Trump’s COVID comeback, Democrat theatrics on ACB

I wouldn’t crow too soon. Trump may have to go back into hospital. That does happen

Perhaps Dr. James P. Phillips, the attending physician at Walter Reed Hospital, hasn’t yet noticed, but President Donald Trump is in the midst of a critical election battle.

Indeed, the president yesterday was behaving as if his COVID convalescence was less important than the task of saving the nation from Joe Biden and his hard-left handlers. Accordingly, he tweeted a MAGA message to his supporters, recorded a thank-you video to the medical staff at Walter Reed, and took a quick ride to thank his many well-wishers gathered outside the Beltway-based military medical center. And it was this last transgression that got the Trump-hating medicine man all worked up.

Phillips, whose Twitter image shows him clenching his fists on the CNN set with Ezekiel Emanuel and Wolf Blitzer, and whose followers number a fair bit fewer than the president’s 86.9 million, heaped scorn on Trump for what he characterized as a stunt rather than a show of presidential strength and resilience.

“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Phillips raged. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”

They may die? C’mon, doc, your derangement is showing. The idea that a young, strong, peak-of-fitness Secret Service agent will soon succumb to COVID is just plain idiotic. Or maybe it’s just plain hyper-partisan. A quick spin through Phillips’s Twitter page, after all, shows that he follows the likes of Kamala Harris, Jill Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Mike Bloomberg, George Conway, Never-Trumpers Max Boot and Bill Kristol, Doctors for Biden, Republicans for Joe Biden, The Lincoln Project, and, well, you get the idea. Let’s just hope the president’s Secret Service detail doesn’t let this guy anywhere near our commander-in-chief.

Not content with a single rant, however, Phillips sent out a second salvo: “That Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play.”

One wonders whether those committed professionals in the president’s SUV were “forced to play,” as Phillips insists, or instead drew straws for the honor of accompanying their America First president on a brief trip around the grounds.

In any case, President Trump’s medical team said his health continues to improve, and he might even be discharged today. If that happens, it’ll mark the most remarkable curb-stomping of this coronavirus by any septuagenarian anywhere ever — especially given what we now know about the president’s condition just a couple of days ago.

“During a press conference late Sunday morning at Walter Reed National Military Medical Hospital,” reports the Washington Examiner, “Dr. Sean Conley confirmed that Trump was given supplemental oxygen on Friday out of concern of ‘possible rapid progression of the illness,’ which the president was adamantly against. Conley said the president had a ‘high fever,’ and his oxygen saturation was dipping below 94%.”

“Today he feels well,” said Dr. Brian Garibaldi. “He’s been up and around. Our plan for today is to have him to eat and drink, be up out of bed as much as possible, to be mobile. And if he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is that we can plan for a discharge as early as [Monday] to the White House where he can continue his treatment course.”

A word of caution, then, to Dr. James P. Phillips, his Trump-addled fellow travelers, and the fatalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times who’ve been tasked with updating the president’s obituary: Reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated.

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Coronavirus: Sweden defied zealots and never met its Waterloo

Comment from Australia, an exceptionally low death-rate jurisdiction

Sweden’s impressive legacy — ABBA, dynamite, Ikea, for instance — has expanded significantly in 2020, having provided the world with an example of a sane response to what’s turned out a relatively mild pandemic.

The Scandinavian nation deserves enduring credit from reasonable people everywhere for resisting the destructive authoritarian mindset that enveloped democratic nations this year. Sweden was viciously attacked by supposed experts and mainstream media all year that if it didn’t crush commerce by fiat and suspend civil liberties indefinitely, as has occurred in Europe, many US states, and of course Victoria, more than 90,000 Swedes would die.

The army of lockdown zealots will never be able to say lockdowns are essential to avert disaster, if that wasn’t already clear enough from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

Historians will struggle to see a public policy disaster in Sweden. The number of deaths there from all causes so far this year, just less than 68,000, is fewer than over the same period in 2015, adjusted for population size. Far from an apocalypse, the total death rate from January 1 to September 20 is barely distinguishable from recent years, notwithstanding a jump from 2019, during which it was unusually low.

While its European neighbours, which bludgeoned their economies for months, now battle “second waves” (albeit with far lower death rates), Sweden has barely had any COVID-19 deaths since mid-July alongside a much milder uptick in so-called cases, which in any case often mean little.

The feared “exponential growth” never occurred (it never occurred anywhere). Swedish hospitals were never “overwhelmed”.

But Sweden’s GDP, which plunged 8.3 per cent in the second quarter, tanked anyway so should it have locked down too and “saved lives”? It’s a fatuous argument, faulty on its own terms, even assuming lockdowns do “save lives” overall.

For a start, its economy suffered in part because its larger neighbours, which themselves endured far bigger drops in GDP, locked down. Second, media fear-mongering left people unreasonably terrified, which, naturally, saw Swedes curtail economic activity.

In any case, looking at GDP over three months is hardly definitive. Sweden’s economy is expected to grow 4 per cent next year, twice as fast as ours, according to the Reserve Bank.

Having inflicted less economic chaos, Sweden’s gross government debt won’t rise beyond 40 per cent, according to its September budget papers, while Canberra’s debt ceiling will be lifted to the equivalent of 55 per cent of GDP along with far bigger budget deficits.

The bigger point is this: the short-term trajectory of GDP matters little. As I’ve argued for years in this column, it’s a flawed, dated measure of prosperity.

In Sweden, no one will be cowering in masks for years; Swedish police are not dragging people screaming from cars or invading homes to stop Facebook sharing. They aren’t shutting internal borders, stopping weddings, funerals or undermining children’s education. The Swedish parliament, unlike Victoria’s, isn’t using the pandemic as an excuse to increase police power. And the Swedish people never had to endure rambling, ridiculous daily press conferences for months about “cases” that belong in a scene from Nineteen Eighty-Four.

And the Swedish government hasn’t set a precedent, which will hang over business investment considerations here for a generation, that whenever a virus emerges, businesses and households will be shut down for months.

None of these factors is reflected in GDP.

There was never a health crisis in Sweden. And there hasn’t been one in Australia, either.

In the first six months of the year, there were 134 fewer deaths from respiratory diseases in Australia, which includes pneumonia and influenza, and 617 additional deaths from cancer compared with the average over 2015-19, according to the ABS’s provisional mortality statistics, released last week. Doctor-certified deaths are within the normal range.

Sweden hasn’t hitched its economic future — and the mobility of its people — to the prospect of a vaccine, either.

As our budget will make clear, forecasts of a return to normality will be contingent on an effective vaccine emerging, and one people will want to take. Given the survival rate for people under 70 is about 99.9 per cent — if they get the virus — it’s unclear how many will want to. Drug companies, under immense pressure to find a vaccine in months rather than the usual eight to 10 years, are understandably trying to wriggle out of liability if something goes wrong.

There are 243 candidate vaccines, of which nine are in stage-three trials, where the wider population testing takes place. There’s no guarantee of success. There’s been no vaccine developed for HIV, for instance.

“It is likely individuals will need two doses of a vaccine and this may need to be repeated every year,” says JP Morgan analyst David Mackie, who took stock of vaccination developments last month. “With a global population of 7.8 billion, this would require 4.7 billion individuals to be vaccinated with two doses each, separated by three to four weeks, and possibly repeated every year.”

Australia’s coronavirus elimination strategy leaves many questions unanswered. How long will we be prevented from leaving, if there’s no effective vaccine? Given the virus is contagious, is it realistic to keep it out forever (assuming it’s not prevalent here)? If not, why has Victoria imposed a 20-week lockdown on its biggest city?

Nations that don’t lock down their populations for months have been cast as immoral, but the truth is more complex. Leadership requires balancing competing objectives, governing for the long term, and being honest with people when new information emerges.

It will require a few more years of data to work out the optimal strategies to fight future pandemics. But what’s clear already — certainly to citizens of Victoria, New Zealand, Israel, the UK and Europe — is that one lockdown, as promised by proponents, does not eradicate the coronavirus.

And let’s drop the idea Swedes care less for their elderly than we do. Sweden spends the equivalent of 3.2 per cent of GDP on its aged-care facilities, compared to about 1 per cent here.

SOURCE

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Polished man month

When I first heard of this, I thought: “How F…ing useless can you get?”. A professional reader of mine, however had some more sophisticated comments — which I reproduce below:

October is Polished Man month, when leftist men put on nail polish to end violence against children.

Painting a fingernail is supposed to start a conversation about violence against children. It also advertises that the male wearer of the nail polish is one of society’s very few good men.

And leftist men try very hard to be seen as among the few good men by leftist standards. Leftist groups/cultures cast out any man who is not continually performing to show that he is an enlightened caring feminist, and being cast out can mean losing his employment, his friends, and in some cases even his family.

So lots of men working in heavily leftist/feminist dominated fields will this month be under pressure to show their painted fingernail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs2PfzuYK4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMd58QwdnfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQGQVh57Ejo

The implication of the Polished Man initiative is that men are the main perpetrators of violence against children, and it is men who must stop it.

Early in the counselling process when working as a forensic clinician, I would ask each prisoner about his childhood experiences, and many would tell me they were physically and emotionally abused by a parent. Not always but often that parent was a mother.

In fact, about 80% of prisoners did not even have a father or other male in the house, just a crazy abusive neglectful mother. “Crazy” was a common description.

Some stories of what some mothers do to little boys, and the number of such stories, cannot be believed or accepted by average decent people. Even my psychologist colleagues (who were all female) could not bring themselves to accept that such a number of women do such things.

