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Ruth King

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A Tale of Two Countries By Madeleine Kearns

By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/a-tale-of-two-countries/

Scottish nationalism in the wake of the coronavirus.

Britain is now reporting around 1,000 new cases of coronavirus a day, but the vast majority are in England. On June 29, Scotland accounted for only five out of 815 new cases across the whole of the U.K. Now, Scotland may be only weeks away from having no new cases. But something stands in their way, or so Scottish nationalists claim — the plague-ridden English!

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, a staunch pro-independence campaigner, said that while she had “no plans” to quarantine visitors from England, she couldn’t rule it out. Prime Minister Boris Johnson then accused her government of “astonishing and shameful,” “disappointing and divisive” rhetoric, making the bizarre statement that there is “no such thing as a border between England and Scotland.” Sturgeon responded in kind, calling out his “frankly disgraceful” politicization of the pandemic.

Though health is a devolved power and Scotland has, by and large, made its own decisions on how to tackle the coronavirus — in truth, the two countries’ approaches have been more similar than not. Take the mistakes made, for instance. The calamitous handling of care homes was an error made both north and south of the border. During its worst weeks, Britain saw a 300 percent increase in care-home deaths in England, while Scotland saw a comparatively lower 200 percent increase, though it’s worth mentioning, as writer Alex Massie has noted, “if the overall Scottish casualty rate remains lower that likely only reflects the fact that Scotland had fewer cases, proportionately, when lockdown was introduced.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Death By Policy Mortality statistics show that many people have died from lockdown-related causes, not from Covid-19.Joel Zinberg, M.D.

By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/deadly-cost-of-lockdown-policies

Many years ago, one of my duties as a young surgical intern was to fill out death certificates for recently deceased patients. Under “cause of death,” Part I asked for the immediate cause, other conditions leading to it, and the underlying cause. Part II asked for “other significant conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause given in Part I.” If you think this is confusing, you’re right. Did the post-operative patient found dead in bed really die of a heart attack, a pulmonary embolism, or some operative complication, like bleeding? Where do you list their colon cancer or hypertension?

The task has not gotten any easier during the Covid-19 pandemic. People are still dying of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and accidents. But now there is a new respiratory illness to account for. Not every decedent who tested positive for the virus that causes Covid-19 died from it—in fact, the disease is mild for most people. Conversely, some deaths due to Covid-19 may be erroneously assigned to other causes of death because the people were never tested, and Covid-19 was not diagnosed. Nearly everyone dying of Covid-19 has concurrent health problems—the average decedent has 2.5 co-morbid conditions—and hypertension, heart disease, respiratory diseases, and diabetes are among the most common. The presence and interaction of these co-morbid conditions is what sometimes changes Covid-19 from a relatively benign disease into a killer. But co-morbidities can also cause death regardless of Covid-19.

A common way to distinguish the mortality burden of a new infectious agent from other causes of death is to estimate the excess deaths that occurred beyond what would be expected if the pathogen had not circulated. A recent study of 48 states and the District of Columbia estimated 122,300 excess deaths during the pandemic period of March 1 to May 30, compared with expected deaths calculated from the previous five years. Deaths officially attributed to Covid-19 accounted for 78 percent of the total; approximately 27,000 deaths (22 percent) were not attributed to Covid-19. A second study, using the same database with different statistical methods for the period March 1 to April 25, found that 65 percent of 87,000 excess deaths were attributed to Covid-19.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, POLITICS Comments turned off

Will Democrats Accept Another Trump Victory? Barton Swain

By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-democrats-accept-another-trump-victory-11594405793?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Joe Biden, asked recently if he had considered the possibility that President Trump may refuse to concede defeat in the election, answered that he had. But he was “absolutely convinced,” the former vice president said reassuringly, that if such a thing happens, military personnel will “escort him from the White House with great dispatch.” What a relief!

The exchange brings to mind the 2016 campaign, when media personalities speculated that Mr. Trump would refuse to concede to Hillary Clinton. The hypothesis was never tested, Mr. Trump having had the bad manners to win, but it turned out to be they who refused to concede defeat—not by contesting the election results but by persuading themselves and half the country that Mr. Trump had won by illegal means and generally behaving like spoiled children for the next four years. 

I suspect Mr. Trump would have conceded the night of the election (which Mrs. Clinton did not do), for the simple reason that he neither expected nor particularly wanted to win. In the event that Mr. Trump fails to win re-election, he will depart willingly. Not graciously, perhaps, but willingly and at the appointed time.

The more interesting question is: What will Democrats do if Mr. Biden loses? What idiotic conspiracy theory will they concoct to explain their defeat?

I mean no disrespect to my liberal friends when I say, to borrow Mr. Biden’s phrase, that I am absolutely convinced that Democrats won’t accept the result if the Republican wins.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Black NFL Player Blasts DeSean Jackson’s Anti-Semitism: ‘Don’t Step On Jews to Uplift By Yakir BenzionYourself’

By on July 11th, 2020

https://unitedwithisrael.org/black-nfl-player-its-wrong-to-think-jews-are-like-other-w

‘Blacks are wrong to think Jews are like other whites,’ said Pittsburgh Steelers player Zach Banner while blasting Jackson’s anti-Semitic remarks and the deafening silence from fellow professional football players.

