Latest from Coffee House

Monday

25 May 2020

Why should Dominic Cummings be sacked for protecting his family?

There have been an enormous number of positive attributes on display during the lockdown in Britain. Family members keeping an eye on each other. Neighbors looking after each other more. But there have been ugly attributes about as well. None uglier than the sort of tell-tale attitude that makes you realize how the secret police could always rely on a certain portion of the populace in any country. Everyone has their own anecdotes. A friend who lives in the countryside told me that someone she knew said to her, ‘Are you aware that this is your second walk of the day?’ That sort of thing. The people who have reported on others who they think are doing something they shouldn’t.

Heather Mac Donald

A short guide to justifying re-lockdown

Fear is gripping the American public health and media establishments: they are losing control. States are belatedly (and far too tentatively) easing their coronavirus lockdowns, many without having met the absurd CDC benchmarks for doing so. Customers are joyfully returning to previously shuttered restaurants and parks, some even discarding that symbol of subjugation: the outdoor mask. The mainstream media and health experts are not going down without a fight, however; their newfound power over almost the entirety of human life has been too exhilarating to give up now. Their reaction to the current rebellion provides a glimpse of the strategies that will be deployed during the much-hyped 'second wave' of infections this fall in order to shut the economy down again.

Sunday

24 May 2020

Amber Duke

Locked up in lockdown

COIVD-19 has turned us all into prisoners: draconian lockdown orders, solitary confinement, monotonous food, limited fresh air and exercise, irregular phone contact with the outside world. More than half of Americans believe the stress and isolation is harming their mental health. Now imagine living in a real prison during this epidemic.America’s prisons have become COVID hotspots due to overcrowding and poor hygiene. Inmates who were meant to serve months or years for nonviolent offenses now face a potential death sentence. It’s impossible to keep prisoners six feet apart. Prisons are last in line for supplies of soap, hand sanitizer and paper towels. At Rikers Island in New York City, hundreds have tested positive.

Andrew Bacevich

Trump’s America needs the conservative tradition

The modern American conservative tradition – roughly dating from the dawn of the 20th century — emerged in reaction to modernity itself. Modernity meant machines, speed, and radical change — taboos lifted, bonds loosened and, according to Max Weber, ‘the disenchantment of the world.’ It induced, and perhaps required, centralization. States accrued power. Bureaucracies thickened. Banks, corporations, rail systems and industrial enterprises grew to mammoth proportions. War became more destructive.Modernity promised liberation and for many did improve the quality of everyday life. Yet it also subjected individuals to immense and only dimly comprehended forces. In exchange for choice, it demanded conformity.

Saturday

23 May 2020

Matt Mayer

Obama should apologize to Trump

Anyone who has children understands the importance of teaching them to say 'sorry' when they’ve done wrong. Apologizing for causing harm to others teaches our young to be empathetic. Being able to say sorry helps knit the fabric of society together. Otherwise, our social contract would devolve into petty squabbles and endless lawsuits.Alas, in the last few decades, as America has become more and more engaged in a cold civic war, we appear to have lost the ability to be contrite, especially in politics.We now know unequivocally that there was no substantial basis for the investigation of Donald Trump, his campaign, and those associated with him for Russian collusion.

Friday

22 May 2020

Freddy Gray

Biden’s mental frailty makes him a Teflon candidate

President Trump gets away with a lot because much of the world thinks he’s a buffoon. Former vice president Joe Biden gets away with a lot because much of the world thinks he’s demented. Welcome to American politics in 2020. Trump may or may not be a buffoon; Biden may or may not be senile — there’s been perhaps too much speculation about his mental health. What is certain is that he gives the strong impression of being a doddery old codger. Perversely, in what Gore Vidal called the United States of Amnesia, that could be the key to his success. You can’t really blame a man who has lost his mind. He can’t be that bad, after all, if he doesn’t know what he is doing.

Matt Mayer

Six months out — who will win the Electoral College?

With just under six months to go, now is a good time to assess where things stand in the 2020 presidential election. You would think that with the Wuhan virus pandemic, predicting the outcome of the 2020 election would be even harder than normal. Given the sheer ‘redness’ and ‘blueness’ of most states, however, the only meaningful change will occur in the 10 or so states we’ve categorized as battleground states over the last five elections. Historically, the last real landslide presidential election occurred in 1988 when George H.W. Bush won 40 states and 426 electoral votes as he earned 53.6 percent of the popular vote. Bill Clinton’s 370 electoral votes in 1992 papered over the fact he only received 43 percent of the popular vote.

