Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories

Chris Cuomo’s coronavirus circus

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has perfected COVID-19 performance art. While other attention seekers declare proudly that they’re ‘pretty sure’ they ‘had the ’rona back in January’, Cuomo has outplayed them all by actually securing a positive test before becoming an insufferable twerp about it. Cuomo announced on March 31 that he tested positive for coronavirus and that he would be self-quarantining in his basement away from his wife and children. On April 7, Cuomo told viewers of his primetime show that he was shivering so much that he chipped a tooth. Sympathy poured in from across the internet, but just five days later, Cuomo threw away any goodwill he ought to receive for his illness.

Chris Cuomo

Disinfectant Donnie

Do you know what the real ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ is? No, not the fauxtraged shrieks of liberals at everything the president does. It’s the tendency Trump has to turn normally sensible conservative journalists into a sort of Praetorian Guard, drawing their swords to defend his every utterance, and endowing comments that would shame a blithering idiot with non-existent purpose and meaning. The esteemed US editor of The Spectator, Mr Gray, has his gladius out. He argues the president spitballing at a press conference that perhaps one could inject disinfectant to the lungs to kill coronavirus, or irradiate the body with (carcinogenic) UV light, was actually 16-dimensional chess and ‘a Trumpian masterpiece’.

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Half of Americans want their state to sue China for coronavirus damages

Public opinion is rapidly turning against China as intelligence agencies have exposed the full extent of the communist state’s coverup of the novel coronavirus outbreak. US intelligence has determined that China has underreported total cases and deaths, and dragged its feet in telling the rest of the world about the seriousness of the virus. A Trump administration official told The Spectator earlier this month that the US response was delayed by at least a month due to China’s lack of transparency. Americans are angry at China’s deception: a majority of them polled at the end of March and in early April said they agree with President Trump referring to COVID-19 as the ‘Chinese virus’.

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mr spectator 10,000th

How to buy The Spectator’s 10,000th UK edition in the US

The Spectator in London has this week done something no other magazine has done. We’ve just published our 10,000th edition. We’ve been producing a weekly magazine since 1828 — I’m proud to have been involved in the magazine for 10 of those 192 years. The key to our longevity is that The Spectator is unique; it dares to be different. We have pretty much stuck to the same simple editorial formula — news and comment first, book reviews after — because it works. We allow jokes and dissent. We encourage arguments. As Douglas Murray puts it in his column this week, The Spectator’s enemies are ‘Boredom. Predictability. Obviousness. Humorlessness. Dullness. Staleness.

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Why Joe Biden’s America loves a lockdown

COVID-19, the Wuhan virus, is an epidemiological scourge — but it’s also a clarifying catalyst for American politics. The virus’s relevance for globalization has been widely noted: this disease of Chinese origin has exposed how incapable the de-industrialized West has become of providing its own masks, drugs, and ventilators. It has highlighted the class divide that globalization produces within countries such as America as well. The highly educated professional classes can work from home, and their jobs are relatively secure; the service class, on the other hand — the waiters and cooks and hotel maids and retail clerks and others — are out of their jobs and shit out of luck. Not to worry: the professional class will write all of them checks for $1,200.

Dispatches from the Nerd-Hack war

The Western COVID-19 crisis started with another skirmish in the Nerd-Hack war and the conflict has continued. Back in February, Vox published a rather snide piece about how Silicon Valley weirdos were not shaking hands for fear of picking up and passing on coronavirus. Balaji Srinivasan, a noted angel investor and entrepreneur, hit back with a detailed critique of the piece. The reader can decide for themselves who was more prescient, though I will pose one question — when did you last shake someone's hand?Nerd-Hack conflict has boiled up again this week. Marc Andreessen, the co-author of Mosaic, the granddaddy of web browsers, published a rousing call to build. ‘Our nation and our civilization,’ Andreessen writes:‘...were built on production, on building.

