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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2020

Coronavirus Concerns Continue; Questions on Tokyo Olympics; Israelis Say Weeks Away From Vaccine

Markets continue to indicate concerns as stocks fall—without indications of easing (WSJ). With Japan among the group of at-risk natiion, concerns are building on the summer Olympics, set to begin on July 24. Rather then postpone, the games would likely be cancelled (AP). Dick Pound of the IOC said, if the virus is still spreading by late May, “You’re probably looking at a cancellation” (RunnersWorld). Schools in Japan to close (AP). Scientists in Israel may be on the cusp of a vaccine. They had been working on a vaccine against infectious bronchitis. As their model they had been using a coronavirus: “Let’s call it pure luck,” Dr. Chen Katz said. “We decided to choose coronavirus as a model for our system just as a proof of concept for our technology” (JPost).

The Latest Threat to the Vision of the European Union: Coronavirus

Brexit was a major blow. We also had the migrant crisis and concerns over terrorism. Now: member nations are pushing to control their own borders from spread of coronavirus. The New York Times reports how Europeans view open borders as one of the EU greatest achievements. From their story: But if it has nurtured prosperity and become a fundamental building block of European identity, it has also, practically speaking, been suffering a death by a thousand cuts (NYTimes).

As South Carolina Votes, Get Ready for a New Narrative: Biden Is BACK

Biden is up in the polls for South Carolina as voters look to their primary tomorrow. Monmouth—the latest—has Biden up 20 points, 36 percent to Sanders 16 (Monmouth). From Guy Benson: Could Bloomberg’s anti-momentum join forces with Biden’s momentum and finally put a major dent in Bernie Sanders’ march toward a delegate plurality or majority? It would certainly place Biden back as the chief (and arguably most viable) anti-Bernie alternative, but despite the aforementioned good news for Biden, the DNC’s 2020 rules could actually help Sanders consolidate his lead…. (Townhall). As we look to Super Tuesday and the viability of Biden in states like California, the New York Times reports: In California, Mr. Bloomberg has 24 offices and more than 300 staff members, while Mr. Sanders has 23 offices and just over 100 staff members, according to their campaigns. The Biden office in East Los Angeles is the only one in the state, and his campaign declined to say how many staff members it had on the ground (NYTimes).

Right on the Heels of South Carolina: Super Tuesday

Voting on March 3 will be 14 states representing over one-third of the nation’s population. The forecast from Five Thirty Eight: It should be a good night for Sanders delegate-wise just as it should be in terms of votes; we’re forecasting him to take home 587 delegates…. But Biden and Bloomberg are also forecasted to get 305 and 211 delegates, respectively, especially from Southern states, since they are likely to perform strongly there even if they don’t win. However, Warren, Buttigieg and Klobuchar are further behind. Buttigieg nets a significant number of delegates only out of California, Klobuchar from Minnesota and Warren from three states (California, Texas and Massachusetts) (538). The delegate contest today (ElectionProjection).

Democratic Superdelegates Signal Willingness to Thwart Sanders

Have you been wondering what the superdelegates will do if Sanders is on the cusp of the nomination? The New York Times “has interviewed 93 party officials—all of them superdelegates, who could have a say on the nominee at the convention — and found overwhelming opposition to handing the Vermont senator the nomination if he arrived with the most delegates but fell short of a majority (NewYorkTimes). To say that Bernie supporters would be upset would be a dramatic understatement.

On Monday: Israelis to Hold Third Election in a Year

And the concern is for another round of gridlock, with a near tie between Likud (Benjamin Netanyahu) and Blue and White (Benny Gantz). The Jerusalem Post, seeing signs that Israelis want stability, see a late shift to Likud: “stability voters” shifted rightward to Likud and its satellite parties, as evidenced by recent polls. Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc grew from 55 seats in the outgoing Knesset to 57, 58 and even 59 in Thursday’s polls. Internal polls taken for both Likud and Blue and White reportedly found that Netanyahu could obtain the 61-seat blocking majority he seeks with the right organization on Election Day (Jpost). Polling average from Haaretz shows a near tie (Haaretz). Could a fourth election be the charm? (IsraelHayom).

The Real Climate Crisis: The Chill on Free Expression on Our College Campuses

If they set their mind to it, liberal colleges and universities can create an environment that respects a diversity of viewpoint. Pete Peterson: In 2018, responding to growing concern about the lack of viewpoint diversity on its campus, Pomona College president Gabrielle Starr formed a “Public Dialogue Task Force” composed of trustees, faculty members, the dean of students, and the junior and senior class presidents. The group brought in Gallup and developed a survey for students and faculty. The results, released online here, are breathtaking and worthy of praise (JamesMartinCtr).

Americans Grow Fatter

At the turn of the century, the obesity rate was 30%. Today: According to data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the obesity rate reached 42.4% in 2017-2018 – surpassing 40% for the first time. Although the increase was not significant between 2015-2016 and 2017-2018, the new data represents a failure to meet the federal government’s public health goals set for this year (USNews). Severe obesity over the same period nearly doubled: 4.7% to 9.2%.

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Friday, February 28, 2020

Weinstein Convicted

“Harvey Weinstein was convicted Monday of rape and sexual assault against two women… He was acquitted on the most serious charges, two counts of predatory sexual assault, each carrying a sentence of up to life in prison.” AP News

Both sides celebrate the verdict as a victory for the #MeToo movement:

“It took enormous courage for Miriam Haleyi, Jessica Mann, Annabella Sciorra, Dawn Dunning, Tarale Wulff and Lauren Marie Young to come forward and testify… All can now hold their heads high: Their courage is a symbol to others to come forward. The inherent messiness of the case made this prosecution, relying pretty exclusively on witness testimony, a risk: Kudos to Manhattan DA Cy Vance for going ahead, and for seeking conviction on more serious counts as well… his 100-plus accusers have not only guaranteed the end of his career and destruction of his reputation, they’ve helped permanently change the culture. No matter how powerful the man, anything remotely approaching Weinstein’s behavior has become very risky indeed. And that’s the biggest win of all.”
Editorial Board, New York Post

“That Mr. Weinstein, 67, even stood trial was a remarkable anomaly. A vast majority of sexual assault cases never reach the courtroom. Most sexual assaults are never reported; of those that are, few ever result in arrest or prosecution. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network estimates that out of every thousand sexual assaults, only five lead to felony convictions… To be sure, #MeToo aims to accomplish much more than sending the worst offenders to prison. The movement’s reach is ambitious — it demands that we transform our culture of male sexual entitlement and the misconduct it begets. But legal accountability is part of this evolution.”
Deborah Tuerkheimer, New York Times

Both sides also see the verdict as an important step in the prosecution of rape cases:

“The jury found Weinstein guilty of raping Jessica Mann and criminally sexually assaulting Miriam Haley. This was a considerable achievement, because juries in the past have bought the ‘blame the victim’ defense Weinstein offered. Weinstein couldn’t have raped Mann, or forced himself on Haley, his lawyers argued, since each kept in contact with him afterward. The implication was that no rape victim would do that… [But] Rape victims behave in ways that are counterintuitive to a layperson’s expectations… Forensic psychologist Barbara Ziv testified that it is common for women not to report a rape to law enforcement, to deny, compartmentalize, or otherwise try to regain control by maintaining a relationship with their assailants…

“In the case of Weinstein, there was understandable fear that he would ruin the career prospects of any woman who went to the police. Haley explained that, instead of being pro-active, she wanted to ‘just put it away in a box and pretend like it didn’t happen’… What the jury understood, by convicting Weinstein, was that all of us need to update our image of the rapist. Weinstein was a monster, but he wasn’t the stranger in the bushes monster. He was the monster in the office, the hotel or the dorm, the one who is capable of committing rape in the context of ongoing relationships. For the jury to have understood this, and convicted Weinstein, is an important turning point.”
Jeffrey Abramson, Los Angeles Times

“This jury, with this verdict — imperfect though it may be, finding Weinstein not guilty on two counts of predatory sexual assault — has shattered the notion that there is a perfect rape victim. A jury with more men than women realized that a victim of sexual assault, especially one who feels her attacker wields continuous, real-world power over her fate, might have reason to remain in contact with him, to continue to have sex or profess love…

“We now have a much more dimensional, sympathetic and true understanding of how victims of sexual assault behave. We are now more likely to believe them, even when it would be easier to dismiss such paradoxes. Black and white thinking, as the jury found, doesn’t apply here. The truth is in the gray areas. And this verdict will, hopefully, have a reach far beyond Weinstein.”
Maureen Callahan, New York Post

Other opinions below.

From the Left

“The defense argued for a constricted framework of rape, one in which, in order to be believed, a victim would have to physically fight off her assailant (until, presumably, some unspecified point of injury and incapacitation), then spend the rest of her life telling anyone who’ll listen that one of the most powerful men in her industry has raped her. The jury refused to buy it. It is a testament to the work of the #MeToo movement’s advocates, many of whom had been doing anti-rape work for decades before Weinstein was publicly accused, that Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley’s stories were heard in all their complexity, subjected to the defense’s most punishing scrutiny, and still believed.”
Christina Cauterucci, Slate“If a more balanced legal approach to sexual assault is going to become the norm instead of the exception, then, for a start, the law needs to change. State statutes of limitations need to be extended or eliminated to give victims the opportunity to come forward even years after a traumatic assault. (Now, in some states, the statute of limitations for felony sex crimes expires after 10 years or less.) Enforcement needs to change as well. Law enforcement authorities need to let women know that they will be listened to, and that their cases will be prosecuted quickly and thoroughly. Victims need to have confidence that their attacker’s DNA won’t be stashed away for decades in a file cabinet.”
Editorial Board, New York Times“You can see [Weinstein’s] conviction as a victory for these women, a testament to how powerful they can be, taking down an abuser with uncommon influence and wealth. Or you can see his conviction as too small a victory, won after too long and great a fight, a symbol not of how far we have come in taking sexual abuse seriously but of how far we still have to go. After all, more than 100 women accused Weinstein himself, and thousands of others came forward with their stories of sexual abuse by other men in the wake of the revelations against him. Why did it take so many?”
Moira Donegan, The Guardian“I have a message for the pundit class: DO BETTER. Don’t tell me to be happy with scraps because historically women have been… I understand that these things things are hard to prove and that this was not an open and shut case, but maybe we need to change the laws around rape and sexual assault to greater encompass the me-too landscape. Not all rapes happen in deserted alleyways. Many rapes happen in the boss’ office or hotel room. Change the laws, erase the stigma. We need to be better than our parents and grandparents about sexual assault and rape. Let’s stop celebrating halfway victories just because they’re better than nothing.”
Molly Jong-Fast, Daily Beast

From the Right

“The court permitted testimony from victims of four similar acts to bolster proof of just two indicted acts. It is unusual for proof of uncharged crimes to be more extensive than that of charged crimes. Clearly, the defense will claim on appeal that the similar-act evidence inflamed the jury into convicting because Weinstein is a sociopath, rather than on the strength of the proof of the two sex acts actually charged… [But] The verdict will help the state rebut such claims. The fact that a jury of seven men and five women did not convict on the most serious charges, and that it convicted only on third-degree rather than first-degree rape (in the Mann incident), indicates that it was sober and discriminating in doing its job.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review“While the press ultimately published exposes on Weinstein, reports like Farrow’s on NBC implicated the media alongside the entertainment industry, showing how outlets were responsive to the producer’s pressure campaign. It’s telling that ‘one of the most open secrets in Hollywood’ remained outside the media spotlight for so long. To be clear, Weinstein and Weinstein alone is guilty for his disgusting behavior, and the justice brought to his accusers is Monday’s primary victory. But everyone knows more could have been done, and much sooner…“Weinstein visited the White House nine times during the Obama administration, and was a major donor to Democratic causes. In addition to his influence in Hollywood, Weinstein’s extensive political involvement continues to raise questions about years of complicity among self-interested elites, who arguably could have protected dozens of women from misconduct by taking action sooner… The hollow morality of our purportedly moral elites is a reality [that] Me Too, for all its faults, laid bare in months of disturbing news cycles. It is rightfully unsettling. It rightfully mingles with other concerns the public has about our ruling class, some of which drive them to the embrace of populists, waiting with open arms.”
Emily Jashinsky, The Federalist“Half of the nation’s top tax bracket knew he spent his nights raping women for sport. ‘I’m Harvey Weinstein,’ the producer used to tell those in his way. ‘You know what I can do.’ And thanks to the survivors brave enough to speak up and the rogue journalists bold enough to believe them, we do… Weinstein is a rapist. Those are the words journalists have spent more than three years waiting to write without that wretched ‘allegedly,’ words that his victims have spent decades waiting for the justice system to validate… For once, he’ll have to read a world-famous story that he didn’t get to make up. Weinstein is a rapist. And thus goes his legacy.”
Tiana Lowe, Washington Examiner

On the bright side…

Playful penguins struggle to keep atop a slippery floating chunk of ice.
Huffington Post

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POLITICO PLAYBOOK

POLITICO Playbook: How can Trump stem the bleeding?

Presented by

DRIVING THE DAY

OF ALL THE QUESTIONS TUMBLING THROUGH THE MINDS of President DONALD TRUMP’S political allies eight months before Election Day, none is more urgent than this: How can the 45th president stop this bleeding?

TRUMP and his White House are facing a crisis of confidence over their handling of the coronavirus, with no obvious way to arrest the slide. Case in point: Although scant new information was released Thursday, financial markets nosedived uncontrollably — part of the worst week in markets since the 2008 crash. AS OF JUST BEFORE 6 A.M., Dow Futures indicated that the market will slide another 1% — 278 points — this morning upon opening.

WHAT’S A COMMANDER in chief to do?

THERE IS PRECEDENT: IN TIMES OF CRISIS, PRESIDENTS tend to use the machinery of the federal government as a salve to calm nerves. Former President BARACK OBAMA committed several thousand troops to West Africa during the Ebola scare. He visited the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. Yet TRUMP seems to delight in throwing sand in that same machinery. He stands by his decision to slash money for infectious disease research.

INSTEAD OF CEDING THE SPOTLIGHT to experts, he has taken it upon himself to talk about the virus outbreak, and cast doubt on the judgment of U.S. government scientists that there will be an outbreak of some magnitude in the United States. He contradicted members of his infectious disease team. On Thursday, he met with a pair of actors who were starring in a play about a couple of former FBI agents the president does not like.

CONGRESS has a role here and will certainly share in part of the blame should the virus spread, which is why Capitol Hill is racing to find a compromise for roughly $5 billion in spending to combat the burgeoning pandemic. Yet TRUMP’S selection of VP MIKE PENCE as the overseer of the government effort has been met with head slaps among Democrats. Speaker NANCY PELOSI said she personally expressed her displeasure to PENCE, although she also noted she’s looking forward to working with him.

TRUMP’S ALLIES — both on Capitol Hill and in the administration — are looking for ways to pull the emergency brake to aid the president. One such ally suggested the government send test kits — like instant pregnancy exams — to Americans’ houses. This would help with detection, this person said. When asked if this was feasible, the ally said they had no idea. Of course, there are differences between coronavirus and Ebola. African nations were hospitable to U.S. help. The notoriously secretive China has been less forthright, officials said.

BIG WAPO STORY … LENA SUN and YASMEEN ABUTALEB: “U.S. workers without protective gear assisted coronavirus evacuees, HHS whistleblower says”: “Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers to receive the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, without proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint.”

NYT, BIZ FRONT: “Trump Administration Faces Economic Test as Coronavirus Shakes Markets,” by Jim Tankersley, Alan Rappeport and Jenna Smialek: “If the infection gains a big foothold in the United States, it could disrupt the economy, which has been expanding steadily with an unemployment rate that has hovered near a 50-year low for more than a year.

“In an extreme scenario where the virus severely hits the United States, it could keep workers at home and grind production to a halt, hurting revenue streams and tanking even highly leveraged corporations as they fall behind on debt payments. In the least severe case, the current slowdown in China could cause a short-lived growth blip.

“Economists at Goldman Sachs already expect to shave 0.8 percentage points off the United States gross domestic product in the first three months of 2020 because of slumping tourism from China and trade slowdowns. But they expect a quick rebound in the second quarter that will help to make up for the downturn.”

— AP: “Asia stocks tumble on virus fears after Wall Street plunge,” by Joe McDonald: “Asian stock markets plunged further Friday on spreading virus fears, deepening a global rout after Wall Street endured its biggest one-day drop in nine years.” AP

WHY THE ADMINISTRATION MAY STRUGGLE … WAPO, by Beth Reinhard, Emma Brown and Neena Satija: “Former federal officials and public-health experts argue that an effective response to a epidemiological crisis demands sustained planning and investment. While the administration’s response to coronavirus has been criticized in recent weeks as slow and disjointed, people in and outside the White House have warned for years that the nation is ill prepared for a dangerous pandemic.”

— “California undertakes extensive effort to trace contacts of woman with coronavirus,” by WaPo’s Geoffrey Fowler, Lenny Bernstein and Laurie McGinley: “California has launched a far-reaching effort to find anyone who might have come in contact with a new coronavirus patient infected despite having no known link to others with the illness, as federal officials tried Thursday to fix the faulty testing process that has hamstrung their ability to track how widely the disease is spreading.

“U.S. officials raced to meet the daunting new challenge of a virus that could be spreading through a Northern California community, even as the covid-19 virus continued its relentless march around the globe. Stock markets continued to plunge, Japan initiated a weeks-long school closure and an Iranian lawmaker contracted the infection. From the Middle East to South Korea to parts of Europe, the number of deaths and infections continued to grow.”

Good Friday morning.

ANDREW DESIDERIO: “Senate Intel chair privately warned that GOP’s Biden probe could help Russia”: The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee has privately expressed concerns about his colleagues’ corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, further exposing divisions within the GOP over whether to continue pursuing an effort that led in part to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

“In a Dec. 5 meeting, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told the leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Finance committees — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, respectively — that their probe targeting Biden could aid Russian efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system, according to two congressional sources familiar with the meeting.”

SCOOP … RYAN LIZZA: “Coming to a podcast near you: Hillary Clinton”: “The other radio personality who influenced the format and style of the new Hillary Clinton show was even more unusual: Howard Stern. …

“Clinton’s show will feature her in conversation with a brand-name guest, who might be drawn from world leaders and politicians, of course, but also celebrities, authors and perhaps famous chefs. Her team is experimenting with using a Stern-inspired ensemble plucked from the larger universe of Hillaryland to help loosen her up, keep the show conversational, and discuss the day’s news, perhaps at the top or bottom of the show. The search is on inside her organization for a Robin Quivers-like sidekick.”

MARK LEIBOVICH in Charleston on PETE BUTTIGIEG on A17 of the NYT: “The Political Junkie Runs for President”: “One could easily envision Mr. Buttigieg as a peripatetic presidential campaign operative, or election commentator; or imagine him organizing ‘watch parties’ in college where like-minded revelers at Harvard’s Institute of Politics could gather to enjoy that week’s episode of ‘West Wing.’ Or see him live-blogging the Indiana primary for Slate in 2016, and angling to become the chair of the Democratic National Committee. That’s because he has actually done all of these things. …

“Still, as you watch Mr. Buttigieg move through his campaign, there are certain settings in which he becomes seemingly indistinguishable from the talking heads and hangers-on who populate this insider bubble.

“On the morning of the New Hampshire primary, for instance, he was working his way backstage following an appearance on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe.’ ‘Hey, longtime follower, first time hand-shaker,’ Mr. Buttigieg said, extending his hand to David Wasserman, a campaign and elections guru at ‘The Cook Political Report’ and semifamous inhabitant of this political-media ecosystem. A self-described ‘nerd for maps,’ Mr. Wasserman represents just the kind of campaign super-junkie that only the most fanatical of politicos get aroused by.”

— “Surging Sanders shows few signs of making nice with fellow Democrats,” by WaPo’s Sean Sullivan in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Michael Scherer: “[I]n just the past few days, the senator from Vermont has angered Florida Democrats with praise for Fidel Castro. He has upset some Jewish leaders with sharp criticism of a pro-Israel group. And his campaign has preemptively spurned billionaire rival Mike Bloomberg’s offer to help fund his campaign in the general election.

“These disputes with other Democrats, even as he cements a position atop the presidential primary field, are prompting nervousness and alarm among many of them over whether Sanders can set aside decades-old habits of combativeness and confrontation and bring the party together to take on a president they revile.”

— “A softer side of Bernie Sanders?” by the Boston Globe’s Liz Goodwin: “On the cusp of Super Tuesday contests next week that could put Sanders on a fast-moving path to the Democratic presidential nomination, he has begun toning down his rhetoric a bit, distancing himself from his own calls for ‘revolution’ and serving up a more suburban-friendly twist to his sweeping policy platform while highlighting more of his biography.”

