Reopening Las Vegas

Interesting video, at CNN:

Graduations, Campus Classes Canceled by Coronavirus Shock College-Town Economy

At WSJ:

This weekend was supposed to be one of the busiest of the year for businesses in Blacksburg, Virginia. Instead, the town remains in quiet repose. https://t.co/BjQzHUIg9u

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 17, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has turned vibrant faculty cities throughout the U.S. into vacant ones.

This weekend was purported to be one the busiest of the 12 months for companies in Blacksburg, Va., as mother and father, grandparents and well-wishers converged in town to have fun the 2020 graduates of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State College.

As an alternative, town of 45,000 stays in quiet repose, pining for its college students to return. It has been a protracted two months for Blacksburg and different communities prefer it, because the pandemic robbed them of their fundamental supply of economic vitality.

What is going on in Blacksburg is enjoying out in cities from Ithaca, N.Y., to Pullman, Wash., the place the pandemic hasn’t solely shut down many businesses but in addition emptied out faculty campuses. The losses are particularly painful in locations which have leaned on universities to lure well-paying jobs and business to communities that may in any other case lack each.

“We’ve all the time had the posh of being insulated from the traditional ebbs and circulate of the economic system,” mentioned Mike Soriano, a Virginia Tech grad who owns 4 Blacksburg eating places, together with Champs Downtown Sports activities Bar & Cafe. The college moved its spring and summer time phrases to on-line lessons. “And with the uncertainty of the autumn, it’s made issues tough to mission,” he added.

Massive schools and universities make use of hundreds, purchase native items and companies and draw tens of hundreds of scholars and guests to their shops, eating places and accommodations. Their presence has shielded native communities from each long-term financial shifts and short-lived recessions. In locations like Blacksburg, enterprise cycles flip predictably with the seasons: It will get busy within the spring, slows in the summertime after which roars to life in September.

Now, Blacksburg enterprise house owners look anxiously towards the autumn, the potential of in-person lessons and the destiny of seven residence soccer video games which have reliably stuffed lodge rooms, bars, eating places and outlets.

“Soccer and commencement is when you can also make cash,” Mr. Soriano mentioned.

Virginia Tech is answerable for greater than half of Blacksburg’s economic system, producing about $1.2 billion in annual earnings, in keeping with an evaluation by researcher Emsi Labor Market Analytics. One among each two jobs is supported by the college, its college students and guests, in keeping with Emsi estimates.

As of January, the college had 9,742 workers, together with full-time and part-time college, employees and wage employees, a college spokesman mentioned.

Median family earnings within the Blacksburg space totaled $50,313 in 2018, in keeping with U.S. Census Bureau knowledge. Whereas that’s under the Virginia median of $72,577, Blacksburg’s earnings has grown sooner than its state general—8.6%, in contrast with 3.6%—since 2010, in keeping with a report by Previous Dominion College.

“As you progress west in Virginia, the inhabitants is much less dense, extra rural,” mentioned Robert McNab, an economist at Previous Dominion, who research the Virginia economic system. The area relies on agriculture, mining and forestry moderately than the manufacturing and data know-how discovered within the state’s city areas.

“Virginia Tech’s location permits it to work as a catalyst for financial growth,” he mentioned. “And it’s in a position to entice analysis funding and investment to part of Virginia that may not in any other case obtain a lot consideration.”

About 39% of Blacksburg’s domestically generated income comes from taxes on meals, lodge stays and different gross sales, mentioned Marc Verniel, Blacksburg’s city supervisor.

Blacksburg Transit has been carrying 300 to 400 riders a day just lately, down from greater than 20,000 a day when the college is in session, Mr. Verniel mentioned. He estimates the house soccer video games carry 400,000-500,000 guests to Blacksburg every fall. And when college students come again in September, they hurry to native shops to furnish flats and dorm rooms.

“We couldn’t have imagined an financial disaster that took the college out,” he mentioned.

There may be extra at stake than one season of retail gross sales. Companies are frightened that some college students received’t be prepared for on-campus lessons this fall, and others would possibly by no means make it to Blacksburg in any respect. Some college students would possibly choose to remain residence. And worldwide college students face journey restrictions and new immigration insurance policies.

This spring, Virginia Tech had almost 35,000 college students, together with 28,000 undergrads. Some 8,250 of the undergrads come from someplace aside from Virginia, and 1,962 of them are worldwide college students, in keeping with the college spokesman.

If the drop in enrollment persists, it could possibly be more durable for Blacksburg and different faculty cities to develop science and tech-oriented companies wanted to broaden their economies...

