MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Are COVID Case Surges More Fake News? By Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.

Posted By on October 12th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/are_covid_case_surges_more_fake_news.html

Thousands of diagnoses and not many dying.

COVID cases are on the rise, or so we are told daily by a hysterical media. Newspaper headlines scream panic as this recent USAToday article proclaimed, “COVID-19 cases rising in 39 states – 9 months into the pandemic: We are overwhelmed.”

It’s the American people that are overwhelmed. Nine months into masks and lockdowns, with a presidential election just weeks away, facing a daily barrage of doom and gloom from the media. Are cases really on the rise or are these simply positive tests?

The above article, one of many warns, “A startling nine states setting ominous, seven-day records for infections.” 39 states reported more cases in the last week than they had in the week before.

What exactly is a “case”? The USAToday article doesn’t say. Neither do other articles or cable news doctors and other “experts.” Is a “case” simply a positive test?

The CDC answers this question with a “case definition.” A case is not just a positive test. Instead what is needed is, “Presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence.” Notice the AND, meaning not simply a positive test.

Yet what the media trumpets as “surging cases” are only positive tests. There is no discussion of whether or not any of the individuals with positive tests are showing symptoms or are actually sick with the Chinese flu. Or if they are contagious and needing to be quarantined.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Opinion: AOC is an anti-Semite – it’s time to say it David Isaac

Posted By on October 12th, 2020

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-aoc-is-an-anti-semite-its-time-to-say-it/

Last week’s revelation puts the nail in the coffin of Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-Semitism.

The Democrats’ new guard bodes ill for Jews and Israel.

The latest slight was reported last week. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has rebuffed meetings with local New York Jewish groups. At least one has been trying to arrange a sit-down with her for the last two years.

Neither the Jewish Community Relations Council, which represents 50 local Jewish groups, nor the New York Board of Rabbis has managed to pin down the freshman congresswoman.

There’s little doubt it’s because both are pro-Israel.

There’s nothing extremist about these two groups, in case there’s an AOC supporter out there looking for excuses. There’s plenty extremist about AOC, though.

As a member of The Squad, the four congresswomen of the apocalypse, AOC has largely dodged the anti-Semitic label so justifiably slapped onto two of its other members – Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). We can’t imagine why. The evidence keeps piling up.

Most recently, Ocasio-Cortez dropped out of a memorial for late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In late July, she praised the support of at least 10 anti-Semitic groups for a congressional letter she spearheaded calling for conditioning aid to Israel on its abandonment of its sovereignty plan in parts of Judea and Samaria.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Difference That A “Packed” Supreme Court Would Make  Francis Menton

Posted By on October 12th, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-10-10-the-difference-that-a-packed-supreme-court-would-make

The impending confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court promises to bring us a Court with a 6-3 “conservative” majority. As a result, Democrats could be facing decades in the Supreme Court wilderness. Even if Biden wins the election for President, the only member of the Court likely to retire in the next few years is Justice Breyer, who recently turned 82; but since Breyer is one of the Court’s “liberals,” Biden’s replacing of Breyer would not change the Court’s ideological balance. The next oldest Justice is Clarence Thomas, currently 72, which is youthful by today’s Supreme Court standards.

But there’s another possibility. Congress could potentially increase the number of Justices, giving Biden as President the ability theoretically to add four, or six, or even more Justices in an attempt to cement a permanent Democratic majority. In fact, Congress has changed the number of Justices multiple times in the past, although the last time was in 1869. In recent days, prominent Democrats — including Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York (my Congressman!), and former Attorney General Eric Holder — have advocated that if Barrett is confirmed, Democrats should retaliate by expanding the number of Justices to regain the majority of the Court.

The last President to float the idea of adding Justices to shift the Court’s ideology was Franklin Roosevelt. The effort occurred in 1937, just after Roosevelt had been re-elected in a landslide in 1936, and had swept in with him super-majorities in both the House and Senate. Roosevelt had become frustrated with a Court that had struck down some of his most significant initiatives, the most famous being the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which was struck down in the Schechter Poultry case of 1935. Roosevelt sought to seize the opportunity of his big new Congressional majorities, proposing to add six more Justices, to make a Court of 15. On the assumption that the new Justices would be loyal political allies, the six new Justices would be sufficient to give Roosevelt a majority to uphold any new legislation he could get enacted. The initiative immediately earned the nickname of “court packing.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Indoctrifornia While California’s ethnic studies mandate for k-12ers is dead for now, there is still much in the works to be concerned about. By Larry Sand

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/10/indoctrifornia/

California governor Gavin Newsom is a force of nature. He leads a state which has record homelessness, rising crime and exploding pension debt. But wait, there is so much more! Ruling more like dictator than an elected official, Newsom ordered a draconian lockdown in March to stem the spread of COVID-19. But more than anything, his autocratic move unnecessarily killed many businesses and livelihoods. Then in September, Newsom ordered a ban on gas-powered cars starting in 2035 because California is facing “a climate damn emergency.” For good measure, he then happily signed off on a bill that mandates the “study and development of proposals for reparations for blacks who live in the Golden State.” Newson insisted in a Tweet that our past is “one of slavery, racism, and injustice.” Could he not know that California was not part of the Confederacy?

