Saturday PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
The Politics of a 'Fear Pandemic'
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Mark Alexander  
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Climate Change is Not Decimating Bees
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By Anthony Watts
{ americanthinker.com } ~ Several media outlets -- namely National Public Radio -- are touting a tall tale that climate change is decimating bee populations throughout North America... The false alarm is based on a February 7 study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The study, however, is deeply flawed and does not change the very low likelihood of climate change seriously impacting bee populations. After examining the study, titled “Climate change contributes to widespread declines among bumble bees across continents” -- one immediately notices that there is a key issue missing that is not discussed in the paper at all: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). In non-scientific jargon, CCD occurs when entire hives suddenly experience population crashes. CCD has been called the honeybee’s biggest enemy by scientific researchers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says: “There have been many theories about the cause of CCD, but the researchers who are leading the effort to find out why are now focused on these factors: Increased losses due to the invasive varroa mite a pest of honeybees. New or emerging diseases such as Israeli Acute Paralysis virus and the gut parasite Nosema.  Pesticide poisoning through exposure to pesticides applied to crops or for in-hive insect or mite control. Stress bees experience due to management practices such as transportation to multiple locations across the country for providing pollination services. Changes to the habitat where bees forage. Inadequate forage/poor nutrition. Potential immune-suppressing stress on bees caused by one or a combination of factors identified above.” Needless to say, the many causes of CCD identified above don’t get a single mention in this new study, which cites climate change as the overwhelming “cause” of declining bee populations. The study’s methods are quite dubious. In effect, they took a trove of bee population data, tossed out a bunch of facts and figures they didn’t like, put it into the world’s most complex gridded climate model, compared data, and somehow claimed correlation with climate change...  https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/02/climate_change_is_not_decimating_bees.html   

The public option is not an easy fix for health care
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by Joseph Antos & James C. Capretta
{ aei.org } ~ Government insurance advocates who are skeptical of Medicare for All’s prospects are placing their hopes on the “public option” as an easier-to-enact step in the same direction... All of the leading competitors to commie-Bernie Sanders, who remains unyielding in his commitment to single-payer health care, have embraced some version of what socialist-Pete Buttigieg calls “Medicare for all who want it.” In general terms, with a public option, the federal government would run its own health plan in competition with private insurance. But for political and practical reasons, starting up a new public insurance plan is easier said than done. Recent efforts to establish public-option plans on a small scale — in Washington State and Colorado — demonstrate some of the challenges of trying to create a nationwide public offering. In both states, officials were forced to scale back their ambitions because of financial concerns and industry opposition. They retreated from creating genuine public option plans — administered by the government — and chose instead to contract with existing private insurers to run “state-directed” offerings. Leveraging existing private plans avoids the expense and financial risk of replicating the functions of commercial insurance within a state bureaucracy. Mr. socialist-Buttigieg and other candidates associate their public option proposals with Medicare, but those plans would likely have little to do with the actual program — with good reason. The Medicare benefit falls short of what the candidates want to offer to voters. For instance, Medicare beneficiaries are not protected against catastrophic costs. They are not automatically covered for prescription drugs. And Medicare requires beneficiaries to pay substantial sums out of pocket for hospital admissions and other care. A public option would operate alongside existing private plans, with consumers deciding which offering is best for them. That requires fair competition, with the public option subject to the same rules as private insurance. Politicians will be tempted to bend the rules for the public plan with special subsidies or other favors, but that runs the risk of taking choice away from the voters — and alienating powerful insurance companies...  https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-public-option-is-not-an-easy-fix-for-health-care/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTVRVMU5XRmtOMll3TW1SaiIsInQiOiIrNFFDRUlwOGVBSmZNY2pBQmNiS3pcL0cyTW9SemZva0tyXC9QeVV4U2U1ZUloTENPdVZQdkJMdVRTbnl3ZDBhMkQ2VjlicExtSVp5dituSWxoTWQwem5iMGNEMHBOWHRrTFBCaGI4cW8yWk5HV1VudnZtVHBhT3RPMjJjdEZVZmdJIn0%3D  
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German Court Rejects Attempt 
to Enshrine Sharia Law
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by Soeren Kern
{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ Germany's Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that the constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms of Muslims can be curtailed if public displays of religiosity... in this case wearing Islamic headscarves in German courtrooms — endanger the ideological and religious neutrality of the state. The court's landmark ruling effectively smashes a backdoor effort to enshrine Sharia law into the German legal system. The case involves a 38-year-old German-Moroccan law student who was born in Frankfurt and customarily wears a headscarf in public. In January 2017, she began legal training in the German state of Hesse, where the law bans any expression of religion in its courtrooms for judges, lawyers and legal trainees. According to the law, legal trainees (rechtsreferendar) are allowed to wear a headscarf — except when they are performing certain official tasks in which they serve as representatives of the judiciary or the state. This means, for instance, that trainee lawyers are not allowed to wear a headscarf when presiding over a hearing, taking evidence or representing the public prosecution office. The complainant filed a lawsuit claiming that the headscarf ban interfered with her right to freedom of religion. She argued that she was being forced to choose between performing the intended tasks or fulfilling a religious clothing requirement that she considers imperative. The Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) ruled that, according to the law in Hesse, legal trainees have a duty to conduct themselves neutrally with respect to religion and that, when wearing a headscarf, the complainant was therefore barred from performing any tasks in the course of which she might be perceived as being a representative of the justice system or the state...   https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15658/german-court-rejects-attempt-to-enshrine-sharia 

