Still More Evidence That Lockdowns Were A Massive Waste Of Time, Money, And Lives

by I & I Editorial Board: The nation’s economy is on track to drop by more than 30% in the second quarter. Unemployment is well into the double digits. Half of small businesses might close in the next six months. All for naught, it would appear, giving the growing pile of evidence that the economic lockdowns didn’t work.

The latest evidence comes from a report out of JP Morgan Chase & Co. this week. It finds that there’s been no increase in cases or deaths as other nations and U.S. states start reopening. This flies directly in the face of all the public health expert predictions of a major spike once people started moving about.

“Virtually everywhere, infection rates have declined after reopening, even after allowing for an appropriate measurement lag,” says the report’s author, Marko Kolanovic, a quantitative strategist at JPMorgan. “This means that the pandemic and COVID-19 likely have (their) own dynamics unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown measures that were being implemented.”

Another research paper released in early May, this one by Thomas A. J. Meunier of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found that the lockdowns in western Europe had no evident impact on the epidemic.

“Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends,” Meunier says.

In the United Kingdom, the disease reached its peak on April 8, which, given the way it progresses, means the peak infection was around March 18, according to Oxford University professor Carl Heneghan. That’s almost a week before the UK went into lockdown mode.

Bloomberg’s Elaine He looked at the data from Europe, compared it with their different strategies to deal with the outbreak, and concluded that “there’s little correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities.

Meanwhile, India’s massive lockdown – the largest in the world – is coming under attack for being ineffective. India now has more than 100,000 confirmed cases and is seeing the fastest growth in South Asia.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the lockdown has failed,” an epidemiologist who is a member of the Indian government’s coronavirus task force told The Caravan magazine. “Social distancing, wearing masks, and hand hygiene work. Together, these measures reduce the rate of transmission. However, to date, there is no evidence that lockdowns can cut down transmission.”

And Sweden, which had come under harsh attack from public health experts for not imposing an all-out lockdown, is now being held up by the World Health Organization as a model for the future.

Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert, said that “Sweden represents a model if we wish to get back to a society in which we don’t have lockdowns.”

Instead of issuing stay-at-home orders and forced business closures, Ryan said Sweden “put in place a very strong public policy around social distancing, around caring and protecting people in long-term care facilities.”

As we noted recently, Swedish infectious disease expert Johan Giesecke, writing in the medical journal Lancet, says “It has become clear that a hard lockdown does not protect old and frail people living in care homes — a population the lockdown was designed to protect. Neither does it decrease mortality from COVID-19, which is evident when comparing the United Kingdom’s experience with that of other European countries.”

We also pointed to a paper by Lyman Stone, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which looked at the available evidence and concluded simply that “lockdowns don’t work.” Stone found the death rate climbing after the lockdowns went into effect in the U.S.

Don’t expect anyone to admit they were wrong. The public health community – which has been peddling wildly exaggerated predictions of deaths – will never do so. Nor will Democrats and the press – which are committed to the narrative that every death in the U.S. is President Donald Trump’s fault. Trump isn’t likely to, either, since he agreed to shutting down the economy after he started taking his cues from public health doomsayers.

This isn’t to say that no action was needed to cope with this uncharted virus. That’s not the argument any of these researchers are making. What they are saying is that the lockdowns weren’t based on sound science, and that far less intrusive measures would likely have been just as effective, if not more so, without destroying the economy.

To be sure, there are studies claiming that the lockdowns reduced infections and saved lives.

But as JP Morgan’s Kolanovic noted, “Unlike rigorous testing of potential new drugs, lockdowns were administered with little consideration that they might not only cause economic devastation but potentially more deaths than COVID-19 itself.”

Where’s the “party of science” when you need it?
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Issues & Insights (@InsightsIssues) is a site formed by the seasoned I & I Editorial Board journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page. We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we believe the nation needs the kind of cogent, rational, data-driven, fact-based commentary that we can provide.

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A Labor of Faith-Based Love

by Tony Perkins: From hero to homeless. It wasn't the life that veteran Randall Sarratt imagined. But, like so many of our brave men and women, leaving the military only meant facing a new battle at home. For six years he lived on the streets, trying to scrape together enough money to survive.

Then, a meeting with a California charity changed his life. He applied for a housing voucher, then a job -- all with help from the Department of Labor's Homeless Veterans' Reintegration Program. They bought Randall clothes, a new suit and tie, even a bus pass. It was, he said, "the best decision ever" to get help. And thanks to the DOL's partnership with groups like the Salvation Army, Goodwill, Easter Seals, Catholic Charities, and others, he won't be the only one.

Today, Randall is a "model tenant." He's off the streets, happily employed, and setting an example so impressive that his landlord is thinking of taking in more veterans through HVRP program. A lot of that wouldn't have been possible without faith-based groups and charities. Together with the Labor Department, their outreach isn't just having a huge impact on homelessness -- but job training, substance abuse recovery, youth leadership, the opioid epidemic, and more. And, more often than not, those religious partners have been effective in ways government agencies are not.

That's why, Secretary Eugene Scalia says, the department needs more involvement with the faith community -- not less. And, late last week, he cleared the way for his agency to accomplish that -- issuing an important memo on the value of religious liberty to his employees and DOL partners. For freedom-loving Americans, it's huge step forward. To Scalia, it's just another day in the office. "I guess in some ways," he told me on "Washington Watch," "it's surprising to me that this is surprising to others... It shouldn't be news, but it is."

Religious freedom "is so fundamental to society," he said, that we shouldn't need to release memos like the Department of Labor's. "But as important as religion and religious liberty are in our society, we know that in ... some of the most sophisticated and powerful quarters of our society, religion is something that's looked on dimly and is under attack in certain respects. And so, this memo we issued is just one of a number of things that the administration is trying to do to push back and protect religious liberty."