The gender of abusers was seldom documented. Due to the pervasive leftist/feminist push that men are society’s abusers, so most people presume child abusers are mostly male.

Leftists/feminists are collective thinkers so psychologists, social workers and welfare workers generally, of whom nearly all are leftist-feminist, easily fall into reflexive mass collaboration. Some may call it conspiracy, which it is among the few most intelligent, conscious, and manipulative.

But most psychologists, social workers and welfare workers are emotional and peer centred people, and reflexively adopt the attitude, outlook and behaviour of the leftist-feminist culture in which they work.

One consequence of this is that a lot of falsities are put out about men and women and assumed by the general public to be true. One of those falsities is that women seldom abuse children. Here is some actual data on the horrible truth:

http://www.breakingthescience.org/SimplifiedDataFromDHHS.php

As the idea of painting a fingernail is to start a conversation about child abuse, then I propose that when the conversations start be sure to encourage people to do their own research into the subject, because truth is more fascinating than leftist-feminist propaganda.

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IN BRIEF

Stats suggest that lockdowns may have had little effect on spread (National Review)

Biden campaign reportedly pulling negative ads against Trump after his COVID diagnoses (The Daily Wire)

“I hope they die”: Left-wingers react to positive coronavirus diagnosis for the Trumps (The Federalist)

“Our liberties … have been stampeded over by these dirty cops”: Republicans rage over unverified but potentially damning Russian report on Clinton, suggest shutting down intelligence agencies (Washington Examiner)

New Supreme Court term begins Monday, with major cases from ObamaCare to religious liberty on the docket (Washington Examiner)

“Our presentation followed the facts and the evidence”: Highly anticipated grand jury recordings of Breonna Taylor case have been released (Disrn)

New Home, Texas, becomes the 15th city in the nation to outlaw abortion (Disrn)

NBA viewership keeps sinking: Game 2 of NBA finals the least-watched game on record (Washington Examiner)

Hondurans in migrant caravan bused back after entering Guatemala (Fox News)

Policy: Could it happen here? The parallels between the Soviet Bloc and the modern U.S. (The Daily Signal)

Policy: The Fed and the housing bubble/bust (Mises Institute)

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal). My annual picture page is here. Home page supplement

The Davos call for “Stakeholder” capitalism is pure Fascism — leading to a Loss of Liberty

Mussolini had a similar idea

What is called for is the “socialization” of private business away from being and viewed as an private enterprise formed and focusing upon the economic and financial betterment of its owners through the production, marketing, and sale of goods and services demanded by consumers in a competitive arena, with a market-generated price system facilitating the capacity for calculating profit and loss as a basis of determining the direction and use of the scarce means of production at the company’s disposal.

Instead, as the Davos Manifesto 2020 declares, in part:

“The purpose of a company is to engage all its stakeholders in shared and sustained value creation. In creating such value, a company serves not only its shareholders, but all its stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers, local communities and society at large. The best way to understand and harmonize the divergent interests of all stakeholders is through a shared commitment to policies and decisions that strengthen the long-term prosperity of a company.

“A company serves society at large through its activities, supports the communities in which it works, and pays its fair share of taxes . . . A company is more than an economic unit generating wealth. It fulfils human and societal aspirations as part of the broader social system. Performance must be measured not only on the return to shareholders, but also on how it achieves its environmental, social and good governance objectives. Executive remuneration should reflect stakeholder responsibility…

“A company that has a multinational scope of activities not only serves all those stakeholders who are directly engaged but acts itself as a stakeholder – together with governments and civil society – of our global future. Corporate global citizenship requires a company to harness its core competencies, its entrepreneurship, skills and relevant resources in collaborative efforts with other companies and stakeholders to improve the state of the world.”

For the members of the World Economic Forum, “‘Stakeholder capitalism,’ . . . positions private corporations as trustees of society, and is clearly the best response to today’s social and environmental challenges . . .” They reject the “shareholder capitalism” advocated by the likes of economist Milton Friedman, and the Chicago School of Economics, who “had neglected the fact that a publicly listed corporation is not just a profit-seeking entity but also a social organism.” (See my article, “Milton Friedman and the New Attack on the Freedom to Choose”.)

Thanks to “the Greta Thunberg effect,” the world has been reminded “that adherence to the current economic system represents a betrayal of future generations, owing to its environmental unsustainability.” Stakeholder capitalism offers “a new measure of ‘shared value creation’ [that] should include ‘environmental, social, and governance’ (ESG) goals as a complement to standard financial metrics.”

Business Governance for Society and Saving the Planet

That is what the World Economic Forum-sponsored Measuring Stakeholder Capitalism report is all about. The report offers four principles: Governance, Planet, People, and Prosperity, with the order clearly implying the ranking of importance. Governance comes first because it lays out the fundamental idea that in the selection of those in positions of corporate responsibility and in their instituting the enterprise’s activities, the goal is the company’s obligation to stakeholderism. By accepting the “challenge” of seeing the corporation’s responsibility to be the fulfillment of the agenda and targets of stakeholderism, the company takes on not only the ethical obligation to follow this mission, but if added into as chosen legal responsibility as part of the institutional basis of the enterprise, it might be held accountable in a court of law, with possible penalties for not meeting the goals and purposes of “the plan.”

The corporation’s responsibility to “the Planet” is explained as acceptance of the premises of and the target goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, with the participating corporations expected to report annually, along with all other aspects of Stakeholder Governance, on how much they have been moving in the direction of meeting the final 2050 goal of net-zero fossil fuel emissions, with a specific date when the company will have reached the target.

They must also demonstrate what they have done with the corporation’s financial resources and investments to create cleaner water and air, preserve the soil, and bring about a greater “harmony with nature” in general. Companies must report their reductions in annual land use and animal input consumption covered by “a sustainability certification standard or formalized sustainable management program.”

Stakeholder Capitalism Means “Living Wages” and Gender/Race Quotas

The responsibility of any participating private enterprise toward “People” goes far beyond such traditional notions as honesty and fulfillment of any and all contractual obligations concerning work conditions, wages, and the like concerning those they employ. No, Stakeholder Capitalism requires provision or support for all employee health costs, including “the mental, physical and social well-being of all people in their operations and value chains.” Companies would be obligated to have announced targets for employee skills training and reports on how much of the company’s payroll has been applied for this purpose. There must also be reports on the percentages of employees based on gender, race and age, and they would be expected to meet targets to assure “equity” in the hiring and retaining of workers in these gender, race, and age categories.

In addition, companies are required to report on wage ratios of difference in salaries between employees in general relative to corporate executives, including the CEO. And similar reported ratios of difference among wages paid to gender, racial and age groups working for the enterprise. There must be targets to reduce any unjustifiable divergences based on the idea of similar pay for similar work. Also, enterprises must enthusiastically support and foster worker collective bargaining; that is, to happily accept and work with established labor unions across the board.

Wages paid should not be based on supply and demand as competitively determined on the market. Instead, the benchmark and basis of employment salaries would be a “living wage,” or “a wage sufficient to meet the basic standards of living, which will vary by country, local living standards and need.” As the report argues, “Companies that offer a living wage to workers and employees can help lift households and communities out of poverty. A living wage provides a benchmark for responsible employers who respect human rights and who choose to pay their employees a rate that meets the basic cost of living in the region they operate in.”

More HERE

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No, the United States Is Not Systemically Racist

In the second half of the 20th century, from 1950 to 2000, Black people in the United States experienced much larger income gains than whites did. The group that had the largest income gains, by far, was Black women. Their incomes nearly doubled over that period (after inflation). The race gap persists, but it is much lower today than it was in 1950. Does this sound like the financial result from a systemically racist country?

We are told by Black Lives Matter, about 80 percent of the college professors and their pals in the media, that President Donald Trump is a racist. CNN says it almost every night. It’s always wise to judge a man by his deeds, not his words or promises. The Census Bureau report released earlier this month finds that, from 2016 to 2019, Black incomes rose more than in any three years in the history of the United States. The median household income for Blacks is now $45,438. I don’t have the latest data in front of me, but data from several years ago would indicate few, if any, other nations on Earth with a higher average Black income than the United States.

Black poverty rates fell to their lowest level ever recorded. Black poverty is still much higher than white poverty, but Black people’s economic advancement under Trump (precoronavirus) has been nearly miraculous. Does this sound like the result of a racist president?

One of the more fantastic claims by the BLM crowd is that America discriminates against all minorities, or “people of color.” By that, they mean people who are Black, Hispanic or any other race that is not white. But the latest census data on incomes squarely contradict this conclusion — at least when it comes to family finances and economic opportunity.

The highest-income group in America today is not white-skinned workers. It is Asians. Astonishingly, the median household income of Asian Americans reached just shy of $100,000 a year. (The number is $98,174 to be exact.) In other words, the average Asian family is upper-income. One of America’s wonders as a land of opportunity is that an immigrant can come to America dirt-poor from China or India and, within 20 years, move into the middle class or even become wealthy.

How did Asians, many of whom are first- or second-generation immigrants from Japan, Korea, India, China, Pakistan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, etc., race ahead of whites? Perhaps they have a stronger work ethic. Maybe they are more likely to go into occupations in the sciences, engineering or medicine, where salaries are high. Perhaps it is the “tiger moms” effect. Who knows? But what is indisputable from this evidence is this: This couldn’t have happened in America if this were a nation that hates ethnic minorities. It could not have occurred in a xenophobic country.

