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April 2020

Progressive Governors Indulge Their Inner Despot What really lurks behind their façade of concern for the “people” and the “oppressed.” Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/progressive-governors-indulge-their-inner-despot-bruce-thornton/

Poet Sylvia Plath’s slur against women, that they “adore a fascist, the boot in the face, the brute,” is more true about progressives, with one big difference: they want to be the ones wear the boot. Behind their façade of therapeutic concern for the “people” and the “oppressed” lies something that Vladimir Lenin was honest enough to express in 1906: the lust for “power, which is totally unlimited by any laws, totally unrestrained by absolutely any rules, and based directly on force.”

Thankfully, those impulses so far have been checked by our Constitutional order, which was created to inhibit the concentration and excesses of power that threatens citizen freedom. But as we have seen over the last century, at times of crisis the technocratic progressives have chipped away at those Constitutional guardrails and serially encroached on our freedoms. The current virus crisis is the latest opportunity for the Dems to indulge their inner despots.

We’ve all seen the catalogue of overweening unilateral diktats enforced by police power coming down from Democrat governors. Under the guise of enforcing social distancing in order to slow the spread of the disease, governors have quickly violated the Bill of Rights: closing gun stores at the same time they release felons from prison; shutting down church services while leaving liquor stores open; criminalizing the right to peaceful assembly; arbitrarily deeming some economic activities as “essential,” like abortion clinics and pot dispensaries, while proscribing others like buying paint or vegetable seeds. Even our freedom of movement that doesn’t endanger others, such as surfing alone or playing with our children in a deserted park, has been interdicted by overzealous police.

UN shocked, shocked that Iran would execute a 17-year-old By Ethel C. Fenig

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/un_shocked_shocked_that_iran_would_execute_a_17yearold.html

Taking a break from blaming Little Satan (Israel) and Big Satan (USA) from all the world’s problems, now the Wuhan, China coronavirus pandemic, the U.N. did something shocking.  Yes, just when you thought you couldn’t be shocked by the U.N.’s incompetent, bizarre behavior, the U.N. fools you and shocks once again.  What did it do that was so shocking?  The U.N. was shocked, shocked, shocked to learn:

UN experts ‘shocked’ as Iran executes young offender

GENEVA, Switzerland — United Nations rights experts accused Iran of violating international law on Tuesday for executing a prisoner who was just 17 years old when he committed a crime.

Shayan Saeedpour, alleged to have committed murder in August 2015, was hanged on Tuesday, United Nations special rapporteurs Javaid Rehman and Agnes Callamard in a statement. (snip)

“We are shocked that the Iranian authorities have once again defied their international obligations by executing a child offender,” the UN experts said.

“We have repeatedly reminded the Iranian government and judiciary that international human rights law is clear: the application of the death penalty to child offenders is strictly prohibited and its practice is an egregious violation of the right to life.”

What?  The U.N. is shocked to learn that Iran has “once again defied [its] international obligations” and expects the Iranians to obey “international human rights law”?

Coronavirus and the Laboratories in Wuhan Their researchers travel to caves across China, where they capture live bats to study viruses. Senator Tom Cotton

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-the-laboratories-in-wuhan-11587486996?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Mr. Cotton, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Arkansas.

The U.S. government is investigating whether the Covid-19 virus came from a government laboratory in Wuhan, China. The Chinese Communist Party denies the possibility. “There is no way this virus came from us,” claimed Yuan Zhiming over the weekend. Mr. Yuan is a top researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studies some of the world’s deadliest pathogens. He is also secretary of the lab’s Communist Party committee. He accuses me of “deliberately trying to mislead people” for suggesting his laboratory as a possible origin for the pandemic.

Beijing has claimed that the virus originated in a Wuhan “wet market,” where wild animals were sold. But evidence to counter this theory emerged in January. Chinese researchers reported in the Lancet Jan. 24 that the first known cases had no contact with the market, and Chinese state media acknowledged the finding. There’s no evidence the market sold bats or pangolins, the animals from which the virus is thought to have jumped to humans. And the bat species that carries it isn’t found within 100 miles of Wuhan.

Wuhan has two labs where we know bats and humans interacted. One is the Institute of Virology, eight miles from the wet market; the other is the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, barely 300 yards from the market.

Mayor De Blasio Says He Needs Ventilators, While Governor Cuomo Is Giving Them Away to Other States By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/trending/mayor-de-blasio-says-he-needs-ventilators-while-governor-cuomo-is-giving-them-away-to-other-states/

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is looking to have ventilators built right in New York City in order to build up a reserve and protect the city during future pandemics. “We’ve learned the hard way that we cannot depend on the federal government,” claimed de Blasio said during his daily press briefing. “We’ll purchase what we need and create a stockpile. We New Yorkers will take care of ourselves.”

It was a bizarre announcement, considering that, according to President Trump, the United States is already on track to build as many as 200,000 ventilators in 2020, which is significantly higher than the 30,000 that were built in 2019. So, why is Mayor de Blasio blaming the federal government and claiming he can’t depend on them?

Not only did New York not need the 40,000 ventilators Cuomo requested from Trump, but the amount they had was more than they ultimately needed. Yet, Bill de Blasio, who’s trying to cover up for his own failures to contain the spread of the virus in New York City, is trying to blame the federal government (read: President Trump) for failing to provide enough ventilators and other equipment.