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May 2020

Why Do Progressives Want To Keep The Economy Shut Down? Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-5-13-why-do-progressives-want-to-keep-the-economy-shut-down

As noted in my post a few days ago (“Republican Governors Are Kicking The Butts Of Democratic Governors On Covid-19 Response”), a clear dichotomy has opened up between left and right over whether and how quickly the economy should reopen, now that our pandemic is in decline. Republicans advocate for a quicker reopening, and many Republican governors are well into implementing that. The President has also come down on the side of optimism and early reopening. On the Democratic side, the response is something like “YOU WILL HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!!!”

The upper right-hand corner of the front page of the New York Times is a place where in the old days you would look for the most important news of the day. These days the article occupying that spot generally has little to do with real news, but instead informs you of the official Democratic Party talking point of the day. Today the headline (print edition) is “OPENING TOO SOON POSES DEADLY RISK, SENATE IS WARNED.” Excerpt:

Two of the federal government’s top health officials painted a grim picture of the months ahead on Tuesday, warning a Senate panel that the coronavirus pandemic was far from contained, just a day after President Trump declared that “we have met the moment and we have prevailed.” The officials — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — predicted dire consequences if the nation reopened its economy too soon. . . .

A Farrago of Democrat Delusions Will Bury Them in 2020 Comparative peace will come after the election; political corpses can’t fight on after the voters have buried them. By Conrad Black

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/14/a-farrago-of-democrat-delusions-will-bury-them-in-2020/

To judge from campaign oratory, it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that the Democrats and Republicans are contesting for the honor of governing the same country this election year.

The Democrats describe a country where, if the administration had acted more quickly and subjected the entire population to constant testing for the coronavirus even before any of its characteristics were known, Americans would have been spared scores of thousands of avoidable deaths. It is a country where there is now no alternative to a near-complete national shutdown while the whole population submits to constant testing and anyone with whom an identified COVID-sufferer has met in the previous 14 days must be hunted down and forcibly quarantined.

As the U.S. economy withers, poverty will be alleviated by borrowing on the backs of the taxpayers and shoveling out a trillion dollars every two weeks in a straight vote-buying exercise in which Trump will atone for his supposed failure to test in adequate numbers before the pandemic got going by transforming himself into the Herbert Hoover of our time, and go meekly to the electoral slaughterhouse as the father of a new Great Depression.

It is hard to credit that the Democratic Party has adopted this fairy tale until its interpretation of recent legal events is taken on board.

The exposure of the facts that Robert Mueller’s probe of nonexistent Russian collusion was launched by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at the instigation of fired FBI Director James Comey’s illegal leak of a self-serving, self-addressed memo about a conversation with the president, after they both knew that there was no basis whatever for what Mueller was supposed to investigate; and that they and others had misled the FISA court in seeking warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and transition team, are portrayed as Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department. Joe Biden calls it a “diversion” from the mismanagement of the public health crisis.

Why Hamas Loves Human Rights Watch by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16020/human-rights-watch-hamas

The HRW report focuses on only three Arab towns in Israel – Jisr al-Zarqa, Qalansawa and Ein Mahel, with a total population of 50,000. It deliberately ignores the other two million or so Arab Israelis. Moreover, the report fails to mention that the housing crisis affects not only Arabs, but also Jews.

In 2015, the Israeli government decided to implement the Economic Development Plan, a multi-year plan of about $12.3 billion, targeting issues such as planning, employment, transportation and education in the Arab sector. This groundbreaking plan is the largest and most comprehensive ever advanced to close gaps for Israel’s Arab society…. Hamas, meanwhile, has done virtually nothing to solve the debilitating housing crisis of the two million Palestinians living under its rule in the Gaza Strip.

This is the same Hamas that is now using the HRW report to shed crocodile tears over the alleged housing crisis in the Arab sector in Israel…. A terrorist group that has failed its own people on an epic level is pretending that it is worried about where Arabs in Israel will live.

The HRW report, which ignores Hamas’s atrocities against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, is now being used by the terrorist group as “evidence” of why Israel should be destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state.

“[The Middle East is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than any other country in the region.” – Robert L. Bernstein, The New York Times, October 19, 2009.

Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel, is apparently very pleased with Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international organization headquartered in New York. Hamas is so pleased that this week it issued a statement praising HRW for its systematic and continuous bashing of Israel.

It is rather rare for a radical Islamic terrorist group to heap praise on a Western supposed human rights organization, particularly an American one.