Pittsburgh Steelers football player Zach Banner made a hugely powerful statement this week, calling on “my NFL brothers” to join him to support the Jewish community in the wake of an anti-Semitic social media post by another NFL player.

Saying that the anti-Semitic remarks by Philadelphia Eagles player DeSean Jackson had kept him awake, Banner tweeted a message to his fellow players saying, “We must hold each other accountable. We must STAND up and for one another. We must keep our focus on the movement at hand.”

“I’m not going to lie. The lack of empathy from my brothers in the NFLPA (National Football League Players Association) towards the DeSean Jackson situation…and our Jewish friends and fans – most importantly fans and the Jewish community, is…horrendous.” Banner said in a video he posted on Twitter.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Energy Production And Consumption: The Seen And The Unseen Francis Menton

By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-7-9-energy-production-and-consu

Over the past several days, you have probably seen multiple articles reporting on reverses suffered in the U.S. courts by developers of pipelines to transport oil and natural gas. In one case, a Federal District Court even ordered an existing, operational pipeline to shut down pending further environmental review. The multiple court decisions have been covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, and every other large news source that you can think of.

Meanwhile, on June 19 the BP oil company issued its annual Report titled “Statistical Review of World Energy,” this version covering the year 2019. I’ll bet you haven’t seen anything in the news about that one. I make that bet because, aside from one article in Forbes magazine, every piece that I can find covering the BP Report appears in some sort of specialized or industry publication.

If you just see what appears before you in your news feed, you could be forgiven for getting the impression that producers of fossil fuels are on the run and will shortly be driven from the scene. But if you take the time to look, you can find the real picture in the BP Report. In summary, world production and consumption of fossil fuels continue their steady and inexorable aggregate growth (although with ongoing substitution of natural gas for coal). Despite all you have read about plans to reduce or eliminate CO2 emissions, in fact those emissions continue to grow from year to year. Production from “renewables” also has been growing, but at a pace insufficient to result in any reduction in use of fossil fuels. Indeed, it’s not clear that any amount of increases in intermittent wind and solar sources can result in reductions in use of fossil fuels, since the wind and solar sources require full backup from dispatchable sources. Meanwhile, the market shares between and among the energy sources barely shift from year to year.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Fifty-two Years Late Isn’t Too Late Shoshana Bryen

By on July 11th, 2020

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

The United States believes that Israel has waited long enough to redeem promises by the United Nations, and in the absence of Palestinian engagement, Israel is entitled to begin the process of securing its border in the east: in Judea and Samaria.

As Israel considers how and when to apply sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria—drawing its map in cooperation with the United States and leaving a chair at the table for the Palestinian Authority—American Democrats, the European community, parts of the international Jewish community and to an apparently lesser degree the Gulf Arab countries have been busy pronouncing themselves “troubled” by the whole process. The silent party has been the Palestinian Authority.

Until now.

In a text message to “the Quartet” (the “peacemaking” group consisting of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia), the P.A. declares itself “ready to resume direct bilateral negotiations where they stopped” in 2014. The Palestinians are ready, the message says, to consider “minor border changes that will have been mutually agreed, based on the borders of June 4, 1967.” It helps to know that the June 4 line is not a border. It is the 1949 Armistice Line that was rejected by the United Nations as a border for Israel in U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Critical National Security Zone Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on July 11th, 2020

Israel’s pre-1967 waistline was shorter than the length of DFW Airport in Texas and the distance between RFK Stadium and Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; equal to the distance between JFK and La Guardia airports and between Columbia University and Wall Street in New York City.

National security requirements in the Middle East

National security requirements are a by-product of the geo-strategic environment.  The more predictable and peaceful the environment, the lower the security requirements. The more unpredictable and non-peaceful the environment, the higher the security requirements.

Thus, Israel’s national security requirements are determined, mostly, by the 1,400-year-old tectonic Middle East reality: unpredictability, instability, highly-implosive, violent intra-Arab intolerance, no intra-Arab peaceful coexistence, systematic intra-Arab terrorism and subversion, Islam-dominated societies and minority despotic regimes, which are as tenuous as are their policies and agreements.

Realistic Middle East national security requirements must be capable of overcoming worst case scenarios of surprise offensives, not good-case-scenarios, which are rare in the Middle East.

The transition from Middle East peace to war could be as precipitous as Middle East politics (e.g., the toppling Mubarak by the Muslim Brotherhood, which was toppled by A-Sisi) and intra-Arab relations (e.g., Jordan’s support of Saddam Hussein and availing its territory for anti-Israel Palestinian terrorism). 

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Where the Hell Is John Durham? Julie Kelly

By on July 10th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/09/where-the-hell-is-john-durham/

Trump has every right to be enraged that four years after Barack Obama’s top henchmen concocted and executed the biggest political scandal of all time, not one person has been held criminally responsible while trials against his associates drag on.

