NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Leftist Nonsense––Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel By Joan Swirsky

Posted By on April 25th, 2020

https://canadafreepress.com/article/leftist-nonsenselike-shooting-fish-in-a-barrel

Happily, an overwhelming majority of Americans have both eyes and ears. They are watching. They are listening. They are keenly aware that Democrats are not on America’s side.

After the 2016 presidential election of President Donald J. Trump, I stopped counting the numbers of Republicans and Conservatives who told me how unpleasantly life had changed for them.

Through eight years of President George W. Bush––even through the Reagan years, they said––they could still speak to their friends and relatives and agree to disagree about political issues.

But the reaction to the Trump presidency, they told me, was so extreme, the hysteria so sustained, the venom so poisonous, the rationality so nonexistent, that they couldn’t even go to a happy affair like a birthday party or wedding or dinner at a restaurant without World War III breaking out.

No surprise. While glamorous billionaire businessman and TV star Donald Trump had been lionized for decades before he became president by the very people who are vilifying him today, while office-seeking Democrats held out both hands for his generous contributions to their campaigns, and while leftists like Oprah and the fake-news media whores considered it either a privilege or a scoop to interview him, all that changed when he descended the Trump Tower escalator with his dazzling wife Melania in June of 2015 to announce his candidacy.

WHY THE CHANGE?

Indeed, why did the “tolerant” Progressives display––and exhibit to this very day––such florid and feverish intolerance?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News by Allysia Finley

Posted By on April 25th, 2020

Stanford scientist John Ioannidis finds himself under attack for questioning the prevailing wisdom about lockdowns.

Defenders of coronavirus lockdown mandates keep talking about science. “We are going to do the right thing, not judge by politics, not judge by protests, but by science,” California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer defended an order that, among other things, banned the sale of paint and vegetable seeds but not liquor or lottery tickets. “Each action has been informed by the best science and epidemiology counsel there is,” she wrote in an op-ed.

But scientists are almost never unanimous, and many appeals to “science” are transparently political or ideological. Consider the story of John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford’s School of Medicine. His expertise is wide-ranging—he juggles appointments in statistics, biomedical data, prevention research and health research and policy. Google Scholar ranks him among the world’s 100 most-cited scientists. He has published more than 1,000 papers, many of them meta-analyses—reviews of other studies. Yet he’s now found himself pilloried because he dissents from the theories behind the lockdowns—because he’s looked at the data and found good news.

In a March article for Stat News, Dr. Ioannidis argued that Covid-19 is far less deadly than modelers were assuming. He considered the experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined Feb. 4 in Japan. Nine of 700 infected passengers and crew died. Based on the demographics of the ship’s population, Dr. Ioannidis estimated that the U.S. fatality rate could be as low as 0.025% to 0.625% and put the upper bound at 0.05% to 1%—comparable to that of seasonal flu.

“If that is the true rate,” he wrote, “locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.”

MEDIA Comments turned off

Fake News: Trump Didn’t Tell People to Inject Bleach or Lysol Into Their Veins to Fight Coronavirus By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on April 24th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/fake-news-trump-didnt-tell-people-to-inject-bleach-or-lysol-into-their-veins-to-fight-coronavirus/

EXCERPTS

On Thursday, liberals thought they finally had the smoking gun, the excuse to oust President Donald Trump as mentally unfit for office. Some called him “President bleach,” claiming he had suggested people should inject bleach or Lysol into their veins to fight the coronavirus.

First came the headlines: “Experts Warn Against Inhaling Bleach After Trump Comments” (Time), “Quack-in-Chief Sees Injected Bleach, Tanning as COVID Cures” (The Intercept), “Trump comments prompt doctors, and Lysol, to warn against injecting disinfectants” (The Washington Post), “Donald Trump’s prescription for coronavirus: quite literally toxic” (The Guardian), “‘It’s irresponsible and it’s dangerous’: Experts rip Trump’s idea of injecting disinfectant to treat COVID-19” (NBC News).

Then the commentary.Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden tweeted, “UV light? Injecting disinfectant?”House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, “The president is asking people to inject Lysol into their lungs.”

You be the judge. here are the remarks in question:

[Trump] So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it.  And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too.  It sounds interesting.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dems Favor Open Borders During Coronavirus It is too late for the party to moderate now. by George Neumayr

Posted By on April 24th, 2020

https://spectator.org/dems-favor-open-borders-during-coronavirus/

The other day the Washington Post ran a piece entitled, “Trump’s new immigration focus could squeeze Biden into a Democratic tug of war.” The suggestion of the piece is that Biden, in order to appear reasonable during the coronavirus crisis, will have to buck the open-borders voices within his party.

