WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

WHO Says It Cannot Invite Taiwan to Annual Summit after China Says Participation Would ‘Severely Violate the One-China Principle’ By Tobias Hoonhout

Posted By on May 12th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/world-health-organization-says-it-cannot-invite-taiwan-to-annual-summit-after-china-says-participation-would-s

The World Health Organization said it could not invite Taiwan to an upcoming international health summit, despite pleas from the U.S. and its allies, due to “divergent views,” after China said it “deplores and opposes” efforts to include Taipei in the gathering.

WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon explained to reporters on Monday that the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom could not invite Taiwan — which is not a member of the WHO — to participate in the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) if members of the international body disagreed.

“To put it crisply, director-generals only extend invitations when it’s clear that member states support doing so, that director-generals have a mandate, a basis to do so,” Solomon explained. “Today however, the situation is not the same. Instead of clear support, there are divergent views among member states and no basis there for — no mandate — for the DG to extend an invitation.”

 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that Tedros should include Taiwan in the upcoming WHA meeting, saying “he has the power to do, and as his predecessors have done on multiple occasions.” The proposal was supported by New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Germany, but China disparaged the claim, saying that those supporting it “severely violate the one-China principle.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

It’s Time to Stand with Taiwan By Mike Gallagher

Posted By on May 12th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/taiwan-deserves-united-states-support/

The U.S. must show its support for the democracy that defies the Chinese Communist Party.

Last week, Taiwan announced a major donation of over seven million face masks to the U.S., Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia in response to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. In Wisconsin, we experienced this generosity firsthand in the form of 100,000 surgical-grade masks, which will help keep our state healthy. This donation marked the third tranche of substantial international assistance from Taiwan, which stands in stark contrast to behavior of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) throughout the crisis.

The CCP’s contributions to the pandemic have inspired legislation holding the CCP legally liable and rapidly reducing supply-chain dependencies on China. These are solid steps, but in our new Cold War, the strategic center of gravity is not the CCP, but rather our allies and partners. As one Chinese diplomat wrote in 2012, “the core of competition between China and the United States will be to see who has more high-quality friends.”

It’s hard to have a more high-quality friend than Taiwan — a vibrant democracy under intense pressure that deserves our full support.

Unfortunately, support for Taiwan has been inconsistent. Unlike NATO’s crystal-clear Article V collective-defense commitment, the U.S. commitment to Taiwan has been muddled. Since the Carter administration, the United States has adopted a policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Once upon a time, proponents of this strategy may have told themselves that they were calming tensions by deterring both sides from precipitous action: Beijing could not count on our restraint if they opted for invasion, while Taipei could not count on our support if they declared independence.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Supreme Court and Trump’s Tax Returns The stakes are bigger than the political fate of this President.

Posted By on May 12th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-supreme-court-and-trumps-tax-returns-11589238780?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

“In short, there’s no legal precedent for the Democratic subpoenas. And the Justices will have to consider the damage that upholding the subpoenas would do to the separation of powers that would outlive the Trump Presidency.”

It will be a full online house on Tuesday when the Supreme Court hears a legal double-header over President Trump’s tax returns. Mr. Trump has broken political norms by refusing to release his returns, but the Court will have to consider whether letting Democrats subpoena them will do more lasting damage to the country’s law and institutions.

Trump v. Mazars concerns whether House Democrats can subpoena the President’s financial records. We’ve urged Mr. Trump to release his tax returns, and his refusal has let Democrats claim they are a Rosetta stone to a Russian money-laundering conspiracy, or something. An IRS audit probably would have turned up any tax fraud, and no law obliges a President to release his returns.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Medical Lockdown Will Cause a Disease Surge Patients who are sick with conditions other than Covid-19 aren’t seeking screening and treatment. By Jeff LeBenger and Mike Meyer

Posted By on May 12th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/medical-lockdown-will-cause-a-disease-surge-11589235129?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Dr. LeBenger is CEO of Summit Medical Group/City MD. Mr. Meyer is president of Meyer Consulting and founder of CCX Cancer Summit.

