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May 2020

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Caught With His Pants Down James Allan

By on May 6th, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/05/caught-with-his-pants-down/

Today was the best day for me so far as this absurdly heavy-handed lockdown is concerned.  I woke to read the immensely satisfying news about Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College – the man who headed the team that modelled the impact of this coronavirus and came up with the apocalyptic prediction that over two million Americans and half-million Brits, give or take a hundred thousand here or there, would die unless immediate and severe lockdown steps not implemented and enforced.  Leave aside that nothing remotely like what he and his team predicted has transpired in Sweden (where they ignored his advice to lockdown and just urged the old and vulnerable to isolate themselves while keeping restaurants, bars, the general economy open) or Taiwan (ditto) or Japan (mostly ditto).

No, what was absolutely delightful and cheered me up no end was that Professor Ferguson had resigned  from the main “scientific” committee advising the UK government. I’ve used scare quotes because a good number of the people on the committee are not hard scientists.

Why did Ferguson resign?  You will just love this:  it turns out the scientist/modeller whose advice has played a biggish part in the world’s response to this corona virus, and who has been insisting for months that all and sundry must observe the strictest of government lockdowns, had himself been ignoring them. During the lockdown he ardently advocated he was bonking his mistress, the married Ms. Antonia Staats, who would sneak away to meet him for a bit of face-to-face lockdowning and viral exchanges with the man who massively and repeatedly over-estimated things viral in the past, like BSE’s effects and foot-and-mouth too.  The unlockdowned married mistress Ms. Staats would travel across London to catch up with her virile virus predictor and have his greatness thrust upon her.

The point here isn’t that Professor Ferguson was married (though he was, but maybe separated).  Nor is it that his carnal compadre, a green left activist climate-change alarmist,  was herself married (though she was).  No, no, no!  The point is that these authoritarian types who are happy to impose heavy-handed rules on you and me aren’t prepared to live by those rules themselves.  One set of rules for you.  Another, much preferable set, for them. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Cuomo Condemned Nearly 2,000 to Die of the Coronavirus By Bryan Preston

By on May 6th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2020/05/06/cuomo-condemned-nearly-2000-to-die-of-the-coronavirus-n388582

New York state reported 1,700 more deaths from coronavirus that had not been included in counts before.

They were all in nursing homes and eldercare facilities. The numbers themselves are questionable, given the incentive to count more deaths as COVID-19 deaths to obtain federal funding. That perverse incentive is probably skewing the tallies up and rendering them unreliable.

Nevertheless.

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York state reported more than 1,700 previously undisclosed deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities in a tally that included for the first time people believed to have been killed by the coronavirus before their diagnoses could be confirmed.

The tally, released late Monday, emerged as state officials faced scrutiny over how they have protected vulnerable residents from the coronavirus.

What scrutiny? The mainstream media keep treating him like a hero and downplaying his failures. Other than the New York Post, who in the state’s media is putting the screws to Cuomo?

True scrutiny would connect this new deaths number with an order Gov. Cuomo gave just a couple of weeks ago.

Gov. Cuomo doubled down Sunday on the state’s controversial directive ordering nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Enough Already with the IHME COVID-19 Model By Robert VerBruggen

By on May 6th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/enough-already-with-the-ihme-covid-19-model/

After repeated failures, it has now been completely revamped. It can’t be trusted at such a critical time in the coronavirus pandemic.

 I have precisely zero envy for anyone trying to predict where the COVID-19 pandemic is headed. There’s a ton we don’t know about how quickly the virus spreads under different conditions, what new treatments will appear, how policy will change in the future, and how well the public will practice social distancing during the summer regardless of policy. Even the world’s top epidemiologists cannot be expected to give us more than educated guesses that are based on reasonable, clearly explained assumptions — and that improve as new information comes in.

Some of those guesses can be quite valuable even as they’re quite uncertain. Given the massive funding behind it and the faith placed in it by the now-moribund White House Coronavirus Task Force, I once hoped that the COVID-19 model from the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) would prove to be one such valuable tool. But those hopes have been dashed: The model simply doesn’t work, and the folks behind it are still futzing with its fundamental workings as the pandemic enters its least predictable phase.

During this crucial period when the country is reopening, we can have no faith in the model’s output. It shouldn’t be used to inform policymaking decisions at all. This isn’t to slight the scientists who took on such a difficult task; it’s just a realistic assessment of how the project turned out.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s ‘Woman’ By Madeleine Kearns

By on May 6th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/joe-biden-campaign-vice-presidential-pick-which-woman-will-he-choose/

Which woman will he select as his running mate? And why?

