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March 2020

China Boomeranging By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-china-response-will-weaken-it-on-world-stage/

Its bad behavior in the wake of COVID-19 will leave it in its weakest global position in memory. And the U.S. will emerge stronger.

S ometime in late November the Chinese Communist Party apparat was aware that the ingredients of some sort of an epidemic were brewing in Wuhan. Soon after, it was also clear to them that a new type of coronavirus was on the loose, a threat they might have taken more seriously given the similar Chinese origins of the prior toxic SARS coronavirus and the resources of a Level 4 virology lab nearby.

Yet the government initially hid all that knowledge from its own people in particular and in general from the world at large. Translated into American terms, that disingenuousness ensured that over 10,000 Chinese nationals and foreigners living in China flew every day on direct flights into the United States (Washington and California especially) from late November to the beginning of February, until the Trump travel ban of January 31.

All this laxity was also known to the Communist apparat in Beijing, which must have been amused when Trump was roundly damned by his liberal critics as a xenophobe and racist for finally daring to stop the influx on January 31 — the first major leader to enact such a total ban.

Yet, no thanks to the Chinese, America, so far, has been comparatively lucky — despite the grave risks of damaging a multi-trillion-dollar economy with the strictest quarantining, isolation policies, and social distancing in its history. Half the country lives in the interior away from ports of entry on the coasts. Medical care, sanitation, hygiene, and meat markets operate on different premises than in China, the supposed fated global hegemon. Transparency in a consensual society together with a free-market economy is encouraging tens of millions of citizens to work in tandem and independently to figure out creative ways to ameliorate the epidemic, politically, medically, socially, and economically. The result is that as of mid-March, the U.S., the world’s foremost immigration destination and among the most visited of nations, had suffered fewer virus fatalities than some European countries a fifth or sixth of its population size.

Covid Closures Expose Insidious Effects of Michelle Obama’s School Lunch Program Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/16/covid-closures-expose-insidious-effects-of-michelle-obamas-school-lunch-program/

Reexamining the community eligibility program, which has created a middle-class entitlement program while teaching kids all the wrong lessons, should be the administration’s to-do list. Its deep reach is just one more flawed government approach now exposed by the current public health threat.

As schools shut down across the nation over fears of the COVID-19 illness, it appears that administrators are less concerned about how to educate children and more worried about how to feed them. A basic parental task—making sure your child has breakfast and lunch during the day—like so many aspects of family life, has been relegated to government bureaucrats thanks in large part to Michelle Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

Signed into law by Barack Obama in 2010, the bill initiated a massive overhaul of the nation’s school lunch program. The first lady’s pet project imposed restrictions on salt, sugar, and saturated fat content in an effort to slim down America’s youth. Nonfat dairy like skim milk replaced whole milk; whole grains replaced white flour. Some schools reported rations on pickles for sandwiches while students were caught smuggling in salt packets to make unappetizing meals more edible. Nearly a decade later, there is no evidence the costly and burdensome effort had any impact on childhood obesity rates.

But one part of the bill has met, even exceeded, its intended outcome: The expansion of taxpayer-subsidized meals to millions of American children and teenagers.

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), enacted nationwide in 2014, allows entire districts rather than individual families to apply for “free” or reduced-price meals based on low-income rates in the area. If at least 40 percent of the students in a district qualify, every student in the district is then entitled to a free breakfast, lunch, and snack.

Jeepers Veepers! As Joe Biden emerges the Democrats’ likely nominee, the focus inevitably will shift to who will be his running mate and heir apparent. But why on earth should it be Kamala Harris? By Ray McCoy

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/15/jeepers-veepers/

Prior to gaining national notoriety as California’s junior U.S. senator, Kamala Harris was widely considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. She spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 as her state’s attorney general, entering to the tune of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’”

Just as Barack Obama had been eight years earlier, Harris was being groomed for bigger things beyond her state’s borders. She was featured by McClatchy in a profile of the new Gen Xer politicians along with Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)

It was thought that the spotlight would do for her what it did for Obama, transforming her from a local prospect into a major league slugger for the party. In September 2017, only eight months after taking office as a freshman senator, Newsweek asked if she was the favorite to take on Donald Trump in 2020. CNN’s Chris Cillizza dubbed her the frontrunner immediately after the 2018 midterm elections.

At a certain point, however, reality kicked in. Kamala Harris—try as she might—does not have the charismatic cadence Obama had, nor does she have his smooth mannerisms.

