Gavin Newsom

Trump lied repeatedly during his interview with Chris Wallace on Fox yesterday. It amazed me that Wallace let him get away with his oft repeated distortion of how the U.S. tests more people than any other country in the world. Forget for a moment that Trump opposes testing and that it is done by states and that Trump is trying to defund those state programs. Instead let's just look at the number of tests that have been done per million residents:

"Die For Him Grandpa" by Nancy OhanianCalifornia is a COVID-mess, particularly the southern part of the state, where all the counties followed Gov. Gavin Newsom into a wait-and-see approach (while the Bay Area counties ignored Newsom's cowardice and shut down fast and managed to stave off the worst of the pandemic that is devastating southern California.

I can't say Gavin Newsom's mishandling of the pandemic has changed my mind about him. I recognized him as a soulless political ghoul the first time I met him in 2010. He called the L.A. politics bloggers together for a getting-to-know-me session at a sleek Hollywood hotel when he first ran for governor against Jerry Brown. He was well-prepared and smart and everyone in the room loved him but one-- me.

I don't understand exactly why, but there was a time when I was looking at the daily COVID statistics and watching Califiornia with so much lower numbers than New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other early states, and I felt some kind of primitive, tribal pride in my state (although I was born and raised in New York and lived for a time in New Jersey and in Massachusetts). Anyway, that's been over for a while.

Saturday evening, the Wall Street Journal published a report by Ben Chapman and Talal Ansari, Coronavirus Cases Rise as U.S. Marks Holiday Weekend. I had a problem with their sloppy reporting right from the top. "Coronavirus infections rose in the U.S. on Friday as states warily entered Memorial Day weekend," they wrote. "States warily entered?" What does that mean?

In a rambling interview this week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (above, wearing a mask) informed America’s largest city that stay-at-home ‘lockdown’ orders will continue ‘with all certainty’ for another three months, bringing his house arrest sentence for upwards of 13 million residents up to the month of August.

I only spoke with him once, but I don't like Gavin Newsom at all. He seemed very smart but utterly devoid of authenticity or even sincerity. He was trying to persuade a roomful of bloggers to back him for governor instead of Jerry Brown. I may have been the only one in the room that was revolted by his smarmy dissimulation. I haven't been impressed since.I heard him on the radio this week.

Huntington Beach Mayor Lyn Semeta appeared earlier this week on the Fox News program “The Story” and confirmed that her city has filed a constitutional challenge of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent order to close down Orange County beaches. Dana Point has also joined the lawsuit.
Protests in Huntington Beach ramped up over the weekend (pictured above) in response to the order.

Clueless Tennessee Trumpist, Governor Bill Lee, was eager for his state to lead the way... to mass graves. So just as his lax policies on social distancing started a steepening of the curve, he decided to... open up for business! Tennessee had 11,891 confirmed cases on Friday, up 1,156 new cases since Thursday. On Thursday there were 1,614 cases per million. One day later that had changed to 1,788.

Congress seems to be at war with the states. Only $150 billion of its nearly $3 trillion coronavirus relief package – a mere 5% – has been allocated to the 50 states; and they are not allowed to use it where they need it most, to plug the holes in their budgets caused by the […]