“President Trump’s sudden announcement that he would bar immigrants from entering the country could present a challenging proposition for probable Democratic nominee Joe Biden, potentially thrusting him back into a tug of war between a Democratic base firmly opposed to stricter border policies and more-moderate voters willing to consider them, particularly during an economic calamity,” the Post’s Sean Sullivan writes.

Trump is calling the Democrats’ bluff, showing the American public that the party that is pretending to be oh-so-careful about risks during this crisis is utterly careless when it comes to immigration.

The problem is that no such tug of war exists within the party. Biden and every other major figure in the party all agree that it should be a de facto open borders party. They are all in favor of health care for illegal immigrants, essentially no deportations, no wall, and emasculating border security. They have gone beyond supporting sanctuary cities to proposing that America be a sanctuary country.

Trump is calling the Democrats’ bluff, showing the American public that the party that is pretending to be oh-so-careful about risks during this crisis is utterly careless when it comes to immigration. Why should anyone take seriously a party that wants the country shut down but its borders left open?

POLITICS Comments turned off

Biden Urges More Mail-In Voting, Blasts Trump as ‘Un-American’

Posted By on April 24th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/biden_urges_more_mail-in_voting_blasts_trump_as_un-american_143034.html

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is calling on Congress to provide enough money for every state to allow voters to cast a ballot by mail this November amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In making that pitch during an online fundraiser Thursday night, Biden blasted President Donald Trump for working to block emergency funding for the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service, which would handle tens of millions of ballots this fall. Biden said it’s evidence that Trump already is trying to “undermine” the election and make it more difficult for Americans to vote.

“We have to make it easier for everybody to be able to vote, particularly if we are still basically in the kind of lockdown circumstances we are in now,” Biden told about 650 donors. “But that takes a lot of money, and it’s going to require us to provide money for states and insist they provide mail-in ballots.”

It’s perhaps Biden’s most explicit call for a national mail election since COVID-19 upended the 2020 campaign and every aspect of American life. The former vice president doesn’t propose eliminating in-person voting. But he said state and local officials must do more to make polling locations conform to public health protocols, while steering voters toward other options.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

“Why I Like Trump” by Sydney Williams

Posted By on April 24th, 2020

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Self-examination is important. It is healthy to try to understand why we believe this or that, why we like this person but not another. Since my support for the President is controversial, even among those who agree with me in other matters, I thought a public self-examination would be welcome.

Ado Annie Cairns would never have fallen for Donald Trump. He doesn’t talk “purty.” He is the antithesis of me, of the way I was brought up, the way I live my life. His clothes are too fancy, and I don’t like the way he dyes his hair. He loves money and power and does not seem interested in history or philosophy. He butchers the English language when he speaks. I doubt he reads Trollope. He is boastful in a way I hope I am not. I would have no interest in living the life he has lived. Nor would he want to live mine.

So, why do I like and support him? Why do I feel he was what the Country needed in 2016 and again in 2020? He has an intuitive sense, I believe, of what troubles America. I doubt he has read much American history or is familiar with our Constitution. I am sure he has never read the Federalist Papers. But he has an instinctual understanding of people.

All societies create ruling classes. I was a beneficiary of that, in that my family were prominent in the last half of the 19th Century and into the early years of the 20th. It was a time when the Country was governed by white, Anglo Saxon Protestants, WASPs as they are lovingly called. That era began to decline slowly in the years after World War II and a new class took the reins – technocrats, bureaucrats, educators, scientists, and businesspeople, David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest. They came from all walks of life, represented all races, religions and sexes. They helped lift up the Country after fifteen years of depression and war. They built highways and put man on the moon. They desegregated schools and offered equal opportunities to women. They won the Cold War without firing a shot.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Boris’s difficult decision: when should lockdown be lifted? The COVID crisis has split the cabinet into two groups James Forsyth

Posted By on April 24th, 2020

https://spectator.us/boris-difficult-decision-lockdown-lifted/

When Chequers was donated to the nation, the accompanying Act of Parliament was explicit about the intended effect. ‘The better the health of our rulers, the more sanely will they rule,’ it said. Prime ministers need time to think, as well as recuperate, and as Boris Johnson continues his convalescence there, he will be in need of that help. Not only is he still recovering from several days in intensive care, he is also facing a policy problem without precedent — and without good answers. Whatever solution he opts for will determine his premiership, the public’s faith in the British state and this country’s future standing in the world.

In the absence of the optimist-in-chief, an air of depression has settled on the government. ‘We are living in a world of bad options,’ says one of those at the heart of the policy-making process. This is exacerbating tensions between departments. Every-one is better at pointing out the flaws in others’ ideas than proposing ideas of their own.