— NYT’S GLENN THRUSH on OBAMA: “As Mr. Sanders’s campaign gained steam a few weeks ago, Mr. Obama said he would enthusiastically support any of the candidates. But he added that the task of uniting the party around Mr. Sanders ‘could be difficult,’ according to an associate who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.”

— WARNING SIGNS FOR WARREN, via Stephanie Murray in Boston: “Warren is at risk of losing her home state, the latest indignity in her long slide in the polls in her own backyard. As recently as October, the two-term senator held a 20-percentage point lead over Sanders, according to a WBUR poll. According to the latest public poll, she trails him by one point. Now, in the run-up to the March 3 primary, Sanders is going all in on his bid to pick off Massachusetts, culminating in a four-day music and canvassing festival in Worcester that begins Friday.” POLITICO

— AND/BUT: “Super PAC backing Warren makes $9 million Super Tuesday ad buy,” by Alex Thompson

THE HERMETIC SEAL IS OFF! … TOO LITTLE TOO LATE, OR RIGHT ON TIME? … MIKE BLOOMBERG is in the midst of a media blitz. He spoke with NBC’s KASIE HUNT in Houston and JUDY WOODRUFF for the “PBS NewsHour.” The NYT’s JEREMY PETERS reported he will be on CBS’ “60 Minutes” this week.

CHRIS CADELAGO in POLITICO MAGAZINE: “The Wizards Behind Bloomberg’s Half-Billion Dollar Makeover”

BEN JACOBS on Medium: “Michael Bloomberg’s North Carolina Game Is Seriously Unlike Anything Else: The Super Tuesday state is the former New York mayor’s best shot at primary delegates — and he knows it”: “North Carolina may be Bloomberg’s best state on Super Tuesday, and on paper, Bloomberg’s organization in North Carolina is formidable.

“By Super Tuesday, the campaign will have 10 offices and a staff of more than 125 in the state. Bloomberg has already spent $14.4 million on advertising in North Carolina. That’s more than Bernie Sanders, his most well-financed competitor, has spent on the air in all 14 Super Tuesday states combined.”

NOT GOING ANYWHERE — “Joe Biden’s campaign isn’t dead yet,” by Natasha Korecki and Marc Caputo in Charleston, S.C.: “Just as his White House bid appeared to be sputtering to an ugly end, there are signs of life for Joe Biden still. And perhaps more than that. A second-place finish in Nevada, a major endorsement in South Carolina, a strong debate Tuesday and a pair of polls showing him with a staggering lead here have given new hope to his campaign.

“Money is flowing anew into his war chest, as well as to a super PAC supporting him. Armed with those data points, the campaign and super PAC are telling donors that Biden — given his strength among African-American voters and momentum kicking in at the right time — is quickly emerging as the alternative to frontrunner Bernie Sanders.” POLITICO

CPAC … ALEX ISENSTADT at National Harbor, Md.: “GOP scramble is on to succeed Donald Trump in 2024”: “President Donald Trump is locked in a tough reelection battle, yet the Republicans looking to succeed him are already circling.

“They’re visiting early primary states, reaching out to major donors, and — in one instance — even running commercials in Iowa. But perhaps the most overt display of ambition is on display this week here at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a rite of passage for White House aspirants eager to audition before thousands of activists whose support can be critical down the line.

“Those with the most prominent speaking roles — a list that includes the likes of Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — are regarded as likely 2024 contenders. At Wednesday evening’s opening reception, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley was mobbed by fans, including a woman who wore a ‘Nikki 2024’ baseball cap. Haley took a picture with the woman and signed the hat.” POLITICO

— “Trump’s answer to Bernie’s youth brigade: Don Jr.,” by Tina Nguyen

— SPOTTED at Turning Point USA’s CPAC afterparty at the Cadillac Ranch on Thursday night: Donald Trump Jr. and Kim Guilfoyle, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), Charlie Kirk, Andrew Kolvet, Benny Johnson, Neil Munro, Charlie Spiering, Dana Loesch, Hogan Gidley, Will Ricciardella, Sergio Gor, Andy Surabian …

… Brooke Singman, Daniel Rodimer, Matt Colby, Rick Harrison of “Pawn Stars,” Gaston Mooney, James O’Keefe (handing out “#EpsteinCoverup” hats), Carpe Donktum, Stephanie Hamill, Gina Loudon, Rogan O’Handley (DC Draino) and a bald eagle. The drinks menu (including “Epstein Did Not Tequila Himself”)

SUNDAY SO FAR …

ABC

“This Week”: Joe Biden … Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Panel: Matt Dowd, Chris Christie, Heidi Heitkamp and Yvette Simpson.
CNN

“State of the Union”: VP Mike Pence … Joe Biden. Panel: Rick Santorum, Van Jones, Amanda Carpenter and Rebecca Katz.
NBC

“Meet the Press”: Joe Biden. Panel: Robert Gibbs, Eddie Glaude Jr., Peggy Noonan and Kristen Welker.
CBS

“Face the Nation”: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) … Anthony Salvanto … Ed O’Keefe. Panel: Karen Tumulty, Michael Crowley, Jamal Simmons and Ramesh Ponnuru.
FOX

“Fox News Sunday”: Joe Biden. Panel: Katie Pavlich, Donna Brazile, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Mo Elleithee. Power Player: Phyllis Wilson.
CNN

“Inside Politics”: Mike Shear, Nia-Malika Henderson and Jackie Kucinich.

TRUMP’S FRIDAY — The president will leave the White House at 4:10 p.m. en route to North Charleston, S.C. He will arrive at the North Charleston Coliseum at 6:15 p.m. and will speak at a political rally at 7 p.m. He will depart the coliseum at 8:35 p.m. and travel back to Washington. He will return to the White House at 10:30 p.m.

PLAYBOOK READS

K STREET FILES — “Longtime Republican lobbyist Dirk Van Dongen to retire,” by Theo Meyer

HIDDEN PLAYER … WAPO’S PAUL KANE on LAURA DOVE: “An unsung aide equal parts air traffic controller and caddie exits the Senate”

AP/ANKARA, Turkey: “Turkey raises death toll to 33 troops in Syrian airstrike”: “Turkey on Friday raised the death toll from a Syrian government airstrike on its forces in northwestern Syria the previous night to 33 Turkish troops, the highest number of Turkish soldiers killed in a single day since Ankara first intervened in the Syrian conflict in 2016.

“The deaths, which came in an attack late Thursday, were a serious escalation in the direct conflict between Turkish and Russia-backed Syrian forces that has been waged since early February. The earlier reported death toll was 29 troops.

“The attack also sharply raises the risk of direct military confrontation between Turkey, a NATO member, and Russia. Ambassadors from NATO countries were holding emergency talks on Friday at the request of Turkey, a member of the alliance. The Turkish stock market fell 10% in the wake of the airstrike, while the Turkish lira slid against the dollar.”

FT: “Benjamin Netanyahu battles for votes ahead of third poll in a year,” by Mehul Srivastava in Tel Aviv: “A veteran campaigner, Israel’s four-time premier is pulling out all the stops to ensure his political survival. In the past week alone, he has promised to legalise marijuana, build vast settlements in the occupied West Bank that would destroy any hope of a contiguous Palestinian state and suggested that an intimate video of his main rival, Benny Gantz, might have been obtained by Iranian hackers.”

BEYOND THE BELTWAY — “Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh sentenced to 3 years for ‘Healthy Holly’ children’s book fraud scheme,” by the Baltimore Sun’s Luke Broadwater, Justin Fenton and Kevin Rector: “U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow described Pugh’s crimes as ‘astounding’ and said she took advantage of a career spent doing good works to mislead organizations who purchased her ‘Healthy Holly’ books.

“‘I have yet frankly to hear any explanation that makes sense,’ the judge said. ‘This was not a tiny mistake, lapse of judgment. This became a very large fraud. The nature and circumstances of this offense clearly, I think, are extremely, extremely serious.’” Baltimore Sun

HAPPENING TOMORROW: the expected signing of the Trump administration’s peace deal with the Taliban. AP: “The Taliban and representatives from Kabul, including the government, are to sit together within 10 to 15 days of Saturday’s signing. They’ll try to negotiate the framework of a post-war Afghanistan. Issues on the table include a more permanent cease-fire and the rights of women and minorities.”

PLAYBOOKERS

Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at politicoplaybook@politico.com.

SPOTTED: Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) flying from DCA to Denver on Thursday afternoon. Bennet and Gardner were in the same row, with one seat in between them.

SPOTTED at a blockchain Black History Month reception in Rayburn on Thursday: Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-U.S. Virgin Islands), Reps. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Darren Soto (D-Fla.), Kristin Smith, Yebbie Watkins, Tariq Meyers, Raj Mukherjee, Lyndon Boozer, Lon Goldstein, Gerry Harrington, Lewis Myers, Devron Brown, Erica Miles, Cleve Mesidor and Todd Wooten.

TRANSITIONS — PAUL TELLER is leaving the White House’s Office of Legislative affairs to join Pence’s office, where his title is likely to be deputy assistant to the president and director of strategic initiatives for the VP. TELLER worked with PENCE on Capitol Hill when Teller was the executive director of the RSC and Pence ran the conservative caucus. More from the Examiner

— Hanna Salem, director of press advance for the White House, is leaving to return to her consulting firm Salem Strategies. She is one of the few original Trump staffers, having first worked as a consultant for the Trump campaign in February 2016. … Heather Foster is joining Lyft as senior director of public engagement and strategic partnerships. She was most recently VP of preK-12 education at Widmeyer Finn Partners.

WEEKEND WEDDING — Molly Stevens, director for scheduling for Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and Joe Venegas, senior CRM specialist at Heritage Foundation, got married Saturday at St. Joseph’s. Pic

WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Joy Swain, VP of corporate research at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and John Baker, program office manager for contractor responsibility and conflict resolution for the Air Force’s Office of the General Counsel, welcomed Ashwin John Baker on Feb. 18. Pic … Another pic

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Andrea Riccio, VP at S-3 Public Affairs. What she’s been reading: “Following the British royal family is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Megxit has taken me down a full-fledged rabbit-hole, and I recently finished ‘The Diana Chronicles’ by Tina Brown to dive deeper into the Windsor gossip of the ’90s.” Playbook Q&A

BIRTHDAYS: NYT’s Paul Krugman … Ira Forman is 68 … WaPo’s Sarah Ellison and Miki King … Steven Chu is 72 … Kristen Slaughter Brown … NYT’s Lisa Lerer (h/t Rachel Adler) … Laura Durso … Porter DeLaney … John Nagl … POLITICO’s Charlie Mahtesian and Danielle Sorcher … Jay Morgan … USA Today’s Kelsey Bloom … RNC’s Christiana Purves … Ken Blackwell is 72 … Christine Simpson … E&E News’ Pamela King … Christine Domenech … Jessie Singleton Lazarus … Pete Williams, NBC News justice correspondent … Brendan Kelly is 37 … Sandhya Taneja … Craig Anderson, legislative director for Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), is 29 (h/t Mitchell Rivard) …

… Heather Fluit, communications director for Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) … Adam Sieff … Mark Lippert, VP at Boeing International … Will May, VP of business development at Firehouse Strategies (h/t NBN) … Erica Goldman of Purple Strategies … Cara Hewitt of Bloomberg Government … Deidre DeJear … Ned Ryun … Drew Ryun … Lamar Echols … Judy Schneider … Heather Sabharwal … Samantha Kruse … Kent Gray … Emily Krueger … Enid Doggett … Tom Hussain is 53 … James Sullivan … Claire Francis … Bruce Potter … Leslie Aun … Katye Riselli … Matt Abbott … Meghan Kielty … Darlene Ayers-Johnson … Michelle Brown … Emily Sporn … Rhea Lieber

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THE WASHINGTON POST MORNING HEADLINES

Read online

The morning’s most important stories, curated by Post editors.

Trump says he can bring in virus experts quickly. The experts say it’s not so simple.

People in and outside the White House have warned for years that the nation is ill-prepared for a dangerous pandemic.

By Beth Reinhard, Emma Brown and Neena Satija ● Read more »

Coronavirus testing widened as California case makes containment more urgent

By Carolyn Y. Johnson and Laurie McGinley ● Read more »

Coronavirus pushes Trump to call on specialists he maligned

At a time when expertise is paramount, the president has hollowed out the very government agencies responsible for the tasks at hand.

By Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker ● Read more »

U.S. workers lacking protective gear met evacuees, HHS whistleblower says

The whistleblower alleges she was improperly reassigned after raising concerns with HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s office.

By Lena Sun and Yasmeen Abutaleb ● Read more »

Pence takes over virus response amid criticism of his qualifications

Vice President Mike Pence faced the dual challenge of reassuring the public that he would provide accurate and full information and placating a president who has projected a sunny optimism about the outbreak.

By Toluse Olorunnipa, Josh Dawsey and Yasmeen Abutaleb ● Read more »

Surging Sanders shows few signs of making nice with fellow Democrats

Sen. Bernie Sanders’s disputes with Democrats are prompting nervousness and alarm among many of them over whether he can set aside decades-old habits of combativeness and bring the party together.

By Sean Sullivan and Michael Scherer ● Read more »

On a South Carolina island, generations of black voters confront their Democratic presidential options

Families on Wadmalaw Island have one thing in common: None expressed excitement about their choices. They all vowed to vote, but expressed frustration with the large, chaotic field of candidates.

By Vanessa Williams ● Read more »

Opinions

In South Carolina, a determination to oust Trump

By Eugene Robinson ● Read more »

Trump’s mixed messages are sowing coronavirus confusion

By Editorial Board ● Read more »

Hey Bernie, you can’t separate Cuba’s social policies from its authoritarianism

By Carlos Eire ● Read more »

How Trump can avoid being his own worst enemy on coronavirus

By David Ignatius ● Read more »

With coronavirus, Trump’s lies and his reassurances backfire

By Catherine Rampell ● Read more »

Now Sanders wants a Green New Deal for the entire world

By Marc Thiessen ● Read more »

More News

U.S. immigration policies hinder Venezuelans seeking refuge. A father and daughter show why.

Though President Trump supports the opposition to socialist leader Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. government has been turning away asylum seekers at the southwest border.

By Arelis Hernández ● Read more »

A glimpse of peace in Afghanistan: With fighting paused, soldiers invite Taliban over for chicken

The “reduction in violence” appears to be holding, even in Helmand, one of the country’s most volatile provinces.

By Susannah George ● Read more »

Russia denies responsibility for attack in northern Syria that killed 33 Turkish soldiers

Turkey has deployed thousands of troops in Syria to prevent the defeat of anti-regime militias in Idlib, and Russian officials in recent days have repeatedly accused Turkey of breaching a 2018 cease-fire deal.

By Robyn Dixon ● Read more »

Everyone talks about millennial voters. Now let’s hear from them.

Eugene Scott describes the impact young voters may have on the presidential election. Drew Harwell on the psychological toll of Web-connected cameras. And Dan Keating explains whether stop-and-frisk actually lowered the crime rate in New York City.

Post Reports | Listen Now ● By The Washington Post ● Read more »

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MORNING EDITION

Friday, February 28, 2020

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‘All hands on deck’: Mike Pence takes charge in fight against coronavirusVice President Mike Pence took control of the U.S. response to the coronavirus Thursday by pledging an “all hands on … more

ARRA News Service (in this message: 18 new items)

Abortion: Making a Corporate Killing

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 08:30 PM PST

by Tony Perkins: How is killing off future customers good for business? Justin Danhof has no idea, but he’s raising an important question now that some of America’s biggest brands are starting to become major players in the abortion debate. Shareholders have already started changing the boardroom conversations, he warns. And conservatives, Danhof says, need to start speaking up.

CEOs across 30 of the country’s biggest companies are already feeling the heat. Earlier this year, a group of investors — with hundreds of billions of dollars in assets — demanded to know where their businesses stood on things like “sexual and reproductive health care.” The first step here, Justin cautions, “and they make this very clear in the articles written about this — they first want companies to make pro-abortion statements. But then, then once they get them on record supporting abortion… they’re going to go after [their] corporate tax funding. And if they find funding for any pro-life legislator, they’re going to hammer that corporation.” The goal is simple, he says: to silence political speech that the Left doesn’t like.

Danhof, who’s become an expert in corporate activism during his time at the National Center for Public Policy Research, worries that the tide is turning at a lot of these major companies — and too many Americans are sitting on the sidelines. “What I found out,” he told listeners, “is that this year — for the first time since 1973 — investor advocates are actually going to corporations and demanding that they get on board, demanding that they ‘make the business case for abortion.'”

And part of the way they’re doing that is by introducing shareholder resolutions. So far, he believes, there are five backed by a group called the As You Sow network — “including one in front of Macy’s and one from Progressive [Insurance]. And again, the message is clear from these proposals: Get into the abortion debate, get on our side, or we’re coming after you. In the end, it’s all about money and speech. The Left likes to silence conservative and Christian voices because they don’t want to debate us, and they don’t like what we have to say. That’s the goal.”

But, as Justin points out, more than three dozen companies fund Planned Parenthood directly. So, “you would think,” he suggested, that these liberal activists would be “satisfied with their status in corporate America.” Well, he said, “you’d be wrong.” Shelley Alpern of Rhia Ventures spelled it out when she talked about the motivation for filing these resolutions. They claim “lobbying and political contributions that ultimately fund candidates or groups backing abortion restrictions do implicate companies.”

If you’re wondering how much sway these radicals have, just look at Macy’s. The company “is closing hundreds of stores and firing thousands of employees at the moment. They don’t need to spend time getting involved in the abortion debate when they have [no reason] to do so…” Danhof argued. But, “[t]he tipping point comes when they’re only hearing from liberals [or] from pro-abortion advocates. It eventually becomes just easy to appease the activists if they’re not hearing from pro-life Americans. So if you shop at Macy’s, if you’re an investor at Macy’s, reach out to them and let them know that you oppose this resolution, that you think the company should just continue to sell goods that folks want and frankly do a better job of it so that they don’t fire more employees and close more stores.”

The threat is real — and so is the urgency for pro-lifers to get in the game. “Companies can — and should — remain neutral in the culture wars,” Justin agrees. “But they need to hear from both sides in order to have the political courage to do so.”

———————–
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.

Tags: Tony Perkins, Family Research Center, FRC, Family Research Council, Abortion, Making a Corporate Killing To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!

‘Berning’ Down America . . .

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 08:17 PM PST

. . . Democrats petrified by the rise of Bernie Sanders have only themselves to blame.

by Arnold Ahlert: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” —Ronald Reagan

“In many US states, a single high-school history class is the only civics instruction that future voters ever receive. Eight states don’t even make the study of American history a graduation requirement.” — from a column, “Public schools are teaching our children to hate America,” by Mary Kay Linge

Bernie Sanders is what you get when orchestrated ignorance, a cultivated contempt for America, and “an everyone gets a trophy just for showing up” sense of self-entitlement reaches critical mass. On Monday night, the leading Democrat candidate for president released a plan calling for a cornucopia of big-government “solutions” to the nation’s problems that demonstrates exactly that. It is a paean to the idea that there are sufficient numbers of intellectually challenged Americans who believe that massive giveaways are “free” or can be paid for by extracting large sums of money from “greedy” fellow Americans who have “more than their fair share.”

Why did Sanders release the plan? Perhaps it’s because he is as ignorant as many of his followers. Asked how he’d pay for his program, Sanders insists he “can’t rattle off to you every nickel and every dime.” Tuesday’s chaotic debate proved no better, as Sanders had difficulty answering a number of other questions as well.

Yet who’s kidding whom? For legions of “Bernie Bros,” who see the 78-year-old socialist/Marxist as more of a televangelist than a presidential candidate, details are largely irrelevant.

Even more irrelevant? These same followers — who support a plan that envisions raising money by precipitating lawsuits against the fossil-fuel industry, eviscerating the military, massively expanding the power of the IRS, and simply seizing wealth for the sake of “social justice” — somehow presume that behavior is static. In short, they think no matter how much money one extracts from the private sector, people will continue to work, take risks, create new businesses, and live their lives as if nothing has changed.

It doesn’t get more ignorant than that, yet that ignorance is hardly surprising. “Feel the Bern” is a triumph of emotionalism over intellectual curiosity.

And no one champions that useful-idiot dynamic more than Sanders himself. Sanders remains an apologist for one of the most repressive regimes on the planet. “We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but, you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad,” Sanders told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who had played a 1985 clip of Sanders extolling Castro’s virtues. “When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did?” Sanders continued. “He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?”

For older Americans, idiotic tradeoffs have a familiar ring, akin to the apologist assertions that murderous dictators like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were not all bad, because Mussolini made the trains run on time and Hitler restored the pride of a German populace devastated by WWI. In that vein, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had the perfect response to Sanders’s assertion: “It really makes a difference when those you murder at the firing squad can read & write.”