Thursday

21 May 2020

Louise Cooper

Why are US shares performing so well when the economy isn’t?

A staggering 20 million Americans lost their jobs in April and yet the US stock market had its best month for decades, with the S&P 500 up 13 percent. Since then job losses have continued to mount, and yet the market is still higher. How can US shares be doing so well when the evidence of economic devastation is overwhelming? Even odder, the US stock market (S&P 500, down 13 percent year to date) is doing far better than the UK (FTSE 100, down 23 percent YTD) and European indices (Eurostoxx, down 26 percent YTD), and yet UK and European governments have protected millions of jobs through various furloughing schemes.

Rachel Bovard

Clear and absent danger: why proxy voting violates the American system

When House Democrats passed their $3 trillion coronavirus ‘relief’ package late last week, they also jammed through a rules change on proxy voting that fundamentally transforms the nature of the House of Representatives and junks centuries of tradition. Because of a change to House rules, members will now be able to submit their votes from afar. They will not have to travel back to DC to vote: they can instead send their ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to a colleague, who will submit it on their behalf. One member can submit up to 10 votes at a time, meaning that the will of the House, which normally takes 218 members in the chamber, could be determined with only 21 members physically present.

Leonard Toboroff

Obama’s political police

In the beginning there was a clandestine ‘surveillance’ and ‘unmasking’ program by operatives in the Obama executive branch, targeting figures in some way related to President-Elect Trump during his 75-day transition period. But on January 5, 2017 the outgoing Obama administration took a fateful step. Obama convened a meeting in the Oval Office; present were his VP, the Deputy AG, his National Security Adviser, the heads of the FBI and CIA and perhaps one or two others. A decision was taken to open a counter-terrorism investigation. The target: the incoming president, Trump. The FBI chief, Comey, was dispatched the next day to brief Trump about an ongoing investigation, but hide from him that he was the target.

Wednesday

20 May 2020

Will Lloyd

Trump’s hydroxychloroquine kick is a billionaire quirk

Though it is yet to enjoy the endorsement of the UN, or the approval of the Supreme Court, the greatest human right of all is the right to self-abuse. Mankind, divided in so many ways, is nevertheless bound together by its desire to ride lawnmowers at speed, or take selfies on cliff edges, or eat bats, or jump from appalling heights out of planes. The right to self-abuse, as costly as it is, will never be legislated out of existence. It cannot be willed away either. It is exercised by the wise and the ignorant in equal measure; by the poor, the slightly less poor, and the rich too. As long as there are human beings, there will be men who find it amusing to eat a cactus. Does the President have the same right to do the Stupid Thing as the rest of us do?

Tuesday

19 May 2020

Karol Markowicz

Boycotting China is not that easy

China’s various human rights abuses, their treatment of women, their savagery toward religious people and their chokehold on Taiwan and Hong Kong, has long made them a target for economic boycotts by Westerners. But executing a successful one is exceedingly difficult to achieve. In 2003, disappointed that the George W. Bush administration reaffirmed their ‘One China’ policy in regards to Taiwan, I launched my own boycott of Chinese goods. It was difficult but felt worthwhile to spend extra time looking for the ‘made in’ label on goods I was buying. And then I needed a shower curtain. I visited store after store and could not find one made anywhere except in China. I lived without a curtain for months before giving in and buying a Chinese-made one.

Dominic Green

Trump picks a Swedish model

Donald Trump is moving toward a Swedish model. His vitality sustained by regular doses of hydroxychloroquine, President Prophylaxis is pushing hard for re-entry. His goal? Normality or, this being the Trump presidency, the next best thing. And that, as Trump so succinctly put it, means ‘a lot of death’.Our future is Swedish. Not naked saunas and reindeer stew, but the Swedish model: herd immunity against COVID-19. The Swedes went their own way when, as in Ingmar Bergman’s chucklefest The Seventh Seal, the plague swept up from the south. Being hardy northerners, they pursued their own corona-strategy and continued to live as normally as possible.

Roger Kimball

How are the public meant to trust the rule of law?

