Today’s read is from Scott Morefield, a reporter for The Daily Caller and a weekly columnist at Townhall.com. Here’s an excerpt, followed by a link to the entire list.
Do you ever wonder why the left primarily seems to be in love with their face diapers and quite obviously wants to wear them forever, while the right tends to either grudgingly use them or avoid them like the, er, plague?It’s pretty fair to say the vast majority of those you see trying to tell the unvarnished truth about the futility of forced masking to stop a highly contagious respiratory virus tend to be conservatives. Why is this? I’ve got some workable theories…
THERE ARE THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF FOOD BLOGS, BUT ONLY ONE CULINARY NO-NO!
Nothing is safe from the coronavirus in troubled 2020. That includes Halloween.
Earlier this month word got out that my extremely liberal alderwoman was working behind the scenes to either cancel or scale back trick or treating. Several people heard her talk about her plan. After being caught and exposed the alderwoman poo pooed the notion that anyone would imagine that of her.
Who would want to ruin trick or treat for children by imposing all sorts of rules that would remove all the fun? Remember, it’s 2020, and there are all kinds of fear mongers with power to be killjoys.
Both the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the CDC have recommended against traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating.
The Los Angeles County health department stirred up controversy by issuing an order banning trick-or-treat as well as events like fall festivals. A day later, the department backtracked a bit, instead recommending that communities not host trick-or-treat this year.
In Wisconsin, Antigo has canceled trick-or-treat, replacing it with a scary movie drive-in event with socially distant costume contests at the Langlade county fairgrounds.
Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett has said no decisions have been made on trick-or-treating yet but that he’s working with the health commissioner on a plan.
Several southeast Wisconsin communities have trick-or-treat times listed on their websites and Facebook pages, although officials are leaving open the possibility of canceling or changing things up due to safety precautions..
Local parents are coming up with alternative ideas.
Facebook user Zeno Franco posted a poll to the Bay View Town Hall Facebook group, asking his neighbors to vote for different trick-or-treat celebration options.
As of Sept. 10, the most popular option was for families to forgo trick-or-treat, but go crazy with decorations and giving their own kids candy. Emphasizing the controversy involved, the second most popular option was to just go ahead with trick-or-treat as usual with no special precautions.
Other innovative suggestions include:
Kids sitting in their own yards while adults walk by throwing candy to them
Trick-or-treating with a contraption made of 10-foot PVC tubes, which would allow candy to be slid to the kids in a socially distant manner
Canceling Halloween this year in favor of two Halloweens in 2021
Using drones to drop candy to kids in their yards
“Innovative” the reporter writes. I say stupid.
No question Halloween will be different this year.
But why stop there?
It’s true. Remember this is wacky California we’re talking about.
The impracticality of some of the safety measures – it’s hard to fit everybody at a table 6 feet apart or to eat a meal outdoors in the late November chill – combined with pandemic fatigue and some Americans’ defiant nature will probably lead many to ignore the suggestions.
“I know there will be plenty of families who mock this kind of advice and say, ’That’s ridiculous. We’re going to get together and enjoy Thanksgiving like it’s supposed to be, and no one’s going to tell us otherwise,’” Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University said. “That may give them a sense of independence, but then the virus gets to Grandma, and she ends up in the hospital on a ventilator, and then you live with the guilt.”
Woolf and other experts recommend that families in separate households sit at their Thanksgiving tables at the same time and connect through a video platform such as Zoom, which might give a sense of sharing the meal. If members of different households congregate inside, opening windows would at least improve ventilation and could help diffuse the virus, reducing the chances of contagion.
Columnist Rich Manieri boils down all this foolishness:
There won’t be much time for regaling your guests with post-feast storytelling, or even dessert for that matter. You need to keep it short – two hours maximum, the governor says. Then, it’s everyone out, post-haste. If you have any lingerers, do what a friend of mine does when he decides the party’s over and wants everyone to leave – start cleaning up. You can even put up the chairs. They’ll get the hint. If not – and I hate to resort to this but rules are rules – you might have to get physical. I don’t see anything wrong with hiring a bouncer for a couple of hours to clear out the riff raff.
Yes, in a state where only Nancy Pelosi can still get a rinse and a blow-out, you, the tax-paying citizens, have to celebrate Thanksgiving in the yard.
I’m not sure how California plans on enforcing what it calls “mandatory requirements for all gatherings.” Along with the obvious challenges, defunding local police departments is all the rage in Cali so good luck finding enough cops to staff a special turkey detail.
CULINARY NO-NO BONUSES
Wolf Richter, the founder of Wolf Street Corp has released his monthly update on the recovery in cities, in terms of what people are doing and where they’re going, if anywhere, and how raw unadjusted indicators compare daily or weekly to how it was just before the pandemic. Here’s an excerpt:
Restaurants as measured by “seated diners.”