With this latest guidance, Secretary Scalia joins a slew of Trump agencies like Justice, HHS, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Education, and even USAID in making sure that faith-based groups are on equal footing with everyone else. After eight years of being treated like second-class citizens under the previous administration, Scalia is asking his team to "incorporate respect for religious freedom" back into his department's daily operations -- including decisions like grant awards.

"If there's not a thoughtful defense of Americans' religious liberty -- which, needless to say, is a liberty for people of all faiths -- then that freedom will be eroded," Scalia warned. It could be subtle at first, but in the end, the gradual wear and tear affects everyone -- especially people like Randall, who benefit from the services the church provides.

One of the things Scalia is trying to change is the Obama-era hostility toward these faith-based groups competing for federal dollars. "[The previous administration] had a rule that said that if you were a federal grantee providing services, let's say, to the homeless, and you happened to be a religious organization -- and of course, we know that it's part of the fabric of so many different faiths to help the poor, help the needy. But this rule said that if you're a religious organization seeking to help the poor and needy and taking federal grants, you have to provide a special warning to recipients of that aid that you believe in God -- and even tell them how to complain if you try to proselytize. And these were burdens only put on religious organizations." That's the kind of open and unconstitutional discrimination his agency is working to weed out.

There are a lot of hurting people right now, Scalia pointed out. Thirty-eight million people filing unemployment in the pandemic alone. "As we seek to help them, we should welcome in religious organizations -- not make it harder for them. And that includes respecting when those religious organizations [are] deciding who's going to work there. Preserving the faith within the religious organization is important to the faith itself... We want religious institutions to keep their identity while also providing help to the public and helping the federal government in doing so."

Our deepest gratitude to Secretary Scalia -- and all of the administration's men and women -- who are doing their part to rebuild our legacy of liberty.

For more breaking news on the Trump administration's religious freedom agenda, check out this post from earlier today!
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Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council. Article on Tony Perkins' Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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Boozman Joins Bipartisan Bill to Expand Telehealth in Rural Communities

WASHINGTON — "U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) joined a bipartisan group of colleagues to introduce the Health Care Broadband Expansion During COVID-19 Act that would bolster funding for health care providers in rural areas for the expansion of broadband and telehealth services.

“Telehealth provides a critical avenue for Arkansans to access medical providers without an unnecessary trip to the doctor’s office. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the need for this connection to health services. This legislation will ensure more health care facilities are equipped with reliable, high-speed internet to better serve their patients,” Boozman said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased the demand for telehealth services, allowing providers to treat patients safely without putting themselves or their patients at risk. However, many providers – especially in rural and hard-to-reach communities – do not have adequate resources to handle this surge in demand. This bill would ensure that these providers have the resources they need to improve connectivity and increase telehealth capacity.

The Health Care Broadband Expansion During COVID-19 Act will:

• Provide $2 billion in additional support for the Rural Health Care (RHC) Program for the coronavirus response.
• Increase the subsidy rate for RHC Health Care Connect Fund participants during the pandemic, which they can put toward additional telehealth resources.
• Enable mobile and non-rural health care facilities to engage in telehealth during the pandemic under the RHC Program.
• Eliminate red tape and streamline the program’s distribution of funding so that health care providers can quickly implement telehealth applications and treat patients faster.
• Delay for one year the implementation of FCC rules that would severely impact support for some of the program’s most rural health care providers.

Boozman is joined in this bipartisan effort by U.S. Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Angus King (I-ME), Gary Peters (D-MI), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Ed Markey (D-MA).

“Senators Schatz, Murkowski, Boozman, King, Peters, Sullivan, Cramer and Markey are right to focus on ways Congress can invest to increase connectivity-based health care solutions during this emergency,” said Jonathan Spalter, President and CEO of the United States Telecom Association. Investing in broadband powered telehealth can transform and expand access to vital health care services. Like the companion legislation introduced by Reps. Eshoo and Young in the House, this plan recognizes that all of our country’s hospital systems and health care providers – no matters their zip code – should have cutting edge broadband and digital technology to diagnose and treat patients.”

Companion legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives last month and has been endorsed by the United States Telecom Association, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, America's Communications Association, the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition, the National League of Cities and the Fiber Broadband Association.

Last week Boozman, Schatz, Murkowski and King, "sent a letter to congressional leadership urging inclusion of $2 billion in new funding for the RHC Program in the next coronavirus response legislation.
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Arkansas U.S. Sen. John Boozman, a co-founder of the Senate Broadband Caucus, is a leader in fighting for increased access to high-speed internet in rural communities.

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Breaking News For You And Your Church, Radical Islam Is Still A Threat, China vs. Hong Kong, The Real Covid Scandal

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Update: Breaking News For You And Your Church
Moments ago, the president made an extraordinary announcement at the White House. President Trump demanded that the nation's governors allow churches to reopen, declaring religious services to be essential to the health of the nation.

During a White House press briefing, President Trump said:

"Today, I am identifying houses of worship, churches, synagogues and mosques, as essential places that provide essential services. . . I call upon governors to allow our churches and places of worship to open right now. . .

"These are places that hold our society together and keep our people united. . . Many Americans embrace worship as an essential part of life. . . In America, we need more prayer, not less."

To be clear: The president is not ordering churches to open, but he is instructing governors to allow them to open.

I can't tell you what has been happening behind the scenes in the last couple of days to make this announcement possible. But I am so pleased that God has allowed me to be part of the process that led to this outcome.

I urge all pastors and other religious leaders to rise to the occasion, of course, following prudent rules on how best to safeguard your congregations.

I urge all of you to share this information with your pastor, priest, rabbi or other religious leader right now. Ask how you can help make this happen this Memorial Day weekend or next weekend.

It has been a travesty watching left-wing governors and mayors rule that abortion clinics are essential, that lottery retailers are essential, that pot shops are essential, but that the places where we go to seek God are nothing to these left-wing politicians but disease spreaders.