Is it just me, or is this piece less well-written than the normal article you'd find at the august WSJ, purportedly the main competitor to NYT?

Read the full article here, if you still have a hankering.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cromwell

At Amazon, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life.

Jennifer Delacruz's Monday Forecast

She's still doing forecasts from home.

At ABC 10 News San Diego:

Online Despair, Loneliness and Camaraderie at UCSD

Some like remote online teaching. Others not so much.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Reddit diaries: Online courses are stirring despair, loneliness and camaraderie at UCSD."

Large Crowds at Virginia Beaches

The beaches are closed, but folks are fed up with this lockdown.

Like I said. The shutdown ends when the American people say it does.

They're saying that it's over.

— Melissa Mackenzie 🌐 (@MelissaTweets) May 17, 2020

The beach at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront was closed today. But it was packed.

This photo was taken at 3:42 p.m. this afternoon by Virginian-Pilot photographer Kaitlin McKeown. https://t.co/Ws2EFAF976 pic.twitter.com/x3lLF1wuHT

— The Virginian-Pilot (@virginianpilot) May 17, 2020

WWII Veterans Hard Hit by Coronavirus

Well, some of these old whippersnappers are pushing 100. Darn right they're getting hammered by this disease, and it's a shame.

At the Des Moines Register:

With the coronavirus disproportionately claiming the elderly, especially nursing home residents, some worry it could accelerate the passing of the World War II veterans known as The Greatest Generation. https://t.co/hHEZequmzz

— Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) May 15, 2020

What Will Be Left of Retail?

Who knows? Won't nobody know anything until all this lockdown stuff stops happening.

At NYT, "When Shoppers Venture Out, What Will Be Left?":

When Shoppers Venture Out, What Will Be Left? Retail Sales Drop 16.4% https://t.co/mGJ1YJLN2b

— Jim Clancy (@ClancyReports) May 15, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic dealt another crushing blow to retailers in April. Now the question is what the sector will look like as the economy reopens — and how much permanent damage has been inflicted.

Retail sales fell 16.4 percent last month, the Commerce Department said Friday, by far the largest monthly drop on record. That followed an 8.3 percent drop in March, the previous record. Total sales for April, which include retail purchases in stores and online as well as money spent at bars and restaurants, were the lowest since 2012, even without accounting for inflation.

Some of the declines in individual categories were staggering. Restaurants and bars lost half their business over two months. At furniture and home furnishings stores, sales were off by two-thirds. At clothing stores, the two-month decline was 89 percent. Increased sales from online retailers didn’t come close to offsetting the downturn elsewhere.

April could prove to be the bottom for sales. The March figures were helped in part by panic buying, and stores were generally open for the first half of the month. Most states have begun to lift barriers to commerce and movement, and many economists expect spending to rise in May as people venture out.

But in contrast to the nearly vertical drop, any rebound is likely to be gradual. Big states like New York and California remain largely under lockdown, and businesses face significant restrictions elsewhere. Even as businesses reopen, there is no guarantee that customers will return in numbers previously seen.

And the financial system may be an added source of vulnerability as the economic downturn places strains on households and businesses, the Federal Reserve said Friday.

“It’s probably fair to say the worst is over in terms of a collapse, unless there are waves of new outbreaks,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. macro strategist for TD Securities. “But how fast does it come back? The short answer is none of us really know.”

The downturn appears to have left lasting scars on a retail industry that was already struggling. J. Crew and Neiman Marcus have filed for bankruptcy protection, followed Friday by J.C. Penney, a 118-year-old chain with more than 800 stores and nearly 85,000 employees.

Surveys show that many Americans still fear the virus and are wary of crowded places. Epidemiologists and public health officials say those concerns are well founded: Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, told a Senate committee this week that rushing back to normal life could “trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control.”

Even if Americans feel comfortable returning to stores, they may not have as much money to spend, since millions have lost their jobs...

Los Angeles Goes Stir Crazy During Lockdown

Danny Trejo's a national treasure.

Watch:

This hasn’t been easy. But in these difficult times, we’re staying #allinforLA to protect the people and city we love. pic.twitter.com/cbaTPpGRwL

— MayorOfLA (@MayorOfLA) May 15, 2020

James Jones, From Here to Eternity

At Amazon, James Jones, From Here to Eternity: A Novel.

Morning Hangover

At Drunken Stepfather, "MORNING HANGOVER DUMP OF THE DAY."

Also, "NUDE ARTISTS OF THE DAY."

Britney Spears on Tik Tok

She's amazing.

Watch on Tik Tok, "Yes folks you end up doing karaoke by yourself when you’re that bored …. singing to George Michael !!!!!"