Sanders’s affection for totalitarian societies isn’t limited to Cuba. The man who honeymooned in the Soviet Union also praised it for providing a “whole variety of programs for the young people, and cultural programs which go far beyond what we do in this country.” He added, “We went to a theater in Yaroslavl which was absolutely beautiful — had three separate stages.”

Columnist Katya Sedgwick, who grew up in the then-Soviet Socialist State of Ukraine, gave the proper context to such an assertion. “My generation of Soviets came of age knowing that the USSR was built on tyranny and lies,” she writes. “We are the most cynical generation in Russian history. Once the country crumbled, our lives spun out of control. As a result, Russian speakers my age suffered through high rates of substance abuse, low life expectancies, and through-the-floor birth rates. On the plus side, we grew up with gaudy chandeliers in public places.”

The same kind of cynicism is the life blood of Sanders’s campaign. Columnist Jake Novak illuminates a number of factors that drive it, all of which involve the alienation of younger Americans, besieged by student debt, even as they underwrite Social Security and Medicare skewed toward older Americans, and remain largely ignored by the establishment members of both parties.

Novak also explains that Democrats have brought Sanders’s popularity down upon themselves, courtesy of their assertions that President Trump is a white supremacist and an agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Think about it: if you really believe the president is a traitor and supporting violent plots against non-white Americans, is this really the time to support mainstream Democrat or Republican candidates?” he writes. “Sanders may be a career politician, but he’s never been a mainstream politician. His persona and political brand fits much better into the current Democratic narrative that we’re living in desperate times.”

Desperation is an emotion, and there is little doubt that emotionalism has transcended intellectual rigor in modern-day America. We are a nation where absurd concepts such as “triggering,” “microaggressions,” “intersectionalism,”and “my truth” have supplanted logic and reason as the common currency of younger generations so cynical, many believe the entire planet has only a dozen years left until climate apocalypse ends humanity itself.

Thus an entire reordering of society, a.k.a. “fundamental transformation” — with retribution as a possible part of the “social justice” mix — is the only way forward.

The searing irony is impossible to ignore. “Democrats have for decades (since JFK) admired godless socialism,” columnist Kevin McCullough explains, even as he further notes that the party “lied about what it all means — especially during election cycles — knowing that middle of the road Americans wouldn’t quite be able to stomach it.”

Enter Sanders, who has unmasked the subterfuge to the utter horror of establishment Democrats and their mainstream-media allies, who are appalled by Sanders’s honesty.

Why? By any reasonable standard, every Democrat still in the presidential race is a radical leftist in a party that has reached “peak progressivism,” as Victor Davis Hanson puts it. Thus it’s hardly surprising that a genuine socialist/Marxist would resonate more than his less honest competitors.

Yet Sanders represents something else as well. For decades, this nation has done a terrible job passing American exceptionalism down to the next generation, and at some point that failure reaches critical mass.

Can Sanders win the nomination? If Sanders maintains his front-runner status, Democrats will likely engender chaos — maybe even a brokered convention — in trying to prevent it. If Sanders still prevails? The 2020 election will be all about revolution or repudiation.

Here’s hoping for repudiation — on a massive scale. A constitutional republic is a terrible thing to waste.
———————–
Arnold Ahlert is a political analyst who writes for the Patriot Post.

Tags: Patriot Post, Arnold Ahlert, ‘Berning’ Down America To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!

3 Big Takeaways From Trump’s Trip to India

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 07:52 PM PST

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
President Donald Trump arrive for a joint press conference.

by James Carafano: It may look as if President Donald Trump’s trip to India boiled down to little more than media optics and Taj Mahal photo shoots. But there is much more significance to it than that.

Over 100,000 people packed a cricket stadium to hear Trump and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, reprise the “Howdy, Modi” event in Houston, Texas, a few months ago.

Each leader highlighted the accomplishments of the other and discussed the strengthening bilateral relationship between our two countries.

Are there notable takeaways from this historic visit? Definitely.

For one, who could have predicted it would take a stadium big enough to hold 100,000-plus cricket fans to showcase two politicians? Of course, we also ought to acknowledge this is India, one of the most populous nations on Earth. A hundred thousand people in India is like five guys at a Starbucks in D.C.

And yet if the stadium could have taken 10 times that number, Modi and Trump probably still could have filled it. The people of India know something very special is going on here.

U.S.-India relations exhibit a bipartisan character in both countries. This is more than just two charismatic leaders and the offer of free hats pulling in a crowd.

The U.S. and India have a lot to offer each other. The easy get is security. Both want a stable and prosperous South Asia and a reasonable Pakistan. Both want to tackle the scourge of transnational Islamist terrorism and curb the worst destabilizing acts of Chinese expansion.

The U.S. and India have forged something new and unprecedented. We are not old-fashioned treaty allies, but we are way more than just friends.

This is a vital strategic partnership. We know that from the most distant Pacific island to the Middle East, we have each other’s back. This is a new geostrategic reality in the world.

To be fair, the two countries started moving in this direction before Modi and Trump made the scene. But they have sealed the deal.

Second, now comes the hard part—forging the economic bonds. This was a disappointment to both sides, which had hoped to seal at least a small-ball trade deal for the visit.

This is difficult for India, which traditionally has had an inward-looking economy with heavy government controls. Still, India knows it’s time to change.

India now has the world’s fifth-largest economy, and it’s time to harness that economic potential to drive real growth. Nothing will make that happen faster than partnering with the United States.

Deals are coming. They will be followed by more deals.

Third, this visit also reminds Americans that we have a statesman in the White House.

The critics would have us believe that Trump is burning through allies and making America the enmity of the world. What Trump showed in India is how empty that critique really is.

At least we know a few hundred thousand Indians think so.
———————–
James Jay Carafano @JJCarafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, E. W. Richardson Fellow, and Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.

Tags: James Jay Carafano, Heritage Foundation, 3 Big Takeaways, Trump’s Trip ,to India To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!

We Must Hear From Bloomberg’s “Kill It” Victims

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 07:35 PM PST

Michael Bloomberg

by Bill Donohue: Time to comments on Michael Bloomberg’s treatment of female employees.

In the South Carolina presidential debate, Senator Elizabeth Warren commented that when she was a special-education teacher she was happy not to have a boss like Michael Bloomberg. She recounted how he allegedly said to one of his pregnant employees, “Kill It!” Bloomberg denied the accusation.

In 1997, Bloomberg was sued by Sekiko Sakai Garrison. He settled with the Japanese woman, but neither the amount nor any other information about the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) has been made public.

Bloomberg must not be allowed to get away with this. Succumbing to public pressure, he said last week that he will release Garrison from the NDA. But neither he nor his company has reached out to her. Bloomberg should contact her immediately.

In the Catholic Church, NDA’s are not tolerated (they once were). While there are legitimate reasons for having NDA’s, such as protecting the privacy rights of victims, those who are in public office, or are in pursuit of it, must be held to a higher standard. This is doubly true of presidential candidates.

There are other reasons why Bloomberg must come clean. Last year a Bloomberg L.P. spokesman told ABC News that the company rarely settles disputes, preferring to take their case to the courts. What was different about this case? Why didn’t Bloomberg take his chances in the courts? Why did he find it necessary to settle?

Garrison’s lawyer told ABC News that she may be willing to speak if the NDA were to be voided. Justice demands that this be done. Consider what we know already.

According to Garrison’s lawsuit, on April 11, 1995, at approximately 11:20 a.m., Bloomberg posed for a picture with two female workers and a group of students from New York University in the company snack area. He noticed Garrison standing nearby and struck up a conversation with her. “How’s married life? You still married?” She said everything was going along just great, and that she was pregnant. Bloomberg responded, “Kill it!” Stunned, she asked him to repeat what he said. “Kill it!” He then muttered, “Great! Number 16!” He was expressing his unhappiness with the sixteen women who were out on maternity leave.

Who is telling the truth? Bloomberg or Garrison? We can’t be certain but it sure looks like she is. There are several reasons for drawing this conclusion.

Garrison understood Bloomberg’s remark as suggesting she abort her baby in order to keep her job. She was visibly upset with him and told several managers in the company what happened.

In August 1995, four months after this incident, Garrison filed a complaint with the New York Division of Human Rights. According to ABC News, she spoke to “ten people within the firm, five of whom were managers.”

What did they do for her? According to her lawsuit, filed two years later, nothing. It’s actually worse than nothing. “The managers told her to ignore the comment, forget it ever happened and not to act on her complaint. These managers reiterated threats of termination if plaintiff pressed the complaint.”

The day after the “Kill It” episode, Garrison went to work but was so distraught and ill that she had to leave. She called in sick the next day. She was subsequently fired.

Some in the media are portraying this as a he said/she said type of dispute: Bloomberg says he never said “Kill It!” and she says he did. But this account is false. There is at least one witness.

David Zielenzinger, a former Bloomberg technology worker, told the Washington Post he heard the conversation. “I remember she had been telling some of her girlfriends that she was pregnant. And Mike came out and I remember he said, ‘Are you going to kill it?’ And that stopped everything. And I couldn’t believe it.” Zielenzinger said this was vintage Bloomberg. “He talked kind of crudely about women all the time.”

Bloomberg learned from some employees that Garrison was upset with him after their exchange. His remarks are telling. [She made handwritten notes of the call, which were obtained by the Post.]

Bloomberg called her at home and left a lengthy voice mail. He asked her to give him a call, saying he learned from another employee that “you were upset.” He said that “whatever you heard wasn’t what I said and whatever I said had nothing to do with pregnancies.”

Why, then, did Bloomberg apologize? Here is how he ended the call. “I apologize if there was something you heard but I didn’t say it, didn’t mean it, didn’t say it.” A spokesman for the company did not deny this account.

Why would anyone apologize for something he never said? More important, why, if he never said it, would he say he “didn’t mean it”? This indicates that he did say it, objecting only to her interpretation of what he meant when he advised her to “Kill It!” What should she have thought? That he was joking about his suggestion that she kill her baby? Did he think she would burst out laughing? What kind of man speaks this way?

Bloomberg had a thing about Garrison. Did he see her as an easy mark? She was the only Japanese woman working in sales in the New York headquarters at the time. Here are some things he allegedly said about her before his infamous “Kill It!” remark.

In front of male employees who knew her boyfriend, he asked her, “Are you still dating your boyfriend? You giving him good [he used a slang term for oral sex]?” On another occasion, after pointing to a newly-hired older female who was conversing with an overweight male salesperson, he asked Garrison, “If you had to, would you rather do THAT or THAT?”

When Bloomberg spotted Garrison wearing an engagement ring, he said, “What, is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?” A week later, he said to her, “Still engaged? What, is he THAT GOOD in bed, or did your father pay him off to get rid of you?”

Bloomberg once broke up a conversation between Garrison and a male employee at a business convention so he could make a crude comment about the male employee’s girlfriend (she was also an employee). As she entered the elevator, he said, “That is one great piece of ass. You must be a great f***.” On another occasion, when Bloomberg saw Garrison wearing a dress he didn’t like, he told her, “Don’t like the dress. Your ass looks huge in it.” He made this comment to her on several occasions whenever she wore a new outfit.

One day Bloomberg saw Garrison return from lunch with a Tiffany shopping bag. “You ARE a real Jap” he said. He was either referring to her Japanese heritage, or, more likely, commenting on her acting like a “Jewish American Princess.” Either way he was denigrating her and making an ethnic slur.

Bloomberg looks even more guilty when we consider that his contempt for pregnant workers is not confined to Garrison.

Less than two years before his alleged “Kill it!” comment, Bloomberg learned that one of his employees, who had just given birth, was having a hard time finding a nanny. He yelled at her in front of a large group of employees. “It’s a f*****g baby! All it does is eat and s***. It doesn’t know the difference between you and anyone else!”

Bloomberg then made a racist comment. “All you need is some black who doesn’t even have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building!” The woman burst into tears in front of her co-workers.

If the CEO speaks this way in front of his employees about pregnant women, it should come as no surprise that he tolerates—indeed promotes—an environment where sexual comments and behavior are not uncommon. This explains why Garrison’s lawyer, Bonnie Josephs, said, “The atmosphere was toxic and harassing.”

It wasn’t just Garrison whom he spoke to this way. In court filings, women employees of Bloomberg allege he said such things as, “I’d like to do that piece of meat”; “I would DO you in a second”; “I’d like to f*** that in a second”; “That’s a great piece of ass.”

He did not hide his sexism. In September 1996, in front of employees and news reporters at a conference in Toronto, he allegedly said, “I would like nothing more in my life than to have Sharon Stone sit on my face.”

Bloomberg set the tone for his entire company. Garrison’s immediate boss routinely displayed wind-up toys in the shapes of a penis and a vagina on his desk. He also placed them on her desk, and when she complained, he did it over and over again. This same man bragged to her about a male employee who performed oral sex on his secretary while she sat on his shoulders in their office.

It is hardly a surprise to learn that when Bloomberg was mayor of New York City, his company continued to foster a morally corrupt workplace.

In 2007, a lawsuit of discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers was filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It was conveniently dismissed in 2011, but not before 67 women said they were prepared to join the case. Bloomberg, they said, took aim at women after they became pregnant and after they took maternity leave.

Bloomberg’s disdain for pregnant women is of a piece with his politics. His passion for abortion is so strong that as soon as he became mayor of New York City, he issued an executive order that forced medical students training to become an obstetrician or a gynecologist in a city hospital to learn how to abort a baby. “Kill it!” is something this man can’t seem to get enough of.

We need to see the NDA. If Bloomberg gets away with this, it will be a huge setback for the rights of all women, especially pregnant women and their babies. He should initiate the contact and she needs to go public with her account.

Contact Jason Schechter, communications director for the Bloomberg campaign: jschechter12@bloomberg.net.
———————
Bill Donohue (@CatholicLeague) is a sociologist and president of the Catholic League.

Tags: Bill Donohue, Catholic League, We Must Hear From, Michael Bloomberg, “Kill It” Victims To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!

Trump Takes Charge, Pence At CPAC, Honoring Israel

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 06:50 PM PST

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Media Bias
President Trump’s White House press conference yesterday was a striking contrast to the left’s carping and its attempts to politicize the coronavirus. The left politicizes everything – tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires – so it’s no surprise that it is trying to score cheap political points with a virus.

For example, one reporter pressed the president to justify his appointment of Vice President Mike Pence to direct the government’s coronavirus response when he had previously suggested that a “virus czar” wasn’t necessary.

Really? That’s the most pressing question on her mind? She was more interested in trapping the president with a “gotcha” question than reporting news.

Suffice it to say that the president was there with top experts doing their best to protect the country, while there were plenty of reporters doing their best to divide the country.

Trump Takes Charge
At yesterday’s press conference, President Trump and top officials from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control reassured the American people that we are prepared and taking all necessary actions. As I just noted, Trump also announced that Vice President Mike Pence would coordinate the government’s response efforts. (See next item.)

The American people should be reassured by this move. The vice president is a workhorse who knows how to inspire people. As governor of Indiana, Pence dealt with the first case of MERS in the United States, another form of coronavirus that originated in the Middle East.

Pence also has a strong relationship with HHS Secretary Alex Azar, a former top executive at Eli Lilly, a major U.S. pharmaceutical company headquartered in Indianapolis.

Today, Pence announced that he will be assisted by Ambassador Debbie Birx, an expert in immunology who has led America’s global effort to combat the AIDS epidemic.

During his remarks, Trump repeatedly stressed that not one person in the United States has died from the coronavirus. In contrast, the flu kills anywhere from 25,000 to 70,000 Americans every year.

So far this year, at least 10,000 Americans have died from the flu. Tragically, many more children in America (105) have died from the flu this year than there are known coronavirus infections.

But our hysterical media and the political left are accusing the president of moving too slowly. It is absolutely astonishing that this has become such an absurd controversy.

Speaking of absurd, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is demanding that funding for the border wall be diverted to efforts to fight the coronavirus. What Warren doesn’t understand is that the border wall is protecting us from the coronavirus.

As we have told you, there was a surge of Chinese nationals coming across the southern border just a few months ago. The last thing you want to do is slow down efforts to secure the southern border.

Coronavirus is now in Brazil. If there is a major outbreak in Central America, there will be caravans of “medical refugees” headed north, especially with progressives like Warren and Bernie Sanders promising free healthcare for illegal aliens.

Pence At CPAC
Vice President Pence addressed the annual Conservative Political Action Conference today. He began his remarks by expressing the administration’s commitment to combatting the coronavirus. Here are some excerpts of his remarks:

“President Donald Trump has no higher priority than the health, safety and well-being of the American people. Last month, following word of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, President Trump took unprecedented action to protect the health of Americans.

“He 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. . .

“Yesterday, President Trump 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.”

More Winning
As you know, the Trump Administration is working hard to fight the left’s radical open borders agenda. A key part of that agenda is the insane “sanctuary” movement where left-wing jurisdictions shield criminal illegal aliens from federal law enforcement officials.

The Trump Administration moved aggressively in its first days in office to confront this radical policy by cutting off federal grants to cities and states that refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Predictably, Obama-appointed judges issued injunctions blocking the Department of Justice from punishing sanctuary cities.

Yesterday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the administration’s authority to suspend federal dollars to sanctuary cities.

This is a huge victory for President Trump, American taxpayers and common sense. If progressive cities refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement officers, they should not get federal law enforcement dollars!

Religious Broadcasters Honor Israel
I was honored to address a breakfast yesterday at the National Religious Broadcasters annual convention. The breakfast, dedicated to honoring Israel, was sponsored by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Combat Anti-Semitism and NRBTV. The audience was comprised of hundreds of Christians and Jews, Americans and Israelis.

My remarks were interrupted several times by applause from the enthusiastic audience. While gratified by the reaction, I was particularly encouraged by the number of radio station managers and owners who told me how popular my daily radio commentary is in their communities.

The commentaries air Monday through Saturday on the Bott Radio Network. Click here to find station listings or to listen live online.

A Ray Of Hope?
The latest poll from the Sunshine State offers a ray of hope for Joe Biden.

Previous polls showed Mike Bloomberg leading in Florida after a $50 million ad blitz. But now Biden is once again in the lead with 34% to Bloomberg’s 25%. Bernie Sanders is a distant third with just 10%. No other candidate received double digit support.

The poll is likely evidence of Bernie’s self-inflicted wound in a state where many people have escaped the evils of communism, and it seems to be evidence that Biden is getting a second look from many voters after Bloomberg’s disastrous debate performances.

But this presents a potential nightmare for Democrats.

Billionaire Bloomberg won’t go away. He’s now run more ads than Hillary Clinton ran during the entire 2016 campaign! Meanwhile, on America’s Left Coast, Sanders appears to be consolidating his hold on California. Sadly, Sanders’s defense of Cuba’s communist regime, while a burden in Florida, apparently isn’t a big deal to many Democrats elsewhere in the country.

If Bloomberg and Biden keep battling it out, the anti-Sanders vote will be split, allowing Bernie to continue coming out on top, increasing the chances of a contested convention.

By the way, the Trump campaign is making an unprecedented bid to attract black voters. It’s opening up 15 Black Voices For Trump Community Centers in key battleground states, including five in Florida alone.
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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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Trump’s Chances for Reelection Are Looking Better and Better

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 06:28 PM PST

Dr. Victor Davis Hanson

by Dr. Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s greatest advantage in 2020 may be his most likely opponent, the unapologetic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.

Donald Trump has at least five strong historical arguments for his reelection.

One, he is an incumbent. Incumbent presidents have won 14 of 19 reelection bids since 1900.

he few who lost did not enjoy positive approval ratings. In a Gallup poll from earlier this month, Trump enjoyed his highest approval rating since his inauguration, squeezing out a 49 percent favorable rating vs. 50 percent unfavorable.

Two, the public perception of the economy usually determines any presidential election — as incumbents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Herbert Hoover learned the hard way. Currently, the U.S. is enjoying low inflation, low interest rates, positive economic growth, near-record low unemployment, rising workers’ wages, and record gas and oil production.

Three, unpopular optional wars derail incumbent presidencies.

The quagmire in Vietnam convinced Lyndon Johnson not to run for reelection in 1968. Jimmy Carter was tarnished by the seemingly never-ending Iranian hostage crisis of 1979–1981. The Iraq War drove down George W. Bush’s second-term approval ratings and helped derail his would-be Republican successor, John McCain.

Three, unpopular optional wars derail incumbent presidencies.

Four, scandals also can destroy a presidency, as when Watergate forced the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Five, the opponent matters. Barry Goldwater was caricatured as an out-of-touch extremist and made incumbent Lyndon Johnson’s election a sure thing in 1964. George McGovern’s radicalism ensured that Richard Nixon would be reelected in 1972. Ronald Reagan was assured of a second term by Walter Mondale’s anemic candidacy.