Unlike Obama in his 2008 campaign, Harris has never made any overtures toward middle America on any issue. Last May, she declared she would require states and municipalities to obtain federal approval before enacting laws that restrict abortion. She also proposed far-reaching executive orders that would impose mandatory background checks and allow for prosecution of gun manufacturers. These are two areas where Harris, apparently, is claiming as president she would reprise the role that she currently plays as a legislator—something that Obama ended up doing but never bragged about before his election.

Coronavirus: Europe’s ‘Open Borders’ System Faces Collapse by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15751/coronavirus-europe-open-borders

“Merkel knows that the instruction to close the border, in general to take consistent national measures to protect her own citizens, would be tantamount to her own declaration of political bankruptcy.” — Ferdinand Knauss, commentator on the German blog Tichys Einblick, March 16, 2020.

“Merkel is now fighting. But as always in her chancellorship, she is not fighting for her country and its citizens, for which she is responsible. She is fighting for her power, for her legacy. When the citizens come to understand this, the corona crisis will have been Merkel’s last fight in the political arena.” — Ferdinand Knauss, March 16, 2020.

In a March 13 press conference, the president of Italy’s hard-hit Veneto region, Luca Zaia, said that Europe’s borderless zone was “disappearing as we speak.” He noted that the stringent border controls imposed by Austria shows that Schengen “no longer exists and will be remembered in the history books.”

As a growing number of countries close their borders to fight the coronavirus pandemic, the European system of open internal borders — a cornerstone of European integration — is on the brink of collapse.

The so-called Schengen Area, which comprises 26 European countries, entered into effect in 1995 and abolishes the need for passports and other types of control at mutual borders. It is a key practical and symbolic achievement of European integration and is now falling apart.

In a move packed with political significance, Germany, the largest and most powerful country in the European Union, on March 16 introduced controls on its borders with Austria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland after it registered 1,000 new cases of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in just one day.

China’s Real Disease: Not Coronavirus by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15745/coronavirus-china-communism

Beijing has, according to President Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro, already nationalized one American factory making medical masks. Moreover, Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on air repeatedly said the Chinese forced at least one ship carrying masks, gloves, and other protective gear to the United States to return to China.

Trump’s optimism is not shared in Beijing…. China, using the epidemic as an excuse, is now pushing to change the agreement by deferring its purchase obligations, the heart of the arrangement as far as the U.S. is concerned.

Xi Jinping, after all, knew about the coronavirus epidemic long before he signed the deal in the White House. In February, he said he had chaired a meeting of the Party’s Politburo Standing Committee on January 7 in which he issued orders to contain the epidemic. Xi’s knowledge of the outbreak on January 15 and his push for relief now, therefore, makes him look cynical. In all probability, he had no intention of honoring his side of the bargain from the beginning.

Americans — and the Chinese people, who are now demanding fundamental political change — realize that the real disease is communism.

Last July, five American analysts who have been consistently wrong told us “China is not an enemy.”

Actually, this time they were technically right. China’s communism is not an enemy. It is the enemy.

After the coronavirus pandemic subsides, Americans should not forget Beijing’s malicious campaign against their country.

For more than a month, the central government’s foreign ministry and the Communist Party’s Global Times have been trying to tar the Trump administration. The campaign culminated in a series of tweets from rising Beijing star Zhao Lijian, foreign ministry spokesman and deputy director general of the ministry’s Information Department.

Taiwan, China and the Coronavirus One treats it decisively, the other treats it ideologically. Don Feder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/taiwan-treats-coronavirus-decisively-china-don-feder/

Taiwan is 81 miles from China. There were 60,000 direct flights between the two nations last year, carrying over 10 million passengers.

As of March 16, the People’s Republic of China, where the coronavirus originated, had more than 80,880 diagnosed cases and close to 3,213 deaths. The Republic of China on Taiwan had 67 cases and one death.

Taiwan has treated the pandemic decisively. China has treated it ideologically, as one would expect from a totalitarian state.

On December 31st, China told the World Health Organization that it had several cases of pneumonia. On the same day, Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control began monitoring passengers who arrived from Wuhan. (The 2003 SARS epidemic made it skeptical of health data from China). Taiwan screened these passengers for 36 viruses. On January 26, it banned flights from Wuhan, making it the first country to do so.