You have to hand it to the New York Times. They certainly know how to spin a story. Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr answered some questions about the ongoing criminal investigation into the so-called 'Russian collusion’ inquiry conducted by Robert Mueller and other people in the FBI and the Obama administration. He did not expect, he said, 'based on the information I have today,' that either President Obama or Vice President Biden would be the subject of a criminal investigation. 'Our concern over potential criminality,' he continued, 'is focused on others.’ Perhaps that acknowledgment would be grounds for sighs of relief from Martha’s Vineyard and wherever Joe Biden’s basement is.

Kate Hyde

The Stacey Abrams presidency

‘You don’t run for second place.’ That’s how Stacey Abrams responded when asked if she would consider being presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s running mate during a March 2019 interview on ABC’s The View. Annoyed at the posed hypothetical, the 2018 Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate’s answer lacked a basic understanding of her place in the Democratic party. But now, a short year later, Abrams is making it abundantly clear to anyone who is willing to listen: she is absolutely, passionately and gracelessly running for second place, so help her God.

Freddy Gray

Trump needs the Catholic vote

On Twitter yesterday, Donald Trump sent out the political equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. ‘Today we commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Saint John Paul II,’ tweeted the President. ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’ This was not just Trump being thoughtful about a great spiritual leader. It was an electoral appeal to Catholics on social media and a move that suggests Trump is worried about the Catholic vote. He’s right to be. There are endless debates about the extent to which America’s Catholics decide elections — or, indeed, whether the Catholic vote exists at all, given the diversity of the nation’s sprawling Catholic population.

Monday

18 May 2020

Will Lloyd

Is it time to bring back Steve Bannon?

Until recently, it seemed unlikely that Donald Trump would need to call on the services of his former strategist Steve Bannon ever again. Why would he need a fire-spewing insurgent like Bannon, given that he was governing from a position of strength? The economy was at Mach 8; unemployment was at record lows; Kanye West was a personal friend. Above all, this presidency was good television. Viewers would want to find out what happened next. Now refrigerated corpse trucks rumble through the streets of New York City. The number of unemployed threatens to raise John Steinbeck from his tomb to write realistic novels about down-and-out gig workers. ‘We are living in a failed state,’ lamented an uber-viral George Packer article a few weeks ago.

Amber Duke

Americans are paying the price for the rotten meat business

Please don’t make me eat the tofu dog. America has reopened in time for the Fourth of July, but COVID-19 is forcing plant-based mock-meat onto the nation’s festive paper plate. The meat industry’s supply chains are disrupted. Families will be forced to consume tofu, mycoproteins and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Meat at their annual cookouts. This is not the American way — but meat is money. The meat industry, like any other American industry, is being wrecked by corner-cutters and monopolists — and we all have to digest the results. More than 4,000 meatpacking workers have been infected with COVID-19. Single plants have experienced hundreds of cases. Entire operations have closed down.

Andrew Bacevich

Still, the Global War on Terrorism goes on

I can think of only a single positive thing to say about World War One: it ended. Yet in addition to precluding any further waste of lives, the Armistice of November 1918 and the ensuing Paris Peace Conference did something else. It allowed historians and other writers to begin taking stock of this ghastly episode, which had caused death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. Making sense of the so-called Great War exceeded the limits of human capacity. Yet however imperfectly, at least it might be understood. Why had the war happened? Why had it lasted so long? What had motivated the belligerents? What did this horrendous cataclysm signify, both politically and morally? Finally, how could the recurrence of such a debacle be averted?

Matt Mayer

It isn’t necessarily the economy, stupid!

'It’s the economy, stupid!' With those now famous words, the Democratic strategist James Carville summarized the 1992 election between President George H.W. Bush and Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Carville captured a fundamental reality. From 1932 to today, only three incumbent presidents have lost their reelection campaigns: Herbert Hoover in 1932, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and H W Bush in 1992. Each man fell thanks to economic woes. As of March 1, 2020, Donald Trump’s reelection campaign was also all about the economy, stupid. Trump’s 'Keep America Great!' economic record had been very strong. The stock market had hit record highs, with the S&P 500 reaching nearly 3,400 and the DJIA almost topping 30,000 in mid-February.

Sunday

17 May 2020

Daniel McCarthy

Why did Justin Amash give up?