But then he went against form. In a major surprise, he vetoed Assembly Bill 331 on Sept. 30th. This wretched legislation would have made taking an ethnic studies class a requirement to graduate high school in the state. “There is much uncertainty about the appropriate K-12 model curriculum for ethnic studies,” Newsom wrote in his veto statement. “The latest draft, which is currently out for review, still needs revision.”

Revision? Mercy killing is more apt. Bills like this invariably come replete with a strong political agenda, and more than anything promote victimology and anger, as well as providing a future army for the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. As I wrote two weeks ago, the model curriculum approves of classes that stress “modern day movements and intersectional struggles for social justice like the Immigrant Rights Movement, the Black Lives Matter Movement, the Environmental Justice Movements, Feminist Movements, LGBTQIA Queer Movements, and others.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Cultural Roots of Conservatism The opposite of “conservative” is not “liberal” but ephemeral. By Roger Kimball ******

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/10/the-cultural-roots-of-conservatism/

Here in mid-October, we are at or even just past the apogee of that “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” John Keats celebrated in “To Autumn.” Harvests are arriving everywhere. The “maturing sun” has conspired “to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; / To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, / And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.”

Which brings me to the word “cultural.” I remember the first time I noticed the legend “cultural instructions” on the brochure that accompanied some seedlings. “How quaint,” I thought, as I pursued the advisory: this much water and that much sun, certain tips about fertilizer, soil, and drainage. Planting one sort of flower nearby keeps the bugs away but proximity to another sort makes bad things happen. Young shoots might need stakes, and watch out for beetles, weeds, and unseasonable frosts . . . 

The more I pondered it, the less quaint and the more profound those cultural instructions seemed. I suppose I had once known that the word “culture” comes from the capacious Latin verb colo, which means everything from “live, dwell, inhabit,” to “observe a religious rite”—whence our word “cult”—to  “care, tend, nurture,” and “promote the growth or advancement of.” I never thought much about it. 

I should have done. There is a lot of wisdom in etymology. The noun cultūra (which derives from colo) means first of all “the tilling or cultivation of land” and “the care or cultivation of plants.” But it, too, has ambitious tentacles: there’s the bit about religious rites again and also “well groomed,” and “chic, polished, sophisticated.” 

Cicero’s Cultivation of the Soul

It was Cicero, in a famous passage of the Tusculan Disputations, who gave currency to the metaphor of culture as a specifically intellectual pursuit. “Just as a field, however good the ground, cannot be productive without cultivation,” Cicero wrote, “so the soul cannot be productive without education.” Philosophy, he said, is a sort of “cultura animi,” a cultivation of the mind or spirit: “it pulls out vices by the roots,” he said, “makes souls fit for the reception of seed,” and sows in order to bring forth “the richest fruit.” 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

More than 1 million people could lose their vote on Nov. 3. That’s the best-case scenario

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/10/08/rejected-mail-ballots-projected-major-factor-2020-election/3576714001/

Rejected ballots in the 2020 election battle between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden could become the post-election focus.

In a normal election year in any given state, hundreds or even thousands of absentee ballots get tossed for everything from late postmarks to open envelopes. 

North Carolina rejected 546 ballots for missing witness signatures in the 2012 presidential race. Virginia tossed 216 ballots in the 2018 midterms because they arrived in an unofficial envelope. Arizona discarded 1,516 ballots for nonmatching signatures the same year.

The 2020 presidential election will not be normal.

Absentee ballot rejections this November are projected to reach historic levels, risking widespread disenfranchisement of minority voters and the credibility of election results, a USA TODAY, Columbia Journalism Investigations and PBS series FRONTLINE investigation found.

At least 1.03 million absentee ballots could be tossed if half of the nation votes by mail. Discarded votes jump to 1.55 million if 75% of the country votes absentee. In the latter scenario, more than 185,000 votes could be lost in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – states considered key to capturing the White House.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Coronavirus Rages in Europe. What Went Wrong? By Rick Moran

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/10/10/coronavirus-rages-in-europe-what-went-wrong-n1034334

A treasured anti-Trump meme since the pandemic began begins with the notion that European reaction to the coronavirus was far better than America’s. If only we had done it the way they did it in Germany/France/Netherlands we would have saved thousands of lives.

It’s true, Europe’s response was far more draconian than the response in the U.S. Their lockdowns were more severe. Restrictions on movement were enforced. You couldn’t go outside your home in France unless you were going to the grocery store or the pharmacy.

As the lockdowns lifted, Europeans celebrated and pitied us poor Americans for not getting it.

Now, the coronavirus is back with a vengeance and Europe isn’t ready for it.

Fox News:

Epidemiologists and residents alike are pointing the finger at governments for having failed to seize on the summertime lull in cases to prepare adequately for the expected autumn onslaught, with testing and ICU staffing still critically short. In Rome this week, people waited in line for 8-10 hours to get tested, while front-line medics from Kiev to Paris found themselves once again pulling long, short-staffed shifts in overcrowded wards.