The prime minister might not be back in Downing Street but he is engaging in more and more issues from Chequers. When the British government makes the big decisions on coronavirus, they will be his. Those in cabinet who want an easing of restrictions like to believe the return of their Tiggerish leader will speed a return to normality. But those who know Boris Johnson will think that his brush with death means that he is now much more cautious about when and how the lockdown should be lifted.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Maybe the Experts Were Right About Covid-19 the First Time They originally wanted herd immunity, realizing lockdowns would incur the disasters we’re seeing. Joseph C. Sternberg

Posted By on April 24th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/maybe-the-experts-were-right-about-covid-19-the-first-time-11587659799?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

It’s time to confront an awful possibility about the lockdowns in which many of the world’s economies now find themselves: The experts might have been right the first time.

“The first time” was not so long ago—February to mid-March—when official opinion on how best to grapple with the new coronavirus pandemic was very different. The distinguishing characteristic was modesty.

The stated goal was not to vanquish the virus but merely to try to control its spread so as not to overwhelm health-care systems. Officials also understood public patience with draconian measures would wear thin quickly and demanded politicians exercise caution when asking the public to take on burdens.

Those opinions now are widely derided, often in insulting terms. Yet subsequent events suggest they’re mainly correct. Let’s take each in turn.

• We can’t stop the virus, we can only slow it. This is the biggest fact about the pandemic that remains politically impossible to say. The trouble started in mid-March when “herd immunity,” previously the tacit or acknowledged endgame for most of the world, became a toxic phrase. Critics pointed out that allowing the virus to spread in a controlled manner would cost lives. They presented a stark alternative of total lockdown or the disaster of Italian hospitals, with no middle ground.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Contest For The Most Brazen Attempt To Grab Federal “Stimulus” Money Francis Menton

Posted By on April 24th, 2020

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=500c3266cd

Back on April 2, when the $2+ trillion “CARES” Act had just cleared Congress, I issued a warning to “make no mistake — this is a perilous moment.” The country had reached seemingly unanimous consensus that all previous budget constraints no longer apply to federal government spending. After all, we are in a crisis. Therefore we must spend “whatever it takes” — a term with no definition and no limits. With all sensible judgment now thrown to the winds, this would be the perfect time for the well-connected and the corrupt to swoop in to grab the extra tens of billions they have long lusted after.

And of course, this is exactly what has happened. Every thoroughly corrupt left-wing priority — from wind power subsidies to teachers union contracts — has its lobbyists there in Washington trying to get in on the next handout (aka “stimulus”) gravy train. As a Manhattan Contrarian public service, I thought I would look around to find a candidate for the very most completely corrupt and unsupportable demand for a bailout among the hundreds of such demands currently swirling around the Washington firmament.

Although it’s a crowded field, I have a candidate that will be difficult to top. On April 14, a guy named Don Harmon — Democrat and member of the Illinois State Senate, and recently elevated to the position of President of the that body — wrote a letter to Dick Durbin — Illinois federal Senator and member of the Democratic leadership of that body — laying out what the state of Illinois is seeking in the next round of federal “stimulus.” This letter is the very definition of the term “brazen.”

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Coronavirus: More Palestinian Libels Against Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on April 24th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15893/coronavirus-palestinian-libels-israel

By talking falsely about sick workers being smuggled through water drainage systems and Jews walking around and spitting, the Palestinian leadership is seeking to create the impression that Palestinians are under attack and must therefore defend themselves — by launching violent attacks against Israelis on the pretext of attempting to stop them from spreading a deadly disease.

The international community, meanwhile, appears blithely unperturbed about the Palestinian leadership’s continued libels against Israel and their continuing incitement to murder.

The indifference of the international community does not bode well for any future talk of peace or coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians. After all, why would any Palestinian want to make peace or live next to a Jew who, according to Palestinian leaders, is spreading a deadly disease and professedly trying to kill him?

The heavy downpour of rain last week prompted the Israeli authorities to open some water drainage systems in the West Bank to avoid flooding Palestinian-owned agricultural lands. Israel, in other words, wanted to prevent damage to Palestinian farmers, whose crops would have been destroyed in the flooding.

Some Palestinian officials, however, have exploited the Israeli move to claim , falsely, that this was one of Israel’s methods to spread the coronavirus among Palestinians.

What is the connection between the water drainage systems and the coronavirus?

According to the Palestinian officials, Israel opened the drainage systems to allow Palestinian workers (in Israel) to “infiltrate” back to their homes without having to undergo tests for the virus and be placed under quarantine by the Palestinian Authority. (The PA assumes that most of these workers contracted the disease after coming into contact with Israelis.)

“Israel opened the water systems to facilitate the movement of the workers,” said Osama Qawassmeh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian ruling Fatah faction. “Our people are fighting two epidemics: coronavirus and Israeli colonialism.”