Three weeks after announcing his bid for the Libertarian party presidential nomination, Justin Amash has called it off. What went wrong? His brief campaign was a media success, if nothing else — and spreading the libertarian gospel to a wider audience by getting on shows like Meet the Press is all that a Libertarian nominee can reasonably ask for. Amash couldn’t have had any illusions about that: he’s self-indulgently idealistic, but he’s not stupid. Was he in danger of failing to get the nomination? If history is any guide, he should have been a shoo-in. The Libertarian party nominated less qualified and capable ex-Republicans in each of its last three presidential contests. Amash had a small-l libertarian voting record in Congress.

Saturday

16 May 2020

Kate Andrews

Stimulus squabble marks a return to politics as usual

Who is the proposed new $3 trillion stimulus package designed to help? If enacted, the bill — which narrowly passed through the House yesterday, with a break in both party lines — would follow from the $2 trillion package passed in March. But it’s not getting past the Senate, at least not in its current form. Despite broad consensus that the first stimulus wave for businesses and families was a necessary emergency measure to help get America’s economy through the COVID crisis, this next round has become increasingly political, looking more like election postering than a thorough plan for the next phase of the pandemic.

Friday

15 May 2020

Michael Tracey

Do you believe Tara Reade?

Without a doubt, women who level sexual assault allegations against powerful men are often subjected to character assassination and smears.However, evaluating the credibility of a person who alleges that a presidential candidate committed a grievous act of criminal violence is not the same as ‘smearing’ that person.I’m not interested in smearing Tara Reade, who claims to have been raped by Joe Biden. For one thing, I have no particular affinity for Biden. You can go check my archive at The Spectator and elsewhere for numerous examples of articles in which I harshly criticize Biden, especially for his own pattern of deception as it relates to the circumstances of his 2002 Iraq War vote.

Saurabh Sharma

Texas’s traveling economic militias are done with lockdown

TexasAs lockdowns began across America, Texans did what Texans do best. They emptied the shelves of every firearm store in the state.Urban progressives and the pundit class were quick to scorn. But those firearms, and the millions more owned by the people of Texas, are now proving useful. Texans want to reopen their economy and are turning to amateur armed guards in order to do so.A recent piece in the New York Times focused on a tattoo shop in Shepherd, Texas, about an hour outside of Houston. When Jamie Williams’s business was passed over for the first wave of permitted re-openings by Gov. Greg Abbott, she called one of what can only be described as Texas’s traveling economic militias.

Wednesday

13 May 2020

Amber Duke

Biden busted? Dems and the media circle the wagons over Flynn unmasking

Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell has dropped a massive bombshell in the counter-investigation on Russiagate. In a document obtained by CBS News's Catherine Herridge, Grenell revealed that Obama administration officials sought to 'unmask' Gen. Michael Flynn 48 times after Trump was elected president. Those officials include, among others, Vice President Joe Biden, former UN ambassador Samantha Power, DNI James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, FBI director James Comey, and President Obama's chief of staff Denis McDonough. Why is this important? Unmasking isn't illegal — officials with the proper clearance can request the identities of Americans whose conversations are incidentally collected during foreign surveillance.

Roger Kimball

Andrew Cuomo is a deadly failure

Have we reached peak Cuomo? I think that the climacteric came when the media was aflutter with rumors that the governor of New York wore nipple rings. Alas, it turned out to be only a rumor, or so we have been assured. There are two questions that continue to bedevil Cuomo watchers. The first is whether his handling of the Wuhan Flu is the absolute worst of any governor or only among the worst. The second question is how, given how appalling his leadership has been, he has managed to float along with such high approval ratings (some say 80 percent). As to the first, we have a veritable litany of failure, much of it deadly.

Cockburn

Does Greta Thunberg have the answer to COVID-19?

COVID-19 is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma and hidden within a Chinese wet market, or possibly a CCP laboratory. World leaders are baffled by how to respond. The science keeps contradicting itself. The world’s greatest mathematicians can’t keep up with the ever-changing data sets. Who can the poor and frightened public turn to for help? Never fear, Greta’s here. That’s right. Little Miss Thunberg, a 17-year-old Swedish girl who dropped out of high school to sound the climate change alarm, is turning her mega-brain towards COVID-19, just when we need her most. On Thursday evening, CNN will host a live town hall called ‘Coronavirus: Facts and Fears’, featuring former acting CDC director Richard Besser, former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Miss Thunberg.

Tuesday

12 May 2020

Amber Duke

Has coronavirus killed the Democrats’ healthcare referendum?