Trump administration sued over plan to 
allocate additional DOD funds for border wall
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By RACHEL FRAZIN
{ thehill.com } ~ Three groups are suing the Trump administration over a plan to allocate an additional $3.8 billion in Department of Defense (DOD) funding for the border wall... "The president is doubling down on his unlawful scheme to raid taxpayer funds for a xenophobic campaign promise that is destroying national treasures, harming the environment, and desecrating tribal lands,” said Dror Ladin, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU, along with the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC), filed the suit in federal court in California on Friday. DOD notified Congress this month that it would transfer an additional $3.8 billion to be used for the wall. The notice to Congress said that the money would come from weapons programs like the F-35 fighter jet and would go toward the “support of higher priority items.” It said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “has identified areas along the southern border of the United States that are being used by individuals, groups, and transnational criminal organizations as drug smuggling corridors, and determined that the construction of additional physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the United States border is necessary in order to impede and deny drug smuggling activities.” The new lawsuit claims that the administration has "acted to circumvent Congress’s exclusive control over appropriations" and that its action "will have devastating effects on the environment." "The Trump administration’s illegal transfer of billions of dollars for wall construction has created a disaster in the borderlands,” said Sierra Club managing attorney Gloria Smith in a statement. “The destruction of cultural sites, Tribal burial grounds, endangered species, protected cacti and water resources shows that Trump will stop at nothing for this wall — not irreplaceable resources nor the Constitution," Smith added. Last year, President Trump declared a national emergency and announced that he would reallocate Defense Department funds to construction of the border wall after Congress did not allocate as much money as he wanted for the project in the federal budget. Following that move, several groups accused the president of overreach. The Sierra Club, ACLU and SBCC previously sued the Trump administration over that decision. The Supreme Court ruled last year that the administration could start using military funds for construction at the border, overturning a prior ruling that halted the use of those funds while litigation continues.  https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/485164-trump-administration-sued-over-plan-to-allocate-additional-money    
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Turkey Opens the Flood Gates: Syrian 
Migrants Granted Unhindered
Passage to Europe
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By  Chris Tomlinson
{ gellerreport.com } ~ A senior official has claimed that the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has opened the borders for Syrian asylum seekers and other migrants... and will not prevent anyone from heading to Europe by land or by sea, Reuters reports. The move comes after the Turkish government claims to expect a wave of migrants after around one million people were displaced in Idlib. According to Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu, “Land and sea crossings to Europe would be free to pass for the NEXT 72 HOURS and Turkey will open the borders immediately.” Following the signing of the migrant agreement, brokered in 2015 and came into effect in 2016, between the European Union and Turkey, President Erdogan and his ministers have made repeated threats to open the border. Last year Erdogan made several threats to “open the gates” including a threat in September in which he demanded aid from European countries to build a “security zone” along the border to settle around one million asylum seekers. “Give us logistical support, and we can build houses up to 30 kilometres into the north of Syria,” he said and added, “Either that happens, or we open the gates.” As of September, EU spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud noted that the political bloc had paid Turkey 5.6 billion euros as part of the EU-Turkey migrant pact...
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The Politics of a 'Fear Pandemic'
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Mark Alexander  Democrat Party leaders Sen. Chuck scumbag-Schumer and Rep. liar-Nancy Pelosi are in a quandary. They have to decide which of the headline tragedies today make for better political fodder — do they keep feeding the coronavirus fears, or do they put that on pause and politicize the Milwaukee murders in order to advance their gun-confiscation agenda?

Yes, their political modus operandi is just that causticly crass.

It follows the model perfected by Barack scumbag/liar-nObama and his then-chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who openly declared, “You don’t ever want a good crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” And that is exactly what they did in 2008, when scumbag/liar-nObama used a pandemic of financial fear as his ticket to the presidency. At the time, even Bill scumbag/liar-Clinton admitted that the Democrats were responsible for that crisis because they resisted “efforts by Republicans in the Congress … to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” scumbag/liar-Clinton himself had loosened up those standards 10 years earlier, with disastrous financial consequences but fortuitous political consequences.

