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March 2020

POLITICS Comments turned off

While all eyes are on Democrats, Trump is the big winner across America By Andrea Widburg

By on March 4th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/while_all_eyes_are_on_democrats_trump_is_the_big_winner_across_america.html

The obvious news is that many voters, after staring into the abyss of Bernie Sanders’ socialism and seeing Fidel Castro looking back at them, are turning to Biden as their preferred candidate. Biden, after looking like a loser last week, is looking like a contender this week.

The less obvious news, though, is that in many states there was a real fire among Republicans, even though Donald Trump is a virtually uncontested incumbent. People ought to be staying home but in several states they are voting for Trump in droves.

The following data is from Decision Desk HQ, as of 11:50 p.m. EST, with many votes still being counted. In those states in which Republican voter turnout exceeded Democrat voter turnout, the Republican numbers are bolded. In those states in which Republicans, while fewer in number than Democrats, still made a good showing, Republican numbers are bolded and italicized.

In Alabama, with 88.44% of votes counted, 387,762 people voted in the Democrat primary, with Biden winning. Meanwhile, 623,732 people voted in the Republican primary, with Trump receiving 613,799 votes.

In Arkansas, with 69.28% of votes counted, 216,840 people voted in the Democrat primary, with Biden winning. Meanwhile, 233,898 people voted in the Republican primary, with Trump receiving 227,078 votes.

In California, with only 12.37% of votes counted, 1,030,439 people voted in the Democrat primary, with Bernie winning. Meanwhile, 625,295 people voted in the Republican primary, with Trump receiving 573,611 votes.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Collapse of Intellectual Standards in Science By Norman Rogers

By on March 4th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/the_collapse_of_intellectual_standards_in_science.html

Each year approximately $25 billion dollars is wasted paying for so-called renewable energy, overwhelmingly wind and solar. This is the excess cost of the renewable energy versus what it would cost to generate the same amount of electricity in existing fossil fuel plants. Because many states have accelerating legal quotas for renewable energy, called renewable portfolio laws, the money wasted each year will approximately double in the next 10-years to $50 billion each year. If the states fail to come to their senses and continue to pursue these laws, another doubling by 2040 to $100 billion per year is likely. In the state of Nevada, for example, the increasing cost of electricity will likely be equivalent to a 4% state income tax by 2030.

The renewable energy industry has powerful sources of support for its program to make money by fooling the public. There are many effective lies, repeated over and over. Long term contracts for wind or solar electricity at $25 or $30 per megawatt hour are touted as proving that renewable electricity is replacing “more expensive” fossil fuel electricity. A close examination of the cost of renewable electricity, either wind or solar, shows that the real cost of this electricity is not $25 per megawatt hour, but around $80 per megawatt hour. The difference is the federal and state subsidies. A good chunk of those federal subsidies are set to go away by 2022.

Then there is the matter of replacing fossil fuel electricity. Wind or solar electricity displaces some fossil fuel electricity, but they never replace the plants used to generate fossil fuel electricity. The fossil fuel plants are throttled back when the wind or solar is generating electricity. But sometimes wind and solar are asleep. At those times the fossil fuel plants have to power the grid without any help from the wind or solar plants. Nothing is replaced by building wind or solar plants. A dual system is created with dependable fossil fuel plants supplemented by erratically operating wind or solar plants. When fossil fuel plants are replaced, they are replaced by newer fossil fuel plants. Often natural gas replaces coal.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Canadian Health Care Myth By Jeffrey T. Brown

By on March 4th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/the_canadian_health_care_myth.html

I recently had the opportunity to listen to two Canadian citizens discuss the Canadian health care system, and their personal experiences within it.  They were a very successful, middle-aged couple who had been involved in a motor vehicle accident in the United States while driving to Florida.  The accident in which they were involved was quite serious.  The wife suffered fractured ribs and a fractured sternum.  She also experienced pain in her shoulder, which wasn’t initially detected or diagnosed due to the extent of whole-body pain she was in.  She was taken to a nearby hospital.  Her husband, however, was more seriously injured.

He was trapped in the vehicle and had to be cut out by emergency personnel.  He was taken by helicopter to one of the premier shock trauma centers in the state, where he remained hospitalized for four days.  A broken leg, and a shattered wrist and forearm, necessitated surgeries, with hardware permanently implanted.  The husband received excellent care, as did the wife, though her injuries were not of a kind that are easily treated.  After four days, they returned to Canada, and began their recovery.