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The Russia probe was mishandled worse than anyone could have imagined

It’s been over three years since the FBI first launched its investigation into an alleged conspiracy between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russian government, and yet we’re still learning just how badly our intelligence agencies bungled Crossfire Hurricane. The president and his allies have been arguing since the probe went public that it was all a ‘witch hunt’ designed to put a stop to or delegitimize his electoral victory. Subsequently released details about the investigation seemed to track with that theory: Inspector General Michael Horowitz, for example, chided the FBI in a December report for failing to fulfill its full obligations when seeking FISA warrants against former Trump campaign official Carter Page. Sens.

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President Donald Trump immigration

Jared Kushner pushes back on Trump’s immigration ban

The White House is currently facing an internal battle over President Trump’s announcement Monday night that he will sign an executive order temporarily halting immigration amid the coronavirus outbreak. The details of the order had not been finalized as of Tuesday morning, causing frantic debate over which groups of immigrants will be exempt from the ban. Immigration restrictionists have been trying to sell the president on the idea of a ban for at least a week, pointing to various polling that shows it is popular among voters due to fears of the spread of COVID-19 and the high unemployment numbers in the US. Twenty-two million people thus far have filed for unemployment as the economy has practically shut down because of social distancing measures.

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National Review: for Trump in 2020?

Does President Trump have a new favorite magazine? At yesterday's Coronavirus Task Force briefing, Trump took a bit of time to educate the press corps on what they should be reading: National Review articles: https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1252354480298811392 'A story that just came out...“How the Media Completely Blew the Trump Ventilator Story”, I'm sure you love to see that. That's by Rich Lowry, respected journalist and person. “How the Media Completely Blew the Trump Ventilator Story”, which, unfortunately, you did. And here's another one that just came out. Kyle Smith, “The Ventilator Shortage That Wasn't”. “The Ventilator Shortage That Wasn't”...because we got it fixed...

Is Bernie Sanders the Barry Goldwater of the left?

Forgive the analogy that follows. Is Bernie Sanders the Barry Goldwater of the left? Has Sanders, to echo the words of George Will on Goldwater, lost two primary campaigns but won the future? What reminds us of Goldwater is the clarity of Sanders’s proposals and the force with which he expressed them. Medicare-for-All, canceling student debt, free college tuition; paid for by soaking the wealthy with new taxes. Sanders made all of this thinkable, because most of his ideas are popular. The Sanders moment arrived at a time of political reorientation that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War years. Polling showed that half of millennials have unfavorable views of capitalism. Seventy percent say they are likely to vote for a socialist candidate.

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Time to crush China’s Arctic influence

Eyes are opening to the evil of the authoritarian Chinese regime that represses its people, genocides entire cultures, and influences investments and policy all over the globe. As most of the world is under coronavirus lockdown, the Chinese Communist party detains hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Uighur Muslims in concentration camps in east China. Not to mention the brutal occupation of Tibet, where China is also allegedly responsible for the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans over the last 70 years due to its brutal occupation.The CCP’s mishandling of the viral contagion from Wuhan may have exposed its obsession with power at all costs, but its next, greater threat is still developing in the shadows: imperialism.

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The Meghan & Harry Show will end in tears

Just as we were getting used to the headlines about hospitalization and mortality rates, the really bad news arrives. Meghan and Harry are back. After scuttling to California before they were isolated in the hell of a luxury rental in Vancouver, the unemployed ex-royals are loose on the streets of Los Angeles. Disguised as two Postmates workers, they’re delivering bags of food to already vulnerable members of the public and making sure to be filmed doing it. Think Candid Camera, without the candor.Like everything this spontaneously warm and down-to-earth couple does, this stunt combines a cold whiff of careful planning with their signature aroma, a complex blend of farce, vanity and self-destruction.

Our post-liberal moment

Can we still say that we live in a liberal age? We live, now, in the age of an epidemic. Calling for a political order that can effectively respond to such a disease is starting to sound a lot like calling for a post-liberal order. In the pages of the Atlantic, Adrian Vermeule has made something of the same point: the order that we have been living under is clearly unequipped to deal with crises of the nature of this epidemic. The common libertarian conservative position that any government action on this is a violation of the rights of the individual, shows the fundamental insanity of libertarianism. My father used to quote Voltaire to me: 'My right to punch you in the nose ends where your nose begins.