 T here’s a scene in Shrek in which the incompetent, ambitious Lord Farquaad is advised that he will need a princess in order to secure his legitimacy as king. Any will do. The magic mirror narrows it down to a choice of three: Cinderella, “a mentally abused shut-in from a kingdom far, far away”; Snow White, a “cape-wearing girl from the land of fancy”; or Princess Fiona, a “loaded pistol who likes piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.” Indifferent (this is, after all, a means to an end), Farquaad picks the third at random.

There’s a similar scene playing out just now in the Democratic Party, in which the incompetent, ambitious Joe Biden has been told he needs “a woman.” He promised voters there’d be one at the debate with Bernie. He recently told The Late Late Show with James Corden that he would have a short list of up to three by “sometime in July.” Little mention has been made of the specific qualities, talents, or experience that this running mate will have. But she will be A Woman. And she will be “simpatico.”

One pressing reason that Biden feels that he needs A Woman is that he doesn’t have the most spotless progressive record on “women’s issues.” As The Cut’s Rebecca Traister complained, by feminist standards, Biden has a history of “bad stances on abortion,” he “permitted the ill treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings,” and he’s haunted by “allegations that he has spent a career touching women in ways that have made them feel uncomfortable.” This last point is the most pertinent in light of allegations by Tara Reade, who has accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s, when she worked for him.

Biden needs not just A Woman, then, but a whole bunch of women who will abandon yesterday’s principles for today’s political convenience. Fortunately, the Democratic Party is full of such people. In a tweet, Reade wrote that “those who remain silent are complicit to rape” and tagged Ocasio-Cortez, Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Michelle Obama. Perhaps one of them will be Biden’s vice president.

This strategy might be received differently if Joe Biden were a Republican. Readers of National Review will remember that moment when Mitt Romney, during a 2012 presidential debate, was asked by questioner in the audience how he planned to “rectify the inequalities in the workplace.” He answered that, as governor of Massachusetts, when he was looking to fill his cabinet, he made a concerted effort to find female applicants.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

JANET LEVY: THE STATE OF HOSPITALS VIDEO INTERVIEW *****

By on May 6th, 2020

This is a great, common sense interview with a seasoned Cedars physician who discusses the impact of the lockdown on medical care.  Well worth the 18 minutes!

https://youtu.be/uGXxPRayzJU

P.S.  I just had the misfortune of spending two days in the hospital for an infection from a freak abscess.  The hospital – a major L.A. medical facility – was running at less than 20% capacity with massive numbers of furloughed staff.

After multiple courses of IV antibiotics, I’m home and fine but extremely worried about the profound effect of the lockdown on our medical system.

It will be quite a while before our healthcare system will be restored.  Many medical or medical-related businesses have been destroyed and may never come back online.

The number of associated deaths for lack of treatment or reticence to seek treatment is probably incalculable.  Panic can be a deadly emotion!  – J.L.  

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Could Media Please Stop Publishing The Exact Same NeverTrump Column Over And Over Again?By Mollie Hemingway

By on May 6th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/06/could-media-please-stop-publishing-the-exact-same-nevertrump-column-over-and-over-again/

It is said that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result. In media, NeverTrumpism is writing the same column over and over and expecting the Orange Bad Man to disappear.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: President Donald Trump is unraveling. Oh, you’ve heard it eleventy billion times from the same half dozen “NeverTrump” pundits? Yeah, so has everyone. It’s the same column from the same people published with alarming frequency.

It’s not the pundits’ fault, necessarily. They are who they are, and clearly Trump has broken the part of their brains that used to be able to synthesize new information and develop interesting and compelling arguments. It is, however, the media outlets’ fault for publishing the same dreck over and over.

Media outlets treat conservative Americans as second-class citizens whose arguments don’t need to be listened to or engaged with. Instead, they take the vanishingly small number of column inches or pundit panel seats they have and give the “conservative” slots to people who repeatedly disparage conservative elected officials, their voters, and their policies.

