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April 2020

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

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.

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

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?

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

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.

“Why I Like Trump” by Sydney Williams

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.”

Coronavirus: More Palestinian Libels Against Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

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.”

COVID-19 death rates among blacks make new fodder for racial politics By John Eidson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/covid19_death_rates_among_blacks_make_new_fodder_for_racial_politics.html

As reported by ABC News, black American coronavirus patients in Michigan died of the disease at more than eight times the rate of white people despite making up only 14% of the state’s population.  Similar death disparities occurred in other U.S. cities with large black populations, thus creating an opening for racial politics to be injected into the debate over COVID-19 death rates in the black community.

At the Coronavirus Task Force press briefing on April 7, Dr. Anthony Fauci correctly observed that black Americans are disproportionately affected by illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and asthma, all of which are known to increase the risk of fatal coronavirus complications.  The widely respected epidemiologist went on to note that such disparities have “long been prevalent in the African-American community.”  With higher coronavirus death rates among black Americans an established medical fact, progressive media outlets are raising the specter that racism is to blame.

The suggestion that the medical profession is rife with racist doctors and nurses is an unfortunate extension of the modern Democratic Party’s identity politics election strategy, which is predicated on the fallacious narrative that even after all the years of racial progress, the America of today is an incurably oppressive place infested with racists who roam the land, including in hospitals and medical facilities that care for all Americans, regardless of the color of their skin. 

Not Merely Wrong but 265 Times Wrong Andrew Stone

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/04/not-merely-wrong-but-265-times-wrong/

Years ago, Paul Kelly noted the striking irrelevance of academic economists to Australia’s 1980s and ’90s reform era. Contributions like Monday’s “Open letter from 265 Australian economists: don’t sacrifice health for ‘the economy‘” show that nothing has changed. What insights do the authors believe are so important they must be urgently put to leaders dealing with multiple critical decisions every day? With its straw-man arguments and vagueness, the letter offers none.

The authors reject as “a false distinction” that there is “a trade‑off between the public health and economic aspects of the crisis”. This is so absurd that it is astonishing any serious economist (let alone 265 of them) could suggest it. If an extra $1 billion – let alone hundreds of billions – were spent on, say, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, some lives would undoubtedly be prolonged. Likewise for spending on highway “black spots”, homelessness, and hundreds of other programs. Trade‑offs between fiscal, economic and health effects (current and future) are properly endemic to all public policy issues.

Moreover, the authors do not even mention that an ongoing lockdown inducing deep recession will itself have large negative health effects – damage that will be definite, not merely possible, in the event of a so-far unseen second-wave outbreak. These impacts will be felt by hundreds of thousands of additional long‑term unemployed, by thousands of small business owners whose firms are destroyed, and through lower future health spending as we repay massive additional public debt.