With most of the nation still on lockdown, many people are missing regular screenings and checkups with their doctors. Some may be experiencing early symptoms of illness, yet aren’t seeking treatment. The effects of a six-week delay are surmountable in most cases, but a six-month delay would lead to much sicker patients and dramatic increases in death rates for major illnesses such as cancer. The number of people who die as a result of these delays could end up rivaling or exceeding deaths due to Covid-19. Adding to this potential crisis is that health systems and medical providers are incurring substantial losses, which will impede their ability to provide care.

Much is being written about the potential of Covid-19 to return aggressively in the fall, assuming it recedes during the summer. But there may be a major aftershock that could throw the health system into further crisis: a flood of patients with other illnesses who are much sicker than they would be had they not delayed visits to their doctors for fear of coronavirus exposure. Health-care executives and policy experts should focus on serving this potential “third wave” of sick patients or the good feelings from having flattened the Covid-19 curve may be short-lived.

We have experienced the trauma and collateral damage of Covid-19. One of us (Mr. Meyer) is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., and recently suffered the death of his father because of delayed diagnosis and treatment. Dr. LeBenger, based in New York City, has seen thousands of patients with Covid-19 while dealing with delayed treatment for many others. We both face uncertainty about the future of our practices; one runs a small business whose revenues have plunged, and the other a large medical group with million-dollar losses.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Did Obama Know — and When Did He Know It?

Posted By on May 12th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/what-did-obama-know-and-when-did-he-know-it/91127/

What did President Obama know and when did he know it? That famous formulation is emerging as the question in the wake of new disclosures in respect of a meeting that took place inside the Oval Office in the closing days of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The meeting included not only his national security adviser, Susan Rice, and the head of the FBI, James Comey, but also Vice President Biden, now the prospective Democratic nominee.

This is laid out in, among other places, a dispatch by Mollie Hemingway in the Federalist. Ms. Hemingway reckons the meeting is turning out to be, as her headline puts it, “key” to the “entire anti-Trump operation” launched two weeks before the end of the Obama administration. She’s not the only one laying this out; a veteran of the Sun, Eli Lake, now of Bloomberg, has been all over the story; the Wall Street Journal, as well.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Encouraging Illegal Aliens To Remain In The US Is A Crime, Supreme Court Rules

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/08/supreme-court-ruth-bader-ginsburg-encouraging-immigration/

“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal stalwart of the bench, wrote the high court’s opinion.“[T]he appeals panel departed so drastically from the principle of party presentation as to constitute an abuse of discretion,” Ginsburg wrote, and later stated that “a court is not hidebound by the precise arguments of counsel, but the Ninth Circuit’s radical transformation of this case goes well beyond the pale.”

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal statute that forbids encouraging illegal aliens to remain in the U.S. unlawfully in a decision Thursday.

The Supreme Court justices voided an earlier decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had ruled that a federal anti-harboring statute was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment by restricting free speech. The ruling by the nation’s highest court Thursday upholds the law.

The Supreme Court not only vacated the appeals court’s decision, but also criticized the judges for “drastically” straying from judicial norms.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal stalwart of the bench, wrote the high court’s opinion.

“[T]he appeals panel departed so drastically from the principle of party presentation as to constitute an abuse of discretion,” Ginsburg wrote, and later stated that “a court is not hidebound by the precise arguments of counsel, but the Ninth Circuit’s radical transformation of this case goes well beyond the pale.”

The decision brings to a close a court battle that lasted roughly 10 years.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Leftist Who Covered Up Cambodian Genocide Accuses Trump of Complicity in Death of Americans Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/05/leftist-who-covered-cambodian-genocide-accuses-daniel-greenfield/

Finally, Noam Chomsky managed to take a break from writing intros for Holocaust deniers or covering up the Cambodian genocide to express his sage opinion on the coronavirus.

Donald Trump is culpable in the deaths of thousands of Americans by using the coronavirus pandemic to boost his electoral prospects and line the pockets of big business, Prof Noam Chomsky has said.

He said Trump, who will seek re-election later this year, had cut government funding for healthcare and research into infectious disease for the benefit of wealthy corporations.

That argument, like a lot of TDS and Chomsky stuff, doesn’t actually make any sense.

Chomsky also said the president had abandoned his duties by forcing individual state governors to take responsibility for combating the virus: “It’s a great strategy for killing a lot of people and improving his electoral politics.”