OpenTable provides daily data on “seated diners,” tracking how many people – walk-ins and those who made reservations online or by phone – actually sat down in restaurants to eat and drink, compared to the same weekday in the same week last year, based on thousands of restaurants in the US that shared this data with OpenTable. I converted daily numbers to a 7-day moving average to smoothen out the day-to-day fluctuation.
These are the types of restaurants where diners can make reservations. They exclude cafés, fast-food places, delis, and the like. Currently, into the eighth month of the Pandemic, “seated diners” are still down 41.1% from where they’d been last year at this time:
The number of restaurants that took reservations before the Pandemic and that are now taking reservations again was still down 26.5% on average over the past 30 days, compared to the same period last year. This is a rough stand-in for how many of these restaurants have re-opened – rough because some restaurants with outside-dining only have eliminated reservations as diners might not show up when it’s suddenly too cold and windy (one of our favorites in San Francisco has done that; it’s open though it no longer takes reservations):
The disconnect between the number of open restaurants being down only 26.5% from a year ago, to the number of seated diners being down 41.1% can in part be explained by reduced capacity in restaurants inside or outside.
1) President Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd during a campaign rally at the Waukesha County Airport on Saturday. The stop marked the president’s second visit to the state in eight days. Photo: Rick Wood / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
2) “Tony Evers, our governor stinks. He’s negative. He’s a drag on the state. He sits around all day and sucks on lemons,” said Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald as he spoke before President Donald Trump spoke to supporters in Waukesha on Saturday. Photo: Rick Wood / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
3) President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight aboard Air Force One shortly before landing at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Oct. 19, 2020. Photo: Getty Images
5) President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden debate each other in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday, October 22. At center is moderator Kristen Welker. Photo: Getty Images
6) The final debate: Biden looks at his watch during the debate. It lasted a little over 90 minutes. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
7) The final debate: Trump and Biden are joined by their spouses at the end of the debate. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
8) People watch from their vehicles as President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate former vice president Joe Biden speak during a debate watch party at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, Oct. 22, 2020. Photo: AP
9) Nigerian Police fire teargas at people during clashes between youths in Apo, Abuja, Nigeria, on Oct. 20, 2020, following the ongoing demonstrations against the brutality of the Nigerian Police Force Unit, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). Photo: Getty Images
10) An aerial picture taken on Oct. 18, 2020 shows a road partially covered with water from where people look at the Mont-Saint-Michel, in Normandy, France, surrounded by the sea during high tide. Photo: Getty Images
11) A health worker stands inside a non-contact chamber called the “CoV SHIELD” before taking swab samples to test for the COVID-19 novel coronavirus at Sunway Medical Center in Subang Jaya, Malaysia, Oct. 22, 2020. Photo: Getty Images
12) A University of Wisconsin-Madison student moves her belongings out of Witte Residence Hall in Madison, Wisconsin. Witte Residence Hall was placed under a mandatory 14-day quarantine in September due to high COVID-19 positive test result rates. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan
14) A new fountain during a ceremony at the Palm Jumeirah in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest fountain, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Photo: REUTERS/Rula Rohana
15) A sick koala named Wally, rescued by the animal rescue agency, Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service, also known as WIRES, on the outskirts of Sydney in an area where urban development is encroaching on koala habitat, is treated as part of a rehabilitation process at Sydney University Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Sydney, Australia. Photo: REUTERS/Loren Elliott
16) Wisconsin tight end Jake Ferguson catches a touchdown pass during the second quarter Friday night against Illinois. The Badgers won handily, 45-7. Photo: Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
17) Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback Jamel Dean (35) returns an interception for a touchdown against the Green Bay Packers during the second quarter of a NFL game last Sunday at Raymond James Stadium. Photo: Kim Klement, Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
19) Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers points at Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive end Ndamukong Suh (93) during the second half of an NFL football game Sunday, Oct. 18, 2020, in Tampa, Fla. The Packers lost, 38-10. Photo: Jason Behnken, AP
When I was in grade school my mother and I would watch Shock Theater on Milwaukee’s Channel 18 Saturday night that aired after all the other local stations had finished their 10:00 news.
Dad was usually asleep. My older brother was generally out (played in a band and often got home late). Mom was as sweet as an angel but loved horror movies (“The Silence of the Lambs” was a favorite).
“Shock Theater” supplied a constant diet of the Universal Studio classics. The monsters. The best.
In August indiewire.com expanded on their list of the 100 best horror movies of all-time by increasing it to 110. At #52, according to the website:
“It’s only fitting that a novel as influential and forward-thinking as Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ would inspire a similarly unique and enduring big-screen classic. James Whale’s take on the tale of a striving doctor and the freakish creature he cobbles together from the dead contributed mightily to how people envision the monster, with Boris Karloff’s big-headed and lumbering portrayal still serving as the gold standard.”
