits, wrote online that it would be "hard to ever go back." No more tips for the barista from her. As for the drag queens, they are taking their glitter elsewhere.

Bosco is distraught. "My staff feels like I let them down to a certain extent," he told the Times. He has supported Bernie Sanders, donated to immigrant groups, contributed to the food pantry, provided child care for an employee, and plans to change the name of the café to Inwood Farm to avoid any possible offense toward the Indigenous. None of this is enough to quell the fury of the Very Online. "Similar backlashes have erupted in liberal New York City, usually after a business is revealed to have financial links to Mr. Trump or socially conservative causes," notes Paybarah, citing the example of Stephen Ross, an investor who had to cut ties to the Equinox and SoulCycle gym chains after it was revealed that he was going to throw a fundraiser for the president. "But Mr. Bosco is no Mr. Ross."

No, Mr. Bosco is not. He is instead one of the countless private individuals whose lives have been upended by the gale of righteousness blowing through this country since the killing of George Floyd in police custody on May 25. For all of the high-profile sackings, vandalism, and cancellations—the editor of the New York Times opinion pages, the CEO of Crossfit, the editor in chief of Bon Appétit, the head of Adidas human resources, the Atlanta police chief, statues of Confederates, Columbus, Grant, and Douglass, and the Washington Redskins—there have been an equal number of stories concerning absolute nobodies, pipsqueaks, formally anonymous men and women whose unpopular opinions or boneheaded errors of judgment, widely publicized on social media, transform them into public enemies, splittists, and heretics whose livelihoods suffer as a result. Andy Warhol’s 1968 prediction of the future was wrong. It's not that everyone is world-famous for 15 minutes. It's that they are infamous.

And it takes ever less time for a cultural phenomenon to go from being deemed praiseworthy to being a pariah:

What was precious and inviolable minutes ago—the musical Hamilton, for example, or Harry Potter—becomes the object of suspicion and derision. The frenzy builds on itself, and grows stronger, and doesn't know where to stop.

And even some whose woke bona fides have been in impeccable order are not okay with where this has gone:

When Noam Chomsky, who had no trouble putting the crimes of the Khmer Rouge into "context," signs a letter warning that "The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted," it is a sign that things …  things have gotten out of control. 

Sports gets less fun by the hour now. Washington Redskins changing their name even though 90 percent of native Americans are just fine with "Redskins."

A Chinese virologist who very early on - as in last December - raised concerns about the coronavirus soon ran afoul of the Chinese Communist Party. And her chcken-s--- husband bailed on her: 

 Fox News has an exclusive interview with Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a virologist from Hong Kong who says she was one of the first doctors in the world to begin investigating the coronavirus outbreak. Her investigation began on December 31, the day word of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan first appeared in Chinese media.

Dr. Yan’s boss told her to look into it so she began asking questions from a network of doctor friends in China. Right away she learned from a member of the Chinese CDC that there was evidence of person-to-person transmission of the virus. This is something that China would officially deny was the case for several more weeks. Dr. Yan continued to investigate but by mid-January she said the tone had changed. Her friends in China were saying they couldn’t talk about it anymore. When Dr. Yan made a 2nd report to her bosses in Hong Kong, they told her to be very careful.

Dr. Yan decided to share her concerns with a Chinese blogger based in the U.S. That was published on January 19th but it was only in Chinese. Dr. Yan notes that within 4 hours there was a response from the Chinese government which suddenly announced there were 198 cases rather than 62. She says that was also when China admitted there was evidence of person-to-person transmission. Three days later, Wuhan was locked down.
The blogger Dr. Yan had spoken to warned her that she might need to relocate to avoid trouble with Chinese authorities. She decided to fly to America but when her husband, who was also a doctor, found out, he was angry.

Yan told Fox News she begged her husband to go with her, and says while her spouse, a reputable scientist himself, had initially been supportive of her research, he suddenly had a change of heart.

“He was totally pissed off,” she said. “He blamed me, tried to ruin my confidence… He said they will kill all of us.'”

Shocked and hurt, Yan made the decision to leave without him.

Dr. Yan left the country on April 28. Her husband refused to go with her. When she got to customs in America, she told them she was there to tell the truth about China’s coronavirus response and spent time talking with the FBI. But she says that even before her plane had landed, police were sent to her hometown to harass her family.

Then in mid-May, before she had spoken to any English language media outlets, people she believes were working for the Chinese government began attacking her on social media and set up a fake Facebook profile for her. Yan says the account was used to “tell people that I’m kidnapped in the U.S., [that] I tried to lie to people, even that I have a mental disorder.” She expects things will only get worse now that she has spoken out (in English). 

"What awaits is not a womb where everyone is Oprah Winfrey feeling your pain, but the world, and there - there be dragons." A short essay on transformation by Springs Toledo at Plough.  

In the course of my research for my latest Precipice piece, I came across this gospel concert from 1955 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The Pilgrim Travellers, The Harmonettes, The Caravans, The Soul Stirrers, Ethel Davenport, Annette May and Joe May. This will squeeze your crotch and bring you to your knees. Don't be apprehensive. Saul went through such an experience and got his name changed to Paul and was assured of a very special place in God's heaven.