Trump invented federalism to try and win reelection.

I know it’s baffling to Chomsky, but America isn’t actually a Communist dictatorship. Now if Chomsky wants a strategy for killing a lot of people, he can ask Pol Pot.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Real Center of the Pandemic Saving nursing homes from Covid-19 Chris Pope

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/coronavirus-super-spreaders-nursing-homes

The Trump administration has called nursing homes “ground zero for Covid-19,” and the analogy is apt—one New York City facility has seen 98 residents die from the disease, while more than two-thirds of Massachusetts nursing homes have reported infections. Though the link to long-term care facilities from deaths after hospitalization is not always recorded, 19 percent of those dying from the virus in Hungary, 51 percent in France, and 62 percent of those in Canada were identified as nursing-home residents.

The population in nursing facilities is vulnerable, and the disease is easily transmitted through extensive personal care in crowded quarters from staff who travel back and forth from the wider community. Several innovative senior homes have secured their facilities by paying bonuses to staff to stay on-site during the most hazardous phase of the crisis. Many lives could be saved if Congress were to support expanding these efforts. Indeed, preventing nursing homes from acting as super-spreaders might help broader communities more swiftly return to normal, too.

In 2016, nursing homes housed 1.3 million Americans, 39 percent aged 85 or over; 800,000 more lived in assisted-living facilities. Nursing-home residents are extremely vulnerable to the coronavirus due to multiple comorbidities: 72 percent have hypertension, 38 percent heart disease, and 32 percent diabetes. Even under normal circumstances, this population faces disproportionately high mortality risks: in 2016, while nursing-home residents made up just 0.4 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for 19 percent of deaths.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Protecting Obama By Peter Kirsanow

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/protecting-obama/

A review of weekend news coverage and commentary shows that mainstream media have gone into full “Protect Obama” mode.

Evidence released last week — including, but not limited to, House Intelligence Committee transcripts showing that multiple top-level Obama administration officials were lying to the public for three years about Russian collusion — indicates that former president Barack Obama wasn’t merely aware of what was going on; he was hip-deep in what increasingly appears to be one of the greatest political scandals in American history.

For other than the most sycophantic and credulous media personalities, Obama’s involvement isn’t much of a surprise. The August 5, 2016 email from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page stating, “the White House is running this,” followed by the September 2016 Page text to Strzok stating, “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing” suggested the obvious: An operation targeting a presidential campaign and then an incoming presidential administration isn’t a mere freelance effort cooked up by a few rogue FBI personnel in their spare time. An operation of that magnitude and import must be blessed from the very top.

Indeed, the January 5, 2017 White House meeting with President Obama, vice president Joe Biden, FBI director James Comey, deputy attorney general Sally Yates, director of national intelligence James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, and national security adviser Susan Rice (which meeting was the subject of Rice’s mother-of-all C.Y.A. emails to herself on Inauguration Day) suggests that Obama wasn’t merely kept informed of the Russia collusion fraud, he was providing direction.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Did Obama Tell The FBI To Hide Its Activities From The Trump Administration? Margot Cleveland

Posted By on May 11th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/11/why-did-obama-tell-the-fbi-to-hide-its-activities-from-the-trump-administration/

Even after Barack Obama had left office and James Comey had a new commander-in-chief to report to, Comey obeyed Obama by withholding intel from President Trump.

In 1980, a teenage Amy Carter left a burnt cake in the oven of the White House’s family quarters in a reflex of childish revenge for her father’s landslide loss to Ronald Reagan. In 2017, Barack Obama and Joe Biden avenged Donald Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton by leaving what they claim was a Russian agent in the West Wing.

That conclusion inevitably follows if one accepts as credible the FBI’s supposed predicates for launching the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign and the four related probes into George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn.

On July 31, 2016, the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, purportedly to learn if members of the Trump team were “coordinating or cooperating” with the Russian government to influence or interfere with the 2016 elections. By August 16, 2016, the FBI had opened four subsidiary investigations on individuals connected to the campaign, claiming their connections to Russian businesses, pro-Russian factions, or Russian-owned entities “reasonably indicated” they “may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security.”