MEDIA Comments turned off

The Times Inflates Trump’s Foolishness into Monstrousness By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on April 25th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/media-donald-trump-new-york-times-inflates-foolishness-into-monstrousness/

President Trump should not spit-ball on live television, especially on topics that are outside his ken.

How depressing is the erosion of the principle that when the president of the United States speaks, it means something, that it’s not just stream-of-consciousness that willy-nilly gets revised or reversed or treated like he never really said it. Just as depressing, though, is the media’s abandonment of straightforward fact reporting, in favor of unabashed alliance with Trump’s political opposition.

Why do blind partisans and demagogues have such sway these days? Because no one can trust the reporting of institutions we used to expect would give us an accurate rendition of the facts being debated.

The president’s meanderings about imaginary coronavirus treatments at Thursday’s press conference, and the press’s reporting on them, are case in point.

While it is good for the president to project engaged leadership, that should never take the form of free-flowing dialogue with his advisers. Those conversations should happen behind closed doors. When the president speaks publicly, he should stick to what he is in a position to convey factually, not hypothetically. Especially when it comes to scientific and medical information, as to which he is quickly out of his depth.

At the same time, no matter how much the press abhors Trump, no matter how sincerely believed its conviction that he is a dangerous man who will induce people to do dangerous things, reporters worthy of the name do not have license to portray Trump as living down to their worst fears when he has not.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Battering Norman Borlaug PBS rewrites the history of the father of the Green Revolution.

Posted By on April 25th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/battering-norman-borlaug-11587769611?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

It seems to be an iron law of modern life: Be successful at what you do, and sooner or later you will be labeled an enemy of the people. The latest target of this treatment is the late Norman Borlaug, who is featured in a new PBS documentary called “The Man Who Tried to Feed the World: A Tale of Good Deeds and Unintended Consequences.”

Borlaug was an Iowa-born agronomist who is rightly regarded as the father of the Green Revolution. By producing disease-resistant strains of wheat, and later rice, Borlaug dramatically increased the yields that farmers—especially those in Third World nations—could extract from the land.

As the film does acknowledge, feeding the world without Borlaug’s innovations would be difficult. Readers of a certain age will recall the laments in the 1960s that humanity’s expanding population, especially in the developing world, would lead to mass starvation. Famines were not uncommon in those years in India, China and elsewhere, and Borlaug helped to make them rare and almost solely the result of bad governance. In 1970 Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Now comes PBS to rewrite history, going light on the lives saved and heavy on the “unintended consequences.” These include everything from diminished water supplies and depleted soil to increased urbanization in Mexico and a “broken society” in India.

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.