Exceptions exist in all areas, however, and HRW, known for its anti-Israel bias and for peddling anti-Israel hate, stands as an especially blazing one.

No Justice, No Freedom When justice is stripped of her blindfold – and her scales are tampered with. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/no-justice-no-freedom-bruce-thornton/

The opening credits of the Perry Mason television drama featured a statue of justice as a blindfolded woman raising aloft a pair of scales. This common visual metaphor captures the two critical dimensions of justice: balancing the punishment with the crime, and the equality of all under the law.

Four years ago the Obama administration and rogue partisans in the FBI and DOJ abused their powers in order to keep Donald Trump from being elected, and then to hamstring and sabotage his administration. Now we are nearing the end of the investigations into those crimes, and the truth long obvious to many will finally be confirmed. But if the verification of these crimes is not followed by indictments and the malefactors put on trial, our political system will be seriously damaged, and we citizens will lose faith in the integrity of our justice system and its role in protecting our political freedom

Like freedom, our view of justice as embodying fairness and balance has not been universal to all peoples. They may have had laws, but those laws were not necessarily just. Our notion of justice arises from the creation of constitutional states that first took form in ancient Greece. Before then, power over others was a personal possession of rulers based on their assumed superiority of wealth or birth, and as such was unaccountable to the masses. These rulers made the laws and enforced them, but they were not always subject to the same laws nor were they enforced fairly. Like governing, applying justice, then, was a function of the ruler’s status and privilege, or his alleged connection to the all-knowing gods. Justice, like political power, resided in men, not in laws equally applied.

UK: Illegal Migrants are the Medicine Being Imported Into a Sickly Country All while Brits remain in strict caronavirus lockdown. Katie Hopkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/uk-illegals-migrants-are-medicine-being-imported-katie-hopkins/

You might think Britain has enough problems right now.

Cowering in our homes like sewer rats smelling disinfectant, unemployment quietly sneaking to 20% under cover of the government’s furlough scheme and Boris apparently absent without leave under the spell of Wilfred, his newborn child.

But you would be mistaken.

According to the government and the usual suspects, what Britain needs right now as our economy collapses and our health service runs out of cash is to import a few more problems for the country to deal with. Illegal immigrants are the medicine being imported into this sickly nation.

I watched in disbelief as 50 illegals from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia were flown into my country this week from crowded migrant camps in Greece.

We were told these were desperate people, ‘refugees’, the ‘most vulnerable’ with severe health conditions, looking to join family member in the UK. But they looked remarkably chipper as they sprang up the steps to board the plane, smiling and waving for the cameras with their new trainers and $250 Apple AirPods in their ears.

Challenging Anthony Fauci By Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/challenging_anthony_fauci.html

“I don’t think you are the one person who gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice but there are people on the other side saying there’s not going to be a surge and we can safely open the economy.” 

The speaker was Sen. Rand Paul, in the hearing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Tuesday. Sen. Paul, a medical doctor, was addressing Dr. Anthony Fauci of the president’s coronavirus task force. Dr. Fauci did not appreciate the challenge. 

“I’m a scientist, a physician and a public health official,” Fauci said. The millions of Americans struggling to get their lives back might quibble with the order, and a key part of the description is missing. 

Anthony Fauci earned a medical degree from Cornell University in 1966. He does not list advanced degrees in molecular biology so, strictly speaking, Anthony Fauci is not a virologist. 

In 1984, a full 36 years ago, Fauci hired on with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). 

There Fauci made a name for himself with the claim that AIDS would ravage the heterosexual community. That turned out to be wrong and for background see The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, by Michael Fumento, and Inventing the AIDS Virus by Peter Duesberg, who is a molecular biologist. 

On Fauci’s watch, NIAID became a major funder of research for what is now known as HIV/AIDS. Dr. Fauci could often be found testifying before Congress, which is where the money comes from. Lately his ability to get things wrong has been on full display.

Police State Dry Run a Huge Success By Carol Brown

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/police_state_dry_run_a_huge_success.html

When the coronavirus landed on our shores, communist China came with it.

We have become part of a mass scale human experiment in government control and it turned out that stripping away our freedom wasn’t all that difficult. Under the guise of concern for our health and well-being, tyrants came out of the woodwork.  Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our lives are being destroyed as the left solidifies and expands their oppressive powers. We’ve been herded around like cattle, threatened, isolated, confined, silenced, and arrested. You name it, it’s happening.

You tell me if what follows sounds like the United States, or China.

