The long, hot summer – Haircut, no appointment necessary – Trump’s latest feat – Evening statistics
My impression that the summer was hotter than usual has received confirmation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It released data today showing that the Northern Hemisphere endured the hottest summer on record. In particular, the period from June through August was 2.11 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average. The heat has moderated today, reaching only the high 70s. In the morning a wind was blowing briskly, so that was quite cool outside; later on the wind died down but at no time did the temperature rise to 80 degrees. It has been a long time since we’ve had such temperate weather in this area.
We are definitely relaxing in some respects with respect to the restrictions imposed by the virus. It was an odd experience when, after spending months not being able to get a haircut at all and some months after that being able to get one by appointment only, to walk casually into a barbershop and have my hair cut without any difficulty at all. The barber managed to cut my hair – including trimming my eyebrows – without lifting my face mask once, which is a fairly impressive display of manual dexterity.
I have not mentioned President Trump for several days running, which, no doubt, must be a source of disappointment for him. The fact is, he has done nothing out of the ordinary until recently. To be sure, he has dragged his feet in responding to the wildfires in the West, has organized a mass rally in Nevada with blatant disregard for the guidelines on social distancing and wearing face masks, has sneered at the Nevada governor for attempting to hold him down to such guidelines, has turned against Matt Drudge because the site run by the latter has focused on some negative news about him, and has been abusive generally with anyone who disagrees with him in the least trifling particular; but these are, if not exactly the “new normal,” are at any rate the “Trump normal,” and thus scarcely worth remarking upon. I am happy to report, however, he has managed to outdo himself once again in a tweet this weekend about Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, which runs as follows:
“Was Andy McCabe ever forced to pay back the $700,000 illegally given to him and his wife, for his wife’s political campaign, by Crooked Hillary Clinton while Hillary was under FBI investigation, and McCabe was the head of the FBI???”
This rhetorical question ignores several circumstances:
- The $700,000 was donated to the 2015 campaign of Jill McCabe, Andrew McCabe’s wife, when she ran for the Virginia Senate, and not a penny of it was given to Andrew McCabe
- The donations came jointly from the state Democratic party and a PAC formed by Terry McAuliffe, the Virginia state governor at the time, were publicly declared, and were perfectly legal
- Hillary Clinton was not one of the contributors
- McCabe was not head of the FBI in 2015 or 2016; he was the acting director for three months in 2017, two years after his wife ran to be elected, and the investigation of Hillary Clinton did not occur under his direction
Four mis-statements in a single sentence! This must be a new record. Our President is an inspiration to dissemblers and fabricators all over the world. At times I am driven to wonder whether the term “trumped-up story” was coined in his honor.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 29,434,021; # of deaths worldwide: 932,397; # of cases U.S.: 6,749,168; # of deaths U.S.: 198,975. A setback after yesterday; the number of new cases is nearly 40,000, although the daily death toll is still under 500. Italy, once a significant epicenter of the virus, now ranks only 20th among the countries with the greatest number of cases. That is not so much because the virus has subsided there – it is still getting over 1,000 new cases a day on the average – as much as that the virus in other countries has become increasingly widespread. Over the past couple of months the case count has increased dramatically in countries where it had until recently been relatively low, such as India, Argentina, Iraq, and South Africa, among others.