How does Trump stack up on all such criteria?

His poll numbers have climbed steadily since Democrats began impeachment proceedings against him in September 2019. His Gallup approval rating is now four points higher than when he was inaugurated in January 2017.

Trump now has far more campaign money than he did in 2016. And unlike then, he has the full backing of the Republican Party, a mostly positive record of economic achievement, lots of campaigning and governing experience, and presidential incumbency.

True, the U.S. continues to borrow about $1 trillion per year. Trump has followed the profligate spending habits of his predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who both dramatically increased the national debt during their eight-year tenures.

China is reeling from the Hong Kong protests, the coronavirus, the trade war with the U.S., and the global outcry over its forced imprisonment of minority groups. If the Chinese economy crashes, it could take down global commerce a notch. Both the stock and housing markets here in America are overheating. At some point, they will be due for a reset.

All that said, few economists are predicting a recession in the next eight months before the election — given the near-record employment and increased disposable income from rising wages and lower taxes. Gallup found that 63 percent of the public approves of the Trump economy — the highest rating for any president in that category over the last 20 years.

Will Trump get into a war? China, Iran, and North Korea would benefit if Trump were not reelected. Any of them might seek a confrontation over the summer to provoke Trump into an unpopular pre-election shootout.

Yet Trump’s record suggests that he is unlikely to favor preemptory attacks, nation-building, or the use of U.S. ground troops in large numbers. So far, he has used mostly air and sea power to accomplish limited objectives, without committing U.S. ground troops to the usual nasty places in the Middle East.

Scandal-wise, Trump has already been impeached by the House but was acquitted by the Senate. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team spent 22 months and some $35 million to investigate collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election — and came up short.

The more Democrats have sought to abort the Trump presidency through impeachment, congressional investigations, lawsuits, and sheer hysteria, the more Trump seems Teflon-like and his approval ratings go up.

Trump’s greatest advantage in 2020, however, may be his most likely opponent: the unapologetic socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders. The various agendas of the radical Sanders turn off a majority of the public. Even mainstream Democrats are terrified of Sanders’s redistribution schemes.

Former front-runner Joe Biden appears befuddled on the campaign trail and has been hurt by revelations about his son Hunter’s Ukrainian shenanigans.

The only other serious Democratic contender is multibillionaire Mike Bloomberg. Compared with his rivals, Bloomberg is a moderate, with unlimited financial resources and ample experience as a three-term New York City mayor.

Yet Bloomberg’s first debate was a disaster. He has variously posed as a Democrat, Republican, and Independent. His strength as a moderate in a sea of extremists was nullified by his decision to apologize for, or disown, many of the decisions that made him an effective mayor.

Bloomberg has been more reckless in speech than even Trump. Almost daily, an embarrassingly crass quote pops out of his past.

Add it all up, and if one looks at 2020 dispassionately and historically, the election appears to be Trump’s to lose.
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Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T National Review.

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Mark Levin: What’s in Democrats’ Coronavirus Containment Plan – Besides Open Borders?

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 06:17 PM PST

by Craig Bannister: Besides attacking anything President Donald Trump does to protect the U.S. from the coronavirus, what, exactly, are Democrats proposing to do about it, conservative commentator Mark Levin asked Thursday.

Levin listed several things Democrats advocate that would actually threaten to make Americans more, not less, vulnerable to the coronavirus threat, such as open borders and financially devastating companies that provide and develop cures for disease:

“I’m waiting for the Schumer-Pelosi-Sanders-Biden- Buttigieg-Warren-Klobuchar-Steyer coronavirus plan. Open borders? Eliminate ICE? No vetting? Sanctuary cities? Nationalize the greatest health care system? Massive taxes on pharmaceutical companies and R&D?”“All they know is to attack, blame, and politicize. Like their media propagandists,” Levin tweeted.

“What’s their containment plan? What’s their vaccination development plan? Meanwhile, all they know is to attack, blame, and politicize. Like their media propagandists.”On Thursday, House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) issued a statement calling steps to contain and combat the virus announced by Pres. Trump “opaque and chaotic” – but, her statement failed to suggest alternatives.
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Craig Bannister is responsible for all CNSNews.com media relations, public relations, and marketing programs.

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Welcome Back To The War

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 06:01 PM PST

by Mario Murillo Ministries: The Holy Spirit has burned a message into my soul that I cannot contain. I want this message to get into the hands of as many people as possible—people who are on the verge of spiritual shipwreck. I have never felt as great an urgency to open my heart to you.

Millions have left the church. Many who were on fire for God, even those who were effective vessels, have fallen and have abandoned their faith in Jesus. A famous Christian singer announced that he is now an atheist. Is that shocking? The real shock is that the church is not shocked, because this kind of recanting of faith has now become common.

Millions have left the church. This is the reality that Christian leaders do not want to talk about. However, facts do not go away. And the facts are these: an entire generation has virtually discarded the faith of their parents.

Perhaps you also were among those who were wounded on the battlefield, but did not get up again. The reasons are as varied as are the people themselves. It may have been an abusive church. It may have been an old habit that raged its way back into control. It may have been a divorce, a false teaching that weakened you, or the gravitational weight of the unbelief and skepticism of this age.

The most common cause is sudden tragedy. Something horrendous happened that ran you off of your theological map. You felt that you had no choice but to abandon your faith. You may be angry with God. You are not alone. There are millions in this condition.

Let me be frank, I believe that God is turning your heart back to Him. And He is also doing this on a massive scale with others.

He has done it before. Just prior to the fire falling on Mount Carmel, Elijah prayed these words, “Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.” (1 Kings 18:37)

The Lord is doing this not only because He loves you, but because He wants to spare America.

“And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.” (Malachi 4:6)

You are likely a casualty of the lukewarm American church. Widespread compromise has left her unprotected. The active ingredient has been left out of preaching—and that ingredient is surrender. And that is the reason that the power of God to stand against tragedy and evil has never kicked in.

The voice of the Holy Spirit is intensifying as He calls to those who are the fallen, the wounded, and the forgotten. His wooing is loving and hopeful, but it never disguises the truth.

And the truth is that, in America, entire churches are backslidden! And it is not unprecedented. Look at these verses: 15 “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. 16 So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. 17 Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked— 18 I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eyesalve, that you may see. 19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” (Revelation 3:15-20)

Okay. So you may have been caught in the cultural crossfire of the compromised church, or the toxic church—even the false church—but why should you lose your soul just to get back at false ministers and sick churches?

This is about you and Jesus. This is about a destiny that God still keeps for you. There is one thing that Satan does not want you to remember—it is the one thing that can break the chains of lies and heartbreak.

What Satan does not want you to think about is this: if you brush away the cobwebs of church politics, hypocrites, and unexpected tragedy, you will have to admit that the best days of your life were when you walked with God in fervent commitment. Those were the days of peace and joy.

The best days were the days before anybody and anything came between you and Jesus. You prayed and sensed that no matter what, everything would come out all right. Even those things that you still had questions about became unimportant, because of your total trust in the character and faithfulness of God!

You have never, before or since, felt anything like His sweet presence. Those were the best days, and those days can come again. Jesus is knocking and wants to have dinner with you alone. “I will sup with him,” Jesus promised.

I admit I am calling forth a divine desperation to come over you. I want you to break, I want you to yearn to come back home—to return to your best life, your only life.

There is an army rising up, composed of people that Satan thought he had, but is about to lose on a grand scale.

Won’t you turn back to Jesus, and reclaim your first love? Do your first works over again. Then, He will say to you, “Welcome back to the war!”
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Mario Murillo is an evangelist Mario Murillo, minister, blogger.

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A Party At War With Its Own Soul

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 05:37 PM PST

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigns for
Sen. Bernie Sanders in Council Bluffs, Iowa

by Thomas McArdle, I & I Editorial Board: The Democratic Party is in a state of panic over an unelectable extremist emerging as the possibly unstoppable frontrunner for its presidential nomination. When an institution is in a crisis like this, its leaders get called on to step in and exercise some leadership.

The problem for Democrats is that their official leaders aren’t their real leaders.

“Bernie Sanders cannot beat Trump,” warns 94-year-old longtime party mega-donor and Joe Biden backer Bernard Schwartz, who is appealing to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to come forward and back one of Sanders’ rivals.

Worse, Bernie at the top of the ticket could have a reverse coattail effect and hurt Democrat House and Senate candidates.

“We are not going to win these critical House races if people in those races have to explain why the nominee of the Democratic Party is telling them to look at the bright side of the Castro regime,” warned former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg during Tuesday night’s CBS debate.

Few if any have financed the Democratic Party establishment as much as New York City investment firm CEO Schwartz, who has given millions to Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, and well more than a million dollars to congressional Democrats’ campaigns in the current election cycle. But Pelosi and Schumer can’t risk the embarrassment of backing the wrong horse on the eve of the South Carolina primary and less than a week before Super Tuesday. Biden seems poised for a comeback win in the Palmetto State but Bernie has an impressive lead in the polls in California, and a narrow lead in Texas, the two biggest Super Tuesday states, as well as leading in North Carolina and Virginia, and even enjoying a slim lead in the home state of competitor Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts, all also holding their primaries this coming Tuesday.

What’s more, a Pelosi-Schumer endorsement could hurt more than help the candidate who receives it, branding him or her with the label of the party establishment at a time when grassroots Democrats are crying for leftist revolution.

Author Steve Petrow, a devoted youthful disciple of 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, whose disastrous campaign lost 49 states to President Richard Nixon, is sounding the alarm to his ideological descendants of today, contending that “while my younger self never would have accepted this, a primary vote for McGovern turned out to be a vote for Nixon. Just as a vote for Sanders now is a vote for Trump in November.”

Nancy and Chuck may be the highest-ranking Democrats among elected politicians in Washington, but they just don’t excite the youngest, most energetic members of their party. And that new generation certainly doesn’t recognize them as their leaders.

From Seeking The Rich’s Revenue To Seeking Blood
Their leaders are Bernie and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez del Bronx y Reinas, who has been campaigning for the Vermont senator as the real deal candidate of the left. A President Sanders might in short time even be joined by a Sen. AOC if she launches a giant-killer primary campaign against Schumer in 2022, as many expect.

To the followers of these two radical Democrats, Pelosi and Schumer are as uncool as the farmer couple in Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic, which they inadvertently self-parodied in their January 2019 response to an address by President Donald Trump on border security.

The 77-year-old, gaffe-prone Biden likely cannot attain the nomination in an environment in which the left, its support now split between Sanders and Warren (and perhaps Buttigieg too), makes up a majority within the party that opposes him. The other candidates marketed as moderates, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and multi-billionaire and former Republican and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, are long shots to bring down Bernie, too.

But beyond the shortcomings of Sanders’ challengers, this dedicated socialist is on the verge of controlling the Democratic Party simply because the party has spent decades embracing the false claims of socialism, even if absent the revolutionary impatience of a Jeremy Corbyn, the hard-left British Labour Party leader relegated to the ash heap of history by last year’s parliamentary elections, or a Hugo Chavez, now-deceased socialist ruler of Venezuela.

The whole premise of ObamaCare, for instance, was that the problem with health care in America was that we needed to find a way to make sure the “insurance companies can’t jerk you around,” as President Barack Obama liked to say. In a massive sector of the economy that was already immensely over-regulated for many years, Democrats have told us unceasingly that the problem is unfettered capitalism.

Democrats were provoking class struggle as a means of getting votes long before Bernie turned the knob up to 11 on the practice. Running for president in 1992, Bill Clinton complained that his opponent, incumbent President George H.W. Bush, had “lowered taxes on people who ride in limousines” and he promised “an America in which the wealthiest – those making over $200,000 a year – are asked to pay their fair share.”

So why should we be surprised when a generation whose minds are immersed in envy and resentment of the successful start linking the distance between a demonization of the rich that seeks revenue and one that seeks blood? How far removed is Sanders’ declaration that being a billionaire is “obscene,” or Ocasio-Cortez’s belief that “a system that allows billionaires to exist” is immoral, from Lenin’s 1917 incitement that there must be “No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals”?

Sanders and AOC and her “Squad” in Congress are monsters of establishment Democrats’ own creation. They’ve done nothing more than take previous generations of Democrats’ own words to their logical conclusion. Hatred of the economic freedom responsible for the success of America over the course of history became the soul of one of the two parties. So why should Schwartz, or anyone else who has spent decades using money or words to advocate class warfare, be surprised when someone such as Bernie stands poised to take over the Democratic Party – and crash it down in flames this coming November?
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Issues & Insights (@InsightsIssues) is a new 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. Article by Thomas McArdle.

Tags: Thomas McArdle, I & I Editorial Board, Democratic Party, At War, With Its Own Soul To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!

Bernie Sanders is Funded by the Wealthiest Zip Codes in America

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 05:03 PM PST

. . . Tech industry bros and trust-fund hipsters are buying the nomination for Bernie.

by Daniel Greenfield: In Los Angeles, it’s not unusual to see a Beemer streak by with a Bernie 2020 sticker on the back bumper. There’s no such thing as a poor socialist and Bernie’s backers tend to have lots of cash.

While Bernie Sanders accuses Bloomberg of trying to buy his way to the nomination, the socialist bought his surge with $50 million in spending. He raised $25 million just in January. There’s more buying to do.

And while he boasts of backing from small donors, the wealth of his donors is anything but small.

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Their employees are three of the top 4 Bernie donors. Apple is in fifth place. These dot coms are not exactly organizations known to employ members of the proletariat. Google software engineers have sent thousands of dollars, individually, to Bernie.

Google’s senior engineers, like the ones who have backed Bernie, make $250,000 a year.

Geographically, Bernie’s top dollar zip code is 94110 in San Francisco. The average household income in this part of the Mission District, specifically the Inner Mission, the Bernal Heights area, is $166,302. The median home value is around $1.5 million and the median rent is almost $5,000 a month.

There are no poor socialists in what was dubbed as “the hottest neighborhood in San Francisco.”

This was the area that Salon founder David Talbot blasted as the “hottest zip code in the country” overrun by “Silicon Valley movers and shakers” in “new-model Teslas, BMWs and Uber limousines”. It’s only fitting that it should also be the spigot through which so much of Bernie’s tech bros dollars flow.

The second top dollar Bernie zip code in San Francisco, 94117 or Haight-Ashbury, seems like a better fit for Bernie. But the Summer of Love has long since given way to the Winter of Trust Fund Hipsters in the Haight where the average income is $201,503 and average home values top $1.6 million.

The media has made much of Bernie’s flow of donations from Brooklyn. But the money isn’t coming from the working-class Brooklynites of Bernie’s old neighborhood, but the gentrifying areas of the borough. 11215 or Park Slope is the second biggest top dollar zip code of Bernie donors.

The neighborhood, formerly urban, known as the home of Mayor Bill de Blasio, and the Park Slope Food Co-Op and its anti-Semitic push to boycott Israel, is filled with renovated brownstones filled with wealthy hipsters. It’s a place where a three-bedroom apartment can go for $2.9 million.

To New Yorkers, Park Slope has become a curse word embodying everything wrong with the new elite.

In third place on Bernie’s donor list is 10025 or the Upper West Side of Manhattan. With an average rental price of $4,695, it’s not exactly an inexpensive place to live. The UWS is the 8th richest neighborhood with a $190,281 mean household income. And this is where Bernie’s cash comes from.

11238 or Prospect Heights, in fourth place, is a newly gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn where the median sales price passed $1 million, and you can expect to spend $800,000 for a one-bedroom co-op. The formerly urban neighborhood has been colonized by wealthy hipsters from Park Slope, and much of what goes for Park Slope also goes for Prospect Heights. They’re the gentrifiers funding Bernie Sanders.

In fifth place is 98103, the Seattle neighborhood of Wallingford. With an average household income of $124,504, the University of Washington neighborhood with its $800,000 homes isn’t working class. Among the cheapest housing options is a $400,000 one-bedroom condo that’s a mere 757 square feet. The area is so expensive because it’s home to tech employees, including Microsoft engineers.

Microsoft employees are among Bernie’s top dollar donors.

And in seventh place is 90026. The Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles is a hipster haven which boasts the most expensive pizza in the city where the median price for housing is $813,000, and rents can hit $6,700 a month. Like Park Slope and Haight-Ashbury, Echo Park is full of wealthy hipsters.

That’s Bernie’s core demographic.

In eight place is the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago at zip code 60647. Logan Square is among the most expensive neighborhoods in the Windy City. A condo will set you back over half a million dollars. The rush got so bad that a garage transformed into a home was going for $2.85 million. With its hipster bars and a farmers market, it’s the perfect area for Bernie’s upscale and trendy base.

Ninth and tenth on the list of Bernie’s money neighborhoods are two expensive Manhattan areas.

10003, Union Square and Greenwich Village in downtown Manhattan, is home to NYU, once a hive of angry radicals, now stuffed full of luxury co-ops with wealthy radicals, where condos cost millions of dollars. Greenwich Village has been listed as the ninth most expensive neighborhood in New York City. So, it’s only fitting that it’s the ninth on the list of areas funding the Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.

In tenth place is 10011 or Chelsea and the West Village of Manhattan. It’s also the single most expensive zip code in New York City. Not only is it the most expensive area in New York, but it’s the 23rd most expensive area in the country with a median sale price approaching $2 million. And with average monthly rents of over $4,000, it’s the 19th most expensive rental area in the entire United States.

It’s also home to New York’s Silicon Alley, the city’s tech industry ghetto of dot com and fintech startups.

What do Bernie’s top donor zip codes have in common? Beyond wealth, Bernie’s cash flow is coming from a handful of very blue cities, almost all of them in California and New York City. Only two of the top ten zip codes are located outside San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. That alone conveys the insular and unrepresentative nature of Bernie’s funding base compared to the rest of the country.

Bernie’s campaign is powered by the very concentrations of power and wealth that he condemns.

The unrepresentative nature of Bernie’s backers isn’t just a matter of geography, but of culture. Some of Bernie’s top dollar zip codes overlap with the tech industry. His candidacy represents another example of how the tech industry has not only distorted our economy, but also warped our politics.

Much of Bernie’s money comes from hipster hubs where wealthy young white people in major urban areas have made old neighborhoods, including Bernie’s Brooklyn, unaffordable to the working class and middle-class people who once used to live there. Bernie’s donors, especially in places like Prospect Heights and Echo Park have also played a significant role in displacing minorities and the poor.

Follow Bernie’s money and it’s easy to see his campaign for the hypocritical farce that it is.

Tech industry bros and trust fund hipsters are buying the nomination for Bernie, while displacing minority candidates, the way they bought up brownstones in Brooklyn and displaced black people.

He’s the candidate of class warfare, not on behalf of the poor, but of young wealthy people seeking more power and influence at the expense of the more established wealth of an older generation. It’s tech industry bros warring for influence with fossil fuel titans, not for the poor, but for themselves.

Bernie’s base is much less than 1%. Call it the 0.001%. A wealthy and influential young lefty elite with disproportionate influence over the internet is setting the nation’s agenda using digital media, tech dominance, and the Weekend at Bernie’s campaign of a senile socialist who barely knows where he is and won’t release his medical records after a heart attack because they will show he’s barely there.

“Not me. Us.”

That’s Bernie’s slogan. It’s true, just not how people are meant to perceive it. Bernie is little more than a puppet of the campaign pros who made him a household name in 2016 and are trying to make him more than that now. The “Us” are not Americans or even Democrats. It’s the elites of these zip codes.

0.001% of the country is using a confused elderly socialist as a proxy for imposing their will on America.

The 2020 election will be a test of wills between Americans and the 0.001% living in Park Slope, Echo Park, the Mission District, and Haight-Ashbury. After eight years of hipster rule under Obama, is the country ready to bow it heads and let a handful of wealthy young radicals run their lives again?
——————–
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 in FrontPage Mag.

Tags: Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Mag, Bernie Sanders, Funded by, Wealthiest Zip Codes, in America 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 the West Won

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 03:47 PM PST

by Kerby Anderson: Nine years ago, I quoted historian Niall Ferguson in one of my commentaries. His book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, explained that Western Civilization succeeded because of six “killer apps—competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society, and the work ethic.” These are the secret sauce of Western Civilization.

Last week he explained this in a PragerU video with the title “Why the West Won.” Since you probably won’t read his book, I suggest you take five minutes out of your life to watch the video. Unfortunately, the ideas he shares in the video aren’t being taught in the universities today. Instead, professors criticize every aspect of our culture while ignoring what made Western Civilization successful.

These are the six killer applications. The first was economic and political competition. The second was the scientific method. All the major 17th century breakthroughs happened in Western Europe. A third application was the rule of law and representative government. This included private property rights and representation of property owners in elected legislatures.