What about Hispanics? Trump has indeed said some very nasty things about Mexicans coming to the U.S. illegally and committing crimes. But Hispanics are doing very well in America. The average Hispanic household makes more than $56,000 a year today. That’s not rich — but it is a massive leap forward from what Hispanics earn in Mexico, El Salvador or Cuba. The gains of Latinos in just the last three years have been extraordinary. Hispanics have also been invaluable in keeping our hospitals, nursing homes, stores and delivery systems functioning during this pandemic thanks to their incredibly strong and admirable work ethic.

I would submit from all this that America isn’t the most but rather the least racist nation on Earth when it comes to upward economic mobility.

SOURCE

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Donald Trump says he will overturn ‘ridiculous order’ of US Navy SEALs removing the words ‘brotherhood’ and ‘man’ from its ethos and replacing them with gender neutral terms

Donald Trump said Thursday he will overturn the ‘ridiculous order’ of US Navy SEALs removing the words ‘brotherhood’ and ‘man’ from its ethos.

In a tweet responding to the news, the president wrote: ‘I will be overturning this ridiculous order immediately!’

The Navy has removed gendered words from its official SEAL ethos, changing them to ‘citizen’ and ‘warrior’. Alterations have also been made in the Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen (SWCC) creed, American Military News reports.

One change in the first paragraph of the SEAL ethos now reads: ‘I am that warrior.’ It had read: ‘I am that man.’ Another states: ‘Common citizens with uncommon desire to succeed.’ That did say: ‘A common man with uncommon desire to succeed.’

In the ethos, ‘The ability to control my emotions and my actions, regardless of circumstance, sets me apart from other men’ has been changed to ‘the ability to control my emotions and my actions, regardless of circumstance, sets me apart from others’.

And ‘brave men’ has been amended to read ‘brave SEALs.’

In the SWCC creed ‘brotherhood’ was switched to a ‘group of maritime warriors.’ In another sentence ‘brothers’ in changed to ‘them’.

The move sparked fury from disgraced ex SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who labeled it ‘a joke’. Gallagher was was acquitted of murdering the ISIS prisoner following a high-profile trial which saw Donald Trump wade into the debate.

Naval Special Warfare spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Stroup said: ‘The previous versions of the SEAL Ethos and SWCC Creed were written prior to the law allowing women to serve as operators in Naval Special Warfare.’

Stroup added: ‘The changes do not in any way reflect lowering standards of entry, rather they ensure that all those who meet the requirements to train to become a SEAL or SWCC are represented in the ethos or creed they live out.

Former SEAL Gallagher appeared to share a picture of an August 3 memo sent by military officials on the pronoun changes. It shows Rear Adm. Collin Green approved the changes.

Green wrote: ‘The SEAL Ethos and SWCC Creed are our community’s bedrock guidance. In order to provide more inclusive language, we have revised them to better reflect our diverse ranks now and into the future.’

Gallagher was acquitted of indiscriminately firing at civilians and murdering an ISIS prisoner in Iraq in 2017. He was only convicted for posing for a photo with the teen’s body.

As a result of posing for a picture with the dead teen, Gallagher was de-ranked in July 2019. However Donald Trump later restored him to Chief Petty Officer. He is now retired.

Sharing a note on the pronoun changes Gallagher wrote: ‘What a joke. To be honest I thought the ethos was always BS. Now I know it is.

‘A creed or ethos is supposed to be written in stone, obviously ours is not and will sway to whatever political agenda is being put out.’

The SEAL program tests participants’ physical and psychological strength along with water competency and leadership skills.

It starts at the Naval station in Great Lakes, Illinois and typically ends 65 weeks later with graduation in Coronado, across the bay from San Diego.

Each graduate is awarded the special warfare insignia known as the Trident that denotes membership in the elite fighting force: The pin features a golden eagle wrapped around a U.S. Navy anchor, while clutching a three-prong trident, and a flintlock style pistol.

The program is so grueling that 75 per cent of candidates drop out by the end of the first month in phase one. That’s when trainees undergo what is known as Hell Week when recruits are pushed to the limit with little sleep.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal). My annual picture page is here. Home page supplement

Donald Trump says he feels ‘much better’ in COVID-19 fight

A reader comments: “I have always thought Trump is who America needs, but I have also thought he is not a very pleasant man. …. However, through the years of his first term, reading his tweets and following his accomplishments, and his dealings with others, I have come to more clearly see his humanity, humour, strength of character, leadership, intelligence, sincerity, his love for individual freedom,… and whether he wins or loses the November election, I think he will be remembered as one of the greatest US presidents.”

Donald Trump has spoken out from hospital in a lengthy address after being diagnosed with coronavirus on Friday.

Mr Trump started by thanking the medical staff at Walter Reed Medical Centre, before talking about “miracle” treatments of the future.

“I came here, I wasn’t feeling so well, I feel much better now, we’re working hard to get me all the way back,” the US President said on Saturday night, local time. It is not clear when the video was recorded.

“I have to be back because we still have to make America great again. “I’ll be back, I think I’ll be back soon,” he said.

“We’re going to beat this coronavirus or whatever you want to call it.”

Mr Trump also went on to say he “just didn’t want to stay in the White House” for quarantine. “Stay in the White House, lock yourself in, don’t ever leave, don’t even go the Oval Office, just stay upstairs and enjoy it. “Don’t see people, don’t talk to people and just be done with it, and I can’t do that,” he said.

“This is America, this is the United States, this is greatest country in the world, this is the most powerful country in the world and I can’t be locked up in a room upstairs completely safe and just say hey, ‘whatever happens happens’.”

Mr Trump thanked leaders from around the world for their well wishes, and that Melania is also doing well – making a joke about how because she is younger than him is not as ill.

The President’s doctor released an update on Mr Trump’s condition on Saturday night, local time. He is said to be “fever free and off supplemental oxygen”. The medical team remains cautiously optimistic, Mr Trump’s doctor Sean P. Conley said in the update.

SOURCE

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The latest from Sweden: Cases up but no deaths

It’s been three months since Sweden recorded just over 800 new coronavirus cases.

But after months with no dramatic increases and low hospitalisation rates, cases of COVID-19 have surged again.

While the Scandinavian country was panned for its controversial approach to coronavirus, it has been recording fewer deaths per day than most other nations — including Australia.

Sweden chose to ignore calls for heavy lockdowns and has kept most schools, bars and restaurants open throughout the pandemic.

Even as cases surged with 752 people testing positive on Thursday – the highest daily rise since June 30 – there was not a single fatality.

Chief Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, the man behind Sweden’s controversial strategy, said the uptick was mostly in young people and workplace outbreaks. “It’s very unevenly spread across Sweden, hitting different parts of the country to varying degree,” he said. “Stockholm once again accounts for a very large part of the new cases in Sweden.”

Mr Tegnell recently pointed out while Sweden went from being one of the countries in Europe with the most virus spread, to one that had some of the fewest cases in Europe, the numbers could always go up.

Its per capita death rate is several times higher than other Scandavian countries, but lower than the likes of Spain, Italy and the UK despite their lockdowns.

It’s marked a turnaround for the country, which saw one of the highest death tolls in the world per capita during its spring, recording 5893 deaths.

Just days ago media outlets reported how Sweden seemed to have the virus scourge controlled with the country having one of Europe’s lowest rates of daily new cases. Experts were proclaiming the pandemic there was essentially over.

Kim Sneppen, from the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, said the country had beaten the virus with herd immunity.

“There is some evidence that the Swedes have built up a degree of immunity to the virus which, along with what else they are doing to stop the spread, is enough to control the disease,” he told the Politiken newspaper.

It’s an idea Mr Tegnell has repeatedly denied, although he had indicated immunity is being evidenced.

“We are happy that the number of cases is going down rapidly and we do believe immunity in the population has something to do with that,” he said. “And we hope that the immunity in the population will help us get thought this fall with cases at a low level.”

“Today, all of the European countries are more or less following the Swedish model, combined with the testing, tracing and quarantine procedures the Germans have introduced, but none will admit it,” Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health, told The New York Times. “Instead, they made a caricature out of the Swedish strategy. Almost everyone has called it inhumane and a failure.”

Mr Flahault warned there was a major flaw in the Swedish approach – not wearing masks. “That can be a big drawback in the Swedish strategy if masks prove effective and key in fighting the pandemic,” he said.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, professor of virology at Aarhus University, recently said it could not be ruled out that Sweden would have a flare up. Still, its voluntary social distancing is something it’s sticking to.

Because of it, Sweden’s economy shrank by 9 per cent in the first months of the pandemic, compared with 20 per cent in Britain.

SOURCE

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‘No evidence’ Melbourne’s draconian curfew keeps coronavirus cases down – admits the senior bureaucrat who extended the policy

Melbourne’s night-time curfew was extended despite there being no evidence the measure would slow the rate of COVID-19 infection on its own, according to the senior health official who renewed the draconian rule.

The city’s five million residents were on August 2 banned from leaving their homes between the hours of 8pm to 5am except for work, medical or care-giving reasons.

Health officials extended the curfew on September 14 but with shortened hours from 9pm to 5am.

The curfew – which was only removed on Monday evening amid a rapid decline in daily case totals – was one of a range of sweeping coronavirus restrictions brought in as part of Victoria’s state of emergency powers.

Department of Health and Human Services senior medical adviser Michelle Giles admitted at a Supreme Court hearing on Thursday there was no physical evidence the policy alone reduced transmission.