Late last December, Democrats were heading into the homestretch of their presidential primary optimistic that although they faced an internal battle about their party's position on healthcare, they could easily outrun President Trump on the issue. Healthcare proved to be a winning issue during the 2018 midterms when Democrats took back the House, catching Republicans flat-footed on a policy issue they had failed to present a new, cohesive idea on since 'repeal and replace Obamacare'. Democrats hoped they could replicate this success in 2020, as Trump repeatedly floated the possibility of a new Republican plan on healthcare but had yet to actually unveil one. The strategy seemed good on its face; healthcare was constantly polled as the top issue for voters in late 2019 and early 2020.

Stephen L. Miller

Newsflash: Trump insults everyone

Want to know the worst kept secret in America? Every time President Trump and the White House Press Corps do their performative dance, while the country rolls its eyes and goes about its day — Trump insults everyone. Male, female, black, white, purple, Hispanic or, as in yesterday’s dust-up with CBS reporter Weijia Jiang, Asian. We can argue all day about if his behavior is fitting for the Oval Office (it isn’t) or if it helps the country (it doesn’t), but one thing that’s been clear in the three-plus years of the Trump presidency is that everyone is fair game. Rarely does sex or ethnicity factor into the president’s choice of target: he is an equal opportunities offender.

Amber Duke

Cut! Weekend news shows give Barr and Pompeo the chop

The communications teams at the State Department and Department of Justice spent the past couple of days trying to correct their record after the respective heads of their agencies were taken out of context by two Sunday news programs. CBS's 60 Minutes and NBC's Meet the Press both used deceptive editing to smear their subjects in a banner weekend for media bias. Attorney General Bill Barr was the first to get clipped on Meet the Press. Anchor Chuck Todd claimed that Barr would not defend the DoJ's decision to drop charges against former Trump campaign official Michael Flynn based on a shortened version of an answer he gave about the topic to CBS News's Catherine Herridge. Herridge asked Barr, 'When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?

Cockburn

NABJ cancels Huawei-sponsored misinformation panel

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) was planning to run a panel tomorrow called ‘The Rise of Misinformation’ sponsored by Huawei — a Chinese consumer electronics firm with suspiciously close ties to the Chinese Communist party. Sadly, just over 24 hours before the start time, the NABJ suddenly canceled the event. What happened?A statement released by the NABJ said that the panel had ‘become a distraction from other priorities’, as it ‘had come under attack because controversial technology giant Huawei was planning to sponsor the webinar though it had no editorial control’.

Daniel McCarthy

Who will be Joe Biden’s co-president?

Joe Biden needs a co-president. Not just a running mate, not just a potential vice president, but someone who will be president-in-waiting should Biden win in November — the month he turns 78. The idea of Biden running for a second term in 2024 at the age of 81 is hard to take seriously. So far, this is something everybody knows but nobody is taking seriously enough. The question of Biden’s current mental acuity has become a campaign issue, but even Democrats who believe Biden is up to the job of being president in 2020 will have a tough time arguing that he’d be fit to serve a second term. In looking at the Democratic ticket this year, voters will in effect be asked to vote not just for a president but for a 2024 nominee as well.

Monday

11 May 2020

Paul Wood

Ma Jian: China’s regime is ‘stronger than ever’

Should we blame China for the spread of coronavirus? And how should the West respond if the communist regime did cause the pandemic by lying about the virus as it emerged? I spoke about these questions to the dissident author Ma Jian, who has been described — by another dissident — as ‘one of the most important and courageous voices in Chinese literature’. His novels have been called — by a critic — ‘a powerful corrective to the self-interested Western view of China’. Ma believes that the economic miracle in China that has given us cheap goods in the West is also bribing the Chinese to forget their past and infantilizing them in their relationship with their rulers.

Michael R. Auslin

President Trump’s support for Taiwan is welcome

Over the coming weeks, a battle between Washington and Beijing over the inclusion of Taiwan as an observer at the World Health Organization will rage, reflecting the struggle between the People’s Republic of China and the United States over control over international institutions. Yet it also reveals the reality of the new cold war between the two countries, and the shift in focus of attention to ground-level tactics at the expense of grand strategies. Long forgotten in the shadow of China’s rise and the intensification of both contact and competition between the PRC and the United States has been the island nation of Taiwan.