President Trump just changed that with today's announcement. Now it is time for our religious leaders to find as much courage by reclaiming their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.

Still A Threat
While the progressive left and its media allies continue to obsess over the coronavirus and climate change, a jihadist attacked the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas yesterday.

Local law enforcement said within hours that it was an act of terrorism. The attacker, who was killed by base security officers, was identified as a Syrian national and had studied in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

This is the second jihadist attack against a U.S. Navy base in the past six months. Earlier in the week, Attorney General William Barr noted that the Pensacola shooter was working with Al Qaeda. We will see what else this investigation uncovers.

The Anti-Defamation League recently reported that there was a 50% increase last year in the number of domestic terrorism arrests linked to Islamic extremists. Clearly, radical Islamism remains a serious threat to our homeland and to the rest of the world.

Speaking Of Islamic Extremism. . .
Earlier this week, we told you that the daughter of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Isra Hirsi, denounced U.S. troops as "bitches" and baby killers in a recent Tik Tok post. Fast forward to today.

Law enforcement authorities in Maine are investigating the desecration of the grave of Master Sergeant Gary Gordon, a member of the Delta Force. Gordon was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for his courage during the Battle of Mogadishu.

You can learn more about his heroism here, which served as the inspiration for the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."

As you may recall, we were engaged in Somalia trying to save the country from radical Islamists. We later learned that Osama Bin Laden had a major influence in the Battle of Mogadishu.

It is worth mentioning that the Somali community in Minnesota, represented by Congresswoman Omar, has become a hotbed of terrorist recruitment. There also happens to be a large number of Somali refugees in Maine.

I concede I have no evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if we later learn that Master Sergeant Gordon's grave was desecrated by an anti-American ingrate, perhaps someone inspired by Hirsi's Tik Tok rant.

Communist China Threatens Hong Kong
Ever since Great Britain relinquished sovereignty over Hong Kong, the Chinese communist bosses in Beijing have gone through a charade of pretending that the city-state has some semblance of self-governance. They did this because the communist regime signed a treaty in which it promised Hong Kong semi-autonomy for 50 years.

Beijing has been chipping away at the freedoms the residents of Hong Kong have enjoyed for years, but now the charade is over. Communist China just launched a direct assault on the city.

After massive pro-democracy demonstrations forced Hong Kong's puppet leaders to back down from their outrageous extradition bill last year, the Chinese Communist Party is planning to impose the law banning "treason, secession, sedition and subversion" through the National People's Congress in Beijing.

Once that it is done, China will have destroyed the "one country, two systems" model. Hong Kong will not be allowed to operate under anything but the communist system.

One pro-democracy leader referred to Beijing's move as "the largest nuclear weapon the Chinese Communist Party has used" against Hong Kong. Another described it as "the end of Hong Kong."

Reaction from U.S. leaders was swift. Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) are drafting legislation to impose sanctions on Chinese officials, banks and businesses.

Senators Risch (R-ID), Rubio (R-FL) and Gardner (R-CO) blasted communist China for its "unprecedented assault against Hong Kong's autonomy" and for "once again breaking its promises."

Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted that Beijing's announcement was "deeply disturbing" and demonstrated the regime's "complete disrespect for the rule of law."

I couldn't agree more! Communist China lies, cheats and steals. Period.

The idea that a totalitarian system would tolerate a free city as part of its body politic is ludicrous on its face. Freedom in the midst of an oppressive regime is a threat to the oppressive regime, and Beijing is determined to stamp it out.

By the way, if China follows through on this action, it will send chills down the spines of the Taiwanese people. Unless the United States and our Asian allies safeguard our mutual interests in the Pacific, other countries, voluntarily or involuntarily, will fall into the orbit of communist China.

Again, it is impossible to imagine "Beijing Biden" standing up to the communist Chinese. In four decades in public office, he never did.

Speaking Of Biden. . .
He was on an influential show in the black community today known as "The Breakfast Club." The show's co-host is known as Charlamagne tha God.

Biden cut the interview short, and Charlamagne wasn't happy about it. He told Biden to come to New York to finish the interview because he had more questions for the former vice president.

Biden bizarrely responded, "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black."

Yes, Biden just questioned a man's ethnicity and pigeonholed an entire race of voters!

The Real Covid Scandal
Left-wing progressives have insisted that President Trump is responsible for every Covid death in the country. But they have been strangely silent about the growing scandal involving the obscene number of blue state nursing home patients who have died.

As we have reported recently, these deaths were due in large part to the policy decisions made by liberal governors. (Here, here and here.)

Today, the Associated Press reported that more than 4,300 Covid patients were transferred from New York hospitals to nursing homes, in spite of everything that was known about just how vulnerable the elderly were to this virus.

We're also learning that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) has some explaining to do, as 81% of the Covid-related deaths in the North Star State have occurred in nursing homes.

These governors should be held accountable. It shows just how insane their plans are.

They have been on the news virtually every day reporting the latest death totals. Surely, they weren't clueless about the details of where those deaths were occurring or why.

Yet, their response was to tell the hard-working people of their states to lock down, sit down and shut up, while they presided over a massacre in the state's nursing homes.

Meanwhile, they keep moving the goal posts from flattening the curve to falling numbers and now to waiting until there's a vaccine. There is no logic that can explain this.
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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Breaking News For You And Your Church, Radical Islam Is Still A Threat, China vs. Hong Kong, The Real Covid Scandal To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Why Florida and New York Have Very Different Records

. . . Yet another unfavorable comparison for Leftmedia hero Andrew Cuomo.

by Brian Mark Weber: Anyone following the news these days might conclude New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is setting a standard for future leaders to respond to the next pandemic, while thinking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is foolish for opening up his state’s economy. In reality, the reverse is true.