We move on to #26.
“…the Bride would appear to represent a welcome opportunity for companionship despite not actually appearing until the last few minutes and thus never fulfilling that role. Almost no one gets their just deserts in ‘Bride of Frankenstein,’ which is part of why it’s more notable some 80-odd years later for its ability to evoke pity than for what few scares it still produces.”
This next film ranked at #110 on indiewire.com’s list of 110.
“He was only 6’1″ but he somehow seems much taller. His eyes sharply lit by a spotlight from cinematographer Karl Freund, (Bela) Lugosi looks striking, even handsome. His protracted delivery set the stage for countless horror films to come (and even more parodies): ‘I do not drink… wine.’ ‘We will leave tomorrow… even-ing.’ He commands the camera. So much so, you think he’ll command you next.”
My favorite Universal Studio monster didn’t crack the website’s Top 110. As a kid I felt sorry for the poor guy and still do.
Another film that didn’t make the list but, to me, was so cool because it had ALL the legends in one movie.
Naturally indiewire.com’s huge list had a ton of non-Universal productions. In my view this is without a doubt the best of all-time. But it came in at #6.
“(Alfred) Hitchcock proved with ‘Psycho’ how impossible it would be for all his many imitators to capture his style. ‘Psycho’ is Hitchcock’s cinematic smirk at our futile attempts to make sense of the senseless.”
“Joe, I ran because of you. I ran because of Barack Obama. Because you did a poor job. If I thought you did a good job, I would have never run.” President Trump at the debate
“Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels. They used to use them to get into our country. We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had.” At the debate, Trump, on the child separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border
“We don’t need money. We have plenty of money. In fact, we beat Hillary Clinton with a tiny fraction of the money that she was able to raise.” Trump, on fundraising
“I take full responsibility. It’s not my fault that it came here. It’s China’s fault. And you know what, it’s not Joe’s fault that it came here either.” Trump, on the coronavirus pandemic
“It’s not clear that Trump really had to do anything in this debate except not Nadler himself on national TV. With the exception of some of the media polls, the momentum is all in his direction, and the president is out holding rally after rally while Gropey J is sitting in his basement wrapped in a shawl watching episode after episode of Matlock. Joe took four days out of the last 15 days of the campaign to prep for last night’s disaster and that performance was as good as he could get. If America is dumb enough to elect him, all Putin has to do is drag out a summit for two hours and, before he nods off, Oldfinger will sign Alaska back to the Russians.” Columnist Kurt Schlichter
“Not one single person with private insurance would lose their insurance under my plan, nor did they under ‘Obamacare.’ They did not lose their insurance unless they chose they wanted to go to something else.” Joe Biden at the debate
“This one is so laughable it does not need much exploring. The promise of keeping the plans they held that led to millions who lost their healthcare and private doctors was such a harsh reality that even Time Magazine had listed it as its ‘Lie Of The Year.’” Brad Slager covers politics and the business side of the Hollywood industry at outlets such as RedState, HotAir, Twitchy, and The Federalist
“What bona fide presidential candidate would arrogantly hide in his basement during the heat of a campaign, especially in the last few weeks of an ever-tightening one? If the liberal media weren’t providing Biden cover, he couldn’t get away with this. If they were even raising questions about his intentional invisibility, this campaign would look far different, and far less surreal. As President Donald Trump has hopscotched the country, traveling thousands of miles to appear at vigorous, humongous campaign rallies, Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, are nowhere to be found. We’ve never had a presidential candidate virtually opt out of the campaign.” David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney
“Two weeks before the election, there are signs that delays continue to plague the U.S. mail, a tracking effort by the USA TODAY Network and the University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found.
“Of 64 letters and packages sent short distances within battleground states since mid-September, 14 took longer than the U.S. Postal Service’s own three-day service standard for first-class local mail. Most of the problems arose in Michigan, although Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida each had at least one late arrival.
“Eight of the shipments took a week or more to get to their cross-town destinations, including one letter that still has not arrived, according to the post office’s online tracking system. The missing letter was put in the mail two weeks ago, on Oct. 6.” USA TODAY
“Why haven’t you seen any stories from NPR about the NY Post’s Hunter Biden story?” Kelly McBride, NPR’s “public editor”
“We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions. And quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was … a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.” Terence Samuel, NPR’s managing editor for news
“Public broadcasting is a comical phrase. Its audience is not the public. It is the left. PBS and NPR don’t care one iota what everyone else thinks … even if everyone else pays a chunk of their budget through taxes.” Tim Graham is executive editor of NewsBusters and director of media analysis for the Media Research Center