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coronavirus Donald Trump at a press briefing, Credit: Getty

Will the coronavirus succeed where Russiagate and Ukrainegate failed?

Back on March 12, I noted in this space that one of the most potent effects of our latest Chinese import would be as a weapon of political propaganda — a new club, that is to say, which the Dems would wield to beat President Trump. It has taken a while for the Hephaestus of the Left to fashion the appropriate weapon. Back at the end of January, there was a brief moment where a stiletto was thought to be the weapon of choice. Trump suspended air travel from China of January 31: stab him with the charge of xenophobia, slice him with slur of racism, carve him up with the charge of overreacting. Towards the end of February, however, there was a sudden shift in sentiment. There were hardly any cases, even fewer fatalities, but the public-health tea kettles were screaming panic.

How Bill Clinton junked America’s supremacy

‘This is a good day for America,’ said President Bill Clinton on May 24, the Year of Our Lord 2000. ‘In 10 years from now we will look back on this day and be glad we did this.’ Clinton was talking about the House of Representatives’ vote to award normal trade relations to China. And he was right. By 2010, despite the crash of 2008, the knowledge class still largely considered the decision to support China’s entry into the World Trade Organization as a great boon. China’s rise had turbocharged globalization and made us all richer — never mind the stupefying sovereign debts. Labour unions had opposed it, but leaders and corporations were still enthralled by the gargantuan consumer markets.

President Bill Clinton speaks in the Rose Garden, May 24, 2000 in Washington, D.C. after the China trade vote in Congress.

Liberate…Michael Cohen?

President Trump sent out a number of tweets today demanding liberation, but he probably wasn’t thinking of his old fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen, who squealed on Donald Trump before Congress, went to jail for a variety of financial and campaign finance crimes. Thanks to the coronavirus, his own problem is largely fixed. He’s getting an early reprieve from his three-year jail sentence at a medium-security prison in Otisville, New York and headed for home confinement. Another member of Trump’s rogues gallery, Paul Manafort, has asked to be released from Loretto federal prison in Pennsylvania because of the pandemic, but there’s no word yet whether his request will be granted. Unlike Cohen, Manafort remained unflinching.

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Coronavirus lockdowns are cowardice

This is a piece about death. Obviously death is a serious topic, perhaps as serious as anything you could possibly write about, but in these truly weird times of a global pandemic and unprecedented threat to what most people would conceive as normality, let’s start with a joke. How do you make ordinary citizens accept an indefinite period of economic shutdown and deprivation of their most basic civil liberties? Two weeks at a time!There seems to be a bit of a trend regarding disclaimers among those who have an opinion in favor of a return to everyday life anytime soon so I’ll start with the usual caveats: I accept that coronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 or whatever you prefer to call it, is a serious health threat.

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I tried to warn the National Security Council about China — and was fired for it

The societal implications of 5G — on how we live and how we work — are truly mind-boggling. And so is the capacity to abuse that power. Let’s be totally clear: anything connected to an unsecured 5G network will be a potential weapon that can be used to gain geopolitical influence and control. If China were to control a 5G network, it would be able to weaponize the technology within entire cities — or entire countries — served by that network and hold that city or state at its mercy.

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Why is the New York Times shilling for the World Health Organization?

Donald Trump announced this week he intends to halt funding for the World Health Organization over the group's suspicious relationship with China. Doubtless you'll be shocked to hear that the establishment media quickly fell in line to defend one of its favorite globalist institutions, regardless of its actual effectiveness. The New York Times, fresh off picking apart the woman who has accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, scraped together an article defending the WHO's response to the coronavirus outbreak in a stunning display of  revisionist history. 'The World Health Organization, always cautious, acted more forcefully and faster than many national governments', declared the Times's standfirst, which prompted Cockburn to spit out his double-roast espresso.