People in Florida are resuming their lives not based on a rejection of the science but in response to understanding it. As a result, Floridians are beginning to thrive while keeping the coronavirus in check. Florida’s virus deaths are minuscule compared to New York’s, even though Florida has more than three million more residents, including 20% more elderly people. Moreover, this is despite the fact that many New Yorkers fled to the Sunshine State since the outbreak of the virus.

Meanwhile, Cuomo had his state, including hard-hit New York City, endure one of the nation’s strictest lockdowns all while experiencing the nation’s highest death toll. The consequence is millions of New Yorkers have lost their jobs, homes, businesses, and savings. No wonder a headline in the New York Post this week read, “It Needs to End. Now.”

Making matters worse, Cuomo wants the rest of America to bail out his state, and it’s not all due to the virus. It’s due to the Democrat governor’s decade of mismanagement.

According to The Wall Street Journal, since 2010, when Cuomo took office, the contrast between New York and Florida couldn’t be more stark. Florida’s population grew by nearly three million; New York’s increased by just 75,000. And yet Florida’s budget since 2010 has grown by $28 billion, while New York’s has increased by $43 billion. Part of that is because New York spends three times as much as Florida on Medicaid. Oh, and the Journal notes, “New York has a top state-and-local tax rate of 12.7%, while Florida has no income tax.”

Those are but a few examples of contrast. But in short, the Empire State is losing residents, spending too much money on worker benefits and Medicaid, maintaining high taxes, and failing to keep up with states like Florida in terms of job growth. And now, instead of unleashing the economic power of its own people, Cuomo wants to send a bill to Washington.

Despite this decade-long history of failed policy, the national media portray Cuomo as a political genius, when all he’s really done during the pandemic is govern by fear. But the coverage of DeSantis is just the opposite.

The national media was apoplectic when DeSantis allowed beaches in Jacksonville to open up to the public in April, warning that he was risking lives, threatening to spread the virus to other states, and acting “recklessly.” DeSantis was mocked by many media and political figures alike. And they shamed Floridians as halfwits for daring to live their lives and trying to save their businesses.

But the DeSantis administration was acting thoughtfully and strategically to tackle the virus. Rather than implementing sweeping lockdowns based on dire predictions, the governor discovered a significant percentage of COVID-19 patients and deaths in other countries occurred in elderly populations. So he removed seniors with positive coronavirus tests out of nursing homes. At the same time, Cuomo was moving them into nursing homes, which resulted in thousands of deaths.

This week DeSantis defended his actions and reminded the Leftmedia of its desire to see Florida turn into New York. He told a reporter, “A lot of people in your profession waxed poetically for weeks and weeks about how Florida was going to be just like New York. ‘Wait two weeks. Florida’s going to be next!’ ‘Just like Italy. Wait two weeks!’ Well, hell, we’re eight weeks away from that, and it hasn’t happened.”

Florida is hardly alone. So far — and we emphasize so far — reopening states are doing alright. The Washington Examiner reports, “States that have reopened their economies appear to be faring no worse in terms of coronavirus cases than those that have not.”

What’s happening in New York and Florida today should be a case study for the next pandemic. Let’s hope the next generation of Americans learn from New York’s failed response that the cure can be worse than the virus and the best way to recover is to follow Florida’s model.
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Brian Mark Weber contributes to The Patriot Post.

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King Abdullah’s Empty Threats

King Abdullah

by Caroline Glick: Should Jordan’s King Abdullah have veto power over Israel’s plan to apply its sovereign laws to its cities, towns and villages in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley, in accordance with the Trump peace plan? Monday morning, senior leaders of the Blue and White party began making noises to that effect.

In an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel last Friday, King Abdullah threatened, “If Israel really annexes the West Bank in July, it would lead to a massive conflict with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.”

News updates Monday morning reported that “senior officials” from Blue and White were working to condition Israel’s implementation of the sovereignty plan on securing prior approval from Jordan.

Later Monday morning, during the ceremony at the Foreign Ministry marking the arrival of incoming Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazy, Ashkenazy said that Israel will implement the Trump peace plan “in dialogue with our neighbors, [and while] preserving of the peace treaties and the State of Israel’s strategic interests.”

Taken together with the morning news updates, Ashkenazy’s remarks raised the prospect that he and his partner, Defense Minister and alternative prime minister Benny Gantz see Abdullah’s threat as a justification for abandoning their support for the sovereignty plan. It bears recalling that during the negotiations leading up to the formation of the unity government between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud and Gantz and Blue and White, Netanyahu made Blue and White’s support for the sovereignty plan his only substantive condition for signing the deal.

Abdullah, of course, will never approve the sovereignty plan. So giving him a veto means shelving the plan. This raises the question of whether there is any reason to give the head of the Hashemite clan that sort of power? Can he cause Israel harm so grave that it should abandon the sovereignty plan to appease him?

The Der Spiegel reporters asked Abdullah if he would suspend Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel in retaliation for an Israeli decision to apply its sovereignty to the areas.

He responded, “I don’t want to make threats and create a loggerheads atmosphere, but we are considering all options.”

In plain English, that means that he is absolutely not considering suspending the peace deal. He’s bloviating. And he has good reason to both keep the peace deal and to bloviate.

Abdullah will not cancel his kingdom’s peace deal with Israel because the peace treaty guarantees the survival of his regime. Israel provides Jordan with an economic lifeline by supplying Jordan with water and gas. The U.S. for its part, protects and sustains Abdullah and his kingdom by stationing U.S. forces in the kingdom and by providing Jordan with $1.8 billion in economic assistance annually.

If Jordan abrogated the peace deal, Israeli water and gas transfers would obviously cease. And since Israel’s sovereignty plan will be undertaken in the framework of the U.S. peace plan, it is hard to imagine that U.S. support for the kingdom would be unchanged in the event that Jordan abrogated its peace deal in retaliation for Israel’s move.

