Very good story by Chi Trib’s Paul Sullivan.
In praise of the big man who set a record for rebounds.
And Coach (later announcer) Johnny Kerr, 1966-67, who had to spell a player’s name when calling in game results to a news desk, so little did the papers know or care about the Bulls in their first seasons.
Apple in the dock here, says AG Barr.
Shooter “more than [just] inspired,” reports DOJ.
In response to suit brought by these:
In addition to the lawsuit brought by the Elim and Logos congregations, Pritzker has also been sued by The Beloved Church, of Lena, in northwest Illinois, and its pastor Stephen Cassell.
Lots of church bodies take a pass, needless to say. But fantasize: What if the Archdiocese of Chicago were in this mix? Not to worry about it, but what if?
Sounds good, as in 3rd-last paragraph:
In the end, the robust estimates equate to more than one-third of the U.S. gross domestic product and easily top the current federal budget. Researchers argue the benefits of social distancing don’t end there, pointing out how such practices could prove beneficial in reducing the spread of other illnesses and diseases.
The final ‘graphs, however:
As for the level of guesswork that goes into their analyses, both Greenstone and Nigam argue that it’s only because there’s currently a lack of hard data to calculate. [boldface added]
“While it is tempting to undertake a full cost-benefit analysis of social distancing, this would require reliable estimates of its substantial costs,” they wrote. “We are unaware of comprehensive estimates of these costs, and their development is beyond the scope of our analysis, so the paper cannot go further than developing an estimate of the gross benefits of social distancing.”
What costs do to net, now that’s always the darn problem.
. . . In the latest RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Trump’s job approval is at 45.6 percent. That is higher than it has been most of the time during his presidency, and it is down all of 1.8 points from April 1, when his approval hit an all-time high of 47.4. Given all that has happened in the last six weeks, it’s just more evidence of the remarkable stability of the president’s polling.
Remarkable, and to be kept in mind, with not quite six months to go . . .
Some glaring particulars in how wrong this Pulitzer winner was (is).
She is wrong about Virginia being the first place that African slaves were brought to America, and wrong too about the status of the slaves whom a group of pirates brought to Virginia in 1619, many of whom gained their freedom. She is wrong that slavery was the founding institution of America and wrong about its importance in key events, including the American Revolution and the Civil War. Her mistakes about the American Revolution included the absurdity that the colonial Americans launched the Revolution to protect their right to hold slaves.
Her newspaper had to admit one thing:
On this single point, The New York Times felt compelled to make a half-hearted correction to the effect that only some of the colonists harbored this motive. To date, no one has been able to identify a single Revolutionary leader, soldier, or supporter of the Revolution who held such a view. Even ardent supporters of slavery in the 1770s knew better because the British government at the time was stalwart in supporting slavery in the colonies. The meaningful opposition to slavery was among the revolutionary colonists, not the British. And this is no obscure historical fact. Historians working with primary sources have documented the slavery politics of the Revolutionary period in detail.
Her sources? Who knows? The writer takes a shot at that:
How could Hannah-Jones have gotten the facts so spectacularly wrong? There is no answer that reflects well on her. Did she know the facts and chose to suppress them to enhance the fable she was composing? Did she disregard the facts because she believed that the history as recorded was a tissue of falsehoods and that she alone had been vouchsafed a vision of what really happened? (Or she and a handful of zealous believers in Afro-centric conspiracy theories.) Or was she simply ignorant of the facts, having paid little or no attention to both the documentary record and the syntheses of historians who have spent their careers examining that record? Our choices seem to be liar, lunatic, or hustler. I don’t know Hannah-Jones and can offer no judgment, but I am hard-pressed to imagine a fourth, more honorable alternative.
Nor anyone else.
Pulitzer winner Nikole Hannah-Jones, for her essay leading off the NY Times’ “1619 Project,” is one ignorant and stubborn individual, argues this takedown of her as someone so loose with data as makes one wonder how she makes it to work every day.
Her miscues . . .
. . . include her cavalier disregard of historical facts, her preposterous assertions conjured out of thin air, and her refusal to correct mistakes pointed out by dozens of reputable historians, some of whom have well-earned Pulitzer Prizes of their own.
Egad. She should give it back.
Better yet, how does she (and her newspaper) get away with it?
. . . here.
From the story:The day McDonough requested the informationis the same day as an Oval Office meeting that has drawn scrutiny in the wake of the Flynn developments. The meeting includedObama, Biden, Clapper, Brennan, Comey, then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates(Fox News).
From the Wall Street Journal editorial board:The Flynn unmasking is important because it occurred amid a media frenzy over supposed Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Leaks to the Washington Post about the conversations between the Russian ambassador and both Mr. Flynn and soon-to-be Attorney General Jeff Sessions were played up as central to the collusion scandal. They caused Mr. Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia probe and Mr. Flynn to be fired. While unmasking isn’t illegal, leaking intelligence is(WSJ).
From Ed Morrissey:Let’s not forget that the collection of intelligence on US persons while in the US is against the law without a specific warrant from a FISA court. Material on US persons that is collected inadvertently through legitimate counterintelligence operations — such as tracking Russian diplomats — is masked unless there is a pressing threat that requires an extremely limited exposure of their identities. Here we have sixteen Obama administration officials requesting access to Flynn’s identity between the election and Trump’s inauguration(Hot Air).
Sean Davis reminds us “The identities are important because they may shed light on which officials illegally leaked information about Flynn’s calls with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak to journalists at the Washington Post. U.S. Attorney John Durham is reportedly investigating the matter and seeking to determine who was responsible for the illegal leak of classified information” (The Federalist).
After NBC’s Andrea Mitchell called this gaslighting, Ari Fleischer responded “Amazing to me how the “cynical” press is missing this story. The issue isn’t how often the intell community unmasks. The issue is how often the White House unmasks. Did it ever occur to the media the Obama WH unmasked like no one before them???” (Twitter).
From Senator Rand Paul:Declassified documents reveal V.P. Biden ordered the unmasking of General Flynn’s private conversation. Anyone think that Biden might have abused his power to go after a political opponent…(Twitter).
From David Harsanyi:Using the no-big-deal standard, it would be legit for Trump to spy on John Kerry (now a member of Biden’s campaign) because he secretly met with Iranians to undermine the administration’s foreign policy. (Even more legit since Flynn was incoming advisor)(Twitter). More (National Review).
From Andy McCarthy:Reminder: Just because we have a list of unmasker names does not mean we know who the actual unmaskers are. If this was GOP unmasking Dems, it’d be a scandal, we’d have answers, and people would already have walked the plank over it(Twitter).
From Hugh Hewitt:Who authorized the unmasking? Pursuant to what standard? Were the “justifications” retained? Is there any precedent for this occurring during a transition and why did vast expanse or ink spilled on SC Report not explain this avalanche of unmaskings and what role they played?(Twitter).
From Katie Pavlich:The argument that the Flynn situation is “just a distraction” isn’t going to fly, DNC(Twitter).
Do you see a mainstream publication in there? Fox News and Wall St. Journal, who do not qualify in the usual sense, being publications of very large circulation who manage to report and comment on news in a reasonable manner, most of the time, especially WSJ.
Blithe Spirit 