“When the state of alarm was abandoned, it was time to invest in prevention, but that hasn’t been done,” lamented Margarita del Val, viral immunology expert with the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center, part of Spain’s top research body, CSIC.

“We are in the fall wave without having resolved the summer wave,” she told an online forum this week.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France Cracks Down on Everyone to Avoid Singling Out Islamic Terrorism By Michael Curtis

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/france_cracks_down_on_everyone_to_avoid_singling_out_islamic_terrorism.html

On September 2, 2020 a trial, postponed because of COVID-19, openedin Paris concerning those alleged to have been involved in the deadly attack in 2015 on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly magazine.  Besides recounting the gruesome account of the details of terrorist activity, the trial implicitly invokes the conflict in France between freedom of speech and freedom of thought and religion and hate speech in the context of terrorist activity that has caused deaths of innocent people.  Freedom of conscience like freedom of speech is protected by the 1789 Declaration of Human and Civil Rights and by the Constitution.  In France, as in all democratic countries, free communication of ideas and opinions is vital.  However, the law also prohibits hate speech, and laws protect individuals and groups from being defamed or insulted concerning identification with ethnic, national, racial, religious, sexual, gender orientations.  Inherent in the present French issue is whether blasphemy, specifically against Islam, is a crime.

Accusation of blasphemy was the alleged basis for terrorist activity in France.  In September 2005, the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten published twelve satirical cartoons about Islam.  The one considered most offensive by Muslims was the cartoon showing the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.  The French magazine Charlie Hebdo, C.H., in a special issue republished the cartoons on February 9, 2006. As a result, criminal proceedings for insulting the prophet on grounds of religion were brought against the chief editor, Philip Val, but he was acquitted in a trial in March 2007.  C.H. published other satirical cartoons of Mohammed in September 2012.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Italy: Defend National Borders, End Up on Trial by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16613/italy-immigration-borders

This is the first time that a court of justice in Europe has been called upon to try a governmental minister — who is actually supposed to responsible for the security of a country — for holding migrants at a port pending a redistribution of newcomers across Europe…. Until then, Europe had never offered Italy the slightest help.

Italy’s political ruling class, which for years has adopted as its migration policy the total surrender to illegal floods of immigrants — often organized by criminal traffickers — has now decided to turn Salvini over to the judges for doing what they did not have the courage to do: defend Europe’s borders.

There seems to exist an assumption that tens of thousands of people can take boats from Libya to Italy without controls, without deterrence, and without a country being able to exercise its right to self-defense from an epochal migratory tsunami.

Italy is now sending a disturbing message to Europe and the rest of the free world: anyone who, by governing the country, defends national borders and tries to stop mass illegal immigration can end up on trial and in prison.

The real horror in this charade is that Italy is still turning away ships carrying migrants, so why is Salvini being set up to take the fall?

“My only regret from this situation is that I will have to explain to my two kids that their father is going on trial not because he is a criminal, but because he defended his country”, Matteo Salvini said as Italy’s Parliament stripped him of immunity to open the way for his trial.

For years, Italy’s political ruling class has had a migration policy of surrendering to floods of illegal immigrants — who have usually been organized by criminal traffickers. Europe has never offered Italy a jot of help. Now these “elites” — politicians, opinion makers, journalists — have decided to turn Salvini over to the judges for doing what they did not have the courage to do: defend the Italy’s borders.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Kidnapped, Raped, and Forced into Islam: The Plight of Christian Girls in Pakistan by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16609/kidnapped-raped-christians-pakistan

“A Christian 6 year old girl was beaten and raped after being forcibly taken to the home of a Muslim rapist in broad daylight…. the local Muslim community are threatening the Christian parents with violence, the rape of their other daughters and financial ruin if they proceed with a legal case against paedophile Muhammad Waqas (18 yrs)….” — Report; British Pakistani Christian Association, September 16, 2020.

“Another Christian girl aged 14 was recently abducted and gang-raped by some Muslim youths… The victim is a student of grade nine and was abducted by four or five boys on her way to a local tuition center on Jan. 16, 2020. The abductors not only raped her but also obtained her signatures and thumb impressions on some papers.” — Morningstar News, February 12, 2020.

“Christian girls are only meant for the pleasure of Muslim men” — to quote a group of Muslim men, seconds before they rammed their car into three young Christian girls, who had ignored their sexual advances while walking home from work; one died. — British Pakistani Christian Association, January 20, 2016.

Christian girls are being abducted, sexually abused, and forced into Islam with increasing frequency all throughout Pakistan. Moreover, everyone — including local police, court officials, and Islamic clerics — seem bent on facilitating this human rights tragedy.

Most recently, according to a September 16 report:

“A Christian 6 year old girl was beaten and raped after being forcibly taken to the home of a Muslim rapist in broad daylight. In a sickening twist the local Muslim community are threatening the Christian parents with violence, the rape of their other daughters and financial ruin if they proceed with a legal case against paedophile Muhammad Waqas (18 yrs)… Tabitha [the raped child] had been verbally abused, shouted at, slapped and beaten and forced to do a number of sex acts with Waqas. She had been stripped of her clothes and had described her terror that she would be killed by Waqas…”