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Fall in line, fellow kids: meet ‘Ziad the Activist’

Ziad Ahmed cares.At least, that’s what he’s trying to convince you of with every fiber of his being in a recent video he posted to TikTok, the Chinese spyware program and social media app. https://twitter.com/ziadtheactivist/status/1248801095322939392?s=20 Ziad chastises his fellow campus progressives for not choosing to bend the knee to Joe Biden, mere days after Bernie Sanders terminated his anti-climactic bid for the presidency of the United States.In and of itself, his is not an uncommon position. Much of the Democratic establishment, from its mouthpieces on MSNBC to its ‘wonks’ at the Center for American Progress, have been making the same argument.

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Trump walks the recovery tightrope

President Trump’s decision to set the United States back on the path to work will be decried as mere politics, but it is the right decision. It is the task of politicians to consider the general welfare. This consideration sets the current emergency against the coming one, the need to reduce deaths from COVID-19 against the need to forestall the human cost of an economy in open-ended limbo. The data on COVID-19 remains insufficient and will probably remain so. The economic prognosis is, however, clearer, and we have the data too.The IMF is warning that a prolonged shutdown will lead to a Thirties’-style Depression.

DC coronavirus newsletters get assist from Big Pharma lobby

News outlets across the globe are grappling with how to expand or adapt their operations to adequately provide readers with the latest news about the novel coronavirus. In the US, for example, various digital publications have reduced their paywalled content so that more people have access to their reporting. Cockburn’s masters at The Spectator are even giving away three months’ free digital access. Away from home though, Cockburn has particularly enjoyed Politico’s nightly newsletter dedicated COVID-19 news, aptly named, ‘POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition.’ However, while settling into his fourth scotch one evening, Cockburn noticed something in his Politico email that greatly disturbed him: the newsletter is sponsored by PhRMA.

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The cashless lobby is cashing in on the COVID-19 crisis

Coronavirus, we have been warned many times, has brought scammers out in force. But lobbyists are not far behind. Their activities may not be illegal, but they are pretty disgraceful nonetheless. Hardly had the coronavirus outbreak begun in January than my email inbox began to fill up with press releases claiming that the contagion was being spread by banknotes and coins — coming, er, from businesses with a vested interest in cashless payments. In Britain, the payments industry seized the moment to lobby the government — successfully — for the limit on payments via contactless cards to be raised from £30 to £45. The new limit duly came into effect on April 1.

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What about flattening the unemployment curve?

Over the last month, most of America has been shut down to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. For the most part, efforts to prevent our medical system from being overloaded have been successful. Now it’s important to focus on another important issue: the employment curve.  In the first week of April, over 6.6 million Americans claimed unemployment benefits, the highest amount in history. That figure nearly doubled from week-to-week. As businesses shutter to combat the virus, experts believe that unemployment has nowhere to go up but up. The St Louis Federal Reserve predicts that unemployment could ultimately peak at 32 percent: that amounts to 47 million Americans out of work.

COVID in Colorado

Denver, Colorado is not New York City. There are not thousands of people stacked on top of one another here. To borrow from Arcade Fire, it’s a ‘massive sprawl with mountains beyond mountains’. The population skews toward young professionals in the downtown area and upper middle class families in the immediate suburbs. It’s a city and a state full of recreationalists, participating in a natural social distancing of the mountains in Aspen So how does a city population known for their isolated outdoor activities handle a statewide lockdown order, like the one issued by first-term Gov. Jared Polis on March 25? Colorado faced the grim reality of ranking within the top 15 states for reported cases of COVID-19.

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Barack Obama’s endorsement of Joe Biden is comedy gold

Anyone who doubts that Barack Obama has a sense of humor should take a look of his endorsement of Joe Biden to be president of the United States. Really, it’s a masterly performance, and delivered, mirabile dictu, with a straight face. Try it yourself. Grab a mirror. Assume your best 'I’m-being-serious-and-sincere' expression. Then say out loud that Joe Biden would bring 'leadership guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace' to the Capital. https://twitter.com/barackobama/status/1250088269502709762?s=21 How’d you do? Crack a smile? Of course you did.