Had they lived in the United States, their recovery would have progressed entirely differently than it eventually did in Canada.  In the United States, they would have been seen within days by their primary care physician.  The husband would have been followed up by his surgeon.  Additional scans and studies, including MRIs, CT scans, and X-rays would have been performed to determine if his fractures were healing, if the bones were forming new growth where they had been joined with plates and screws.  The extent of any nerve damage would have been determined by EMG studies.  As soon as he was ready, he would have been started on a course of physical therapy directed to rehabilitating his many injuries, and returning him as closely as possible to his prior level of function, or that level that a maximum medical recovery would have allowed.  Such therapy would likely have been administered at least twice, and more likely three times or more, per week. The progress would have been recorded and the surgeon and primary care doctor, or other orthopedic specialist, would have been copied on the reports.  A team approach to this man’s healing would have brought about the greatest degree of recovery and resumption of function that it was possible to achieve.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Pretending Joe Biden Is Fine By Kyle Smith

By on March 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pretending-joe-biden-is-fine/

As what appears to be a willful act of national make-believe sweeps the Democratic primaries, Alexandra Petri has a funny sarcastic column in the Washington Post: “I just remembered Joe Biden is fine.” She writes:

Please don’t show me any footage of Joe Biden saying or doing things. Or of me saying or doing things about Joe Biden, pointing out what I erroneously thought were major and obvious flaws in his candidacy. I forgot: They were not.

Biden has been trying to achieve the presidency since 1988. Even in his best days, he was not a strong candidate. And he’s much weaker today. Are Democrats just going to pretend that Biden didn’t look the other way while family members leveraged their connections to him to go into places like Ukraine and collect large paychecks? That Biden offers a coherent vision of where to take the country other than hokey nostalgia and bromides? That he wouldn’t be, on the day he takes office, older than any chief executive has ever been on the last day of his presidency? That his unscripted speech isn’t rambling, nonsensical, and bizarre? That he isn’t already showing signs of incipient dementia, ten months before his term would even begin? That he doesn’t make Grandpa Simpson look like a sage?

 

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Globalization Bleeding By Victor Davis Hanson

By on March 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/globalization-bleeding/#slide-1

When we become citizens of the world, that is, citizens of everyplace, then we end up citizens of utopia. That is, as citizens of οὐ τόπος — of “no place.”

The recurring dream — or nightmare — of being a ‘citizen of the world’

By the early 21st century, cosmopolitans were gushing that high-tech, instant communications, transnational agencies and agreements, free-flowing capital, international corporations, and a new eerily uniform global elite had, finally, made nationalism, borders, and even the nation-state itself all irrelevant. Nationalism was apparently relegated to dustbin of history, as we hit peak Socratic citizen-of-the-worldism.

There were always two flaws to these adolescent giddy reports from world-bestriding New York Times op-ed journalists about win-win globalization, with their praise of gleaming airports and superior high-speed rail in what was otherwise Communist China, or accounts of flying first-class on Qatar Airlines was heavenly compared with backward United or American Airlines.

Nothing New under the Sun
One, globalization was not the end of history. It is a recurrent, cyclical, and at best morally neutral phenomenon that has always, at least in relative terms, waxed and waned over the past 2,500 years of civilization — although recent transcontinentalism carries greater consequences in the era of electronic interconnectedness.

By a.d. 200, there was a globalized Roman world of 2 million square miles, stretching from Hadrian’s Wall to the Persian Gulf, and from the Rhine to the Atlas Mountains. Like frogs around the pond of Mare Nostrum, all official business was conducted in Latin or, increasingly in the East, Greek. A Roman citizen could enjoy habeas corpus from Bithynia to the Atlantic. Thousands of small towns were marked by fora and agorae, colonnades, and basilicas. While multiracial and non-Italian, otherwise uniformly equipped and trained legions secured the vast borders. It was quite an achievement of providing aqueducts, security, and property rights to 70 million disparate peoples, but it was no longer really the earlier Roman Republic of the Scipios, either.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

RICH LOWRY ON CORONAVIRUS

By on March 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/can-we-please-be-sober-minded-about-the-coronavirus/

EXCERPT

The coronavirus may not prove as threatening as first feared, but one way to ensure that it isn’t is for American officials to take it seriously. Foolish happy talk aside, the administration has, by and large, acted appropriately. The targeted travel restrictions can at least slow the influx of infected people while researchers work to develop treatments and vaccines. In addition to providing resources to those researchers and streamlining the testing process, federal agencies should promptly disseminate the number of cases and work with localities to quarantine patients as warranted.

 

To hear the Democrats tell it, Trump has already stumbled into a debacle. They’ve hit him for alleged cuts to the CDC, but Congress has in fact increased funding to the agency during Trump’s presidency. The cool-headed analysts at the New York Times also chimed in. Readers of Gail Collins — who titled a column “Let’s Call It Trumpvirus” — can be forgiven for thinking the president concocted the virus in the West Wing. Paul Krugman absurdly said Trump’s fear of “scary brown people” left the government ill-prepared to combat the crisis.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

NEW YORK-DISTRICT 17

By on March 4th, 2020

I think the fact that there are Congressional races all over the country where you have AOC-type progressives who are either challenging the old guard in primaries or are are poised to try to take the seats of those who are retiring  is worthy of attention. Amanda M.

https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/lowey-retirement-paves-way-for-generational-c

The decision by longtime Westchester Rep. Nita Lowey, the 82-year-old pro-Israel stalwart, not to seek re-election next year opens up the possibility of generational change in the district after 31 years of her leadership.