In some cases, the supposed “conservatives” have long ago renounced their conservatism. The Washington Post’s Max Boot, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, and Twitter’s Bill Kristol receive a great deal of mockery for their boring obsession with Orange Man Bad, an obsession that has led them to renounce every one of the policy positions they once held.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Adam Schiff may be the biggest loser of Russia probe declassification Review of Democratic House Intelligence Committee chairman’s public statements finds many contradicted, some linked to Russian disinformation. By John Solomon

By on May 6th, 2020

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/adam-schiff-may-be-biggest-loser-russia-probe

In a packed hearing room two months into Donald Trump’s embattled presidency, Rep. Adam Schiff played the willing protagonist by dramatically reading into the congressional record some of the most explosive claims from Christopher Steele’s dossier.

At the time, Steele’s dossier had recently burst on the scene, and the Trump White House was under siege as a far-reaching FBI investigation examined allegations — later disproven — that former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and others tried to collude with Russia to hijack the 2016 election.

“According to Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who is reportedly held in high regard by U.S. intelligence, Russian sources tell him that Page has also had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin, CEO of Russian gas giant Rosneft,” Schiff declared at a March 20, 2017 House Intelligence Committee hearing.

“Sechin is reported to be a former KGB agent and close friend of Putin’s. According to Steele’s Russian sources, Page is offered brokerage fees by Sechin on a deal involving a 19 percent share of the company,” the California Democrat added.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The Worldwide Lockdown May Be the Greatest Mistake in History Dennis Prager

By on May 6th, 2020

https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2020/05/05/the-worldwide-lockdown-may-be-the-greatest-mistake-in-history-n2568180

The idea that the worldwide lockdown of virtually every country other than Sweden may have been an enormous mistake strikes many — including world leaders; most scientists, especially health officials, doctors and epidemiologists; those who work in major news media; opinion writers in those media; and the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people who put their faith in these people — as so preposterous as to be immoral. Timothy Egan of The New York Times described Republicans who wish to enable their states to open up as “the party of death.”That’s the way it is today on planet Earth, where deceit, cowardice and immaturity now dominate almost all societies because the elites are deceitful, cowardly and immature.

But for those open to reading thoughts they may differ with, here is the case for why the worldwide lockdown is not only a mistake but also, possibly, the worst mistake the world has ever made. And for those intellectually challenged by the English language and/or logic, “mistake” and “evil” are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.

The forcible prevention of Americans from doing anything except what politicians deem “essential” has led to the worst economy in American history since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus, that created this catastrophe. And the consequences in much of the world will be more horrible than in America.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Why Don’t I Hate Donald Trump? Peter Darrow

By on May 6th, 2020

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/why_dont_i_hate_donald_trump.html 

Why do you not like Donald Trump? I asked my brother.  “Because he is a d—” was his reply.  Such a deep, meaningful answer!

I had never been a political person.  To be honest, politics bored me.  In any debates, I always took the middle option as I did not have the knowledge and experience to express an opinion.  It was not until Trump began his campaign that I started to investigate whether I was right- or left-wing.

Why I never felt the same way as my brother is a question I have often asked myself.  Prior to his campaigning and his presidency, I never felt any hatred for the man.  Having an interest in property, I read his books and enjoyed watching The Apprentice, and not once did I feel any animosity.  Trump was such an admired figure by many businesspeople, celebrities, and politicians prior to his announcement that he was running for president.  Yes, he had his detractors, but there was none of the vile hatred you see today.

For some reason, I was extremely hopeful that Trump would run for president when the rumors were flying around that he would do so.  Maybe it was instinctive that the world needed a change.  When Obama was elected, I was a fan, and there was a great sense of hope that he would achieve great things.  Oh, how disappointed we all were!

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MEDIA Comments turned off

TELL A LIE AND WIN A PULITZER- THE NEW YORK TIMES

By on May 6th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/05/06/tell-a-lie-win-a-pulitzer/

Maybe you missed the news that the august New York Times won yet another Pulitzer Prize, this one for its much-debunked “1619 Project.” If you didn’t, we have a question: Is there any better illustration for why Americans now hold the big media in such low esteem?

Nikole Hannah-Jones of the Times won the Pulitzer for Commentary on Monday, proving once again that the American media and its guiding institutions have continued to move far left, and that includes the Pulitzer Prize judges. Among major media, none have made the sinistral shift more determinedly than the New York Times under Executive Editor Dean Baquet.

The 1619 Project is aptly titled. It’s not journalism so much as a twisted piece of progressive propaganda that even now is being imposed on thousands of grade-school students as part of our “education” curriculum. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragically true.

The truth is, the essential outlines of the 1619 Project have been knocked down like bowling pins. In its own words, the alternate history proposes “to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story.”

As the Times further elaborated, “Out of slavery – and the anti-black racism it required – grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality.”

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