All this is not to say that Israel’s relations with Jordan are stable. Anti-Semitism is almost universal in Jordan. And support for the peace with Israel is non-existent. The Hashemite monarchy itself is deeply unpopular.

It is possible that one day, with his back to the wall, Abdullah will abrogate the treaty. It is equally possible that one day he will be overthrown and that the successor regime will abrogate the peace treaty with Israel.

Facing this state of affairs, Israel’s proper response is not to set aside the sovereignty plan, which among other things, secures Israel’s long border with Jordan by applying Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley. The proper response to Jordan’s enormous hostility – a state of affairs that existed long before the sovereignty plan and the Trump plan were conceived – is to draw up detailed contingency plans for the day after the Hashemites are overthrown or the peace treaty is abrogated.

In his remarks at the Foreign Ministry, Ashkenazy rightly praised U.S.-Israel relations. “The United States is Israel’s closest ally and the State of Israel’s most important friend,” he said.

During his visit with President Donald Trump in the White House in January, according to a senior American official, Gantz committed himself to implementing the Trump peace plan, including the sovereignty plan.

To preserve U.S.-Israel relations, Ashkenazy and Gantz need to uphold that commitment. Failure to do so is liable to undermine Israel’s credibility as a stable ally among administration leaders and other friends of Israel in Washington.

Ashkenazy acknowledged that through his peace plan, President Trump, “presents us with a historic opportunity to shape Israel’s future and its borders.”

Israel mustn’t permit King Abdullah, and his empty threats stand in its way to seizing that opportunity now.
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Caroline Glick is the Senior Contributing Editor of Israel Hayom and the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

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COVID-19 Shows We're More Risk-Averse Than Post-World War II Americans

Michael Barone

by Michael Barone: Do you remember the 1957-58 Asian flu? Or the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu? I do. I was a teenager during the first of these, an adult finishing law school during the second. But even though back then I followed the news much more than the average person my age, I can't dredge up more than the dimmest memory of either.

I don't have any memory of schools closing, though apparently, a few did here and there. I have no memories of city or state lockdowns, of closed offices and factories and department stores, of people banned from parks and beaches.

Yet these two influenzas had death tolls roughly comparable to that of COVID-19. Between 70,000 and 116,000 people in the U.S. died from Asian flu. That's between 0.04% and 0.07% of the nation's population, somewhat more than the 0.03% of the COVID-19 death rate so far.

The Asian flu, unlike COVID-19, was rarely fatal for children and was more deadly for the elderly -- and pregnant women.

The Hong Kong flu, the Center for Disease Control & Prevention says, had more precisely an estimated U.S. death toll of 100,000 in 1968-70 (years that included the Woodstock festival), 0.05% of the total population. Both flus had high death rates among the elderly but, apparently, not as high a proportion as COVID-19 has had.

Once again, there were no nationwide school closings, no multi-month lockdowns, no daily presidential news conferences. Apparently, neither the nation's leaders nor the vast bulk of its people felt that such drastic measures were called for.

Perhaps some of this calm reaction can be ascribed to confidence that a vaccine would be developed, as other flu vaccines had been developed after the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic. But flu vaccines are never entirely effective, and none were widely available until after the Asian and Hong Kong flus had swept over the nation.

Fundamental attitudes can change in a nation over half a century, and the very different responses to this year's coronavirus pandemic and the influenzas of 50 and 60 years ago suggest that Americans today are much more risk-averse, much more willing to undergo massive inconvenience and disruption to avoid marginal increases in fatal risk.

At least some of this can be explained by different experiences. The Asian and Hong Kong flus arrived in an America amid and at the end of what I call the Midcentury Moment. That's my name for the quarter-century after World War II when Americans enjoyed low-inflation economic growth, and a degree of cultural uniformity and respect for institutions that some yearn for today.

Midcentury Americans had living memories of World War II, with its 405,000 American military deaths. They were troubled not so much by the number of military deaths in Korea (36,000) and Vietnam (58,000) but by our leaders' failure, after years of effort, to achieve victory.

Contrast this with the shrillness of outcries over orders of magnitude fewer military deaths in Iraq (4,497) and Afghanistan (2,216). Yes, every death is a tragedy, but those numbers total less than the average number of deaths in America every day (7,707) in 2018. But today's Americans, beneficiaries of a victory in the Cold War that was almost entirely bloodless, seem to blanch at paying any human price.

They seem to also expect any competent leader to come up with policies that preserve every life at any cost. Thus the high approval of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who said his lockdown is worth it if it saves just one life -- although if he really believed that, he'd impose and strictly enforce a 5 mph speed limit on the New York State Thruway.

You can argue that Americans in the Midcentury Moment were too willing to accept pandemic or battlefield deaths, just as they were too willing to accept racial segregation or to stigmatize uncommon lifestyles.

But there's also a strong argument that they had a more realistic sense of the limits of the human condition and the efficacy of official action than Americans have today -- certainly more than the governors stubbornly enforcing lockdowns till the virus is stamped out and deaths fall to zero.

Behind that stance is the assumption there's an instant and painless solution for every problem, rather than a need to weigh conflicting goals and make tragic choices amid unavoidable uncertainty.
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Michael Barone is a Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel  and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics Shared by Rasmussen Reports.

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What Does Winning Mean in a Forever War?

by Patrick Buchanan: When it comes to spending lives and treasure indefinitely we find we have no vital interest in whether these lands we occupy are ruled by monarchs, democrats, dictators or demagogues… If they don’t attack us, why do we not just leave them be?

When a Wall Street Journal editorial warned this week against any precipitous U.S. withdrawal that might imperil our gains in Afghanistan, an exasperated President Trump shot back:

“Could someone please explain to them that we have been there for 19 years. … and except at the beginning, we never really fought to win.”

Is that true? Did we “never really” fight to win during our 19-year war in Afghanistan, except when we first ousted the Taliban in 2001?

At one point in this longest American war against al-Qaida and the Taliban, Barack Obama surged 100,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan.