The fourth was modern medicine. Nearly all the 19th and 20th century breakthroughs in health care were made by Western Europeans and North Americans. Fifth was the consumer society. The industrial revolution took place because there was both a supply and a demand. Sixth was the work ethic. Westerners worked harder and saved more of what they earned. This led to capital accumulation which in turn led to investment in the wonders of modern technology.

These six killer apps made the West successful and have now been downloaded to other countries as well. That is why the West won.
—————-
Kirby Anderson 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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Biden Warns Gun Makers: ‘I’m Coming For You. Period.’

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 03:18 PM PST

(Joe Biden – AP Photo by/Cliff Owen)

by Rick Moran: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is a tough guy. How do we know? ‘Cause he talks real tough, that’s how.

He also doesn’t like guns very much. Doing his best Clint Eastwood impersonation, Biden told gun manufacturers that he is “coming for them.”

To do what, Biden doesn’t say. But whatever can a senile doddering old fool actually do to make those gun makers quake in their boots?

Maybe he’ll throw his teeth at them.

Washington Examiner:

“A guy has 12 assault weapons with bump stocks, which means you can fire it faster. You can pull the trigger faster,” Biden said to a crowd during a CNN town hall. “Why in God’s name should anyone, anyone, anyone, anyone be able to own that? It’s just wrong, and we’ve got to — and I promise you, as president, I am going to get these guys.”Because of the Constitution, Constitution, Constitution, Constitution. Nitwit.

Biden continued after the crowd applauded by reiterating his desire to curtail gun production in America while also acknowledging his goal of hindering the National Rifle Association’s efforts.“I want to let them know. I promise you. I’m the only guy that has beaten the gun manufacturers — I’m the only guy that has beaten the NRA nationally, and I did it twice, nationally. And gun manufacturers, I’m coming for you. Period.”Biden, of course, didn’t beat anyone. He rode to the White House on Barack Obama’s back. As for beating the NRA, how many gun laws did Obama pass during his presidency and how many did Biden help become law? The NRA has power because the people of the United States have power. No major anti-gun legislation was passed in the eight years that Biden was beating the NRA and gun manufacturers.

Biden also took his gun control message to a meeting this week with anti-gun group Moms Demand Action in which he attacked fellow 2020 candidate Bernie Sanders on guns.“Too many Republicans and some Democrats, like Bernie Sanders, voted five times against the Brady bill that I was passing,” Biden said. “Five times against background checks and waiting periods.”

Biden also attacked Sanders on guns on social media, suggesting the Vermont senator is partially responsible for the power gun manufacturers currently have.

You can sue tobacco companies.

You can sue pharmaceutical companies.

The only companies you can’t sue are gun manufacturers because of a law Bernie Sanders voted for. #DemDebate

— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) February 20, 2020

Biden voted for the Brady Bill. He’s lying when he claims credit for its passage. Whatever Sanders did in the past to get elected in Vermont — an anti-gun stance would have short-circuited his career — doesn’t hold now. He’s as rabidly anti-gun as any other Democrat.

Biden is out of money, out of time, and out of luck. If I were him, I’d start writing my political obituary.
——————–
Rick Moran is PJ Media’s Chicago editor and contributor. He is blog editor at The American Thinker. His blog is Right Wing Nut House.

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Reading, Writing, and Tyranny . . .

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 02:57 PM PST

. . . Bernie Sanders loves to rave about Communist dictators and their policies such as Castro’s Literacy program.

Editorial Cartoon by AF “Tony” Branco

Tags: Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, Reading, Writing, Tyranny, Bernie Sanders, loves to rave about, Communist dictators, their policies, Castro’s Literacy program To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!

McConnell Discusses Supplemental Funding to Combat Coronavirus

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 02:47 PM PST

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: “The question before us now is how we can help the administration and our professional medical experts continue their efforts to take advantage of this head start. Our task is to make sure these dedicated professionals have what they need to continue preparing in ways that are calm, smart, and effective… It’s our job to ensure that funding is not a limiting factor as public health leaders and front-line medical professionals continue getting ready.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding the new coronavirus, COVID-19:

‘The continued spread of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, has the world on notice.

‘Here in the United States, we are fortunate not to be facing an immediate crisis. In response to early reports of the outbreak, the Administration began monitoring efforts and enacted common-sense travel restrictions to help blunt and delay the spread of the virus to the United States.

‘But obviously, as our public health experts remind us, a nation of nearly 4 million square miles and more than 300 million people cannot be hermetically sealed off from the world. There seems to be little question that COVID-19 will eventually cause some degree of disruption here in the United States.

‘The question before us now is how we can help the administration and our professional medical experts continue their efforts to take advantage of this head start. Our task is to make sure these dedicated professionals have what they need to continue preparing in ways that are calm, smart, and effective.

‘Here in Congress, first and foremost, that means providing additional surge resources for the comprehensive federal response. It’s our job to ensure that funding is not a limiting factor as public health leaders and front-line medical professionals continue getting ready.

‘That’s exactly why, several days ago, the Trump administration submitted an initial request for supplemental funding to begin this conversation. It was exactly the kind of action that many of our Democratic colleagues had been demanding.

‘But as soon as the Administration did take action, to the apparent puzzlement of basically everyone, including his fellow Democrats, the Democratic Leader began launching partisan political attacks at the White House instead of working together to get this done.

‘Just days ago, the Democratic Leader signed a letter, quote, “strongly urging” this kind of funding request. But almost the instant it arrived, he began blasting it as, quote, “too little too late.”

‘And our colleague continued to move the goalposts.

‘His strong views on the necessary amount of funds varied daily. It has been a strange and clumsy effort to override normal, bipartisan appropriations talks before they even happen and replace them with top-down partisan posturing.

‘Everyone from his fellow Democrats to President Trump have seemed perplexed by the Democratic Leader’s political game-playing. It’s not clear to anyone why he’s prioritized fighting with the White House over simply letting the appropriators do their work.

‘I feel confident that the coronavirus does not care about partisan bickering or political news cycles. This new disease is not going to press “pause” so that members can engage in performative outrage that gets us farther from results, rather than closer.

‘This is our first step in confronting this challenge. The Congress must be prepared to work together, across the aisle, in a collaborative way and get results.

‘Fortunately, it appears we will have an opportunity to put this cynicism behind us quickly and move forward in a unified way.

‘Bipartisan discussions are already underway among our colleagues on the Appropriations Committee. I have full confidence that Chairman Shelby, Senator Leahy, and our colleagues are fully capable of handling this well.

‘I have faith the Committee will carefully consider the right sum to appropriate at this time to ensure our nation’s needs are fully funded.

‘I hope they can work expeditiously so the full Senate would be able to take up the legislation within the next two weeks.

‘And I hope, as we move forward through this challenge, this body can put reflexive partisanship aside and uphold the spirit of cooperation and collaboration this will require.’

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Capitol Prayer Alert

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 02:31 PM PST

by Carol Bauer: Have you noticed what I’ve noticed? The past few years on the political scene have been quite intense. As you look back, it is amazing to see how many newsworthy events have been packed into each week. The speed of the news is breathtaking, making a daily newspaper seem obsolete before the ink dries.

Most of the dizzying events seem to revolve around the 45th president and his statements, policies, rallies or tweets. At times it feels like he has sucked all the air out of the political room with his big personality, constant presence and laser-focused efforts to get things done before he faces the voters again in November.

If you stand back from the frenetic pace of each week, you can see certain themes that emerge, several repeated over and over. From the “Not My President” or “Resistance” movement to Russia and charges of collusion and obstruction to being a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin to an unpredictable foreign policy to chaos in the White House to Russia again to Ukraine and impeachment and Russia yet again, there is a familiarity to the political playbook that begins to take shape.

When you stand back it looks like this: A fiery charge, media hysteria, and then we wait a couple weeks to see if the latest iteration has staying power. When it doesn’t, it’s on to the next fiery charge.

The only good thing is that those directing the process are beginning to look like a comedy routine with their outrageous, repetitive charges lacking factual basis. This week it was the familiar charge that Trump is a puppet of Putin (boy is that one getting old!) and a regurgitated one from a former leader of the Democrat Party (Howard Dean) charging that if President Trump is re-elected he would give Alaska back to Russia!

Yes, the familiar playbook is still being used on the same issues, but they are beginning to ring hollow. Charge after charge lacking evidence loses its power. Outrageous characterization after outrageous characterization leaves one amused at the empty effort rather than convinced of the validity of the charges.

Meanwhile, economic numbers continue to be good, impeachment is behind us and the focus of the upcoming campaign could be the striking contrast between healthy economic growth in a capitalistic economy and outright socialism marked by government control of nearly every aspect of our lives.

As the other side of the aisle seems headed toward chaos, the future looks somewhat promising for extending the Trump agenda for at least another four years. After constantly fending off attacks from all sides, it almost feels like we can catch our collective breath, doesn’t it?

And that’s my worry. In the past few days I’ve heard too many folks with whom you and I would be aligned comment on the upcoming election as a slam dunk win, describing the disarray on the other side as setting up a landslide for us. Friends, I urge you not to be lulled into complacency. Though we can take heart in recent events and the outlook ahead, we must not rest in our efforts.

Please pray for the president, vice president and all our elected officials in this tumultuous time. Ask our Heavenly Father to guide them to make the best decisions for the long-term well-being of the country.

Prompt them to recognize that they are now the stewards of a vibrant America and that decisions they make today will have an impact for generations to come. Pray that they would be wise in a time that can feel like we have hit a new low in our political life.

The choices ahead look very stark as the differences between individual candidates come into clearer focus. Ask our Heavenly Father to be generous in granting us opportunities and words with which to make an impact on those with whom we discuss the nation’s future and the political choices before us. Give us grace in our conversations and courage to effectively make our points.

The impact of the coronavirus on our country and the world is uncertain. It feels as though we are just at the beginning of the process of understanding how it is spread and the potential impact on individual lifestyles and the American economy.

Words have power. The potential for overreaction is present and so is the possibility of painting too rosy a picture. Yes, so far the United States has been spared a large outbreak due in part to decisions made by the administration in the past few weeks. For that, we are thankful.

But the next several weeks are critical as we learn more about the virus, examine how it spreads and intensify research to find a vaccine.

Pray that all those in public life — from the president and other political leaders to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokespeople to physicians and talking heads in the media — would be more aware than ever of the power of their words as they speak to a country on edge.

Ask God to guide them in the words they choose, the emphasis they give, the guidance they pass along and the impression they give to a concerned people. Pray that each would be very aware of the power of their descriptions, and ask God to guide them in being accurate and precise yet calming.

Also, ask God to comfort those afflicted with the virus, and to protect first responders, medical professionals and hospital staff.

Help us to make clear-eyed and educated decisions on our own lifestyles so that we, too, would be careful yet not fall prey to overreaction.

Please, dear Lord, hold our country in the palm of Your hand. May the peace you offer be a balm that we seek.
——————–
Gary Bauer is a contributing author who is married to Carol Bauer who shared this February Capitol Prayer Alert.

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All the Tyranny in China

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 01:58 PM PST

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Are you going to make a big fuss?

I mean, about China — dominated by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Because some people get all bent out of shape over their totalitarian government placing a million or two Muslim Uighurs into re-education camps surrounded by high walls and razor wire in order to browbeat, brainwash and torture away their ethnic heritage, language, and religious beliefs.

Folks also complain about the insidious social credit system and the massive surveillance state, both of which would make Orwell blush; the ugly history of Chinese repression in Tibet; threats to invade peaceful neighboring Taiwan and snuff out their budding democratic experiment; not to mention Tiananmen Square.

Some cannot get over the estimated 400 million babies murdered by the CCP against the will and amidst the anguished cries of their loving parents. Of course, that old “One Child Policy” has been “liberalized” . . . now permitting two children.

Moreover, the CCP’s assault on free inquiry and public dialogue is no longer limited to just silencing their own citizens — as infamous attempts to squelch criticism from universities in Australia and here in America, as well as basketball players, show.

Presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said months ago that Chinese President Xi Jinping was “not a dictator” and “has a constituency to answer to.” At Wednesday night’s debate, he was asked about those remarks.

“In terms of whether he’s a dictator,” Bloomberg explained, “he does serve at the behest of the Politburo, of their group of people, but there’s no question he has an enormous amount of power.”

“But he does play to his constituency,” he reiterated. Sure, all 25 unelected communist insiders (ruling over 1.4 billion disenfranchised Chinese).

Acknowledging that their human rights record is “abominable,” Bloomberg agreed that “we should make a fuss, which we have been doing, I suppose.”

But . . . “make no mistake about it, we have to deal with China if we’re ever going to solve the climate crisis. We have to deal with them because our economies are inextricably linked.”

Yes, indeed . . . with eyes wide open to the totalitarian brutality of the CCP’s Xi Jinping-led, 25-person dictatorship.

We need a lot bigger fuss.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
——————
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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62 Million Americans Voted for Trump, Only 6 Newspapers Endorsed Him

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 01:23 PM PST

How representative are local papers
when 62 million people voted Trump
but only 6 papers endorsed him?

by Daniel Greenfield: Warren Buffett started the year by dumping his portfolio of 30 newspapers in a fire sale. After having spent $344 million on a stable of local papers including the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Buffalo News, and the Omaha World-Herald, the Oracle of Omaha had to let them go for a mere $140 million.

“They’re going to disappear,” Buffett said of the papers. “It went from monopoly to franchise to competitive to … toast.”

In February, McClatchy, the country’s second largest local newspaper chain, the owners of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, the News & Observer, the State and many other major local papers, filed for bankruptcy.

We’re barely into 2020 and the apocalypse which wiped out 7,800 media jobs in 2019 is speeding on. That was down from the 15,000 media jobs lost in 2018, but only because it’s hard to cut jobs that don’t exist anymore. By the end of the decade, there will be no local newspapers. Only a few national ones.

The internet is certainly to blame, but digital media took nearly as bad a beating as dead tree media with the Gawker relaunch, the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and many other lefty digital darlings bleeding.

On CNN, the Miami Herald’s Julie Brown claimed that the lack of local newspapers, “has contributed to the divisions that we’re experiencing around the country.”

The media has been making similar claims for a year now based on a dubious study. But the problem with the papers in the McClatchy, Gannett, Tribune, or other media stables is that they’re echoes of the same national agenda repackaged for a local audience. In the age of the internet, readers are cutting out the middleman and watching CNN or MSNBC, or reading the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Who needs a third-rate local lefty version when you can just buy access to the real lefty thing?

Local papers aren’t really local. They’re investments owned by lefty tycoons like Warren Buffett. As the investments become hopeless, they’re turning into non-profits owned by lefty tycoons like Jeff Bezos. If the local paper is just going to consist of recycled talking points from the Washington Post or the New York Times, then who needs the “local” paper? Local communities don’t. That’s why they’re dying.

The local newspaper is dead. The national media writing its eulogies long ago fired the fatal shot.

What local media markets are really missing is diversity. Vital media markets used to have dueling papers. There are fewer dueling papers and even fewer conservative ones. Of the 100 largest papers in the country, only 2 endorsed Trump in 2016. Only 6 papers endorsed Trump across the country.

It’s telling that “local” newspapers wouldn’t support a candidate that local communities voted for.

How representative are local papers when 62 million people voted for a presidential candidate who went on to win the election that only 6 papers endorsed? Who are those papers really representing?

Why would any of those 62 million people bother reading newspapers that have nothing to say them?

The 6 papers that endorsed Trump were mostly locally owned. 4 were either family-owned local papers or had a single owner. Another was a publishing group of 2 papers. Only one was a smallish media group. These are true local papers because they are locally owned and represent the local population.

The local newspaper died long ago when it vanished into the maw of national media groups which made them interchangeable. The absence of political diversity was a reflection of hiring practices that reflected the political views of national corporations, instead of the perspectives of local communities.

McClatchy is headquartered in Sacramento, California. Tribune is based out of Chicago. Gannett is run out of McLean, Virginia, less than a half hour away from Capitol Hill.

There’s nothing local about any of this.

The media groups hollowed out local papers. A single dominant local paper with national standing because of its role in a media group often functioned as a virtual monopoly for a particular area. But these miniature versions of the Washington Post weren’t widely read outside local government and business leaders. They were local chapters of a national influence operation with a bad business model.

That’s why the media is upset at the decline and fall of the corporations that controlled local news.

The media keeps insisting that local newspapers are a vital civic institution. But, as the other Marx once said, “Who wants to live in an institution?”

People invest in institutions to the extent that they reflect their values and worldview. Civic comes from the Latin ‘civis’ or citizen. Civic institutions that are not rooted in the civitas are foreign bodies. No institution that usurps the citizenry can be anything other than an engine of cultural colonialism.

Partisan civic institutions are, like the Holy Roman Empire, neither civic nor institutions. They’re the propaganda operations of a political faction which are maintained with money diverted from taxpayers and with funding from wealthy interests connected to that faction. They have no institutional future.

The Left launched its bid for power by hijacking institutions and, in doing so, destroying their legitimacy. Hijacking institutions allows radicals to temporarily wield their power at the cost of crashing the plane. That’s how the institutional legitimacy of academia, the media, and the entertainment industry died.

America is not divided because local newspapers are dying. They’re dying because they’re on one side of the divide. True institutions reflect the diversity of the civitas. False institutions reflect only themselves.

The newspaper business is much more vital and interesting in cities like New York and Boston that still have conservative papers. Discussion and debate are dynamic when there’s more than one point of view. That’s another reason why the people who used to read newspapers moved on to the internet.

The media is an echo chamber. A false institution that does not listen to the citizenry, only hectors it.

And the voice of its echo chamber is losing power.

Trump won even though only a handful of papers endorsed him. He won the White House over the opposition of the big media conglomerates that are racing each to bankruptcy court.

The media makes much of its endorsements. But how much do they really matter?

In one survey 69% of Americans said that a newspaper endorsement of a candidate would have no impact on their vote. 14% said that it would make them more likely to vote for and 14% more likely to vote against. Newspaper endorsements of political candidates couldn’t possibly matter any less.

An older survey however noted that endorsements by “independently owned papers seemed to influence readers more than larger and group-owned papers”.

True local newspapers can still be trusted. Conglomerate papers posing as local aren’t.

Local papers were once local. When they went national, they stopped being civic institutions. The lack of endorsements for Trump and the lack of political diversity are symptoms of the problem. When newspapers became a partisan institution, they stopped being relevant to the lives of much of the country. And they also stopped being interesting even to those readers who agreed with their politics.

As Buffett put it, they “went from monopoly to franchise to competitive to … toast.”

Trying to subsidize them as non-profits with tech money from Silicon Valley, as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon are doing, won’t change that. Take it from Warren Buffett who lost a fortune trying.
———————
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.

Tags: Daniel Greenfield, Sultan Knish, 62 Million Americans, voted for Trump, only 6 newspapers, endorsed him To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!

The Left Is Thwarting Trump’s Efforts to Secure Border

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 12:57 PM PST

President Donald Trump inspects border wall prototypes.

by Rep. Andy Biggs: Tremendous progress has been made in slowing the number of illegal border crossers, but there is still a long way to go to fully secure our border.

The Trump administration is successfully building a wall on the border, negotiating with international partners who are helping slow the flow of illegal border crossings, and putting resources into securing the U.S. border.

In May 2019, nearly 150,000 people illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Last month, that number had been reduced to about 30,000. Before the surge last year, we would have expected something closer to 10,000 to be caught.

Our aspiration is to prevent all illegal entries into our country. To that end, the Trump administration has been fighting leftists in Congress, the judiciary, and the media. They have attempted to impede efforts to reduce the number of illegal entrants, prevent deportation of those who are here illegally, and obstruct the enforcement of our immigration laws.

Democrats have thwarted efforts to fund the building of a border wall. Even when they have given an inch, it has been cloaked in a veil of regulatory burdens that effectively prevent completion of the wall.

When President Donald Trump has found money and eased regulatory hurdles to building the border wall, the left has searched for and identified conspiratorially complicit judges to issue orders forbidding building. Those orders have universally been overturned on appeal. Thus, the administration’s efforts continue, only after delays caused by the Democrats and the institutional left.

Those delays should be viewed with the understanding that walls actually produce a reduction of illegal entries. The leftists’ desired delays of the barrier has allowed hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to enter the United States.

The left’s own open-border rhetoric has fueled the criminality that comes with purposefully ignoring our laws. The violation of the rule of law is particularly odious as the civil order and respect for one’s fellow human beings are products of the rule of law and are necessary conditions for freedom to exist. By submarining immigration laws, leftists remove the milieu necessary for perpetuation of the great American experiment in self-governance.

The left is attempting to crash one of the great accomplishments of the Trump administration in securing the border: the Migrant Protection Protocols.

Trump, by carrot and stick, persuaded Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to place Mexican military personnel on the U.S.-Mexico border and to adhere to international law, which requires an asylum-seeker to wait in the closest country while his asylum claim is processed.