Bourke Street is pictured deserted after a citywide curfew was introduced in Melbourne on August 2. The bureaucrat who signed off on the measure has admitted there was no evidence it would slow the rate of COVID-19 infection on its own +4
Bourke Street is pictured deserted after a citywide curfew was introduced in Melbourne on August 2. The bureaucrat who signed off on the measure has admitted there was no evidence it would slow the rate of COVID-19 infection on its own

‘What I say is the curfew is part of a package of directions that aim at reducing movement and interactions between people and there is evidence that reduces transmissions,’ she said.

But Associate Professor Giles – who had final say on the extension while standing in as Victoria’s Deputy Public Health Commander – told the court there was no proof the policy by itself would be effective.

Professor Giles also said she disagreed with the premier’s assertion when the curfew was announced it would help Victoria Police enforce the lockdown.

‘I actually considered the curfew in relation to public health,’ she said, according to The Australian.

‘I don’t agree with those comments, particularly the law enforcement one.’

The Supreme Court case has been brought by Mornington Peninsula cafe owner Michelle Loielo – who is suing the government claiming COVID-19 restrictions have caused a 99 per cent drop in her revenue.

‘Every time I see the premier, Daniel Andrews, on the television and every time I hear the premier speak, I feel a sense of dread and anxiety,’ she said.

Last month, Mr Andrews said he decided to bring in the unprecedented 8pm curfew even though it was not recommended by scientists.

‘That’s a decision that I’ve made,’ he said on 10 September, adding governments are ‘free to go beyond’ advice given to them by doctors.

The previous day Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said he did not recommend the curfew.

Ms Loielo, a Liberal Party supporter, claims the curfew violates her rights to freedom.

She says her business in Capel Sound used to bring in up to $20,000 a week in earnings.

SOURCE

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So Much for Income Tax Privacy

How many times have we been told that the information we send to the Internal Revenue Service in our federal income tax returns is guaranteed to be kept confidential?

So much for that myth, as President Trump can now attest. The New York Times somehow secured a copy of Trump’s income tax returns and is excitedly telling the world what they contain.

One thing is for sure: If the president of the United States can’t keep his income tax returns private, no one else can either.

From the very start of Trump’s quest for the presidency, the mainstream press has been obsessed with getting its hands on his tax returns. And from the very start, Trump refused to disclose them, which he has every right to do.

Trump took the position that his tax returns were none of anyone’s business. And he was right. HIs tax returns fell within his right of personal privacy. If people chose not to vote for him because of his refusal to disclose his tax returns, so be it. That would be their right. But that possibility didn’t abrogate Trump’s right of privacy.

Obviously, Trump’s position did not prevent him from winning the presidency. HIs tax returns were just not that important to millions of people who voted for him.

The New York Times’ decision to disclose Trump’s income tax returns reminds us of what a horrific disaster the adoption of the federal income tax was. Just think: For more than 125 years, Americans lived without a federal income tax. Everyone was free to keep everything he earned and decide for himself what to do with it.

During that time, the editorial board and reporters for the New York Times and other mainstream papers were not having conniption fits over the refusal of presidential candidates to reveal their income tax returns because, well, there were no income tax returns, given that there was no federal income tax.

One of the big reasons the Framers favored indirect taxes over direct taxes was that indirect taxes didn’t have the enormous intrusiveness into privacy that comes with direct taxes. If the Framers had proposed a federal income tax in the Constitution, there is no possibility that our American ancestors would have approved the Constitution and the federal government. Don’t forget, after all, that under the Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitution, the federal government had not been given the power to tax at all.

The Times and other mainstream papers are making a big deal out of Trump’s use of tax deductions and other tax-avoidance provisions of the massively thick IRS Code to avoid paying taxes. They are implying that he’s unpatriotic for not helping fund the welfare-warfare state that the income tax funds.

That’s ridiculous. It might be hypocritical given Trump’s ardent support for the welfare-welfare state but it’s certainly not unpatriotic to employ every tax avoidance provision in the book. After all, I’ll bet that the members of the Times’ editorial board and its big team of reporters and columnists do the same thing. They are just upset that they don’t do it as well as Trump.

I must say that I do find it ironic that while the mainstream press is celebrating the disclosure of Trump’s private tax returns, it is also failing to come to the defense of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, the men who disclosed the truth about the U.S. national security state to the world. In today’s topsy turvy world, it’s considered okay to violate the privacy of American citizens by publicly disclosing their income tax returns to the world. At the same time, it’s considered a grave crime to disclose the truth about the dark and sordid activities of the national security state that the income tax funds.

The best thing the American people could ever do is restore America’s founding principle of an income-tax free society and to repeal the dark and sordid warfare-welfare things that it funds.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal). My annual picture page is here. Home page supplement

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White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas reacts to Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, says ‘zero reason to panic’

Dr. Scott Atlas, a special adviser on coronavirus to President Trump, said Friday he expects the president and first lady to make a “complete, full and rapid recovery” after the two tested positive for COVID-19, adding, “there is zero reason to panic.”

During an exclusive interview with Fox News, Atlas said the novel coronavirus is an infection “that is very difficult to avoid.”

“It is no surprise that people get the infection, even with precautions,” Atlas said. “I anticipate a complete and full and rapid recovery back to normal after his necessary confinement period. I anticipate he’ll be back on the road and in full swing.”

Atlas called the president a “super vigorous man,” adding that he has “never seen anyone with more energy and more vigor, at any age, but particularly at his age.”

“He is a very, very healthy guy,” Atlas said. “And the overwhelming majority of people, even at his age, do fine with this. He is very healthy, and so I anticipate the same for him.”

When asked about the first lady, Atlas also maintained that “she is not a high-risk person at all and I anticipate she will do perfectly well.”

Atlas stressed that the president and first lady’s positive test results “change nothing” about what “should already be known.”

“This is a widespread, highly contagious infection, and this is going to be very mild or asymptomatic for the overwhelming majority of people, especially if you’re a healthy person,” he explained.

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The Unscientific Attack on the Science of Dr. Scott Atlas

The news media until recently had rarely criticized the medical advice of experts — especially those who worked for federal bureaucracies, international organizations or elite universities.

Yet the much-praised Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, has demonstrably weakened the effort to fight COVID-19.

During the critical initial weeks of the virus’s spread, Tedros parroted Chinese propaganda. He falsely assured a complacent world that the virus was likely not transmissible between humans and did not warrant travel bans. That Tedros was the first WHO director not to have a medical degree was seldom cited by the media.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is known to the public for his past advocacy of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. Although he now advises 77-year-old presidential candidate Joe Biden, Emanuel once wrote an article for The Atlantic titled “Why I hope to die at 75,” contending that that life after age 75 is, and should be, mostly over — now an eerie idea in a time of a pandemic that targets the elderly.

Emanuel has often weighed in on the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes in overly pessimistic fashion by suggesting that some acquired collective immunity and a viable vaccine were not likely to come soon.

Yet Emanuel also has been largely exempt from media criticism. No reporters have questioned his epidemiological expertise despite his background as an oncologist specializing in breast cancer.

The esteemed Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has given conflicting advice on the use of masks, quarantining and the methods of viral transmission. Yet such inconsistency is either ignored or chalked up by the media to the usual learning curve of dealing with a new epidemic.

So why — other than politics — is there now a concerted media attack on Dr. Scott Atlas, an adviser to the Trump administration on COVID-19 policy?

Atlas has had a distinguished career as one of world’s top neuroradiologists. He has become a national expert on public health policy, especially in the cost-benefit analysis of government programs.

After COVID-19 arrived in the U.S., Atlas consistently warned that government must follow science, not politics, in doing the least amount of harm to its people. He has reminded us that those under 65 rarely die from COVID-19, and that those infected who are younger than 20 usually do not show any serious symptoms.

Accordingly, Atlas has urged the states to focus more resources on the most vulnerable — those over 65, who account for the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths — and allow younger Americans to re-enter schools and the workforce with appropriate caution.

Atlas has also warned that the available test data on COVID-19’s infectiousness, spread and morbidity must be handled with care, given that those who feel sick are more like to get tested. He argues that those with some natural protection from the virus, either through antibodies from an asymptotic past infection or through T-cells, may be a far larger group than previously thought.

But most importantly, Atlas has warned that government must be careful not to endanger Americans with draconian lockdowns that curtail needed medical examinations, procedures and treatments.

Just as dangerous as the disease may be quarantine-related spikes in mental illness, substance abuse, child and spousal abuse, and depression from lost livelihoods. Children may be suffering irreparable harm from being locked down and kept out of school.

Atlas has shown that these policy choices unfortunately entail bad options and even worse ones, rather than good choices and even better alternatives. He has not played down the dangers of COVID-19 but rather has reminded us to look at scientific data that often belies media sensationalism.

Many in the media, some of his former colleagues at Stanford Medical School and some other Stanford faculty members have claimed that Atlas — a colleague of mine at the Hoover Institution — has acted unprofessionally. They allege that he has downplayed the lethality of the virus, implying that he is aiding the administration’s efforts to ease out of the quarantine.

Yet few if any of these complainants have cited supporting evidence, either from what Atlas has written or said. Often the accusations turn puerile, suggesting that Atlas can’t be a public health expert because he was originally a neuroradiologist.

In fact, rarely reported is that many members of the Stanford community are honored by its medical school receiving global acclaim for its diversity of expert scientific opinion on the virus.

