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March 2020

Cuba Is an Academic Fraud Few educational stats are available, and they are highly suspect. By Paul E. Peterson

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuba-is-an-academic-fraud-11584380234?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Bernie Sanders has spent decades preparing to lose the Florida primary. In a 1985 interview, Vermont’s self-described socialist said of Fidel Castro that “he educated their kids.” He still praises the Communist regime’s “massive literacy program.”

Mr. Sanders is not alone in his admiration for Cuban education. In 2016 President Obama quoted himself as telling Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother and successor: “You’ve made great progress in educating young people. Every child in Cuba gets a basic education.” Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, visited Havana in 2017 and exulted: “Cuba’s education system might as well be considered the ultimate wrap-around institution for children.” In 2007 Stanford’s Martin Carnoy published a book called “Cuba’s Academic Advantage.

It’s all bunk—though it’s hard to prove, because Cuba refuses to participate in international tests such as the respected Program for International Student Assessment. The only external tests in which Cuba did participate were the 1997 and 2006 waves of the Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education, sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and nicknamed Laboratorio. This was the main evidentiary basis for Mr. Carnoy’s book.

But the Cuban government supervised the administration of the Laboratorio tests, and the results strongly suggest it cheated. The median language-arts score for Cuban third-graders in 1997 was 343 points, compared with 264 in Argentina, 256 in Brazil and 229 in Mexico. If these scores are to be believed, the median child in Cuba learns by grade three what equivalent students elsewhere don’t learn until at least grade six.

Coronavirus Panic: An Opportunity To Hit ‘Reset’ With China Bob Maistros

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/16/coronavirus-panic-an-opportunity-to-hit-reset-with-china/

“In short, that America is going to stop lying down with depraved, despotic dogs and waking up fleeced — in every sense.”

It’s an old and familiar saying: “If you lie down with dogs, you’ll wake up with fleas.”

Not to mention:

Poisoned, fake-brand THC vapes killing our kids via the vaping lung illness outbreak of last summer. (Oh. You missed that foreign-sourced public health crisis?) Plus floods of counterfeit nicotine e-cigarette brands habitualizing high-schoolers and undermining heavy-handed efforts at home to keep the products away from kids.
Thousands of dangerous, fraudulent, mis- and wrongly-labeled, and even banned products swamping the world’s largest retail platform – and driven to the top of listings, claiming a coveted but misleading “Amazon Choice,” through lies, bogus sales and bribes.
Decades of systematic cheating on trade agreements hollowing out America’s industrial base.
Blatant and ubiquitous identity theft, cyberfraud and cyberattacks – including, ironically, unrelenting unleashing of computer “viruses.”
Sponsorship of rogue nations rushing headlong to develop nukes that can take out Los Angeles.
Of course, pandemics that, in flea-like fashion, rapidly infest the entire globe.
And resulting record stock-market crashes, free falls in energy and other commodity markets, plummeting bond yields, and maybe, a recession that could undo the unparalleled job gains of the last few years.

Hey, Wall Street! Ya maybe paying attention yet?

Panic Never Helped Any Pandemic And Won’t Start Now Michael Fumento

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/16/panic-never-helped-any-pandemic-and-wont-start-now/

CNN Business calls it “a pandemic unprecedented in modern times.” That would probably include the so-called “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918-19 that killed more than 500,000 Americans, and perhaps 20 million to 50 million worldwide. Coronavirus so far has killed fewer than 75 Americans, fewer than 7,000 people worldwide, and its growth internationally already is clearly slowing. But economic growth is another matter: We’re now in a bear market, with worldwide recession a serious possibility. For hysteria has now become the “conventional wisdom.”

Invoking the “Black Death,” which probably wiped out a third of Europe, both CNN and the Washington Post have reported that Iran is digging (per the Post) “Coronavirus Burial Pits So Vast They’re Visible From Space.” Never mind that Google can read your license plate from space, nor that on average more than 12,000 Iranians die daily and the country has reported less than 80 COVID-19 deaths since virus was detected there a month ago. For those without enough fingers, that’s a 0.02% increase in deaths per day. The cemeteries can handle it.