The MPP has allowed the U.S. to remove tens of thousands of Central American asylum-seekers to Mexico to await adjudication of their asylum claims. This took away the incentive to come to the United States illegally from the Northern Triangle states of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras.

Last week, I led my fourth congressional delegation in the last 15 months to the border to see improvements since the 2019 surge and observe where we still have work to do in order to secure our border. We saw improvements, such as new wall construction and new camera, radio, and lighting towers. All help slow down illegal intruders.

There is still work to be done. In one urban area, less than a half-mile in length, the wall has slowed down the crossers, but between 200-300 illegal aliens cross at that location every week. Other areas remain totally unsecured. Walls work. But illegal crossings continue wherever there is a gap.

Perhaps our friends on the left, who champion the end of the nation-state and rally for open borders, will join with the majority of Americans who love this nation and want our borders secured. Our generous immigration laws still allow more than 1 million people to lawfully enter the United States every year.

It is time to unite for the preservation of our national sovereignty, and that begins by securing our national borders and ensuring the geographical integrity of the country.
—————–
Rep. Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) a Republican, represents Arizona’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House. He is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and serves on the Judiciary and Science, Space and Technology committees.Shared on The Daily Signal.

Tags: Andy Biggs, Arizona, Representative, The Left, thwarting Trump’s efforts, to secure border To share or post to your site, click on “Post Link”. Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and “Like” Facebook Page – Thanks!

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Emory nonprofit starts GoFundMe campaign to help test coronavirus treatment

Posted: 28 Feb 2020 04:01 AM PST

Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory (DRIVE), a nonprofit biotechnology company owned by Emory University, launched a GoFundMe charity campaign Feb. 27 to help accelerate testing for its antiviral compound that could potentially be used to treat the new coronavirus associated with the outbreak in China and spreading around the globe.

While a related treatment, administered via injection, is currently being evaluated for COVID-19 in China, DRIVE’s approach is centered around an oral pill. Having an effective treatment for COVID-19 in pill form would allow the treatment to be more easily distributed to patients around the globe, which is a vital component in ending the epidemic.

DRIVE is developing the compound, designated EIDD-2801, which has shown efficacy against other coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus) and MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus).

To date, the research has been primarily funded by government agencies for the treatment of Influenza, coronavirus, chikungunya and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus. While great progress has been made due to this support, additional urgent funds are needed to accelerate testing and development in order to prove its safety and efficacy in humans and ultimately bring it to the general population.

‘We are working extremely hard to move its development forward as fast as possible with the hope of helping to address the new conoravirus outbreak,’ says George Painter, PhD, chief executive officer of DRIVE.

‘In addition to its good activity against coronavirus, EIDD-2801 is one of the few antiviral agents that is not just a ‘one bug, one drug’ compound,’ says Dennis Liotta, PhD, executive director of Emory Institute for Drug Development. ‘It’s active against multiple viruses including, inter alia, influenza and Ebola. This would make it a useful compound to prepare and store to help quell future pandemics.’

The funds will be used to accelerate the development of EIDD-2801 for the treatment of COVID-19 and to help develop other antivirals to address future pandemics.

View the ‘End Pandemics Now’ GoFundMe campaign.

About DRIVE: DRIVE is a nonprofit LLC wholly owned by Emory University started as an innovative approach to drug development. Operating like an early stage biotechnology company, DRIVE applies focus and industry development expertise to efficiently translate discoveries to address viruses of global concern. Learn more.

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Posted: 28 Feb 2020 03:33 AM PST

Senate Bill 1, the popular Road Repair and Accountability Act, has been stolen. The bill that California voters designated to fix their abysmal roads and unsustainable levels of traffic was hijacked by Governor Gavin Newsom for his climate change pet project. The promise made to voters has been officially broken.

Technically, it was broken twice. Not only did voters pass the bill specifically to address the roads, but they even overwhelmingly passed Proposition 69 a year later to make absolutely certain Sacramento wouldn’t tax them $54 billion and then use the money for something other than roads. Unfortunately, the Governor has outsmarted everyone and found a way to not only let the heavily congested roads continue to rot, but also solidify his position as one of the world’s most obtuse climate change alarmists.

Executive Order N-19-19 did an end around on voters by taking the money allocated for popular projects such as widening Highway 99 and moving it to his green projects like adding more rails. Locomotives are the future in Gavin Newsom’s world. What the voters wanted is secondary to what he believes they really need, which is to start laying the groundwork for the Green New Deal.

Meanwhile, media outlets in California other than conservative talk radio are sitting back and letting it happen without a peep. Why? Because they’re all-in on Newsom’s climate change hysteria. They’re just as big of radical progressives as he is, so they’re keeping the blatant betrayal on the down low.

Californians need to be told how badly they were robbed and local media isn’t going to do it. The onus is on social media and independent news outlets like OAN and California journalist Pearson Sharp to alert the people about this betrayal.

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The villains in HBO’s ‘The Plot Against America’ are called ‘America Firsters’

The post Gavin Newsom’s executive order N-19-19 is an insult to SB1 voters appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes.

Posted: 28 Feb 2020 02:22 AM PST

Today, the term “America First” is a mantra among supporters of President Trump whose policies reflect the need for our nation to stop being the world’s police, punching bag, and welfare check distribution center. The notion is one that is relatively modern as it’s a break from standard Republican orthodoxy of maintaining strength worldwide through support of other nations. It’s not that President Trump wants to isolate us. He just wants to make sure we’re getting a fair deal.

But the history of he term is much darker. The America First Party of the 1940s was isolationist and quite anti-Semitic. They wanted aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, a non-interventionist and Nazi-supporter, to be their nominee for president. It never happened, but Philip Roth’s novel, “The Plot Against America,” dove into an alternate reality in which Lindbergh actually did win the 1940 election.

HBO has created a mini-series based on the novel. Here is their plotline: “A working-class Jewish family in New Jersey watches the political rise of aviator-hero and xenophobic populist Charles Lindbergh, as he becomes president and turns the nation toward fascism. This six-part re-imagining of history is based on the Philip Roth novel of the same name.”

The timing of this release is completely intentional. Viewers are supposed to see parallels between the message delivered by the bigoted man running for president in 1940 and President Trump. The Lindbergh character will talk of the need to defend our homeland from foreigners, close the borders, and avoid wars. Though the book was written in 2004, the HBO version will make the ideas much more contemporary though set in a pre-WWII backdrop.

But the biggest goal of the progressives who put this mini-series together is to conflate these concepts with fascism and bigotry. It’s political, psychological warfare and it will be effective to some extent; HBO is arguably the best at delivering “entertainment” intended to sway perspectives without being ham-fisted in the process.

Most in Hollywood are chipping in to help elect whichever Democrat emerges as the nominee. The narrative will be crystal clear and since the source material predates the Trump presidency, HBO will shrug its shoulders and deny it’s a modern metaphor.

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Why Mike Bloomberg is rooting for Bernie Sanders in South Carolina

The post The villains in HBO’s ‘The Plot Against America’ are called ‘America Firsters’ appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes.

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 11:03 PM PST

Senator Bernie Sanders is running away with the Democratic nomination for president by securing a plurality of the delegates with first- or second-place finises in each race so far. He is expected to finish second in Saturday’s South Carolina primary. Billionaire Mike Bloomberg hopes he finishes first.

The lanes have been long-established between the two radical progressives—Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren—and the rest of the candidates who are all fighting in the “moderate” lane. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is leading in that lane, but he is expected to finish fourth at best in South Carolina and not receive any delegates. Warren likely won’t sniff many delegates, either, as she also hopes for a “strong” fourth-place finish. As for Senator Amy Klobuchar, she’s ready to get South Carolina over with so she can head into Super Tuesday with a chance of winning her first primary in her home state of Minneapolis.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is currently leading the polls in South Carolina with billionaire Tom Steyer trying to pass Sanders for second-place. And while a third-place finish for Sanders will make most of the candidates happy as it will be his first sign of weakness, Bloomberg is hoping for the opposite. His nomination calculus requires a whittled down field for Super Tuesday. That would only happen if Sanders surprises everyone and wins South Carolina.

Bloomberg needs the other candidates in the moderate lane to drop out before then. It’s highly unlikely any of them will unless there are big surprises on Saturday. But even if they all stay in for three more days so they can see where they stand after Super Tuesday, it still behooves Bloomberg if Sanders wins South Carolina. It would be a signal to voters that none of them other than possibly Bloomberg—who has not appeared on a ballot thus far—has a chance of derailing Sanders’ momentum or overcoming his lead. Sanders will almost certainly get the most delegates on Super Tuesday regardless of how he performs on Saturday, but a packed field means Sanders has an opportunity to sweep all or most of the delegates in certain states, including California.

This year’s new DNC rules stipulate a candidate must receive 15% of the vote statewide or in the denoted divisions within the states. The most recent California polls show Sanders with a decent lead, but more importantly they show either one or no other candidates hitting the 15% threshold. They’re splitting the non-Sanders vote relatively evenly with Warren getting 16% in one poll and Biden getting 17% in another. Otherwise, none of the candidates are projecting to get many delegates from California.

Most of the other states aren’t much better for the field.

If Biden comes in second in South Carolina, it could be the trigger for voters who are concerned about a Sanders nomination to consolidate behind the billionaire who has already spent over $500 million on the campaign so far and has promised to spend much more to get himself the nomination. Though Americans in general and Democrats in particular frown on wealthy people “buying” elections, the fear of a Sanders nomination is palpable among those in the Democratic Establishment. Reports have been coming in the DNC is in full-blown panic mode. Our EIC received a tip that there are even powerful Democrats trying to convince candidates to stand down before Super Tuesday. It’s a total mess.

For Mike Bloomberg and the DNC to take (steal?) the nomination from Bernie Sanders, they’ll need some of the other candidate to be disheartened enough to not push forward to Super Tuesday. But the clock’s ticking. Is a Sanders-Trump matchup inevitable?

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Israeli researches plan to have coronavirus vaccine in a few weeks

The post Why Mike Bloomberg is rooting for Bernie Sanders in South Carolina appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes.

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 10:20 PM PST

Four years prior to the current coronavirus epidemic that is quickly becoming a worldwide pandemic, researchers in Israel began working on techniques to create vaccines. Their test virus was infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a bronchial disease that affects poultry. As it happens, this avian coronavirus is very similar to the human coronavirus striking fear and suffering across the globe.

“Let’s call it pure luck,” said Dr. Chen Katz, MIGAL’s biotechnology group leader for MIGAL. “We decided to choose coronavirus as a model for our system just as a proof of concept for our technology.”

MIGAL— the Galilee Research Institute—switched gears when the current outbreak began. They started sequencing the DNA and realized the similarities between the viruses they had been working with and Covid-19 were striking. This gave them a tremendous head start in fighting the infectious disease and will likely yield a vaccine within weeks, Israeli Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis announced yesterday.

“Congratulations to MIGAL on this exciting breakthrough,” Akunis said. “I am confident there will be further rapid progress, enabling us to provide a needed response to the grave global COVID-19 threat.”

The research team wasn’t specifically working on a vaccine but rather a technique for producing and delivering future vaccines. It is orally administered and easily absorbed, making it an ideal method for quickly and safely administering it to the masses if necessary. The technique they’re using is nothing short of brilliant.

“The scientific framework for the vaccine is based on a new protein expression vector, which forms and secretes a chimeric soluble protein that delivers the viral antigen into mucosal tissues by self-activated endocytosis, causing the body to form antibodies against the virus,” Katz said.

Once the vaccine is created, it will go through a minimal 90-day test window to certify it safe for human use. As Ryan Saavedra at The Daily Wire noted, this can’t sit well with those in the BDS movement.

Online, pro-Israel voices quickly mocked those who support the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to destroy the state of Israel.

BDS this https://t.co/fmd0we8kPk

— Jonathan Schanzer (@JSchanzer) February 27, 2020

Vox: The Zionist Plot To Brainwash People Through Vaccines, Explained https://t.co/iferuw64Yd

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) February 28, 2020

With Iran and other enemies of Israel reeling from the coronavirus, it would be ironic if their people are saved by a vaccine that comes from their sworn enemy. But when a pandemic supersedes political bickering, even one as old as the Middle East conflict.

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President Trump’s ‘medical diplomacy’ towards China is necessary

The post Israeli researches plan to have coronavirus vaccine in a few weeks appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes.

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 09:11 PM PST

Nearly 90% of the ingredients used to create pharmaceuticals used by Americans come from China. The lion’s share of masks and other gear necessary to slow the spread of infectious diseases are produced in China. There are Chinese components in nearly every piece of equipment used in hospitals across our country. Most importantly, the bulk of the data pertaining to the coronavirus is centered in China.

For these and other reasons, President Trump must maintain solid diplomatic footing with China regarding the coronavirus. Despite efforts over the last three years to reduce our dependency on China, decades of bad policies and corporate desires for cheap labor and resources have placed China squarely in the center of our healthcare system. It will take years to disentangle ourselves from this web, and that’s assuming President Trump is reelected. If not, it may never happen.

This should be the trumpet call for an “America First” mentality within the healthcare industry. Placing so much prominence on Chinese imports to keep our medical readiness and effectiveness at high levels is nearly as idiotic as relying on China to supply us weapons. We wouldn’t put Chengdu J-20s on our aircraft carriers because we couldn’t trust them. Why do we trust China to supply our medical needs?

The reality is, we don’t. At least this administration doesn’t. But until the outbreak of the coronavirus, weaning ourselves from China’s iron grip on the healthcare industry was secondary to securing a proper trade deal. It was the right order of steps; we needed the various trade deals before we started pulling back on our dependence. But that was before the coronavirus, something nobody (other than maybe Dean Koontz) could have predicted.

Now that we’re face-to-face with a possible pandemic unlike anything we’ve seen in decades, it’s time to adjust our priorities. The President knows this. But he can’t make that play right now because even though China is hurting, they still hold all the cards. If it turns out we need to bring in more supplies quickly, the President needs to be able to fall back on both leverage, which he has, and diplomacy, which he is maintaining.

Congratulations and thank you to our great Vice President & all of the many professionals doing such a fine job at CDC & all other agencies on the Coronavirus situation. Only a very small number in U.S., & China numbers look to be going down. All countries working well together!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2020

For some reason, there are fools on both the left and the right attacking the President for not lambasting China on Twitter over their botching of the coronavirus. It’s true, they really did botch it and are likely still holding back crucial information in an effort to save face for the Chinese Communist Party.

Perhaps there will be a day in the near future when the President can Tweet to the world what he really thinks about how China has handled this outbreak. In the meantime, he must maintain a positive diplomatic stance, and if that means Tweeting platitudes at them, so be it.

Some people want the President to annihilate China on Twitter the way he has in the past, the way he continues to do with Democrats and mainstream media. But now’s not the time. Let’s see the coronavirus contained. Then he can lambaste them.

American Conservative Movement

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Even AP blasts Democrats for lying about the coronavirus and President Trump’s efforts

The post President Trump’s ‘medical diplomacy’ towards China is necessary appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes.

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 02:51 PM PST

Democratic candidates Mike Bloomberg and Joe Biden have been claiming President Trump cut the budgets for the Centers of Disease Control, putting Americans at risk with the coronavirus ramping up. Bloomberg has spent a great deal of money promoting an ad that makes this same claim. The problem is the claim is absolutely false and even the Associated Press acknowledged it in a recent fact-check article.

MIKE BLOOMBERG: “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing.” — debate Tuesday night.

JOE BIDEN, comparing the Obama-Biden administration with now: “We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. … He’s wiped all that out. … He cut the funding for the entire effort.”

THE FACTS: They’re both wrong to say the agencies have seen their money cut. Bloomberg is repeating the false allegation in a new ad that states the U.S. is unprepared for the virus because of “reckless cuts” to the CDC. Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased.

It is quickly becoming part of the Democrats’ election playbook to blame the coronavirus on President Trump. Their media proxies have gone so far as to dub it the “Trumpvirus.” The implication based on their recent actions is that at least some of them are actually hoping for this to turn into a disaster. The best hopes the Democrats have of winning the White House and keeping control of the House of Representatives is for the coronavirus to devastate the nation.

Breitbart was the first to report on the falsehoods being spoken by Bloomberg following the last Democratic debate. As they noted, the administration has proposed cuts, but those cuts have not been approved by Congress. They even increased the budgets.

Americans must remain cognizant of the truth despite what most mainstream media outlets and Democrats are reporting. There are fears that need to be associated with the coronavirus, but don’t let political bias obscure the real threats it poses.

American Conservative Movement

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Ted Cruz douses Elizabeth Warren with coronavirus logic

The post Even AP blasts Democrats for lying about the coronavirus and President Trump’s efforts appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes.

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 02:18 PM PST

Politicians often make statements that, upon further review, make absolutely no sense. Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose presidential campaign is fading quickly, made such a statement yesterday when she declared she was initiating a “plan” to force President Trump to divert money from building the wall to fighting the coronavirus.

Tomorrow, I’m introducing a plan that takes every dime Donald Trump is spending on his wall, and diverting it to fighting the coronavirus. #CNNTownHall

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 27, 2020

It was a populist statement from a woman who is desperately trying to regain the relevance she had in the nomination race a few months ago. It’s also one of those statements that seems to make sense from a leftist perspective, hitting two components of the Democrats’ current perspectives: the President is doing enough to fight the coronavirus and the border wall is racist or something. But when one thinks a little bit about what she’s proposing, it’s utterly ludicrous. Senator Ted Cruz called her out for the idiocy.

How exactly would open borders protect us from the potential spread of a worldwide pandemic? https://t.co/bzUrvt1g6Y

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 27, 2020

If anything, the coronavirus is evidence that we NEED the southern border wall and stricter enforcement of travel and immigration laws. Elizabeth Warren is foolish to conflate the two issues. Americans aren’t that stupid. Ted Cruz eradicated her idea with a Tweet.

Image via Gage Skidmore.

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FISA abuses remain unaddressed

The post Ted Cruz douses Elizabeth Warren with coronavirus logic appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes.

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 01:40 PM PST

Officials abused the process of obtaining a FISA warrant and multiple renewals on Carter Page. Two of the warrants have actually been declared illegal.

At CPAC 2020, Thursday morning contained several panels reviewing the investigation launched by law enforcement into the Trump campaign and presidency using those warrants. Thanks to the hard work of journalists and some members of congress and their staffers, we now know many details of how those investigations were launched. Additional details are expected as U.S. Attorney John Durham concludes his investigation.

The question still looms how faith can be restored in the FISA process. It is currently existing on a 90-day renewal of the authorization. This temporary measure is set to expire on March 15, 2020. Speaking at the conference, Representative John Ratcliffe noted that about 25% of the actionable intelligence received by the United States originates with FISA warrants. In a separate panel Representative Doug Collins agreed FISA is a tool that has value for surveilling foreigners who pose a threat to the United States. However, both congressman asserted the FISA Court and procedures must be reformed.

They also made nearly identical comments about the barriers to getting these reforms done. They are called Democrats. The FISA abuse occurred under a Democrat administration against a Republican candidate. In order to reform the process, Democrats would need to to acknowledge the malfeasance that occurred. As panelists noted, this would mean acknowledging the memo written by Representative Devin Nunes outlining the abuse of the process in 2018 was correct. More importantly it would mean the competing memo written by Representative Adam Schiff based on the same intelligence was, at best, misleading.

In light of the upcoming expiration, we should be supporting the position articulated by Representative Collins on stage. He said that he did not support an extension in light of Democrats’ inaction. If these are tools that benefit our national security and the safety of Americans, simply passing on endless extensions serves only to prevent accountability for Democrats and the previous administration.

All of the system failures that were articulated by IG Michael Horowitz are unaddressed. This is a situation that should not persist to ensure the 4th Amendment rights of American citizens are protected.

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The left has weaponized the language: It’s easier to change a word than change a law

The post FISA abuses remain unaddressed appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes.

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 01:32 PM PST

The headline was a paraphrasing of a rather profound statement on our current situation on how the post modernist left tries to change society to their collectivist dictates. It was an observation made in the above video on how the NHS has slippery-sloped its way into controlling free speech.

For those unfamiliar, Tim Pool is a video journalist who considers himself to be a ‘moderate’ liberal. Those who have viewed his content over time can’t help but notice that someone who used to support Bernie Sanders is now gradually moving further and further to the pro-liberty right side of the political spectrum. Perhaps even he hasn’t noticed it, but he has gradually moved towards the freedom side, away from the authoritarian left.

This is unsurprising for those who have experienced or studied socialism first hand. Only those with a superficial knowledge of socialism actually believe in its magical thinking. The more one learns about socialism, the less one supports socialism, as in the case of Mr. Pool.