Nobel Prize-winning biophysicist Michael Levitt of Stanford, along with several stellar Stanford epidemiologists, have been praised worldwide for their careful critiques of often media-generated misconceptions — especially on the overreliance on COVID-19 positive test data to calibrate viral prevalence and morbidly.

How ironic that some critics fault Atlas for not following science, but they do so in a fashion that is completely … well, unscientific.

SOURCE

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The First Debate Eviscerated the Central Argument for Joe Biden’s Candidacy

When former Vice President Joe Biden announced his candidacy for president last year, he said he chose to run after witnessing the white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. He condemned President Donald Trump for supposedly praising white nationalists (Trump didn’t) and then said he was running for president because “I want to restore the soul of this country.” His premise? Trump is an aberration, and Biden will restore America’s decency.

Contrary to the popular narrative on the Left, the first presidential debate on Tuesday did not prove that Trump is a white supremacist. It did, however, prove that Joe Biden cannot restore the soul of America.

The “decency” candidate constantly interrupted his opponent during the debate. The candidate who wants to “restore the soul of America” unleashed a torrent of insults against his opponent. The “moderate” Biden refused to say whether or not he would pack the Supreme Court. What kind of “soul,” exactly, would he restore?

Biden and Trump proved rather rude to one another, although Biden’s personal insults were arguably worse.

The Democrat told his Republican opponent to shut up, called him a “racist,” a “liar,” and a “clown,” and said, “You’re the worst president that America’s ever had!”

How, exactly, would language like this “restore the soul of America?”

Biden’s debate performance is not the only argument against his ability to restore America’s soul.

Joe Biden has himself embraced the radical left and openly socialist faction of his party. He has refused to condemn antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters and agitators by name, instead blaming “right-wing militias” for the violence in American cities. Biden has bragged about the character defamation of Robert Bork, lied about the man who got into the tragic accident that killed his wife, and even compared Trump to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Trump Eviscerates the False Narrative About His Proud Boys Answer to White Supremacy Question
Even if Biden was a moderate and an entirely decent man, most Americans expect that if Biden wins the election in November, his vice president will take up the mantle sometime before his 4-year term comes to a close. In other words, the ostensibly moderate Joe Biden is really a kind of Trojan Horse for one Kamala “let’s lock up pro-life journalists” Harris.

Harris is prickly, slimy, extremely disingenuous, and quite radical. She smeared Brett Kavanaugh with outright lies. After her record as a tough-on-crime attorney general, she tried to get hip by lying about smoking pot in college. She demonized Roman Catholic judges for their faith. Oh, and during the primary, she was the most vocal candidate to condemn a certain Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. for — among other things — working with segregationists in his own party.

President Trump is far from perfect, but he is curbing the radical Left’s transformation of America. He is defending the Constitution from the Left’s unilateral redefinition by nominating originalist judges and justices. He is restraining the radical transgender dissolution of gender in the law. He is countering the Marxist critical race theory of the 1619 Project. He is defending religious freedom against a Democratic onslaught.

Biden launched his campaign on the premise that Trump has destroyed America’s moral compass, whatever his policy successes. Yet on Tuesday, the Democrat definitively proved that he would not restore America’s moral compass.

On November 3, Americans have a choice between a president who stands with the original public meaning of the Constitution and a Democrat who wants judges to rewrite the Constitution according to their policy preferences, specifically in favor of abortion, and who refuses to say whether he’ll pack the Supreme Court wink wink, nod nod.

Both candidates are aggressive and rude. Perhaps Trump is ruder — although he may only seem that way because he has to fight the legacy media’s outright leftist bias. Biden wasn’t exactly decent to Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan in 2012.

The debate on Tuesday will not likely make a big difference in the polls, but it did undercut Joe Biden’s central argument for his candidacy. Americans who tire of Trump and want a “return to normalcy” should not pull the lever for Joe Biden. If they can’t stomach Trump, perhaps they should consider Libertarian Jo Jorgenson

SOURCE

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Leader McConnell: ‘Full Steam Ahead’ on Judge Barrett’s Confirmation After POTUS Tests Positive for COVID-19/b>

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) indicated that the confirmation hearings for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, will proceed as planned after President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19.

Judge Barrett tested negative for coronavirus, has not been in contact with President Trump since her nomination ceremony, and is following CDC guidelines, the White House said.

McConnell tweeted that Judge Barrett’s confirmation will proceed “full steam ahead,” and Graham said that the president is “very engaged” in the hearings ahead:

SOURCE

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IN BRIEF

Attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse to sue Joe Biden for libel after campaign video labels his client a white supremacist (Disrn)

Wife of Boston Marathon hero said Biden touched her in “an inappropriate and uncomfortable way” (Washington Examiner)

Pope Francis denies audience with Mike Pompeo; the ever-politicking Vatican warns against playing politics over China (Reuters)

California’s nanny-state governor signs corporate boardroom diversity law (Fox Business)

California task force will consider paying reparations for slavery (AP)

Disney lays off 28,000 employees (Disrn)

American and United to lay off 32,000 as airline aid talks drag on (Bloomberg)

Movie-industry group pleads for aid from Congress, warning “theaters may not survive” (MarketWatch)

Americans increasingly believe violence is justified if the other side wins (Politico)

Trump plans to slash refugee admissions to new low of 15,000 (Reuters)

Policy: How the administration is taking back the courts (The Daily Signal)

Policy: It’s beyond time to reform the UN Human Rights Council (The Dispatch)

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal). My annual picture page is here. Home page supplement

Australian scientists insist hydroxychloroquine COULD prevent people catching COVID-19 after giving the controversial drug to hundreds of health care workers

Australian scientists have vowed to continue investigating whether taking hydroxychloroquine can stop people becoming infected with coronavirus.

Researchers from the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne believe the drug could prevent people catching SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19.

Hundreds of health workers in NSW and Victoria have been given the drug in the Institute’s COVID SHIELD trial in an effort to try and determine its effectiveness as a prophylactic.

Hydroxychloroquine was brought to public attention when US President Donald Trump said he was using the malaria drug to ‘protect’ himself from coronavirus.

Prescriptions for the drug subsequently skyrocketed, before it was removed from major testing trials as it proved to be ineffective in reducing the impact of COVID-19.

Scientific journal The Lancet published and later retracted a study based on false data that claimed coronavirus cases taking hydroxychloroquine had an increased death rate.

COVID SHIELD co-lead investigator Marc Pelligrini said researchers were not considering the drug as a treatment, but as a preventative.

‘The evidence that shows that the drug doesn’t particularly help with treatment really never deterred us because we always thought that … if the drug did have a role in preventing people from getting COVID-19, it has to be even before they were exposed to SARS-CoV-2,’ he told The Australian.

Test tube studies have found hydroxychloroquine can work to impede the replication of COVID-19 and discourage proliferation.

Claire Lobb is an emergency care nurse at The Alfred Hospital and among about 230 frontline healthcare workers signed up for the four-month trial.

‘Hydroxychloroquine is a drug that is cheap and readily available, with very few side effects. If there is a chance this drug could help prevent frontline healthcare workers from getting COVID-19, I think it is important that we do a proper clinical trial to test it,’ she said.

Ms Lobb said she was keen to be involved and excited at the prospect of finding out whether the drug was useful as a prophylactic.

‘To have a drug that is cheap and widely available to reduce transmission of the virus to frontline healthcare workers would be really helpful, especially while we are waiting for a vaccine,’ she said.

While the Australian researchers remain hopeful hydroxychloroquine could prevent COVID-19, a U.S. study found on Thursday the drug offers no protection.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found about 6.3 per cent of hospital workers who took the drug regularly caught the virus, compared to 6.6 per cent of people who didn’t.

The effect, they said, was ‘negligible’ and although a slightly higher proportion of people without the drug became sick, it was not a big enough difference to suggest hydroxychloroquine worked.

Whether or not the medicine could help treat people who already had Covid-19 was not studied.

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New CDC Coronavirus Survival Rates Torches the Democrats’ Lockdown Regime

I know a lot has happened recently. The 2020 election is entering its final stages. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18 at the age of 87, adding a SCOTUS fight to this cycle. It’s insanity. And yet, COVID is still around. Well, like any pathogen, it’s still around, but the panic porn has somewhat subsided. You drift further from the doom and gloom once you turn off MSNBC and CNN who weaponized this virus in an effort to better Joe Biden’s chances of winning the election. At the very least, panic and mayhem almost always impact a sitting administration to its detriment. Donald Trump has been heavily slammed by the fake news press, despite enacting an agenda that Joe Biden said he would do if elected. The only exception being a national mask mandate, which he stepped away from on constitutional grounds, and a new lockdown regime…if recommended by the experts.

You mean, the experts who worried about protesters wanting to re-open their businesses to feed their families but endorsed the mass protesting done by Black Lives Matter activists. Oh, and most of these devolved into outright rioting, but whatever, right? You can riot but can’t feed your family. Being outside is risky…unless you’re protesting in support of liberal causes. The virus is not transmissible le in that situation. That’s our medical expert class, a bunch of ‘woke’ quasi-Democrat operatives that spread fear porn 24/7 on these liberal networks. Well, a new CDC study on COVID survival rates just wrecked the Democrats’ lockdown protocols—and Joe Biden’s plans for a new national lockdown. Why? Well, because the survivability rate for almost everyone, even the elderly is 90+ percent.