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Curbing China’s rise should be America’s top priority

My first personal encounter with victims of a modern authoritarian government came last October, when I sat down with Zumret Dawut and Mirighul Tursun, two Uighur women who survived China’s so-called 're-education' camps in Xinjiang. I was particularly struck by one story from Ms Tursun:'She endured several days of beatings and electrocution. Her torturers mocked her when she called to Allah.'Then they ask me, "Where is your God? You say God, where is your God? Tell him, if he is stronger than me, to help you,”’ said Tursun.'Your god is Xi Jinping,' the guards told her.It is not enough for Chinese authorities to repress faith; they must also replace it with a secular, party-approved deity.

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Trump should shut down his press conferences, now

What do you do when you are in an argument with an impossible child who sees you as the enemy? Do you shout at them until you sound as unreasonable? Do you keep going back to them to hash out the key points? No, you do not engage. You walk away and leave them to stew in their own rage. All parents know this. Donald Trump is often called childish; petulant; irascible — in his press conferences, he often is. His pride takes him over and he ends up ranting. He takes the bait and the media revels in it. But what the media can’t accept or understand is that, in the president vs media conference dynamic, it is the journalists who play the role of teenage brat. They goad Trump until he flips, then gloat about how mad he went.

Has Fauci become the James Comey of the scientific community?

Is the Trump White House fired up? Not exactly. White House spokesman Hogan Gidley tried to douse the speculation that Anthony S. Fauci is about to be sacked for his incautious remarks on CNN’s State of the Union about the merits of an earlier shutdown: 'This media chatter is ridiculous. Dr Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump.'The problem is that the White House has issued similarly indignant statements in the past, only to watch Trump’s wrath turn pustular on Twitter. Any future transgressions are not likely to be forgiven. For now, Trump, who prevented Fauci from responding to a question about hydroxycholoroquine a week ago at a news conference, has sent a warning shot in Fauci’s direction.

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The thin facade of authority

The virus will teach us many things, but one lesson has already been relearned by the American people: there are two, quite different, types of wisdom. One, and the most renowned, is a specialization in education that results in titled degrees and presumed authority. That ensuing prestige, in turn, dictates the decisions of most politicians, the media, and public officials — who for the most part share the values and confidence of the credentialed elite. The other wisdom is not, as commonly caricatured, know-nothingism. Indeed, Americans have always believed in self-improvement and the advantages of higher education, a trust that explained broad public 19th-century support for mandatory elementary and secondary schooling and, during the postwar era, the G.I. Bill.

This Easter, we should moderate our complacency

For Christians, Easter commemorates the most important event in history. The importance of the event is not always obvious, for Easter — like Christmas — has been festooned with a garland of secular preoccupations. At Christmas, it’s the gifts and the gaudy, the saccharine and the sentimentality. The kernel of the event, part pagan, part Christian, is often little more that a quiet seed in the cacophony of a holiday from which the 'holy' has been carefully extracted. Still, if you stop moving, you can descry the adumbrations of a ceremony acknowledging the engulfing darkness of the winter solstice and promise of light to come. Easter has been decorated with ribbons and chocolates and strawberries.

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Didier Raoult — leader of the hydroxychloroquine cult

Professors of medicine do not usually look as if they have emerged from the pages of Asterix, or alternatively as if they were the drummer of a 1960s rock band just emerged from drug rehabilitation for the 17th time: but that is how Prof Didier Raoult, recently elevated to the rank of the most famous infectious disease doctor in the world, looks. If you type 'Didier' in your search engine, up comes Raoult, before even the soccer player, 'Drogba'. When infectious disease doctors are more famous than footballers, you know that an epidemic is serious.  Raoult says that he adopted his appearance to irritate his colleagues, which is another specialization of his, one at which he is undoubtedly very good.

No, the coronavirus isn’t racist

It was just a matter of time before the coronavirus was leveraged as a tool of race politics. With the US presidential campaign in suspension, Democratic broadsides against America’s white supremacy have lost a valuable outlet. Now, however, the media, politicians, and race activists have found a new theme: 'Black Americans Bear The Brunt' of COVID-19 deaths, as the New York Times put it.America’s medical personnel have gone overnight from being heroes to being bigots. Three failed presidential contenders — Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker, joined by Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Robin Kelly — have asked the CDC and the FDA to investigate doctors’ 'implicit biases'.

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