Being denied health care because of hate speech

The video showcases one of the dangers of the national socialized health care. There are those who only look at the ‘positive’ side of socialism: other people’s money taken by force to buy votes with free stuff. Looking past the freebies reveals that both sides in this transaction are under a modern form of slavery.

Even worse than that, when the government has complete control of society, it can reshape it. Those of an authoritarian elite can make decisions for everyone else. In the case of the example in the video, this kind of system can be used to control people based on any kind of arbitrary criteria.

It’s easier to change the word than change the law

This observation was at the 3:27 min point in the video on the subject of how the authoritarian left manipulates the language to their advantage. This was a somewhat profound statement because it encapsulates in one sentence what the left has been doing the past few years. The advantage of this saying is that it frames the situation in one clear sentence.

They use this tactic to suppress individual liberty and basic human rights instead of trying to change the law. They know that it would be impossible to repeal the 1st and 2nd Amendments. Therefore, they simply do an end run around on the Constitution – changing the word instead of changing the law.

For years the left has endlessly parroted propaganda in woefully undefined terms such as ‘hate speech’ or ‘assault weapons’ as a means to try to change the law on free speech or the common sense human right of self-defense.

An undefined word or phrase can be used to describe anything and ban anything. In the case of the term ‘assault weapon’ it’s just a matter of saying ‘every gun is an assault weapon’ in order to justify banning all guns, negating constitutional law by negating the meanings of certain words.

It’s easier to change the word than change the facts

Using undefined weasel words also relives the left of actually having to deal in facts and logic. Saying something is ‘high capacity’ means they don’t have to justify restrictions on liberty. Those words can mean anything so they can never be pinned down to the facts of everyday reality.

It also means they can exploit certain words to impart an emotional competence to the argument. Using words like ‘military style’ or ‘weapons of war’ charges up the emotions of the moment, making it easy to negate the practical reality of free speech or the common sense human right of self-defense.

The bottom line: Weaponized words prove the left doesn’t care for democracy

The authoritarian socialist left has weaponized the language because they want to get around logic, facts and the laws that limit government. Undefined weasel words let them interject an emotional component into any discussion on basic human rights, letting them avoid the true issues being discussed.

The left uses language to attack liberty, because they can’t do that is an open debate. They talk about ‘assault weapons’ and ‘hate speech’ so they don’t have to be honest about their true goal of restricting everyone’s basic freedoms.

American Conservative Movement

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Stunning: Dan Bongino Reveals FBI 302 from May 2017; FBI Team Tells Rod Rosenstein the President is NOT a Suspect

The post The left has weaponized the language: It’s easier to change a word than change a law appeared first on NOQ Report – Conservative Christian News, Opinions, and Quotes.

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REDSTATE

Even In Massachusetts, It’s Clear Elizabeth Warren Is Done

Democrat Super-Delegates May Have Just Ensured Total Chaos at the Convention

NYU Professor Notes Coronavirus May Be ‘Bi-Phasic like Anthrax’, It’s Time to Press the Chinese for More Answers

Twitter Reportedly Suspends a Guy for Typing Only Two Words

Bill Barr Laments the ‘Remarkably Monolithic Media’ While Championing Religion, a Free Press, and the United States

Video: In Which a 2016 Bernie Sanders Campaign Speech Gets Turned Into a Hilarious Fan-Made Trump 2020 Ad

CPAC – Did Matt Gaetz Just Declare His 2024 Candidacy?

Hillary Clinton Gets an Overdue History Lesson After Ranting Against ‘Purging Public Servants Disloyal to a Regime’

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REALCLEARPOLITICS

02/28/2020

Carl Cannon’s Morning Note

Stopping Sanders; Warren as VP? Quote of the Week

Good morning. It’s Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, the day of the week when I offer up a quote meant to ease readers’ troubles, inspire their optimistic impulses — or sometimes merely entertain you. Hopefully, today’s entry will do all three. It comes from Mark Twain (how can one go wrong?) with an assist from an American patriot named Alvan E. Bovay.

An upstate New York-born lawyer who resettled in the Upper Midwest, Bovay convened a political meeting in the small Wisconsin town of Ripon on this date in 1854. The galvanizing idea for those present was ending the spread of slavery in the United States. Their proposed solution was a new political organization that they took to calling the Republican Party.

I’ll have more on Bovay and his comrades in a moment. First, I’d point you to RealClearPolitics’ front page, which presents our poll averages, videos, breaking news stories, and aggregated opinion pieces spanning the political spectrum. We also offer original material from our own reporters, columnists, and contributors, including the following:

* * *

Dems Can’t Wait Until Convention to Stop Sanders. A.B. Stoddard argues that the party’s unwillingness to block the democratic socialist while there’s still time bodes poorly for any hopes of defeating Donald Trump in November.

Could a Sanders-Warren Ticket Work? Progressives love the idea, and a poll finds the pair would prevail in a matchup with the incumbents, Phil Wegmann reports.

Bolstered by His Lead, Freewheeling Biden Lets Loose in S.C. Phil has this story too.

Mike Bloomberg’s Fuzzy Math. Lou Cannon is unconvinced the New Yorker can overtake Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday, given his late start and Democrats’ peculiar delegate rules.

Media Ethics and Trump-Russia Leak Wars. Mark Hemingway writes that journalists are failing in their professional obligation to determine leakers’ agenda and get both sides of the story before publishing.

2020 Presidential Race Steamrolls Nearly All Else in TV Coverage. Kalev Leetaru lays out the numbers.

Supply Chain Vulnerabilities Put Power Grid at Risk. In RealClearEnergy, Tom Ridge spotlights a model framework to address a national security threat.

* * *

Although Wisconsin is considered the spiritual origin site of the Republican Party, the Feb. 28, 1854 meeting at the First Congregational Church of Ripon was not the only one of its kind — or even the first. A week earlier, a group of like-minded souls had gathered in Jackson, Mich. Four months before that, former congressman Amos Tuck led a meeting of slavery opponents at the Blake Hotel in Exeter, N.H., where the name “Republican” was mentioned as well.

Abolition was in the air, and the name for an opposition party seems to have arisen spontaneously in several locations. Although the idea is often attributed to Alvan Bovay, he himself credited New York newspaper publisher Horace Greeley. Its obvious appeal was that Thomas Jefferson had led the “Democratic-Republican Party” — and Republicans would be using the half of that moniker as a historical counterweight to pro-slavery Democrats.

In any event, it became official at a second Ripon meeting, held on March 20, 1854, in a place known to this day as the “Little White Schoolhouse.”

“We went into [the meeting] Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats. We came out of it Republicans and we were the first Republicans in the Union,” Bovay recalled later. “The actors in that remote little eddy of politics realized at the time that they were making history by that solitary tallow candle in the little white schoolhouse on the prairie.”

What came next was GOP nominee John C. Fremont’s 1856 unsuccessful Republican campaign, Abraham Lincoln’s winning 1860 campaign, civil war, and emancipation. Alvan Bovay wasn’t a man to rest on his laurels, however. Less than a decade after the Civil War ended, he had moved on to a new cause, one not nearly as noble as abolition.

“The mission of the Republican Party had ended with the overthrow of slavery and the reconstruction of the old slave states on a free basis,” he declared. “Its place should be taken by a new party with prohibition as its central idea.”

Eventually, the U.S. would try out abstinence of this type — a failed social experiment if ever there was one — but America could have spared itself much grief had it listened to a wiser and droller social observer.

“Temperate temperance is best,” mused Mark Twain. “Intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance, while temperate temperance helps it in its fight against intemperate intemperance. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky.”

And there’s your quote of the week.

Carl M. Cannon
Washington Bureau chief, RealClearPolitics
@CarlCannon (Twitter)
ccannon@realclearpolitics.com

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CHICAGO TRIBUNE

1	Chicago police to announce strategy to combat CTA crime spike FRIDAY, FEB 28

Chicago police plan to beef up patrols and investigations to address a spike in crime on the CTA’s rail system. In a plan to be announced Friday, the department will add 50 officers to the unit that patrols the “L,” bringing the total to 250. And, in a first for the department, each of those officers will be equipped with tracking devices for the department to better monitor and adjust how they’re deployed, interim police Superintendent Charlie Beck said.Chicago police plan to beef up patrols and investigations to address a spike in crime on the CTA’s rail system. In a plan to be announced Friday, the department will add 50 officers to the unit that patrols the “L,” bringing the total to 250. And, in a first for the department, each of those officers will be equipped with tracking devices for the department to better monitor and adjust how they’re deployed, interim police Superintendent Charlie Beck said.

The realignment follows an increase in high-profile crimes, along with a boost in overall crime on the system, as documented in a September Tribune investigation. Crime doubled between 2015 and 2018 and arrest rates fell, despite the addition of cameras in every station and rail car, the Tribune reported.

With CTA crime in the spotlight, here’s how ‘L’ riders can stay safe
Serious crime has doubled on Chicago’s ‘L’ system, despite the CTA adding thousands of security cameras

2	Videotaped incident showing Cook County judge leaving child alone in a cell may have been ‘scared straight’ attempt FRIDAY, FEB 28

A Cook County judge captured on video leaving a young girl locked in a holding cell alone behind her courtroom may have done so in a “scared straight” type of disciplinary effort, sources familiar with the matter said.

Judge Jackie Portman-Brown was captured on security footage last week, her black robe swinging, as she hustled the girl forward into an empty lockup and then left her for about 10 minutes. The sources told the Tribune the child is believed to be a young relative of Portman-Brown’s. The footage blacked out the child’s face. But sources who saw the child told the Tribune she is a girl about 6 to 8 years old and was visibly distressed.

3	Frustrated with shortages, medical marijuana patients begin growing their own at home FRIDAY, FEB 28

Worried by widespread shortages of products at Illinois cannabis stores, medical marijuana patient David Kurfman took matters into his own hands. He started growing his own. Under the new state law, medical marijuana patients may grow up to five plants each at home. Kurfman said he spent $5,000 to build a deluxe grow room in the basement of his downstate home, outfitting it with lights, fans and separate compartments.

“There’s a statewide shortage of all products, and patients are suffering from that,” Kurfman said.

4	Goodbye, Columbus Day. CPS ends the holiday in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day — and parade organizers call it ‘a slap in the face.’ FRIDAY, FEB 28

Columbus Day will no longer be observed in Chicago Public Schools — and the group behind the city’s annual Columbus Day parade is already pushing to reverse that decision. Following similar moves in other school districts and cities, the Chicago Board of Education voted Wednesday to drop Columbus’ name from the October school holiday in favor of an observance of Indigenous Peoples Day.

5	Got $100? Get a personalized greeting from Rod Blagojevich. FRIDAY, FEB 28

For a mere $100 on Thursday, patrons of the online video service Cameo could get a personalized workday, anniversary or motivational shoutout from disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. His initial rate for a Cameo video was $40 Thursday morning but increased to $100 for a single video by midafternoon and could go higher.

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“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple,” (Psalm 19:7‬, ESV‬‬).

Moving Iowa Forward

By Steven Holt on Feb 27, 2020 07:00 pm
State Rep. Steven Holt highlights bills the Iowa House passed in week seven dealing with health care professionals, free speech, youth entrepreneurship, and the Second Amendment.
Read in browser »

Finkenauer Highlights Progress Made Out of the Media Limelight

By Shane Vander Hart on Feb 27, 2020 06:15 pm
U.S. Rep. Abby Finkenauer, D-Iowa, during a town hall in Marshalltown highlighted progress in Congress she says is never reported in the press.
Read in browser »

Iowa Senate Passes Welfare Eligibility Verification Improvements

By Caffeinated Thoughts on Feb 27, 2020 10:22 am
The Iowa Senate passed a bill that establishes a real-time verification system for public assistance programs managed by the Department of Human Services.
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Launched in 2006, Caffeinated Thoughts reports news and shares commentary about culture, current events, faith and state and national politics from a Christian and conservative point of view.

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CONSERVATIVE DAILY NEWS

CDN’s Daily News Blast delivers the day’s news first!

The most important part about freedom of speech is listening – Unpolitically Correct is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

CDN Daily News Blast

02/28/2020

Excerpts:

The most important part about freedom of speech is listening – Unpolitically Correct

By Patrick Lockhart –

Hate-filled and disrespectful “free speech” is alive and well in the Democratic Party, which has been my party for 50+ years. The so called “debate” the other night was filled with nasty and embarrassing moments – again. No order, no self-control, no facts or fact checking, way too many straight-out …

House Democrats Block Resolution Condemning Bernie Sanders’s Praise Of Fidel Castro is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

House Democrats Block Resolution Condemning Bernie Sanders’s Praise Of Fidel Castro

By Jason Hopkins –

Democratic lawmakers on Thursday successfully blocked a GOP resolution condemning Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ laudatory comments about the Castro regime. By a vote of 224-189 that fell along party lines, the House of Representatives on Thursday voted to block a resolution that not only condemned numerous human rights abuses that …

Liberalism – An Ignorant, Gutless, Clueless, Arrogant Groupthink Society! is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

Liberalism – An Ignorant, Gutless, Clueless, Arrogant Groupthink Society!

By Amanda Alverez –

Have you ever noticed the real modus operandi of Liberals? First, liberals expect everyone to believe they are the smartest person in the room – regardless of whether it is a discussion about brain surgery or playing checkers but void of any professional background in the topic. Next, they falsely …

Corona Virus Latest Media Tool To Get Trump

By Jim Clayton –

The News of the coronavirus is causing unnecessary panic and is being used as a false alarm by the media and democrats and Deep State to bring down Trump. This will eventually pass as quickly as it arrived as all media fads do. Conservative talk show host, and recent Medal …

Corona Virus Latest Media Tool To Get Trump is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

DNC Superdelegates: If Bernie Doesn’t Get 60% of the Primary Vote, We’ll Vote Against Him is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

DNC Superdelegates: If Bernie Doesn’t Get 60% of the Primary Vote, We’ll Vote Against Him

By Andrew Kerr –

The New York Times interviewed 93 Democratic superdelegates, 84 of which said Sen. Bernie Sanders shouldn’t become the nominee based solely on winning most, but not over 50%, of primary and caucus delegates. “If 60% is not with Bernie Sanders, I think that says something, I really do,” Democratic Rep. …

President Donald Trump’s Schedule for Friday, February 28, 2020 is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

President Donald Trump’s Schedule for Friday, February 28, 2020

By R. Mitchell –

President Donald Trump will hold a Keep America Great Rally in South Carolina on Friday. Keep up with Trump on Our President’s Schedule Page. President Trump’s Itinerary for 2/28/20 – note: this page will be updated during the day if events warrant All Times EST 4:10 PM Depart the White …

UH-OH: Watchdog Asks Feds to Probe Bloomberg Groups for Illegal Campaign Contributions is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

UH-OH: Watchdog Asks Feds to Probe Bloomberg Groups for Illegal Campaign Contributions

By Chris White –

SHOCK: It seems that Bloomberg uses Bloomberg Philanthropies as a type of pass-through entity through which donors can support elected officials with resources that legislatures will not provide and which donors cannot legally provide directly.

Watch Live: President Trump and the First Lady Participate in African American History Month Reception – 02/27/20 is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

Watch Live: President Trump and the First Lady Participate in African American History Month Reception – 02/27/20

By R. Mitchell –

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will participate in a White House reception celebrating African American History Month. The event is scheduled to begin at 6:00 PM EST. Content created by Conservative Daily News and some content syndicated through CDN is available for re-publication without charge under the Creative …

Once again, religion will take center stage at the nation’s highest court is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

Once again, religion will take center stage at the nation’s highest court

By The Thoughtful Conservative –

Photo by Wendy van Zyl on Pexels.com On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that will help to define the rights/protections afforded to institutions/businesses based on their religious beliefs. The case at issue is Fulton v City of Philadelphia. More particularly, the Supreme Court agreed to hear …

Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals Rules Facebook, YouTube Are Not Bound By First Amendment is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals Rules Facebook, YouTube Are Not Bound By First Amendment

By Chris White –

Facebook, YouTube and other big tech companies are not bound to abide by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a court ruled Wednesday, dealing a blow to conservatives online. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court Appeals decision came in a case brought by Prager University, a nonprofit that produces videos …

Reading, Writing, and Tyranny – A.F. Branco Cartoon

By A.F. Branco –

Reading, Writing, and Tyranny – A.F. Branco Cartoon is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

Democrats Feature American-Indian Tribe Known for Rampant Drug-Smuggling to Speak Against Border Wall is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

Democrats Feature American-Indian Tribe Known for Rampant Drug-Smuggling to Speak Against Border Wall

By Jason Hopkins –

The Democratic-controlled House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on Wednesday regarding the southern border wall’s impact on the surrounding environment. One of the hearing’s featured speakers was Ned Norris, the chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, who spoke out adamantly against construction of the wall through his tribe’s lands. …

Bolshevik Bernie’s Bad Ideas

By Jim Clayton –

Bernie Sanders’ radical plan for democratic socialism is about one thing and one thing only and that is the complete government takeover of every aspect of our lives. It starts by saying the government will give you everything for free and we’ll take care of you. The problem is all …

Bolshevik Bernie’s Bad Ideas is original content from Conservative Daily News – Where Americans go for news, current events and commentary they can trust – Conservative News Website for U.S. News, Political Cartoons and more.

See all breaking news, conservative commentary, political cartoons and more posted to CDN at our Home Page.

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DESERET TIMES

5 keys to ensure your family is ready for any emergency (Sponsored)

Friday, Feb. 28, 2020

Which Democrat will Utah vote for on Super Tuesday? A new Deseret News poll has an answer

The secret to staying together if you love Bernie Sanders and your partner loves Donald Trump

The new ‘Mulan’ has people asking: Are PG-13 films becoming the new default for kids’ movies?

The argument behind classifying the West Coast Conference as a power conference

Coronavirus casts uncertainty on tax cut, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert says

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AXIOS

An analog clock with only two symbols instead of twelve: the symbols read 'AM' and 'PM'.

Mike Allen

🎬 Sneak peek: “Axios on HBO” Series 3 premieres Sunday at 6 p.m. ET/PT.

See a clip of my interview with Roger Stone … at the Watergate Hotel.

😎 Happy Friday from L.A.! Today’s Smart Brevity™ count: 1,087 words … 4 minutes.

1 big thing: Growing virus recession threat

Illustration of a virus cell landing on an upward trending line and weighing it down.

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

In just weeks, top economists and investment bank analysts have gone from expecting the coronavirus to have minimal impact on the U.S. economy to warning that an outright recession may be on the horizon, Axios Markets Editor Dion Rabouin writes.

The spread of confirmed cases in Europe, the Middle East and the U.S., and the speed at which they are being discovered, has set the table for the outbreak to have a larger and much costlier impact.
The outbreak threatens consumer-oriented businesses — restaurants, bars, travel. They had held up the U.S. economy as business investment fell and manufacturing dropped into recession, largely because of the U.S.-China trade war.
Europe and Japan are particularly at risk: Both have generated only 1% growth over the past year and are very susceptible to falling into recession.

Flashback: Just a few weeks ago, many economists thought the coronavirus would cause only a tenth of a percentage point decrease in U.S. growth this year.

But the S&P 500 has fallen by 10% in just six trading sessions, the fastest correction in history from a record high, Deutsche Bank Securities chief economist Torsten Sløk said in a note to clients.

Share this story.

2. Ad spending on 2020 primary tops $1 billion

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Spending on the 2020 presidential primary has officially surpassed the $1 billion mark, with more than half of that total coming from Mike Bloomberg, Sara Fischer writes from Advertising Analytics data.

Why it matters: That’s the most that has been spent this early in an election cycle in U.S. history.

For context, experts project that more than $10 billion will be spent on political ads this election season, with more than $3 billion toward the presidential primary specifically.

In other words, roughly one-third of the total money that will be spent on presidential political ads has already been spent with eight months to go until Election Day.

By the numbers: Democrats have outspent Republicans more than 9-to-1 due to a highly competitive primary contest and because there are two billionaires spending an unprecedented amount on ads.

So far, Democrats have spent a whopping $969 million on ads, compared with $67.9 million by Republicans.
Bloomberg has spent more than $538 million to date, per Ad Analytics, while fellow billionaire Tom Steyer has spent more than $186 million.
All other candidates have spent less than $50 million each.

Startling stat: One of the biggest shifts between 2016 and 2020 has been the increase in money invested in Super Tuesday states — mostly as a result of Bloomberg’s unorthodox campaign strategy.

About $247 million has been spent in Super Tuesday states, up from only $30 million in 2016.

Share this story.

3. U.S. schools prepare for virus spread

Vice President Pence and HHS Secretary Alex Azar (left) tour virus operations center yesterday. Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP

Schools across the U.S. are canceling trips abroad, preparing online lessons and even rethinking “perfect attendance” awards as they brace for the possibility that the coronavirus spreads to their communities, AP’s Collin Binkley reports.