The issue here is with the terminology.

In the forever wars of the Middle East, what does “winning” mean?

To those of us who grew up in the mid-20th century, victory was Gen. MacArthur standing on the deck of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay as top-hatted Japanese diplomats signed the articles of surrender.

Victory was unmistakable and irreversible.

Five years after V-J day, however, came Korea, a war that lasted three years and ended in deadlock, stalemate and a truce along the 38th parallel, where the North-South war had begun in June of 1950.

Vietnam also came to be called a “no-win war.”

Though U.S. troops never lost a major battle, and every provincial capital was in Saigon’s hands when we departed in 1973, the United States is said to have “lost the war” when the North Vietnamese army overran the South and Saigon in the spring of 1975.

That was a geostrategic defeat but not a military defeat.

America’s problem, in this century, lies in our concept of “winning.”

While U.S. military forces can crush any Middle East adversary, as we showed in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, we have been unable to realize the fruits of the victories our armed forces produced.

We have failed to reorient the defeated nations to our way of thinking. We have failed to win the peace.

While we can defeat our enemies in the air and on the seas and in cyberspace, we cannot persuade them to embrace secular democracy and its values any more than we can convert them to Christianity.

John Locke means nothing to these people. As for our Bill of Rights, why would devout Muslims, who believe there is but one God, Allah, and that Muhammad is his only Prophet, tolerate the preaching of heresies in their countries that can cause Muslims to lose their souls?

Millions of Muslims are familial, tribal, nationalistic, resistant to foreign intervention and proudly anti-Enlightenment.

With our “democracy crusades,” we have been trying to conquer and convert people who do not wish to be converted. Moreover, we lack the patience and perseverance to change or convert them.

As imperialists, we Americans are conspicuous failures.

Moreover, with us, the national interest inevitably asserts itself.

When it comes to spending lives and treasure indefinitely we find we have no vital interest in whether these lands we occupy are ruled by monarchs, democrats, dictators or demagogues, and we lack the staying power to occupy these countries until they accept our ideas and ideals.

If they don’t attack us, why do we not just leave them be?

Our enemies in the Middle East do not defeat our military. They outlast us. They apparently have an inexhaustible supply of volunteers willing to give up their lives in suicide attacks. They are willing to fight on and trade casualties endlessly. They do not subscribe to our rules of war.

They tire us out, and, eventually, we give up and go home.

They refuse to surrender and submit because it is their beliefs, their values, their faith, their traditions, their tribe, their God, their culture, their civilization, their honor that they believe they are fighting for in what is, after all, their land, not ours.

They are not trying to change us. We are trying to change them. And they wish to remain who they are.

Woodrow Wilson famously declared of our neighbors to the south, “I am going to teach the Latin American republics to elect good men!”

Wilson forgot the kernel of truth in the ethnic slur of his era, that you cannot grow bananas and democracy on the same piece of land.

If it is a contest between armed forces, America wins. We can impose our will on the country but cannot win their assent. They resist until we tire of trying to educate them.

Historically, the Afghans are fundamentalist, tribal and impervious to foreign intervention.

What will the Taliban do when we leave?

They will not give up their dream of again ruling the Afghan nation and people. And they will fight until they have achieved that goal and their idea of victory: dominance.

And if 100,000 Americans fighting beside the Afghan army could not force them to surrender, then why should they settle for half a loaf and accept a compromise now?
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Patrick Buchanan (@PatrickBuchanan) is currently a blogger, conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior adviser to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.

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All O’s Women . . .

. . . All the women involved in the ObamaGate scandal, under oath, and when talking to the media.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Yuge Shoes to Fill . . .

. . . Obama, the worst president ever, is now calling Trump incompetent for his job well done on the corona-crisis.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Voter Fraud

by Kerby Anderson: The potential for voter fraud this year is significant. As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, more states are proposing a vote-by-mail electoral system. In fact, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former attorney general Eric Holder are pushing for a national vote-by-mail option.

California governor Gavin Newsom has signed an executive order requiring every registered voter (including those listed as “inactive”) be mailed a ballot this November. Yet we know that Los Angeles County has a registration rate of 112 percent of its adult population. Many of those ballots will go to addresses where the voter has moved or is deceased. Is it possible that other people at that address will use those mailed ballots?

Anyone who thinks that voter fraud is a non-issue needs to spend a few minutes looking at the Heritage Foundation database that currently lists over 1,285 proven instances of voter fraud.

The database is by no means comprehensive. It doesn’t even purport to list all the cases of voter fraud, especially when many cases aren’t investigated or prosecuted. You can find examples of false voter registrations, duplicate voting, fraudulent absentee ballots, vote buying, and illegal assistance and intimidation of voters.

If you think that voter fraud won’t impact an election, then perhaps you forgot that George W. Bush won the state of Florida by 537 votes. Donald Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes. But many state and local elections are even closer. One writer collected data from over 100 elections in Ohio that were decided by less than two votes.

Many of the changes in voting this year (voting by mail, ballot harvesting) make it easier to commit fraud and make it easier to intimidate voters. With all the potential for fraud, we should hope and pray we don’t have another close presidential election like we had in 2000 and 2016.
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Kerby Anderson @KerbyAnderson) is an author, lecturer, visiting professor and radio host and contributor on nationally syndicated Point of View and the "Probe" radio programs.

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Masks Work

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Early in this pandemic, experts — including CDC officials — told us that if you aren’t a medical worker dealing with infected patients, wearing a mask is ineffective in protecting yourself and others.

Many reversed themselves, though without honestly explaining why they had ever downplayed the value of masks to begin with. Masks are even now mandatory some places.

But we still hear naysayers who declare masks to be pointless.