And on Twitter:

Smiling for my haters 🌹🌹🌹 pic.twitter.com/VFmbSOfPUK

— Britney Spears (@britneyspears) May 13, 2020

You asked for a new Glory cover and since it went to number one we had to make it happen !!!! Couldn’t have done it without you all 💞😘🌹✨!!!! pic.twitter.com/uWzIXHR6cR

— Britney Spears (@britneyspears) May 9, 2020

'Reporters are expected to work in dangerous places. I just never figured the White House to be among them...'

Well, he does admit it's a cushy job.

An interesting inside take on reporting from the White House:

Anyone who has seen a post-apocalyptic movie knows that a desolate White House offers a ripe backdrop for end times. https://t.co/e9iNAkAmk7

— Noah Bierman (@Noahbierman) May 15, 2020

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.

Surprise: The Wealthy Fled New York City as the Coronavirus Broke Out

Yeah, big surprise here.

At NYT, "The Richest Neighborhoods Emptied Out Most as Coronavirus Hit New York City":

Hundreds of thousands of New York City residents, in particular those from the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, left as the coronavirus pandemic hit, an analysis of multiple sources of aggregated smartphone location data has found https://t.co/IO8qUK8zqq

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 15, 2020

Hundreds of thousands of New York City residents, in particular those from the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, left as the coronavirus pandemic hit, an analysis of multiple sources of aggregated smartphone location data has found.

Roughly 5 percent of residents — or about 420,000 people — left the city between March 1 and May 1. In the city’s very wealthiest blocks, in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, the West Village, SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, residential population decreased by 40 percent or more, while the rest of the city saw comparably modest changes.

Some of these areas are typically home to lots of students, many of whom left as colleges and universities closed; other residents might have left to care for friends or family members across the country. But, on average, income is a strong simple predictor of a neighborhood’s change: The higher-earning a neighborhood is, the more likely it is to have emptied out.

Relatively few residents from blocks with median household incomes of about $90,000 or less (in the 80th percentile or lower) left New York. This migration out of the city began in mid-March, and accelerated in the days after March 15, when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he was closing the city’s schools.

The highest-earning neighborhoods emptied first.

“There is a way that these crises fall with a different weight on people based on social class,” said Kim Phillips-Fein, a history professor at New York University and author of a book about how New York changed during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. “Even though there’s a strong rhetoric of ‘We’re all in it together,’ that’s not really the case.”

These estimates are based on data provided by Descartes Labs, a geospatial analysis company.

Descartes Labs used anonymized smartphone location data to find a large sample of New York City residents — not commuters or tourists — based on where they lived during a two-week period in February. They then analyzed their aggregate movements as the pandemic hit and whether they had left the city. The sample was about 140,000 residents, including residents from nearly every populated census tract in the city.

Smartphone location data is imperfect. It misses people who don’t own a smartphone. It requires guesses about who is a resident rather than a visitor or commuter. It relies on the kinds of apps that track and transmit a user’s precise location. And it is unlikely to be perfectly representative of the general population.

But it can be more useful than other methods to measure quick changes in population on a large scale...

Interestingly, that 420,000 who left is the exact same number of all the Chinese who flew into the country before President Trump banned flights from China.

Keep reading.

The Naked Dress

That's Rose McGowan at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards. Man, that was crazy, and way ahead of the naked zeitgeist of today, lol.

More often than not -- and especially in case of the media -- the naked dress reveals more about the watcher than the wearer. https://t.co/fNvNEX1fNE via @i_D

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) April 29, 2020

Two decades before the #MeToo movement, Rose McGowan wore a beaded dress and black G-string on the VMA red carpet as a personal political statement. “It was my first public appearance after being raped. And I thought, it was kind of like Russell Crowe and Gladiator when it comes out in the ring and he’s like, ‘Are you not entertained?’” she told Jameela Jamil during an interview for the actress’ I Weigh series. In her memoir, Brave, McGowan stated that the dress was “a reclamation of my own body after my assault”...

Click through for the full-size photo. 

Brenna Spencer

On Twitter:

Alright guys, here ya go pic.twitter.com/pMMAiuTJuF

— Brenna Spencer (@BrennaSpencer) March 26, 2020

Back in cayman pic.twitter.com/sBWmQmkAkS

— Brenna Spencer (@BrennaSpencer) January 18, 2020

Unmasking the Deep State

At the Other McCain, "The ‘Deep State’ Unmasked: Joe Biden Targeted Trump Aide Gen. Flynn."