Then there’s that Peggy Noonan op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that unabashedly declared: “‘Don’t Panic’ Is Bad Advice.”

Ahem. Don’t panic.

Another Epidemic Of Hysteria

Canada Psychiatrists: Refusing Euthanasia for Mentally Ill Is ‘Discrimination’ By Wesley J. Smith !!!!???

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/canada-psychiatrists-refusing-euthanasia-for-mentally-ill-is-discrimination/

Dedicated psychiatrists are often the only defense between patients with serious mental illness and suicide. But legalizing euthanasia shifts thinking 180 degrees because suicide has been redefined as health care and a right. Hence, protections — such as barring administered death to the mentally ill — soon come to be seen as obstacles.

That has happened in Canada, where the government is erasing its weak provision that death must be “reasonably foreseeable” requirement to qualify for killing. Once that provision is repealed, psychiatric conditions diagnosed “irremediable” could qualify for death.

This is the context in which the Canadian Psychiatric Association has warned the government not to “discriminate” against the mentally ill by barring them from lethal jabs when the law is changed. From the Association’s Position Statement (my emphasis):

2. Patients with a psychiatric illness should not be discriminated against solely on the basis of their disability, and should have available the same options regarding MAiD [medical assistance in dying, i.e., euthanasia] as available to all patients.

White House Pushes Back on Reports of National Curfew By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/white-house-pushes-back-on-reports-of-national-curfew/

The White House on Monday pushed back on reports that the administration is considering imposing a national curfew.

“This is not true!” White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere wrote in response to a CNN report claiming that the administration was engaged in active discussions about encouraging a curfew across the country, meaning non-essential businesses would have to close by a designated time every evening.

“This is not correct,” Katie Miller, press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence tweeted about the same report.

“That’s not even in the realm of things we’re asking governors for,” Miller said. “There are a lot of rumors. I promise you, I’m sitting in every single meeting … so I can give you guys a yes or no.”

“Rumors of a national lockdown or national quarantine recently shared via text message are FAKE,” read a tweet from the official White House Twitter account.

Another Terrible 24 Hours in Italy By Rich Lowry ….Italy recorded another 349 deaths:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-terrible-24-hours-in-italy/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

Italy experienced the most deaths in a 24-hour period of any country during the pandemic, including China:

The coronavirus continued its assault on Italy, the hardest hit country outside of China, with officials on Sunday reporting the number of deaths rose to 1,809 — a 25 percent increase over the day before and the largest one-day uptick yet of any country.

The 368 deaths Italy reported exceeds the highest single-day number China reported at the height of its outbreak. China’s highest daily toll was on Feb. 13, when the country reported 254 new deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

According to this Reuters report, the health-care system in Italy is stressed, but not yet completely overwhelmed:

The head of the civil protection authority, Angelo Borelli, said that Lombardy had been able to transfer some patients to other regions. He also said he was so far unaware of any cases of patients dying because of a lack of intensive care facilities.

Wuhan Virus Disrupts 2020 Primary Calendar As States Postpone Elections By Tristan Justice

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/16/wuhan-virus-disrupts-2020-primary-calendar-as-states-postpone-elections/

Four states will hold their primary contests on Tuesday night, despite Georgia and Louisiana each postponing their elections previously scheduled for a few weeks later over concerns of the spreading Wuhan virus.

Louisiana was the first state to make the decision, announcing on Friday it would hold its primaries on June 20 instead of April 4 as originally planned. Georgia, which had its primaries scheduled for March 24 has now moved its elections to May 19.

Arizona, Florida, Ohio, and Illinois however, will proceed with their primaries on Tuesday as planned even as large public gatherings, restaurants, bars and schools shut down in each state.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have each cancelled rallies and public appearances in the final week leading up to the next round of state contests, conducting virtual campaign events instead, and participating in a no-audience debate Sunday night.