One blithely declares: “The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked.” That’s less than 2.5 micrometers. A micrometer is one millionth of a meter. Yes, small. But “too fine to be blocked”? A properly worn mask need not be 100% effective to block tiny particles. Viruses do not fly unerringly through holes and gaps in the mask. They have no guidance system and no little legs enabling them to scamper to a hole if it hits fabric.

Nor is the virus invariably unattached to larger particles.

Obviously, the better the filtering, the more effective the mask.

Suppose you go to a supermarket and

1. wear a mask,
2. try to keep your distance from others,
go when fewer people tend to be shopping, and
leave fast.
3. All pointless?

Short of wearing a hazmat suit or never leaving a one-resident home, no protective measure will be 100 percent effective all the time, infallibly. This doesn’t mean that partly effective measures should be dismissed as entirely ineffective.

A part of something is, well, not zero.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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3 Out Of 5 Deadliest Coronavirus Outbreaks Were In State Nursing Homes

by Daniel Greenfield: The lockdown model sought to flatten the curve by preparing hospitals for a massive influx of patients by clearing out everyone including elderly patients, who were sent back to nursing homes. The hospitals, with a few limited exceptions, were not overwhelmed, but the nursing homes were.

1 in 3 coronavirus deaths, as of now, have involved nursing homes. These deaths were amplified by policies in blue states, especially New York and New Jersey, compelling facilities to take coronavirus patients, while concealing the number of deaths at facilities behind false claims of resident privacy.

Blue state administrations have tried to blame the thousands of deaths on mismanaged private nursing homes, and while some nursing homes are badly run, the worst death tolls were in state nursing homes.

The 5 deadliest outbreaks in nursing homes took place in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Three of those facilities, the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the Paramus Veterans Memorial Home, and Veterans Memorial Home in Menlo Park in New Jersey, are state run facilities.

New Jersey's Department of Military and Veterans Affairs runs 3 homes for veterans. 2 of them had major deadly outbreaks. As of now, the Paramus home had 72 deaths and the Menlo Park facility had 55 deaths. But the third, Vineland Veterans Memorial Home, had recorded only one death.

Paramus has 211 residents and 189 cases which means that nearly all of the residents are infected. The Menlo Park facility has 167 cases in a 190-resident facility with an equally bad infection rate. The latter facility had repeatedly come to the attention of federal inspectors who cited it for not following infection-control procedures and its health violations rate was four times the state average.

Its Medicare rating was ‘Below Average” and its health inspections rating was ‘Much Below Average’. The Paramus veterans home was also poorly rated. The Vineland home, by contrast, was highly rated.

State officials had apparently lied about staff not coming down with the virus, workers were told not to wear protective equipment, and the Paramus facility wasn’t following CDC disinfection guidelines. At Menlo Park, the family of a Vietnam veteran complained that he was wrongly placed with coronavirus patients leading to his death, and family members of other deceased residents reported facility failures.

Garden State nursing homes have been ground zero for some of the worst outbreaks in the country, but even among them, the homes run by New Jersey have been the worst. Had a Republican been in charge of the state, instead of a Wall Street donor to the Obama campaign, the media might have noticed that.

When Governor Murphy was asked who was currently running the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, he replied, “There’s an acting person who came in from under him. I don’t know that name.”

Murphy didn’t know because, his political appointee had resigned in the middle of the pandemic to run for Congress, infuriated that some members of the New Jersey delegation, one of whom had a brother-in-law at one of the facilities, had called for a federal investigation into the breakdown.

The former department boss claimed that he had resigned so as not "embarrass Gov. Murphy by running against a candidate [he] supports."

Despite the pretense that blue state politicos cared about veterans or nursing homes, Murphy had no clue who was in charge of veterans affairs or the facilities that had 2 of the 3 deadliest nursing home outbreaks in the state. And he made it quite clear that he really didn’t care.

In Massachusetts, the outbreak at the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke with 74 deaths was by far the worst in the state where other facilities had an average of 10 deaths. Holyoke is one of only two state run facilities for veterans, the other being the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home where the death toll is up to 28.

In New Jersey, two out of three state homes for veterans had major outbreaks with massive death tolls, and in Massachusetts, it was one out of two. Statistics like these tell their own story about socialized medicine.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division are investigating the Holyoke facility, and Governor Baker has brought in Mark Pearlstein, a former DA, to conduct an independent investigation on behalf of Massachusetts.

The spectacle of dead veterans and investigations of facilities meant to serve them is not a new one. It is all too likely that what happened at state facilities is exactly what had been happening at the VA with an entrenched bureaucracy running the system for its own benefit, not for those whom it’s meant to serve. The investigations will turn up local mismanagement and recommend more funding. As they usually do.

The VA, which helps funds the state homes, has claimed that it conducted inspections and that the facilities met its standards even as, some like the Paramus facility, were receiving poor Medicare grades.

Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, Governor Murphy's lackey, launched an investigation meant to focus on private nursing homes, a point he made clear when he threw around rhetoric about, "profits over patients." While there may be some truth to that, it's New Jersey's state-run homes which were some of the worst killing fields in the state. And any reckoning ought to begin with the state officials responsible.

The death tolls in nursing homes are already being used to push for more socialized medicine, but it was state medicine that was responsible for the deadliest outbreaks in nursing homes in America.

The VA scandals of the Obama administration, which may have claimed the lives of as many as 1,000 veterans, were swept under the rug, and Senator Bernie Sanders, who had tried to cover up the deaths as chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, rebounded with a push for socialized medicine.

After all this time, socialized medicine is still killing veterans.

The deaths of hundreds of veterans in state-run facilities in blue states will be covered up the same way, but they must not, cannot, and should not be forgotten. The deaths of thousands of nursing home residents are an outrage. And blue state governors in New York, New Jersey, and California, among others, should be held accountable for putting lockdown politics ahead of saving the lives of seniors.

Our nation owes a particular debt to the veterans who were left to die in Paramus, Menlo Park, and Holyoke. We should remember their names and honor the debt by telling the truth about their deaths.