Also, bombshell at AoSHQ, "Oh Wow: Devin Nunes Says That Criminal Referrals Are Coming. Not Just for the FBI/CIA Coupists. But for Mueller's Team of 13 Angry Democrats."

And the ominous flaming skull, "LUNATIC LAWLESS "JUDGE" EMMIT SULLIVAN ENLISTS HIS OWN PRIVATE PROSECUTOR TO PRESS CASE AGAINST FLYNN; CONSIDERS IMPOSING HIS OWN CHARGES OF PERJURY AND CONTEMPT ON FLYNN."

Timeline of FBI's FISA Abuse

At the Epoch Times, an amazing newspaper, "Timeline of FBI’s FISA Abuse in Trump Campaign Investigation":

INFOGRAPHIC🔎Timeline of #FISAAbuse in Trump Campaign Investigation: https://t.co/pkDss2owxg#EpochTimes provides a comprehensive timeline of details from the #IGReport, describing how @FBI rushed to #Spy on the Trump campaign and the flaws in its case. pic.twitter.com/mDbwxGGdp2

— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) May 12, 2020

In its pursuit of establishing surveillance on the Trump campaign, the FBI turned its attention to Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the spring of 2016, culminating in the issuance of a FISA warrant—which allows for some of the most intrusive spying methods on an American citizen.

As part of this process, the FBI relied extensively on the flawed Steele dossier, leading an FBI legal counsel to note that this was “essentially a single source FISA.”

A report issued by Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz reveals a surprising number of details on how this process developed, as well as numerous problems with the evidence that was presented to the FISA court.

Important information was at times altered or not properly shared with the DOJ.

Here we provide a comprehensive timeline of details from the inspector general’s report, describing how the FBI rushed to spy on the Trump campaign and the flaws in its case...

Click through to see the whole thing, with an amazing graph of the timeline. I had to register by email, but apparently you get 20 "free" articles a month, which is the most for any pay-walled newspaper I've seen.

Unmasked

At WSJ, "The Flynn Unmaskers Unmasked":

The Flynn Unmaskers Unmasked: Now we know who knew about the Russian calls, including Joe Biden. https://t.co/KVJhdV4Nra

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) May 13, 2020

When news stories appeared in early 2017 about Michael Flynn’s conversation with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., these columns wondered how Mr. Flynn’s call was so widely known. The names of private U.S. citizens caught on tape by U.S. intelligence are supposed to be “masked” so their privacy is protected.

Well, now we know. GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson on Wednesday released a declassified list of Obama Administration officials who in their waning days in power “unmasked” the conversations of Mr. Flynn, who was set to become President Trump’s National Security Adviser. It seems everyone but the night janitor wanted to know who Mr. Flynn was talking to.

A stunning 39 separate officials snooped on Mr. Flynn’s conversations with foreign actors, lodging nearly 50 unmasking demands between Nov. 30, 2016 and Jan. 12, 2017. Our sources say the nearly dozen redacted names on the list are likely intelligence types—who might have a legitimate interest in knowing who their foreign targets were speaking to in the U.S. But most of the rest are partisan officials who had no business spying on their successors.

The list includes then White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, then Vice President Joe Biden, and then Secretary of Treasury Jacob Lew. Ambassador to the U.N. and Obama confidante Samantha Power made no fewer than seven requests, though she told Congress she had no recollection of unmasking Mr. Flynn.

Mr. Flynn was unmasked by at least four U.S. ambassadors, six Treasury officials, and people connected to the Energy and Justice departments and NATO, among others. Then FBI Director James Comey, then CIA Director John Brennan and then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also made the list. This means they had access to the transcripts of any phone conversations Mr. Flynn had with foreign sources as he prepared to take power.

The media cordon sanitaire that protects Democrats will say this is no big deal because unmasking is routine and legal. But if the masking rule means nothing in practice, why pretend it exists?

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.

There are other dots to connect. Documents released last week show that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates first learned about the Flynn wiretapping from no less than President Barack Obama in a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting. At least one of the unmaskers must have told Mr. Obama.

The dates of the unmaskings raise further questions. The FBI’s interest in Mr. Flynn was supposedly triggered by conversations starting Dec. 29, 2016. Yet Mr. Flynn was first unmasked a month earlier—shortly after Mr. Trump named him security adviser.

The McDonough unmasking takes place on Jan. 5, 2017—the day of the Oval Office meeting at which Mr. Flynn was discussed. Mr. Biden’s unmasking request was made on Jan. 12, 2017—the day the Washington Post reported on the Flynn-Russia conversation. Mr. Biden has some explaining to do.

All of this is fodder for U.S. Attorney John Durham as he tries to unmask the origins of the Russia collusion political ambush...