And let’s not forget that Democrats are responsible for a lot of the US-based deaths with their nursing home policy. Yes, forcing these locations in which house our most vulnerable can end with deadly consequences and it has, with almost half of the US death toll being traced to these facilities. No other party has done more to increase the death rate and suffering than the Democratic Party. Also, those with co-morbidities are also vulnerable, as they are regarding any virus. People fighting cancer, history of lung infections, organ transplants, etc., have always been vulnerable. COVID is no different.

I’ll concede that a brief lockdown at the outset of this thing when we knew next to nothing might have been necessary just to keep cases down. Now, that’s not to say I’m not saying we know a whole lot now because we still don’t, but the market was sinking faster than the Andrea Doria and some form of government action usually stabilizes things. And then, Democrats decided to arbitrarily extend these lockdowns and establish a power-grabbing regime. Typical. It’s as expected and a consequence in areas we already knew were to be anti-freedom: blue states.

Some of us overreacted, yes. I raise my hand, but now it’s time to end this nonsense. Florida and Indiana are now fully open. It’s time everyone else does the same. For the healthy, in all age groups, it seems almost everyone recovers. Should people remain vigilant and be safe? Sure. Wash your hands and the like, but this virus and the fear that comes with it is over. No one wants to get COVID obviously, but let’s stop treating this thing like it’s some new virus a la The Andromeda Strain.

End the lockdowns. Also, to all the medical experts, your time is up. We’re done. Go away and learn to not be idiots when offering advice because a lot of what was shoveled into the media was straight-up ‘woke’ nonsense. No, racism isn’t as deadly as COVID, which was offered as a justification for why no one went ‘COVID Karen’ over the mass protests. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, another idiot, delayed opening schools but was going to allow daycares to open. That makes no sense. If anything, we saw why Democrats can’t govern.

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AG Barr Is Making America Safe Again. Will He Get Credit for It?

For years, Democrats have gone to great lengths to punish Americans for exercising their Second Amendment rights while ignoring career criminals breaking the law and carrying out violent crimes with firearms.

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into states across the country, successfully limiting the ability of law-abiding citizens to fight back against those who want to do them harm. Through his gun control lobbying organization, Everytown, Bloomberg has made it harder for women to defend themselves against domestic abusers, stalkers and easier for criminals to prey on the innocent. Everytown and other anti-rights groups conveniently target law-abiding citizens because it’s easier and cowardly while they refuse to do the hard, dangerous work of going after violent criminals illegally using or possessing firearms.

Under the leadership and tenure of Attorney General Bill Barr, the Department of Justice has done the hard work to go after the criminals wreaking havoc in the streets. Through Operation Legend, which was implemented earlier this year, federal law enforcement agencies have aggressively gone after those who Barr and federal prosecutors call “the trigger pullers” and have taken hundreds of illegal firearms off of the streets. They’re also going after those who knowingly and illegally sell guns to criminals.

“We’ve dedicated hundreds of the federal government’s best investigators, analysts, fugitive trackers and other experts to work with our state and local colleagues in law enforcement here in Chicago to help get violent criminals off the streets and I am pleased to report Operation Legend is working. Crime is down and order is being restored to this great American city,” Barr said during a press conference earlier this month.

These efforts have led to a substantial decrease in violence carried out by criminals using guns. In Chicago, the murder rate has been cut in half since July thanks to federal efforts to take bad guys off the streets. In total, Operation Legend has resulted in the arrests of 2000 individuals for serious crimes, 592 of them have been charged federally. Nearly 600 illegal firearms have been seized.

This is a substantial change from the previous administration. Under Attorney Generals Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, federal prosecutions against those using firearms to carry out crimes plummeted. The result was more innocent victims and increased crime in America’s most vulnerable communities.

“While President Obama decries gun violence and presses for more laws to restrict ownership, his Justice Department has prosecuted 25 percent fewer cases referred by the main law enforcement agency charged with reducing firearms violence across the country, a computer analysis of U.S. prosecution data shows,” the Washington Times reported in 2014. “Federal prosecutors brought a total of 5,082 gun violation cases in 2013 recommended by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, compared with 6,791 during the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency in 2008, according to data obtained from the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. The 2013 totals represent a 42 percent decline from the record number of 8,752 prosecutions of ATF cases brought by the Justice Department in 2004 under Mr. Bush, according to the data.”

Barr is reducing gun violence by upholding the law and putting bad people in prison. Will he get credit for it?

SOURCE

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Telemundo’s Poll Offered Some Very Bad News for Joe Biden

This could hand the crucial swing state of Florida to Trump

Is it because he quasi-endorsed or didn’t push back as hard as he should against the far-left’s agenda during the primaries? Do they know he’s a weak sauce candidate? Or is it because his Hispanic outreach operation has been all-in-all total garbage? On the latter point, it might not be the case of bad outreach operations because the difference in preference regarding who won the first presidential debate is so large. It’s as vast as the Pacific Ocean.

While many noted how the first debate went off the rails between President Trump and Joe Biden, Hispanic voters overwhelmingly picked Trump as the winner. In fact, Trump crushed Biden 66/34 regarding who they think won the first duel. It goes in keeping with the polling data that Trump has been doing well with Latinos. You see this in Miami-Dade County, Florida, a key Democratic bastion, where Trump has been doing mighty fine with this voter bloc, causing some Democrats to worry. Well, I’m sure Telemundo’s poll didn’t neutralize those fears:

That’s quite a trouncing.

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Florida’s Governor Has Taken GIANT STEP Towards Taking Care Of Rioting Thugs!

Governors actually hold a great deal of power, it’s why they are the one person that can stop an execution from taking place.

With all of the rioting going on these past few months, it is about time someone does something about it.

The state of Florida is going to get tough on people who engage in violence during protests, Florida’s Republican governor said Monday in announcing new legislation.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said his proposed legislation will impose felony-level penalties on anyone who damages property, causes injury or destroys public property during a protest.

“Recently in our country we have seen attacks on law enforcement, we’ve seen disorder and tumult in many cities,” DeSantis said.

Florida’s legislature won’t begin its annual 60-day session until March, so it’s somewhat unusual for the governor to announce a legislative proposal so far in advance. But DeSantis has the support of incoming Senate President-designate Wilton Simpson and House Speaker-designate Chris Sprowls, along with local law enforcement agencies throughout the state.

Democratic leaders criticized the measures as a ploy to help President Donald Trump’s re-election bid. Florida’s 29 electoral votes are a key to Trump’s re-election and polls show a tight race with former Vice President Joe Biden.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal). My annual picture page is here. Home page supplement

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Australia: State Government funds research into ‘game changer’ in fight against COVID-19

Aussie scientists are on the verge of a major breakthrough in the fight to track and control coronavirus that could see a return to normal life.

A leading coronavirus expert in the UK has pointed to research showing children display a different set of COVID-19 symptoms to adults.

Researchers at Xing Technologies are developing an ultra-rapid coronavirus test that can detect whether a person is infected and contagious within moments.

The State Government has already invested $1.5 million into the project and the company has also received $1 million from the US Government.

The Courier Mail reports that trials for the test are already underway in the US.

Brisbane-based Xing Technologies CEO Tom Esplin told the newspaper that a rapid test could pave the way for a return to normal pre-COVID activities, including travel.

“People are saying we need a rapid point-of-care test to let people get on aeroplanes,” Mr Esplin said.

“We’d like to be able to offer it. The highest viral loads occur in the three days before you develop symptoms. This test is perfectly suited for those who’ve got the highest risk of spreading it.”

The test has been designed to use a nasal swab that those who have taken COVID-19 tests are familiar with.

A solution would then be applied to the swab to produce a rapid result.

The Today show reports the test “could be used to test people before they go into high risk areas” like “aged care facilities, shopping centres, planes and hospitals”.

Queensland Innovation Minister Kate Jones told the Courier Mail that funding the project through the Palaszczuk Government’s Industry Tech Fund was an important step in moving forward with the lingering threat of COVID-19.

“It could be a real game changer in the fight against this pandemic,” Ms Jones said.

The test could cost as little as a cup of coffee, 9 News reports.

There are hopes that it could be used in a spray to be applied to personal protective equipment like face shields and face masks.

SOURCE

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Trump Still Building the Border Wall

In spite of Covid-19, the Trump administration is on track to hit its goal of building 450 miles of border wall by the end of this year. Currently, crews have built 341 miles and are averaging more than a mile-a-day of new wall. To date, they have used 509,000 tons of steel and 732,000 cubic yards of concrete to construct the wall.

Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, issued the following statement in reaction to the update:

“President Donald Trump continues to keep promises as 341 miles of new border security wall have been put up with the past three months averaging more than a mile a day. In spite of constant fighting with Democrats who opposed this basic measure, the Trump administration is on pace to hit its goal of building 450 miles of wall by the end of the year.

“Protecting America from illegal immigration, the free flow of drugs across the border, and the national security threats of the open border has been a priority which President Trump has fought tooth and nail to achieve. The President knows that you cannot have a secure America without a secure border and has expended massive amounts of political capital to keep this promise. No one can doubt that this President has been resolute in his determination to stop the flow of illegal traffic across our border, the same cannot be said of Joe Biden.

“The Obama-Biden administration built the cages and put children in them along the southern border. The Obama-Biden administration oversaw and encouraged the flooding of our southern border with illegal immigrants. The Obama-Biden administration gave lip-service to southern border security while allowing the few barriers along the border to fall into disrepair. President Trump has not only been busy building the wall, but because Mexico has begun cooperating with us and is now turning back illegal entrants, there has been a significant drop in the numbers of illegal entrants into our country.”