Taiwan instituted 124 safety protocols for the virus. It distributed 6.5 million masks to primary and secondary schools, along with 84,000 liters of hand sanitizer and 25,000 forehead thermometers. Public and private buildings screened entrants for signs of fever. Apartment buildings have hand sanitizers in or near elevators.

After China finally admitted that it had a problem, it took another month for researchers from other countries to get in.

Major Islamic Conference on Reform Upholds Radicalism Exposing a large international conference attended by 42 Muslim nations. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/major-islamic-conference-reform-upholds-radicalism-raymond-ibrahim/

Largely unknown to and unreported in the West, a large, two-day conference was recently hosted by Al Azhar University in Egypt and attendant by the leading clerics and politicians from 46 nations on January 27-28.  Titled, “Renewal in Islamic Thought,” it is currently the most significant response to Egyptian President Sisi’s calls for reform, which he forcibly made on January 1, 2015.

The conference focused on the most pressing topics affecting the Islamic—and in some cases non-Islamic—world, including women’s rights, government and society, and of course the question of “radicalization” and the emergence of jihadi terror groups such as the Islamic State, etc.

I’ve watched many of the panels with great interest, and in the coming weeks hope to remark on some of these, but for now I wish to discuss what can be learned from the closing remarks of the Grand Imam of Al Azhar (and Pope Francis’ good friend), Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb. 

First, in consensual agreement with the other clerics present, he closed the door on the possibility for reform on a great number of issues: “Renewal,” he announced, “is in no way possible concerning those texts which are irrefutable in their certainty and stability; as for those texts that are not entirely credible, they are subject to ijtihad [reinterpretation, especially based on changing circumstances].”

Jennifer Rubin’s death wish for Republicans is factually wrong — and the maps prove it By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/jennifer_rubins_death_wish_for_republicans_is_factually_wrong__and_the_maps_prove_it.html

Once upon a time, Jennifer Rubin was an intelligent woman. Things started to go downhill when she went to work for the Washington Post, but what really flipped the switch in her brain was seeing Donald Trump become president. Not only did she lose perspective, but she also lost intelligence, self-restraint, and decency. Her latest flight of NeverTrump nastiness has her speculate about possible Republican deaths during a time of coronavirus. Her speculation not only reveals an even further degradation of mind and soul, but she’s got things entirely bass-ackwards wrong – and a couple of maps prove it.

Maybe the seeds of Rubin’s decay were always there, considering that she attended U.C. Berkeley both as an undergraduate and at law school. Her downslide might also have come from spending twenty years in Hollywood, working as a Labor and Employment lawyer in Hollywood.

Or perhaps the problem was when she moved with her family to Virginia and started writing for The Weekly Standard and Commentary magazine. Her work there was excellent during the Bush and Obama years when these magazines were conservative stalwarts. As you may recall, though, both magazines went all-in for NeverTrumpism, which eventually killed The Weekly Standard.

By the time The Weekly Standard died, though, Rubin had already moved on to the Washington Post, ostensibly as a “conservative” commentator. At that point, the years at Berkeley, in Hollywood, and at two cocktail-party-circuit “conservative” magazines had already started to catch up with her. By the time Donald Trump came along, the term “conservative” when attached to her name was a misnomer. As with Bill Kristol, her hatred for Trump caused a seismic shift in her political ideology. Rubin’s fanatic hatred for Trump is such that she’d rather embrace a hard-left platform (for there’s little real difference between Bernie’s agenda and Biden’s other than the speed of change) than see Trump in the White House.

The American press’s entire energy is bent towards destroying Trump By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/the_american_presss_entire_energy_is_bent_towards_destroying_trump.html

The mainstream American media have abandoned journalism’s formerly-prized ethos of “who, what, where, why, when.” There is no pretense anymore that they serve a purpose other than maligning Donald Trump in the hope of destroying his presidency. The latest example comes from The New York Times, a once-respected institution that now would offend the birds whose cages it might line.

President Trump has recommended new, very stringent, social distancing guidelines as part of slowing coronavirus’s spread in the United States. Speaking of slowing the virus, keep in mind that, thanks in part to President Trump’s decision to close America’s borders to China in January, the spread here has already been slow. Currently, despite the virus having been present, but unidentified, in America for some time, only 0.00002 percent of the population has died (i.e., 68 people).)

The New York Times began its report on the new guidelines in a straightforward fashion:

The Trump administration released new guidelines on Monday to slow the spread of the coronavirus, including closing schools and avoiding groups of more than 10 people, discretionary travel, bars, restaurants and food courts.