In May 2019, Attorney General William Barr made an announcement millions of Americans had been waiting for: A U.S. attorney outside the Beltway would investigate the corrupt origins of the FBI’s probe into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and government efforts to sabotage the incoming president after he was elected.

For the past 14 months, we have been waiting (impatiently, I confess) for news from John Durham, the Connecticut prosecutor Barr tapped to lead the long-delayed inquiry. After all, by the time the attorney general initiated the targeted probe, there was plenty of evidence of wrongdoing by top officials in the Obama Administration, including James Comey, John Brennan, and Andrew McCabe among others. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had wrapped up his two-year partisan witch hunt and despite unlimited resources—along with the unflinching support of Republicans on Capitol Hill—Barack Obama’s former FBI director could find no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

But Mueller did plenty of damage in the interim. Just weeks after his May 2017 appointment, Mueller started rounding up Trump associates: George Papadopoulos was arrested at Dulles Airport in July 2017 on a concocted charge. A few months later, Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, was arrested; Lt. General Michael Flynn finally relented to a plea deal for which he still hasn’t been sentenced. (The judge in the case is refusing to drop the charges against Flynn, per the government’s request.) All that and more happened within the first six months of Mueller’s investigation.

Yet Durham has produced nothing for public consumption.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Closing of the American Mind  By James Ceaser

By on July 10th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/07/27/the-closing-of-the-american-mind%e2%80%88/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

The media and the universities have mostly lost interest in fair debate

Cheers, but just two of them, for this special issue of National Review on the defense of America’s heritage and heroes.  

Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, it was inevitable that a strong reaction would take place. All elements of American society joined in condemnation, from the president, to members of Congress, to the black leadership, to the population at large. Protests ensued, directed first at the police and then at targets indifferently charged with a measure of blame, from the federal government, to the nation’s historical legacy, to the newly minted abstraction of “systemic racism.” Dismissing the plea of Floyd’s girlfriend to remember that George “was about love and about peace,” and the assertion of Floyd’s brother that his family is “peaceful” and “God-fearing,” mobs soon formed within and alongside the protesters, bringing arson, violence, murder, and the widespread destruction of property, estimated to be among the most costly ever for an eruption of civil unrest. Mass iconoclasm against monuments, statues, and symbols of the West became the order of the day, as the lawless made a jubilee of the suspension of police enforcement.

Assembling important thinkers to set straight the historical record of America is assuredly a good thing. It should help make clear that Christopher Columbus, though a harsh commander, was a brilliant and dauntless explorer; that George Washington, rumored to have chopped down a cherry tree, was a man of extraordinary skills of leadership; that Thomas Jefferson, for all his moral shortcomings, was a statesman of unparalleled intellect; and that Abraham Lincoln, coming from a deprived background, succeeded in keeping the Union together and emancipating the slaves. These persons merit recognition for the good they did for the nation, which is certainly more than what the woke today, who celebrate their superiority by claiming to live lives without flaws, have contributed. 

Why then not go ahead and extend a full three cheers to this special issue? If there is a reason, it is the premise that if only the real facts are made known, the false reasoning and deceptive narratives behind so many of the ideologically tinged historical accounts of our time will eventually come tumbling down. The truth will set us free. But the reality is more dire than many suppose. America is now well down the road to losing its capacity to respond to argument. Let’s be clear about terms. Arguments are encountered everywhere today, filling almost every nook and cranny of intellectual space. But a repetition of arguments is not the same as the willingness and ability to argue, or the same as cultivating a disposition to consider alternative viewpoints. American society is now arranged from top to bottom, institutionally and sociologically, to suppress the encounter with different ideas and to fix thoughts automatically on set positions.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Fragility of the Woke By Victor Davis Hanson

By on July 10th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/woke-protesters-historys-ingredients-riot-revolution/#slide-1

History’s ingredients of riot and revolution

A TikTok video that recently went viral on social media showed a recent Harvard graduate threatening to stab anyone who said “all lives matter.” In her melodrama, she tried to sound intimidating with her histrionics.

She won a huge audience, as she intended. But her video also came to the attention of the company that was going to give her an internship later this summer, Deloitte, which decided it didn’t want to add an intern who threatened to kill strangers who said something she didn’t like.

This wouldn’t have been much of a story. But then the narcissistic Harvard alum posted a very different video — one that showed her weeping in a near-fetal position.

She fought back tears while complaining about how unfair the world had been to her. Her initial TikTok post had earned cruel pushback from the social-media jungle she had courted. Deloitte, she sobbed, was mean and hurtful. And she wanted the world to share her pain.

The Harvard grad instantly became an unwitting poster girl for the current protest movement and the violence that has accompanied it. What turns off millions of Americans about the statue toppling, the looting, the threats, and the screaming in the face of police is the schizophrenic behavior of so many of the would-be revolutionaries.

On one hand, those toppling statues or canceling their own careers on the Internet pose as vicious Maoists — the hard-core shock troops of the revolution. Their brand is vile profanity, taunts to police, firebombs, and spray paint.

In homage to Italy’s Blackshirts of the past, they wear black hoodies, don makeshift helmets, and strap on ad hoc protective padding — part lacrosse attire, part cinematic Road Warrior costume.

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