“What’s more, President Trump has cracked down on those who have used the legal VISA provisions under law to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor, in many cases forcing the displaced Americans to train their replacements.”

SOURCE

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New Project Veritas Video: Voter Fraud in Ilhan Omar’s District

A Somali whistleblower working in the sheriff’s office helped O’Keefe record evidence of a cash-for-votes scheme.

A“ballot broker” boasts about keeping hundreds of absentee ballots in his car trunk. He brags about them being filled in by people other than the voters. Often, money changes hands. Witnesses tie the rampant fraud to the campaign chairman of a prominent member of the radical “squad” in the U.S. House. Loose election laws allow people to come from out of state, vote, and then leave again.

This activity is really happening in America in 2020, and it’s been captured on video by guerrilla filmmaker James O’Keefe. Some of it could be coming to swing states near you if something isn’t done.

A concerted effort is being made to use the coronavirus as an excuse to transform how we vote in elections by shifting to mail-in or absentee ballots. We are told that democracy will be improved if we allow ballots to be handled outside the scrutiny of election officials — and that there is almost no voter fraud, so what’s to worry about?

Trump Calls on U.S. Attorney to Investigate Reports of Illegal Ballot Harvesting by Ilhan Omar Supporters
FBI Investigating Whether Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother
Common sense and election observers argue against any sudden shift. “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud,” concluded the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter. Allowing such ballots “increases the risks of fraud and of contested elections.”

In 2012, a grand jury in Miami-Dade County warned about the risks of absentee voting: “Once that ballot is out of the hands of the elector, we have no idea what happens to it. The possibilities are numerous and scary.”

Omar Escobar, the Democratic district attorney of Starr County, Texas, says that in his area the abuse of elderly citizens for their absentee ballots is such that “the time has come to consider an alternative to mail-in voting . . . something that can’t be hijacked.”

Guerilla filmmaker James O’Keefe is famous for having busted institutions ranging from the fraudulent voter-registration group ACORN to NPR to Google. His Project Veritas team has also piled up an impressive array of videos documenting voter fraud and how easy it is to commit it.

Veritas reporters found that it was easy to vote using the name of a dead person in New Hampshire. They filmed a Greenpeace activist in Colorado boasting about how he could find ballots in trash cans that could be fraudulently mailed in. In North Carolina, political operatives encouraged Veritas representatives to vote even if they were not citizens. In 2016, Veritas cameras caught Alan Schulkin, Manhattan’s Democratic election commissioner, saying, “It’s absurd. There is a lot of fraud. Not just voter fraud, all kinds of fraud.” He explained, “They put [people] in a bus and go from poll site to poll site.” Schulkin was promptly fired for his candor by New York City mayor Bill de Blasio.

Now O’Keefe has trained his cameras on “ballot harvesting,” in which third parties collect mail-in ballots and deliver them to election officials. While illegal in some states, it is legal in California and other states. The individual collecting the ballots can even be a paid campaign worker for someone who is on the ballot. So-called ballot brokers will target certain communities, apartment complexes, or nursing homes to collect votes for their political party.

O’Keefe has uncovered what appears to be a massive ongoing voter-fraud scheme in Minneapolis. It is linked to the political machine of Ilhan Omar, the congresswoman from Minnesota’s fifth district (Minneapolis) and a close ally of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the U.S. House.

Omar was first elected in 2018 and quickly became a controversial figure, rebuked for her anti-Semitic remarks and accused of shady campaign spending and having committed immigration fraud by marrying her brother. In 2020, she was challenged by Antone Melton-Meaux, a lawyer who promised to pay less attention to national progressive politics and who ran on the campaign slogan “Focused on the Fifth.” He was endorsed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial board and former Minneapolis NAACP president Nekima Levy-Armstrong.

Many people believe that Omar’s complete domination of the district’s politics is rooted in her machine’s ability to fool, seduce, or bribe members of her Somali community into committing voter fraud.

Minnesota law forbids anyone from “ballot harvesting” more than three ballots in an election. So why does Liban Mohamed, a “ballot broker,” boast about having 300 ballots in his car from the August primary, many of them blank and some opened? “Money is everything,” he laughs on the video. Activists describe how people receive cash when they hand their absentee ballot over so it can be filled out.

A. J. Awed, a Somali who was a losing candidate for city council in Minneapolis’s Ward 6, is shocked at the “corruption” he sees. He calls Omar’s machine “an alliance between [her] clan and the progressive Left.” A Somali political activist says the state’s Democratic Party knows all about the schemes. She describes how Somalis have long moved in from out of state and temporarily established residence and then voted on Election Day, with local campaign workers “vouching” for them. They then disappear and go back to their real homes and their normal lives. Now, with the loosening of mail-in ballot laws, cheating is even easier.

O’Keefe’s guide and facilitator in making these undercover videos is Omar Jamal. A Somali American, Jamal works for the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office and also runs the Somali Watchdog Group, which fights corruption by some of the community’s leaders.

O’Keefe’s sources say the practices that O’Keefe describes are organized by Ali (Isse) Gainey, Ilhan Omar’s deputy district director. Isse has served critical roles in Omar’s two successful congressional campaigns as the field organizer for her Minnesota House race and the outreach director for her first congressional campaign. Jamal says that Omar is “victimizing her own community and undermining election integrity.”

Nor is the corruption new. Phyllis Kahn, a Democratic state representative in Minneapolis for 44 years until Omar defeated her in 2016, has long complained about voter fraud tied to Omar’s machine; she believes that fraud contributed to her sudden defeat.

Nor is Kahn the only Democrat concerned that voter fraud exists and is seriously undermining our elections. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii Democrat who made a mild splash as a presidential candidate this year, has become a lead co-sponsor of a bill to withdraw federal election assistance from states that allow ballot harvesting. Her Republican counterpart on the Election Fraud Prevention Act is Illinois Republican Rodney Davis.

“Banning ballot harvesting is not a partisan issue . . . and it is ripe for fraud,” she says in a video. “It poses a serious threat to the integrity of our elections.”

Omar Jamal is even more blunt. “If American people don’t pay attention to what’s happening, soon the country will collapse,” he warns. “The rules and regulations, if you ignore that, and you let corruption and fraud become a daily business, then tough luck. The country will not exist as they know it.”

SOURCE

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IN BRIEF

The Democrats’ $2.2 trillion COVID relief bill is still likely too rich for GOP (Washington Examiner)

Senate Republicans eye Amy Coney Barrett floor vote at end of October, just days before election (Fox News)

Rules are for the little people: Senator Dianne Feinstein walks through an airport without a mask — just three months after she demanded a nationwide mask mandate (Daily Mail)

Biden’s Texas political director implicated in massive mail-in ballot harvesting scheme in Harris County (American Greatness)

Minneapolis police say they will look into allegations of ballot harvesting connected to Ilhan Omar (The Post Millennial)

Next time someone tells you noncitizens don’t vote in U.S. elections, tell them about Canadian Christine Chernosky (PJ Media)

Minneapolis plan to defund the police collapses; city council members “regret” making pledge (The Daily Wire)

Arizona cop stops at 3 a.m. to pick up fallen American flag (Disrn)

A military first: Supercarrier is named after Doris Miller, a heroic black sailor at Pearl Harbor (NPR)

Policy: Why American exceptionalism is different from other countries’ “nationalisms” (The Daily Signal)

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal). My annual picture page is here. Home page supplement

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From RBG to Mask Mandates, the Dems Beg for Authoritarian Rule

Imagine living in a country where your basic rights are subject to a single individual’s whim and decree. That this individual could die at any moment and her replacement will make a new decree removing those basic rights. Is this the country you want to live in?

Imagine in the late 18th century telling Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington that 240 years after the revolutionary war, millions of Americans would be mourning the death of a single individual with lamentations that their basic rights, freedoms, and even our system of government are endangered.

Imagine telling these patriots who were pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to facing down the most powerful monarch on the face of the planet that these Americans would be screaming and wailing at the sky over the death of this single individual who they often referred to as a “queen.”

Is there any doubt that our Founding Fathers, knowing that millions of their fellow Americans would vest such faith, power, and control in a single individual – a “queen” – would look at each other and say, “Oh, why bloody bother? We have our wealth and property; let’s go get an ale.”

I wouldn’t blame them, and neither would you.

This is not the America our Founders envisioned or expected for us, their posterity.

And those Americans who crave, yearn and plea for such a nation should be looked upon with suspicion.

There is a common theme in the fervent lamentations hurled upon the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg from the Left in this country: That she was the last standing protection in this country from multitudes losing their basic rights and now that she is gone, these rights are facing an existential crisis.

How obscene.

To think that our basic rights are in the hands of an 87-year-old woman with several bouts of cancer is terrifying and antithetical to everything our country was supposed to stand for. But this is the country the Left has created by lifting the Supreme Court to the level of some kind of super-legislature with its limited members enjoying lifetime appointments.

The basics of your constitutional rights are not supposed to be determined by one tie-breaking vote on the Supreme Court. Your constitutional rights are determined in the Constitution. And if you want to modify the Constitution to recognize and protect more rights, then there is a mechanism to do just that. They are called amendments. We’ve used it many times in our 240 years.

Instead of following James Madison and Alexander Hamilton’s recipe, the Left has used the courts to inject newfound rights and protections with unelected judges who are never accountable to the American people. This has been a recipe for disaster, which has now led us to this revealing moment.