My point is not to relitigate how the Democrats used that “fear pandemic” to ensure scumbag/liar-nObama’s election but to say they are experts at converting tragedy into political triumph. Their current “Hate Trump” platform is constructed on their perennial political foundation of fear, anger, and division.

At this point in the 2020 election cycle, Democrats are scrambling for any “opportunity to do things you think you could not do before” to enable them defeat Donald Trump, especially if they can’t dispense with Bernie Sanders. COVID-19, the scientific term for coronavirus, is providing them an election-year crisis that they won’t let go to waste, especially if it becomes a significant domestic health threat. They see the potential to convert coronavirus into Trump’s “Hurricane Katrina.”

In January, I wrote a comprehensive analysis, “The Flu and You,” putting the potential for a COVID-19 flu pandemic into perspective and offering helpful links on preparedness and response. At that time, the Trump administration was taking significant steps to prevent a viral spread in the U.S.

Monday of this week, reflecting concern about the economic impact of coronavirus, there was a 3.5% equities-market selloff — a bellwether indicator of economic concerns. For the record, there are other factors – equities are likely due a 10-15% correction, and the possibility that commie-Bernie Sanders could somehow win the 2020 presidential election is cause for a lot of concern among businesses and consumers. Responding to the selloff, Nate Jackson provided an update on COVID-19, noting how scumbag-Schumer and liar-Pelosi had their coronavirus crisis/fear machine at full throttle. liar-Pelosi claims the Trump administration’s request for $2.5 billion in funding was “long overdue and completely inadequate.” scumbag-Schumer declared that Trump is “asleep at the wheel.”

On Tuesday, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, an official at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), promoted a panic narrative that ran contrary to the Trump administration’s measured concern and effort to encourage calm. Messonnier, who is the sister of former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (one of the coup co-conspirators), told Leftmedia reporters that the pandemic potential is “bad” and the “disruption to everyday life may be severe.” She declared, “It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen.”

Let me be clear: Messonnier could be right. COVID-19 is estimated to be much more lethal than the .1% fatality rate of typical flu bugs, which have killed more than 60,000 Americans in a single year.

But her comments were irresponsible and played right into the Demos’ panic narrative — and another market selloff of 3.2%. The selloff continued into Wednesday and is not over. By undermining consumer and business confidence, and thus the equities markets, Democrats are playing politics with the wealth and job stability of all working Americans and their families. Democrats are quietly high-fiving each other in Capitol Hill cloakrooms, knowing that what is bad for America workers is bad for Trump’s reelection prospects.

Messonnier’s dire warnings necessitated an executive press conference Wednesday evening with President Trump and his key administration officials. In that conference, Trump appointed Vice President Mike Pence and Health Secretary Alex Azar to head the White House coronavirus-containment task force. Trump assured the public, “Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared,” adding the infection rates in the U.S. “may get a little bigger, [or] it may not get bigger at all.”

Of note regarding the “reliability” of reports from China’s communist regime, Trump said that China is containing the epidemic: “If you can count on the reports coming out of China, that spread has gone down.”

For his part, Mike Pence outlined the administration’s response thus far and plans moving forward: “[President Trump] declared a public health emergency. He suspended travel to the United States from China. He initiated quarantine efforts for American citizens returning, and he established the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which has literally met every single day. President Trump has directed me to lead a whole of government approach to address the coronavirus in this country. And I promise you: We will continue to bring the full resources of the federal government to bear to protect the American people… We’re all in this together. This is not the time for partisanship. This president will always put the health and safety of America first.”

As outlined in my COVID-19 analysis last month, for the most current information on the viral threat in the U.S., visit the CDC’s page, “What You Should Know,” which provides updates, preventive measures, travel advice, etc. You can review the CDC’s national pandemic-response plan and basic citizen flu-prevention measures.

And finally, as I noted in “The REAL Pandemic Threat” back in 2006, “Clearly, there are significant pandemic threats posed by viral infections that mutate into much more contagious forms and can spread regionally, nationally, and internationally, causing significant loss of life. The primary defense against such contagions is the capacity to shelter in place. What originates in China or Africa one week can be in your suburb the next.”

For that reason, we developed a comprehensive resource page on Disaster Preparedness Planning, including a Two-Step Individual Readiness Plan and a section on how to shelter in place. We encourage you to visit each of these pages, because national preparedness begins with individual preparedness, and individual preparedness is the firewall against a “fear pandemic.”

Update Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren, a master at politicizing everything, is demanding that funding for the border wall be diverted to combat COVID-19 nationally. But the fact is, our porous southern border is a signifiant entry point for the virus, particularly if there is an outbreak in Central America, sending caravans of “pandemic refugees” north. But more to the point, recently there has been a significant increase of Chinese nationals crossing our the southern border.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/68876?mailing_id=4892&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4892&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

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