We’ve been told who can work and who can’t, with language that separates us according to who is and who isn’t “essential” as the almighty State supersedes individual rights and the family unit.

We’ve been physically and verbally harassed, threatened, fined, detained, arrested, jailed, and/or placed in forced quarantine. Business licenses have been revoked. Going to work without the permission of the government is now a crime. So is going to the park or a beach. Children playing together is also in defiance of the government. So is placing flags on the graves of veterans. The list of infractions goes on and on and on and on. Examples read like the manifesto of a demented madman.

Teen Girls vs. ‘Trans’ Athletes By Madeleine Kearns

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/teen-girls-vs-trans-athletes/

The restoration of sanity depends on straight talk.

In the latest installment of our dystopian black comedy, Biological Sex v. Gender Identity, using the scientifically accurate term “males” to refer to boys who “identify” as girls is enough to land you in contempt of court.

District Judge Robert Chatigny, during an April 16 conference call, chastised the attorneys who are contesting Connecticut’s transgender sports policy on behalf of three female high-school athletes. During the call, as reported first by National Review’s Jack Crowe, who obtained a transcript, Chatigny said that using the term “male” to refer to — well, male athletes — was “very provocative,” tantamount to “bullying.” Thereafter, in his court, it would be unacceptable, he warned.

Never mind that the two transgender athletes in question were born male and lived unambiguously as such until several years ago, when, in their late teens, they began socially “identifying” as females and competing with girls. Enabled by their state’s athletic conference, the pair have, between them, claimed 15 women’s state-championship titles and deprived countless more girls of the opportunity to participate in races and compete for scholarships.

How can you parse such blatant injustice? How can you view perpetrators as the victims? The only way to do this is to believe, as the ACLU attorneys claim to believe, that the boys — declaring themselves to be female — are female. In this instance, the person they are required to convince is not the average American, but the presiding judge. Luckily for them, he has already decided in their favor.

Germany’s New Coronavirus Thinking Berlin tolerates more Covid-19 spread for the sake of reopening its economy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-new-coronavirus-thinking-11589498695?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

A strange thing happened in Germany this week: Covid-19 started spreading a bit faster and officials and the public managed to cope. It’s an important benchmark for other governments as they allow their own economies to emerge from viral hibernation.

Scientists at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German government’s epidemiological advisory service, calculate that the coronavirus resumed its spread through the population as the country’s lockdown started easing in late April. The reproduction rate, or R0, was above 1 for several days this week, and as high as 1.1 last weekend. That means that each person infected with the virus transmits it on average to 1.1 other people—exponential growth.

This is as much a political event as a medical one. It seems inevitable that the coronavirus will spread as rapidly as any respiratory virus as lockdowns ease. But Chancellor Angela Merkel made a transmission rate of less than 1 a central plank of her reopening plan.

In an April press conference, Mrs. Merkel instructed Germans on precisely how overwhelmed hospitals would become at each level of R0 above 1. The RKI estimated the transmission rate at around 0.8 before Mrs. Merkel started easing the lockdown. Germans were warned that restrictions might return if the disease resumed its spread.

Judge Sullivan vs. Justice Ginsburg By inviting outside help, the Flynn jurist is acting ‘beyond the pale.’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-sullivan-vs-justice-ginsburg-11589498942?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

“Justice Ginsburg’s argument is that the job of judges is to judge, not to substitute for prosecutors.”

In his zeal to convict Michael Flynn of something, federal Judge Emmet Sullivan is harming his own reputation. He’s also violating the law, as he’d know if he had read Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s opinion last week overturning the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Wednesday Judge Sullivan appointed an ex-judge to explore whether former Mr. Flynn should be held in criminal contempt for perjury even though prosecutors have sought to drop the charges against the former national security adviser. The relevant case is U.S. v. Sineneng-Smith, in which the Supreme Court reversed a Ninth Circuit ruling striking down a criminal statute involving immigration as unconstitutionally overbroad. The case was overturned because instead of adjudicating the issues raised by the parties, the Ninth Circuit panel invited outside groups to brief them about a defense the defendant never raised.

This is akin to what Judge Sullivan is trying to do with Mr. Flynn by asking outside parties to make new arguments for prosecution—and even appointing former judge John Gleeson, who has shown clear public bias (in an op-ed) against Mr. Flynn, to make the case. Judge Sullivan’s abuse is more egregious given that the real prosecutors now say they don’t believe they can honestly prosecute Mr. Flynn.