The Left has not been circumspect about their strategy to remake our Constitution through judicial fiat. Instead, they are threatening violent revolution if they can’t have a hand in selecting their new, replacement monarch in Queen RBG’s place.

It’s telling. They actually like this arrangement.

This tendency toward authoritarianism is also revealed in their singular criticism of President Donald Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If Joe Biden and other Democrats are ever properly pressed on their hyperbolic attacks on Trump of coronavirus, the only real policy they point to that they’d have done differently is to have a national mask mandate. Now, let’s set aside some of the dubious science behind many of the mask mandates we’ve seen pop up in Democrat states. Let’s instead think through their real criticism of Trump in this regard.

Think about it: The one thing they’d do that Trump didn’t do is implement a nation-wide mandate to wear a mask. This mask declaration is undoubtedly unconstitutional, but they don’t care. They insist that not only is the mandate necessary, but any president who does not implement one is neglectful of his duties to the American people.

Their biggest criticism of Trump in this pandemic is that he has not been authoritarian enough.

“How dare the president not command what we should and should not wear in public and how we should or should not behave!!!”

It doesn’t end there. From the Green New Deal, mandates on your car, your travel choices, your diet, your choice of gun for self-defense, your income, your energy options, your income level, your medical choices, your doctor, your children’s school, and on and on and on… the Democrats have a plan to fix this country, as long as you just let them tell you what to do and fine or throw you in jail if you disobey.

They want their monarch to sit on the throne in the Supreme Court to grant or deny you your rights and they want the head of state to mandate your behavior and life choices so that it serves the state.

Imagine, we used to get upset in this country over a tax on tea.

SOURCE

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Kamala Harris is branded ‘ignorant’ for praising BLM protests and calling them ‘essential’ just three days after two cops were shot during Louisville riots

Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris has come in for criticism after saying that protests against racial injustice, including those by the Black Lives Matter group are ‘essential for the evolution of our country’ – with some online branding her ‘ignorant’.

Senator Harris D-Calif. made the comments during the NAACP’s national convention in which she was interviewed for more than one hour and come just three days after two police officers were shot and injured during rioting in Louisville.

The shooting came after a grand jury’s decision not to charge the officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor. One of the officers involved was charged with wanton endangerment for shooting into a neighboring apartment.

‘Nothing that we have achieved that has been about progress, in particular around civil rights, has come without a fight, and so I always am going to interpret these protests as an essential component of evolution in our country – as an essential component or mark of a real democracy.

‘The people’s voices must be heard, and it is often the people who must speak to get their government to do what it is supposed to do, but may not do naturally unless the people speak loudly – and obviously peacefully.’

Harris went on to praise the ‘brilliance’ and ‘impact’ of the Black Lives Matter movement.

‘I actually believe that Black Lives Matter has been the most significant agent for change within the criminal justice system,’ she said.

‘I think, a community and the country speaking out, understanding that nothing that we have achieved that has been about progress in this country has come without a fight. Nothing that we have achieved in our country that has been about progress, and in particular around civil rights has come without a fight.’

The comments came thick and fast with many seemingly shocked at the vice presidential candidate’s take on recent events.

‘Unmoved by the violence in our streets and the brutal attacks on our police officers, Kamala Harris says the ‘protests’ are essential for our ‘evolution’ as a country,’ wrote Arthur Schwarz as he used the senators own words against her.

It was a view shared by Steve Guest, Rapid Response Director of the GOP.

‘After months of left-wing violence, Democrat Sen. Kamala Harris says these protests are an essential part of our ‘evolution’ as a country,’ encouraging others to see fault with Harris’ words.

Robby Starbuck, a Cuban-American director and producer also attempted to place Harris’ quotes into relevant context.

”Nothing we’ve achieved… has come without a fight and so I’m always going to interpret these protests as an essential component of evolution in our country… and as necessary.’ – Kamala Harris Remember this when you see cities on fire & people attacked’, Starbuck added.

Another Twitter user, Philip Camp, called the senator ‘stupid’: ‘Kamala Harris praises BLM, says ongoing protests are ‘essential’ for change in US. Just shows how stupid Kamala Harris is. The country is going to pot with people like her in leadership roles.’

Christian author Daniel Bobinski was also far from impressed by what he had heard.

‘I’d like to publicly thank Kamala Harris for telling Americans that the protests (aka riots) need to continue … and hold her personally responsible for the violence and the medical bills … and yes, the deaths, too. I lay this at the feet of Congressional Democrats,’ he tweeted.

It’s not the first time Harris has defended the cause of protestors taking to city streets across the country.

‘We must always defend peaceful protest and peaceful protesters. We should not confuse them with those looting and committing acts of violence, including the shooter who was arrested for murder. Make no mistake, we will not let these vigilantes and extremists derail the path to justice,’ Harris said last month.

Harris’ comments come at the end of another week of mass protests over the death of Black Americans including Breonna Taylor, whose case prompted a series of demonstrations earlier this week.

Two officers, Louisville Metro Police Department, LMPD officer Robinson Desroches, left, and LMPD Maj. Aubrey Gregory were shot during clashes in Louisville on Wednesday, after authorities announced a grand jury had decided not to charge anyone in connection with the death of Taylor

Hundreds of demonstrators chanted Taylor’s name and marched in cities including New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Portland.

People gathered in Millennium Park, Chicago, chanting demands for justice as drivers in Michigan Avenue honked their horns.

Police in Atlanta unleashed chemical agents and made arrests after some protesters tried to climb on a SWAT vehicle.

In Wisconsin, peaceful marchers blocked traffic on an interstate and spoke about Ms Taylor on the steps of the state Capitol.

In Louisville, police said they arrested 127 people after what began as peaceful protests. Officers declared an unlawful assembly after they said fires were set in bins and several vehicles were damaged.

A police statement also described the ‘looting’ of several stores. Footage emerged showing buildings vandalized and burned in Louisville

Interim Police Chief Robert Schroeder said a suspect was detained in the shooting of two officers, who are expected to recover from their wounds.

Jail records later confirmed Larynzo D Johnson, 26, was charged with two counts of assault on a police officer and multiple charges of wanton endangerment of police officers.

SOURCE

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Platinum Plan Just Another Example of President Trump Supporting the Black Community—Democrats Could Learn Something From This

All too often, we see Democrats attack Black Americans like me who refuse to fall in line and answer every beck and call. We’re called names like “Uncle Tom” and “traitor” for refusing to obey Democrats when they tell us we are supposed to believe or react a certain way. I personally witnessed this after leaving the White House for President Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention (RNC) acceptance speech last month.

As I left the White House, a group of far-left radicals consisting of Democratic allies like Antifa and Black Lives Matter surrounded me – throwing insults and threats my way. If it were not for the brave law enforcement officers who protected me, I may not be here today. These radicals are the people who Democrats have embraced in recent months, and silence speaks louder than words. Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris have refused to condemn the far-left radicals of their party like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. If anything, the two are endorsing the fringes of their own party by refusing to take a stand against them.

As a Black man who is still a member of the Democratic Party, I am not afraid to support President Trump or call out the problems I see within my own party, and this is definitely one of them. All we have to do to see how radical these fringes of the Democratic Party have become is to look at the Black Lives Matter website.

The organization outright stated that they intend to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” until they just recently wiped the claim from their website. They called for the destruction of the nuclear family, which is already a problem that we are seeing in Black communities. If Democrats want to represent all Americans, why are they embracing radicals who hate everything America represents? As a proud American, as a proud Black man, and as a proud Democrat, I will be the first to condemn the fringes of my party.

But what do I get for speaking the truth? What do I get for telling Democrats they have a serious problem? I’ll tell you what I get – I get violent rioters screaming in my face that I am an “Uncle Tom,” a “race traitor,” and other awful names that I refuse to even give the light of day. After Senator Tim Scott, football star Herschel Walker, and I spoke at the RNC, “Uncle Tom” trended on Twitter. I have personally seen racism in America, and it’s not coming from the Republican Party.

The Democratic Party has a serious racism problem today in America, and it’s coming from the fringes that Democrats refuse to disavowal. Racism is ridiculing a Black man for breaking free from the Democratic plantation. It’s treating a Black man like he is stupid, ignorant, or some kind of traitor because he dares to think for himself.

I’ll tell you right now. If Democrats want to fix their racism problem, then they need to rid their party of the radicals like Antifa and Black Lives Matter that refuse to accept anything less than conformity – anything less than complete obedience. They’re prejudice toward those of us who don’t fit their “mold” of what a Black person is supposed to be or is supposed to believe. Democrats cannot allow this to continue.

It’s time for the Democratic Party to rid itself of the intolerant racists who refuse to step out of the way and allow the party to open up and welcome all Americans into its arms. We can’t do that when radical far-left groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter are controlling the direction of the party and when the party’s leaders like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris allow the nonsense to continue.

Meanwhile, President Trump has gone above and beyond to help Black communities – the same Black communities that Democrats pandered to and ignored for decades. As he just announced in his Platinum Plan, President Trump will be committing $500 billion to create what will be known as a new era of prosperity for Black communities and will also be committing to new legislation to further build on the historic First Step Act. What has Joe Biden offered? Nothing but empty promises.

If you’re a Democrat like me, that’s why we must re-elect President Trump. We must show the Democratic Party that we will not accept their intolerance any longer. President Trump has been open and accepting to all Americans, and the Republican Party has grown as a result. It’s time for Democrats to do the same, and they won’t get the message unless we send President Trump back to the White House once again.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in). GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal). My annual picture page is here. Home page supplement

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