Sanders raised concerns over the four states moving onward with their elections this week despite massive cancellations and closures nationwide. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued new guidance this weekend recommending no gatherings of 50 people or more for the next eight weeks. These social distancing recommendations aim to keep the spread of the outbreak from overwhelming hospitals ill-equipped to manage the coming caseload.

10 Ways the Left Has Politicized the Coronavirus Pandemic By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/trending/10-ways-the-left-has-politicized-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

It was disgusting to see the way Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders politicized the coronavirus pandemic during their debate Sunday night. I expected as much, to be honest.

A public health crisis is no time for partisanship. Sadly, for the left, they saw the coronavirus pandemic was just another opportunity for them to take down Trump. From the Russian collusion hoax to the bogus impeachment, they’ve tried relentlessly to find something to not just damage him, but to end his presidency.

The left’s politicization of the coronavirus pandemic has taken many forms, and I’ve compiled the most significant examples below.

10. Wishing infection on Trump supporters

In a now-deleted tweet, liberal activist Susan Daniel declared, “For the record, if I do get the coronavirus I’m attending every MAGA rally I can.”

As bad as that was, Denver City Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca apparently thought it was appropriate to retweet the disgusting comment on her official Twitter account:

Pakistani-Canadian author Ali A. Rizvi made a similar comment on Twitter when he announced, “If I contracted coronavirus, I would go out and try to attend every Trump rally possible.”

No, the Trump administration didn’t weaken US biodefenses by Tom Rogan

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/no-the-trump-administration-didnt-weaken-us-biodefenses

Befitting their absurd deference to China’s lies about the coronavirus (yes, they are lies), too many in the media are lapping up the Democratic Party talking point that the Trump administration gutted the National Security Council counter-pandemics effort.

It did not.

While the Trump administration has rightly reorganized the NSC away from the bureaucratic behemoth it became under the Obama administration, NSC bio-defense efforts have continued. And as pointed out by the former NSC lead on the issue, Tim Morrison, these efforts were wide-ranging.

The key here is that the NSC’s bureaucratic reorganization is being presented as a gutting of the nation’s bio-defenses. And that’s plainly unfair.

The NSC is supposed to exist as a filtering house for government national security efforts in service of the president’s needs and policy priorities. Unfortunately, under the Obama administration, the NSC became a place where Ben Rhodes used bureaucracy to centralize power away from the Pentagon, State Department, and Intelligence Community, and slow down the policy process. Why the interest in lethargy?

International Counter-Terrorism Group Addresses Ever-Changing al-Qaeda Threat By Ella Kietlinska

https://www.theepochtimes.com/international-counter-terrorism-group-addresses-ever-changing-al-qaeda-threat_3270200.html

The Warsaw Process Counterterrorism and Illicit Finance working group convened in Marrakech, Morocco, on March 4-5, with the goal of working out a solution to counter the potential threat posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, in preparations for the ministerial-level meeting to be held in Washington this year.

Al-Qaeda, overshadowed by ISIS over the past several years, took advantage of this situation to strengthen and expand its abilities to operate, adapt to using new technologies, and exploit conflicts and vulnerabilities in different parts of the world, e.g. the wars in Yemen and Syria, says a statement from the working group.

Threats Posed by al-Qaeda

Despite losing its main leader in 2011, al-Qaeda adapted to the changes in the world’s political situation and exerted its ideological influence. Its affiliates still pose a threat to the entire African continent and there is a possibility for al-Qaeda to engage in a relationship with ISIS, according to the statement. Al-Qaeda also operates in Asia and the Middle East.

Al-Qaeda’s tactics and methods may also evolve. It could exert more attacks outside of conflict zones, utilize more low-cost technology, and develop “more effective use of the internet” as well as “a sophisticated network of communication tools,” threatening global security and stability, the statement says.