Many of them defended our country by fighting socialist regimes in Korea and Vietnam. Their deaths should not be exploited to promote the big lie that socialized medicine is the answer.

Socialized medicine is not the answer unless the question is, “How do we kill more senior citizens?”
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Daniel Greenfield (@Sultanknish) is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an investigative journalist and writer focusing on radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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Does Anyone Really Believe the Polls Showing Biden Cruising to Victory?

by Stephen Kruiser: Biden Can’t Speak, How Can He Win?
Former Vice President Joe Biden is leading President Trump in most of the recent polls, prompting the question: are we really going to do this again?

Presidential election polls have become Lucy holding the football as the rest of us play the role of Charlie Brown. Ever gullible, American voters promise to ignore all of the polls when the next election comes around, yet we seem hopelessly drawn to them. It’s a dysfunctional relationship that doesn’t seem to have any real hope of getting better. Let’s face it, after the polls got everything wrong in 2016, we’re all still fond of them if they’re telling us what we want to hear.

Biden has no doubt benefited from being locked in his house for the past couple of months. Avoiding the campaign trail and prolonged exposure in the public eye has been a gift from Heaven for Team Biden. Sure, his highly controlled, limited time appearances have been absolute train wrecks, but those are only being seen by a fraction of the audience that would be viewing his remarks on the nightly news if he were out campaigning.

When an appearance is preserved to share on social media, they manage to find one or two sentences where Biden didn’t sound clinically insane to create the appearance that he’s A-OK.

Rick wrote a post that examines how different methodologies can be used to predict victory for either Trump or Biden, showing that nobody really has a crystal ball that’s worth a damn.

It has become more than obvious that the Democrats are willing to keep Americans financially destitute in order to throw the election to Biden, and that may be what is reflected in the current polling. However, as we have noted a couple of times this week, the states that are opening up are looking better than the states that are remaining on arbitrary lockdown. If that keeps playing out like that, it will reflect better on Trump and the Republicans.

President Trump probably relishes the opportunity to face Biden in a couple of debates. Crazy Joe the Wonder Veep hasn’t been able to read a short script in a controlled home video lately. Trump will mop the floor with that bumbling idiot in a debate. The Democrats are almost certainly going to make the case that it “just wouldn’t be safe” to have public debates.

The media will reflexively spin for Biden, emphatically proclaiming that he was the clear winner of any debate with Trump. All team Trump will have to do to counter that is put together a reel of Biden mangling the English language and losing his train of thought every four seconds and turn that into a campaign ad.

I’m not being mean to Biden here. I know a lot of people think it’s cruel to mock his decline. I maintain that it’s not really a decline. He’s always been a mush-mouthed idiot. I’m a veteran Biden basher, having consistently written during Barack Obama’s tenure that he was the safest president ever because nobody really wanted Biden to become top dog.

I wouldn’t even point to the spectacular failure of the polls in 2016 as a reason to be dismissive of the current Biden victory snapshot that they are providing us. Rather, I would point to the otherworldly volatility of all life in 2020 so far. Think about life since mid-March. It all went to hell a little more than two months ago. We’re still about five and a half months out from this election.

Is anyone willing to put money down on where the mood of the electorate will be then?

Biden Uses His Words

Joe Biden: "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black" https://t.co/qy2FwakxB5 pic.twitter.com/LYQJ2I5hv1

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 22, 2020

Make Up Your Minds

YouTube censored an epidemiologist for saying this. https://t.co/WFBSS4hSkn

— SFK (@stephenkruiser) May 22, 2020

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Stephen Kruiser is a professional comedian and writer who has also been a conservative political activist for over two decades. A co-founder of the first Los Angeles Tea Party, Kruiser often speaks to grassroots groups around America and has had the great honor of traveling around the world entertaining U.S. troops. PJ Media shared this article.

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Naval Air Station Corpus Christi Shooting 'Terrorism-Related,' FBI Says

by Gina Harkins: The incident involving an active shooter at a Texas naval air station was "terrorism-related," an FBI official said on Thursday, making it the second Navy installation to experience an attack in less than six months.

The gunman who prompted Naval Air Station Corpus Christi to be locked down early Thursday morning is dead, Leah Greeves, the supervisory senior resident agent for Corpus Christi FBI, said at a press conference.

A second "potential person of interest" may still be at large in the community, she added, while urging the public to remain calm.

"If you see something, say something," Greeves added.

One sailor with the air station's security forces sustained minor injuries during the incident, which began around 6:45 a.m. That sailor, according to Navy officials, has since been released from a local hospital.

State, local and federal law enforcement agents are still investigating the situation, which Greeves called "fluid and evolving." She declined to provide any additional details on the shooting, citing the ongoing probe.

"But I assure you that you have an absolutely awesome brotherhood of law enforcement working together, because the safety of Corpus Christi is paramount to each of us," Greeves said.

This is the second terror-related incident and the third shooting at Navy installations in less than six months.

In December, a Saudi officer, whom the FBI determined had ties to a terror group, opened fire on a classroom building at Naval Air Station Pensacola. The gunman was training there as an international military student. Three sailors were killed in that attack and eight other people were injured.

Days prior, a sailor shot and killed two people and injured a third at a naval shipyard in Hawaii.

The attack in Pensacola has led to a host of new rules for foreign troops training on U.S. military installations. The Navy and Marine Corps have now barred students training on their facilities from carrying or owning personal weapons. The students also have faced new restrictions on moving between U.S. military bases.

Jonathan Hoffman, a Pentagon spokesman, said base security has been ramped up in recent years in the wake of other shootings and attempted breaches.

"I can't speak specifically for Corpus Christi as a base because I'm not in the loop as much on each individual base's security measures, but overall we have put in additional security measures at our bases in recent history," he said.
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Gina Harkins @GinaAHarkins reports on the Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard for Military.com.

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