Lowey’s retirement and the fact that she was already facing a primary challenge from the left also shakes up a race that calls to mind the 2018 primary fight between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Crowley, the longtime representative of Queens and the Bronx whose defeat came as a shock to the Democratic establishment. Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning victory inspired a new wave of primary challengers, particularly in safely blue districts in New York like Lowey’s, where Mondaire Jones, a former attorney for Westchester County, announced his campaign for Lowey’s seat in July. Jones raised $218,000 in the third quarter of this year.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Let the Run-Offs Begin: Jeff Sessions, Tommy Tuberville Tied in Ala. Senate Race

By on March 4th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/election/jeff-sessions-faces-a-runoff-in-the-gop-primary-for-his-old-u-s-senate-seat/

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions will face a runoff in the Republican primary in the race to win back the U.S. Senate seat he vacated to join the Trump administration, the Associated Press projected. Sessions appears to be essentially tied with Tommy Tuberville, a former college football coach.

As of 11:30 p.m. with 51.4 percent reporting, Sessions led with 129,497 votes (32.5 percent) to Tuberville’s 122,713 (30.8 percent). Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore trailed at about 7 percent. The winner will face Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who was uncontested in the Democratic primary. Since Alabama is a deep-red state, either Sessions or Tuberville is almost certain to defeat Jones in November.

Tuesday’s incoming results will likely set up a four-week runoff between Sessions and Tuberville after a campaign focused on which Republican was most loyal to Trump.

“We’re going to overtime, and I know someone who knows how to win in overtime,” Tuberville said in a speech Tuesday evening, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. “We’re going to finish what President Trump started when he looked at Jeff Sessions from across the table and said, ‘You’re fired.'”

Ouch!

Tuberville is running as an outsider who will help implement Trump’s agenda, but Sessions has been extremely loyal to Trump. He was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump in the 2016 primary, and he resigned from the Senate in 2017 to become U.S. attorney general.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu at the Cusp of a Dramatic Comeback After Monday’s Elections By P. David Hornik

By on March 4th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/netanyahu-at-the-cusp-of-a-dramatic-comeback/

Israel went to the polls on Monday. By Tuesday morning, as vote-counting proceeded, it appeared all but certain that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Likud Party, and his right-wing bloc had scored a dramatic comeback victory.

First it will help to recap.

Netanyahu was prime minister from 1996 to 1999, and again consecutively from 2009 to 2019, winning elections in 2009, 2013, and 2015. When he ran again in April 2019, it seemed he’d won again handily as the right-wing bloc took 65 seats out of Israel’s 120-member Knesset (to win you need 61).

But something happened on the way to coalition-forming. Avigdor Liberman, head of a secular-hawkish faction, demanded that Netanyahu stop making concessions to two ultra-religious parties that had been part of his coalition since 2015.

It was a demand Netanyahu had to refuse, since his ultra-religious coalition parties held far more seats than Liberman’s faction, which had won all of five seats. But when Liberman pulled out of the coalition, it was left with 60 seats—one short of the 61-seat minimum. Israel has been in electoral limbo ever since.

Especially because in the September 2019 elections, Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc—sans Lieberman’s faction—slipped even further to 55 seats. Netanyahu’s main challenger, former chief of staff Benny Gantz, led his centrist Blue and White party to an impressive performance—but his bloc, like Netanyahu’s, fell way short of 61 mandates. (If you’re wondering about the arithmetic, the remaining mandates went to the Joint List, an Israeli Arab party that’s hostile to Israel as a Jewish state and not grist for anyone’s coalition.)

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Biden Resurgence A very Super Tuesday makes the former Vice President the best Democratic hope to beat Bernie Sanders.

By on March 4th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biden-resurgence-11583298561?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Hold the revolution. The Bernie Sanders takeover of the Democratic Party took a detour on Super Tuesday as Joe Biden’s political resurrection that began in South Carolina on Saturday continued in the Southeast and expanded into the Middle West and even Bernie Sanders country in the Northeast. Maybe President Trump wished too soon for Mr. Sanders as his opponent.

Literally in four days the Democratic race has turned upside down. Mr. Biden replicated his South Carolina coalition of African-Americans, Baby Boomers and center-left voters for a crushing victory in Virginia with 53.3% of the vote. He won North Carolina more narrowly, but his margin with black Democrats again made the difference. He also won Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and by our deadline was competitive in Texas and Maine.

The former Vice President ran away with the vote among late deciders, which means he benefited from the rush of endorsements that followed South Carolina. The party is almost literally lifting the old war horse on its back despite his many gaffes and stumbles. The prospect of an avowed socialist at the top of the ticket has scared millions of Democrats into Mr. Biden’s arms no matter his liabilities.

His strong performance will keep him close to Mr. Sanders in the delegate count, though we won’t know how close until the results in California are clear. But his victories may be most important for restoring credibility to Mr. Biden’s argument that he is the Democrat who is best able to defeat Mr. Trump.

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