“Somewhere, something
incredible is waiting
to be known.”
Carl Sagan, quoted in
Popular Science
“To live is the rarest
thing in the world. Most
people exist, that is all.”
Oscar Wilde, quoted in
GoodReads.com
“I haven’t been every-
where, but it’s on my list.”
Susan Sontag, quoted in
Lapham’s Quarterly
“Americans love
change, but they hate
to be changed.”
British journalist Godfrey
Hodgson, quoted in
The Washington Post
“Life is physics
orchestrated.”
Theoretical physicist Brian
Greene, quoted in Nature
“A generation that
cannot endure boredom
will be a generation of
little men, of men unduly
divorced from the slow
processes of nature.”
Bertrand Russell, quoted
in Aeon.co
“A luxury liner is just a bad
play surrounded by water.”
Critic Clive James,
quoted in Forbes.comTalking points
Wit &
Wisdom
Getty
NEWS 17
Poll watch
Q68% of registered
voters have seen an
ad put out by Michael
Bloomberg’s campaign,
compared with 47%
who have seen one for
President Trump, 40%
for Bernie Sanders, 38%
for Joe Biden, 29% for
Elizabeth Warren, 27% for
Pete Buttigieg, and 16%
for Amy Klobuchar.
Yahoo News/YouGov
Q61% of Americans say
they are better off now
than they were three
years ago—the high-
est percentage when an
incumbent was running
in a presidential election
dating back to 1992.
GallupCovid-19: Turning into a pandemic
“We are at a turning
point,” said Julia Belluz
in Vox.com. Efforts
to stop the spread of
the new coronavirus,
or Covid-19, haven’t
worked—and a pandemic
is likely. Despite the travel
bans, the masks, and the
millions on lockdown, the
flu-like virus has spread
to 37 countries, infect-
ing at least 80,000 and
killing over 2,600. Italy, Iran, Japan, and South
Korea are all battling serious outbreaks. Evidence
is mounting that the virus can be passed on by
people without symptoms and is “spreading like
a wildfire” in contained environments. Fears sent
stocks plummeting Monday and Tuesday. Nancy
Messonnier of the National Center for Immuniza-
tion and Respiratory Diseases said an outbreak
in the U.S. was inevitable and warned the public:
“This might be bad.”Trying to stop this virus is “like trying to stop
the wind,” said Michael Osterholm and Mark
Olshaker in The New York Times. It spreads
fairly easily through the air, via droplets from
sneezes or coughs, and through contact with
infected people and surfaces. That means our
focus needs to shift from containment to prepar-
ing for the reality that “what happened in Wuhanwill likely play out else-
where.” The U.S. needs
to make sure health-care
workers and hospitals
are prepared and well-
equipped. “Facing the
hard facts” will require
the government to be hon-
est and direct. In other
words, we need the exact
opposite of President
Trump’s blithe reassur-
ances, said Russell Bran-
dom in TheVerge.com. In a bid to calm the mar-
kets, he falsely claimed that we’re “very close”
to a vaccine. Our know-nothing president has
“minimized the threat and spread bizarre lies.”“The next few months are likely to test all of us,”
said David Fickling in Bloomberg.com. On a per-
sonal level, we need to follow some basic prac-
tices: hand washing, keeping hands from faces,
limiting contact with busy surfaces like elevator
buttons, and keeping basic supplies and essential
medications on hand. “Don’t panic,” said Jon
Evans in TechCrunch.com. Keep in mind that the
mortality rate may be far lower than the “head-
line 2 percent,” due to undiagnosed cases among
those with mild or no symptoms. For a period
of time, schools may be closed, and you may be
working from home. “But it will be very far from
the end of the world.”Attorney General William Barr has been vindi-
cated, said The Wall Street Journal in an edito-
rial. Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s imposition of a
40-month sentence on President Trump’s former
confidant Roger Stone last week proves that the
attorney general was right to intervene to reduce
prosecutors’ original sentencing recommendation
of seven to nine years. When four Department
of Justice prosecutors withdrew from the case
in protest over Barr’s intervention, “Washington
went nuts” and accused Barr of bowing to “the
supposed authoritarian” in the White House.
It turns out that “the rule of law is doing fine.”
Even 40 months was too much, said Deroy Mur-
dock in NationalReview.com. Stone was con-
victed of lying to Congress about his role in the
Russia investigation. But just days earlier, the Jus-
tice Department dropped its inquiry into Andrew
McCabe, the former FBI director who admitted
to lying to FBI agents about leaking to the press.
Why do Trump haters like McCabe get lucrative
book and TV deals while Trump aides like Stone
and George Papadopoulos go to prison?Barr’s extraordinary interference in the Stone case
remains deeply alarming, said Noah Bookbinder
in The New York Times. Seven to nine years wasin line with federal sentencing guidelines, espe-
cially given the contempt Stone showed the justice
system and Judge Jackson, whose gag order he
repeatedly violated. The DOJ handles upwards of
100,000 criminal cases a year. Can Barr “point
to a single case” in which he personally inter-
vened “in which the defendant was not an ally of
President Trump, or someone who could testify
against him?” Even the replacement prosecutor
Barr sent to the sentencing made it clear what
was going on, said Aaron Blake in The Washing-
ton Post. When Judge Jackson asked Assistant
U.S. Attorney John Crabb if he’d written the
new, more lenient sentencing memo or had been
directed to do so, he responded, “I can’t answer.”Jackson made a brave stand for the rule of law,
said Frida Ghitis in CNN.com. She rebutted
Trump’s claim that Stone was being unfairly sin-
gled out, noting that Stone had been found guilty
of “covering up for the president” by denying
that he’d served as a conduit to WikiLeaks and
Russian hackers. In the end, said Darren Samu-
elsohn in Politico.com, Trump will circumvent
the law by pardoning his loyal dirty trickster. As
one former administration official put it: “It’s not
a question of if. It’s when.”Stone: What his sentencing revealed
Masked tourists at Venice’s traditional carnival