If schools are forced to close for long stretches, it could have a heavy impact on students who rely on school meals and for parents who use their schools’ child care programs.

Cleaning crews have been told to pay extra attention to door knobs, keyboards and other surfaces that students touch through the day.

Some districts have invested in handheld disinfectant sprayers that are used in hospitals.
Others are adding hand sanitizers in schools and buses.

Officials are considering how they would handle large numbers of absences among students or teachers, and how to make up days that could be missed because of the virus.

In Miami, public school leaders said they’re readying 200,000 laptops and tablets for students in case buildings close and force classes online.

The National School Boards Association is asking districts to reconsider attendance awards to students who don’t miss a day of class for an entire year or semester.

Some schools have previously abandoned the practice amid fears that it encourages students to come to school sick, but some still award gift cards, cash or raffle prizes to students with perfect attendance.

4. Syria’s darkest chapter leaves kids freezing

Syrian civilians flee Idlib in rain to find safety near the border with Turkey. Photo: AP

Syria’s campaign to retake the final rebel strongholds in Idlib Province — backed by Russian strikes on schools, hospitals and homes — has displaced 1 million people and counting, Axios World Editor Dave Lawler reports.

Many in Idlib are sleeping in cars, in caves, in sports stadiums or on the street in bitter winter weather.
About half are children.

Go deeper.

5. How they see us: 2020, from across the pond

Courtesy The Economist

From London, here’s how The Economist sees the prospect of a Trump v. Sanders general election in the former colonies:

Sometimes people wake from a bad dream only to discover that they are still asleep and that the nightmare goes on.

Keep reading.

6. Permanent asterisk: AP won’t declare Iowa winner

Pete Buttigieg greets supporters at a town hall in Denver last weekend. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

The Iowa Democratic Party released updated results of the Iowa caucuses after the completion of a recount requested by Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg:

Buttigieg has 562.954 state delegate equivalents and Sanders has 562.021 state delegate equivalents out of 2,151 counted.
That is a margin of 0.04 percentage points.

AP says it won’t call a winner, given irregularities that undermined the count.

The party plans to certify the results tomorrow. At that point, the caucuses will formally end, and no further changes to the results will be made.

7. Coronavirus correction

Data: FactSet. Chart: Axios Visuals

The Dow industrials had their worst-ever daily points drop — 1,191 — and the S&P 500 posted its largest percentage drop since August 2011.

Oil prices tumbled to their lowest in over a year. (Reuters)

The latest: Stock indexes around the world today followed Wall Street into correction territory. (Wall Street Journal)

CNBC headlines: “STOCKS ON TRACK FOR WORST WEEK SINCE FINANCIAL CRISIS … DOW DROPS 3,200+ THIS WEEK.”

8. Concerts, parks, games disrupted around globe

People wearing masks line up to buy more face masks in Seoul, South Korea, today. Photo: Lee Jin-man/AP

Coronavirus disruptions, told in headlines:

“Swiss government bans all events over 1,000 people”
“New virus prompts Mormons to cancel key leadership event”
Facebook cancels F8, its annual conference for developers
“National Symphony cancels Japan concerts”
“Serie A’s biggest match will be played in empty stadium”
“Saudis close Islam’s holiest sites to foreigners”
“South Korea, US postpone annual military drills”
“Virus fears lead K-pop superstars BTS to cancel Seoul shows”
“Tokyo Disneyland to close through mid-March”

9. Walmart tests rival to Amazon Prime

“As soon as next month, Walmart plans to start publicly testing a membership program called Walmart+,” Recode’s Jason Del Rey scoops.

“The program is expected to essentially launch as a rebrand of Walmart’s existing Delivery Unlimited service, which charges customers $98 a year for unlimited, same-day delivery of fresh groceries.”

The paid membership program “would include perks that Amazon can’t replicate, in part to avoid a direct comparison to Prime.”

Walmart+ ultimately “could include discounts on prescription drugs at Walmart pharmacies and fuel at Walmart gas stations, as well as a Scan & Go service that would allow shoppers to check out … without waiting in line.”

10. 1 big bang

Image: NASA via AP

This NASA image shows the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, viewed in a composite of X-ray, radio and infrared data.

Astronomers have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the universe, AP reports.
Scientists reported that the blast, which was first detected in 2016 and appears to be over by now, came from a black hole in a cluster of galaxies 390 million light-years away.

Mike Allen

📬 Thanks for a great week! Please tell a friend about AM/PM.

BRIGHT

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Friday, February 28, 2020

Can Joe Biden Get His First Ever Primary Victory in South Carolina?
Though he was the front-runner for the better part of a year until voting began, Joe Biden’s third campaign for President has been in crash-and-burn mode as socialist Bernie Sanders cruised to easy victory in the first three contests. The Saturday primary in South Carolina offers Biden a crucial chance to claim victory after seeing disappointing results in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the Majority Whip and highest-ranking black member of Congress endorsed Biden on Wednesday at the 11^th hour after saying he was torn between the former Vice President and female Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. But Clyburn, who was expected to endorse Biden long ago, finally gave his blessing with Biden’s polling numbers dramatically increasing as a result.

But is a victory in South Carolina a sure thing for Biden even with the influential Clyburn nod? Many believe that it still isn’t set in stone. And if Biden does win, is it just a one-off or does it really spell a turn in fortune for the beleaguered campaign? One thing is for certain, without victory in South Carolina, Biden’s path to the White House is all but eliminated. More on the possibilities of a Biden comeback from Guy Benson at Townhall:

“Following a pair of humiliating also-ran finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, erstwhile Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden’s campaign appeared to be on life support. He fell out of first place in the national polling, saw his lead in his ‘firewall’ of South Carolina dwindle considerably, and watched as donors and supporters started to seek out other options. But are the former Vice President’s fortunes once again on the rise? A confluence of events appears to be working in Biden’s favor, but there’s a catch. Read on. First came a relatively strong debate performance (grading on a Biden curve) in front of a largely affirming and supportive crowd. Then came an endorsement from a prominent South Carolinian in James Clyburn, an influential member of the Congressional Black Caucus and Nancy Pelosi’s House leadership team.

I’ll note that Clyburn is not above shameless race-baiting and has refused to denounce an appalling bigot, which would surely be a bigger media angle if this were a Republican endorsement, but it is what it is. Up next was this poll, the results of which look a lot closer to Biden’s previously commanding standing in the Palmetto State.”

rid of super PACs, count me in. I’ll lead the charge. But that’s how it has to be. It can’t be the case that a bunch of people keep them and only one or two don’t,’ Warren said.”

No, Michael Bloomberg Did Not Lead New York City Through 9/11. Rudy Giuliani Did.
In recent days, former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg has asserted that he “led New York City through 9/11,” not specifically saying, but indicating that he was mayor at the time of the terrorist attack that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people in 2001. To clarify, Bloomberg did not assume the office of mayor until 2002 and, certainly, the city was still gravely wounded from the vicious and deadly attacks but it shows a tremendous lack of respect for his predecessor and the people of New York to campaign on a blatant lie about his role during 9/11. More from the New York Post:

“Presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg takes credit for leading New York ‘through’ the 9/11 attacks in a campaign ad. But there’s one problem: He didn’t become mayor until four months later.

Touting his leadership chops, the billionaire released a 30-second video including the claim. ‘I led a complex, diverse city through 9/11 and I have common-sense plans to move America away from the chaos to progress,’ Bloomberg, 78, is seen saying at a campaign rally.

But Rudy Giuliani was mayor during the attacks, and he didn’t hand Bloomberg the keys to Gracie Mansion until Jan. 1, 2002. The businessman has so far poured $500 million of his $62 billion personal fortune into his campaign, including flooding the airwaves with campaign ads.

Bloomberg served three terms as mayor — twice as a Republican and once as an independent. He was praised for leading the rebuilding of a decimated Lower Manhattan in the decade after the attack, but was considered wooden when it came to connecting with victims’ families compared to his predecessor, Giuliani.”

Sips, Pours, and Nibbles
DC area Chinese restaurants report a massive drop in sales due to Coronavirus panic (DC Eater)

How Japan Created the Modern American Bourbon Market (VinePair)

Your food probably needs more acid: 6 Recipes That Put the Power of Acid on Full Display (Bon Appetit)

After a month of eating only dog food, Muenster man sees drastic change in health (WFAA ABC 8)

Friday Entertainment Center
#MeToo themed thriller “The Invisible Man” fails to reach its lofty goals but provides a suspenseful and entertaining two hours. (The Washington Post)

Supernatural thriller “I Am Not Okay with This” on Netflix struggles to boldly define its characters, but provides a compelling and captivating story about a teen girl with extraordinary abilities. (Variety)

Netflix’s New Metrics Are Good But Not Good Enough (The Federalist)

“The Jesus Rolls” Review: John Turturro’s “Big Lebowski” Spin-Off Is a Breezy Sex Comedy with Balls to Spare (IndieWire)

BRIGHT is brought to you by The Federalist.

Today’s BRIGHT Editor

Ellie Bufkin is a staff writer at Townhall and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Originally from northern Virginia, Ellie grew up in Baltimore, and worked in the wine industry as a journalist and sommelier, living in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. A fanatic for movies and TV shows since childhood, she currently reviews movies and writes about many aspects of popular culture for The Federalist. She is an avid home cook, cocktail enthusiast, and still happy to make wine recommendations. Ellie currently lives in Washington D.C. You can follow her on Twitter @ellie_bufkin.

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Democratic Debate Doom
David Limbaugh

New Sanctions Turn the Screws on Venezuela’s Maduro
Ken Blackwell

Coronavirus Crisis Is Trump’s Time to Lead
Pat Buchanan

Jimmy Kimmel Slobbers Over Schiff
Tim Graham

How Can Bernie Sanders Happen in America
David Harsanyi

American Socialists Don’t Understand American Business
Laura Hollis

James Carville’s Last Campaign
Emmett Tyrrell

Vaping Prohibition Would Create Black Markets and Put American Health At Risk
Leah Vukmir

Voting for Who You Hate to Stop Who You Loathe
Erick Erickson

Replacing Buses with Ridesharing Would be a ‘Win’ for Everyone
Janson Quinlan Prieb

Something Smells About Bernie’s Self-declared ‘Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian’ Platform
Dr. Shea Garrison

Elizabeth Warren’s Dizzying Arguments on Abortion Illustrate Problem for Democrats
Kristan Hawkins

Trump’s Rally Cry
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Gov. Evers: Saying Abortionists ‘Execute Babies’ Is ‘Blasphemy’

Trump blasts Schiff as ‘political hack’

Pelosi’s condescension offers some laughs

Pelosi open to border infrastructure

INVESTING

Coronavirus: San Francisco Mayor Declares State of Emergency, Europe Prepares for Pandemic

Christine Blasey Ford No Longer Deserves Benefit of Doubt

Schumer Throws Gasoline On The Coronavirus Fire

Is Wall Street on the Brink of Disaster? – Mark Skousen

Blame Big Government For Rising Cost Of Living

Tipsheet

Bloomberg Reportedly Approached Andrew Yang About Possible VP Pick
Bronson Stocking

A California Bill Would Give Gift Cards to Recovering Meth Addicts

Bronson Stocking

ICYMI: Judge Allegedly Stabbed By Illegal Alien Released Three Times Under Sanctuary Policy
Bronson Stocking

Bloomberg Vows to Stay in Race Unless Bernie Wins a Majority of Delegates
Bronson Stocking

AP Fact Checks Democrats’ Claims that Trump Is Lying About Coronavirus
Cortney O’Brien

Here’s a Devastating, Little-Known Story About Bernie Sanders. Why Haven’t His Rivals Exploited It?
Guy Benson

Disappointed But Not Surprised: NYT Op-Ed Tries to Blame Coronavirus on Trump
Julio Rosas

Pence on Coronavirus at CPAC: ‘Trump Has No Higher Priority’ Than Health of Americans
Ellie Bufkin

Superdelegates Oppose Handing Bernie the Nomination if Candidate Falls Short in Delegate Count
Bronson Stocking

The ‘Unprecedented’ Way the Trump Campaign Is Going After the Black Vote

Leah Barkoukis

Political Cartoons

Bearing Arms

No, There Is No Gun Show Loophole | Tom Knighton

OK Senate Passes Bill Protecting 2A Rights Of Medical Marijuana Users | Tom Knighton

Honolulu Police Chief Endorses Magazine Ban And More | Cam Edwards

Kansas Lawmaker Proposes “Privilege” Tax On Guns, Ammo | Tom Knighton

Media Blasts Florida For Not Being Reactionary | Tom Knighton

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The coronavirus spread illness and fear across continents and through world capitals on Thursday as Congress pledged to hastily enact billions in new spending to combat the public health emergency, states and cities raced to be ready and Wall Street chased the sort of grim records set in financial markets more than 11 years ago.

Reuters: Coronavirus threatens global economy as experts warn no country will be spared.

The Associated Press: Virus’s impacts are now dramatically global, shutting Japan’s schools, spreading through Europe and into sub-Saharan Africa.

The World Health Organization advised international leaders again that the virus is moving across continents and everyone should immediately be preparing as confirmed infections climb. This morning, 83,704 reported cases of the virus are in 56 countries. The death toll has reached 2,859, according to the latest information.

Vice President Pence chaired a meeting of President Trump’s coronavirus task force on Thursday, one day after the president handed him the assignment. Seated next to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who had been in charge of the response efforts until Wednesday, the vice president said he spoke to congressional leaders about quickly coming to agreement on a spending measure to cover the nation’s coronavirus response.

“The president’s been clear: We want all hands on deck,” Pence said. Later, during an interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity, the vice president contradicted information from federal researchers and public health specialists that the spread of COVID-19 around the country is “inevitable” and people, businesses and schools should prepare for it now.

“The risk of the spread of the coronavirus in the United States of America remains low,” Pence said, crediting the president for refusing U.S. entry to Chinese citizens and quarantining returning Americans. “That’s according to all of our experts” (Fox News).

The Hill: The vice president bolsters Trump’s coronavirus team following criticism.

In the Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Congress was close to a bipartisan agreement on a plan to approve billions of dollars in funding, and that it was no time to be “playing politics.” Nevertheless, she said she told Pence by phone that she had concerns that he was put in charge of coronavirus coordination, citing reports that he “slashed” the Indiana public health budget when he was the state’s governor.

Pelosi did not mention a dollar amount for a House measure to address the COVID-19 response, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says he’d like to see the Senate pass a bill in the next two weeks (NPR). Trump has said he would sign the Democrats’ proposed $8.5 billion proposal and not prolong negotiations in an effort to trim the price tag.

The Speaker said she had been in a bipartisan meeting all morning with House colleagues and that her goal was to “make sure the government has the resources to combat this deadly virus and keep the American people safe” (New York Post).

Pelosi’s home state was on high alert on Thursday because of one patient revealed to be receiving extensive treatment for the virus who has no traceable travel or contacts to explain how she was infected. The patient was hospitalized in Northern California on Feb. 15 with signs of the disease and then moved days later to a larger hospital, UC-Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, while intubated and on a ventilator. Testing for the coronavirus was not immediate in her case, creating opportunities for spread and new infections.

The Washington Post: Extensive efforts in California to trace infected patient’s contacts.

The South China Morning Post: How does COVID-19 spread so easily?

The South China Morning Post: COVID-19 did not spring from a fish market in Wuhan. The exact origins remain unverified by researchers.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wrote to Pence on Thursday to advocate for “rapid testing” of patients who present symptoms that could be “suspected cases.” Criticisms initially arose that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) operated in California on the basis of containment and quarantine of infected Americans evacuated from China and Japan, but not a testing protocol that covered the possibility that the coronavirus was already in California’s general population. The CDC’s protocol does not include testing for the virus in asymptomatic people.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced on Thursday that the state has made testing its “top priority” in collaboration with the CDC. Accurate testing for coronavirus takes days and CDC is working to improve the test kits and number of labs that can perform the testing. Federal health officials on Thursday expanded the criteria that guides who should get tested. There are 60 confirmed cases of infection in the United States as of this morning.

The Associated Press: Tough questions about testing for the virus.

Los Angeles Times: Three students at the University of California-Davis and other colleges are under self-quarantine following potential coronavirus exposure.

In California, 33 people have been diagnosed with coronavirus and five have since left the state, the governor said. Of the confirmed cases, 24 were either evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Tokyo or returned on repatriation flights from Wuhan, China. Newsom said more than 8,400 people are being monitored for signs of possible infection and illness (Los Angeles Times).

The jittery situation in California paled in comparison with the nosedive in the financial markets on Thursday and analysts’ expectations that the U.S. economy was taking a hit along with specific businesses, trade, travel and production in the rest of the world.
Thursday marked the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s biggest one-day points decline in history. The S&P 500 also closed below 3,000 for the first time since last October as investors tipped the major averages into correction territory. The Dow fell 1,191 points or 4.4 percent, the S&P 500 tumbled 4.4 percent and the Nasdaq slid 4.6 percent (CNBC).

One specialist in infectious disease epidemics at the global health charity Wellcome Trust on Thursday urged finance institutions to commit an initial $10 billion to fighting the coronavirus.

“What we are really missing is tangible, high-level funding and support from global financial institutions,” Wellcome director Jeremy Farrar said in a statement. “The possible impact of this coronavirus is far beyond a health emergency. It’s a global crisis with potential to reach the scale of the global financial crisis of 2008” (Reuters).

Because economic analysts believe the chances of a recession are rising this year because of the new virus, Trump and fellow Republicans are wringing their hands that the U.S. political climate could shift dramatically between now and November’s elections (The Hill).

The president’s agitation is clear on social media. Trump on Thursday night tweeted his concurrence with Fox News hosts that in their view, CNN is intentionally stirring public anxiety about the virus. “Media refuses to discuss the great job our professionals are doing!” the president wrote. Democrats, he groused in an overnight tweet, are working to blame a global contagion on him.

The Morning Dispatch: Brokered Convention Blues

Plus, we chat with a virologist about why the world is struggling to keep coronavirus under control.

The Dispatch Staff

15 min

Happy Friday! And congratulations to long-suffering fans of the Bills, Jets, and Dolphins—it looks like your days of being torched by Tom Brady twice per year could be coming to a close.

Adam Schefter@AdamSchefter

Tom Brady is currently operating under the belief that he will enter free agency to play somewhere other than New England next season, a sentiment the quarterback has shared with others, ESPN’s Jeff Darlington is repotting. Sources: Brady open to new home in free agencyTom Brady is set on entering free agency and believes the process could lead to a new team, sources told ESPN.espn.com

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

The stock market continued its coronavirus-sparked slide Thursday; the Dow has now fallen by about 10 percent since its peak earlier this month. Stocks are trending towards their worst week since the financial crisis in 2008.
A whistleblower in the Department of Health and Human Services claims American health officials interacted with quarantined Americans without proper protective equipment and training, potentially putting themselves and the public at risk of spreading the coronavirus.
Vice President Pence, whom President Trump tapped Wednesday to head up the U.S. coronavirus response, announced Thursday that he will appoint State Department ambassador-at-large and HIV/AIDS expert Debbie Birx to serve as his “coronavirus response coordinator.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state is monitoring about 8,400 people for the coronavirus, confirming 33 cases of it thus far.
More than 30 Turkish soldiers were killed by airstrikes in northwestern Syria. Turkish officials blamed Syrian government forces, but the strikes could set up a clash between Russia and Turkey.
Pence also took time Thursday to address the GOP faithful gathered at CPAC with a typically triumphalist speech about President Trump’s 2020 chances and the evils of socialism.
Georgia Republicans are fretting that an increasingly intense Senate primary between recently appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Rep. Doug Collins may imperil the seat in the special election this November, where Pastor Raphael Warnock, an Atlanta pastor and Democrat, is also expected to be a competitive candidate. (Sarah discussed this scenario earlier this week for The Dispatch.)

A Virologist on COVID-19

In yesterday’s Morning Dispatch, we broke down some of the political and economic implications of the virus. Today, we’ll look at some of the medical ramifications.

To do so, we talked to Anthony Fehr, a virologist at the University of Kansas who focuses on coronaviruses and how they infect people.

Fehr told The Dispatch that COVID-19 causes symptoms similar to the flu—coughing, sneezing, malaise, headaches, difficulty breathing—but has an incubation period (the time between contracting the virus and showing symptoms) of one to two weeks. Therefore, while the United States was able to quickly identify and quarantine the first few coronavirus patients from their symptoms and travel history, that’s about to become much harder.

Are We Headed Toward a Brokered Convention?

It’s not a coincidence that every presidential nominee since 1952 has won on the first ballot. From a purely actuarial standpoint, that makes a brokered Democratic convention unlikely despite the punditry’s enthusiasm for exciting political hypotheticals.

There are a couple party rules that have helped to prevent brokered conventions for the last 70 years. On the Republican side, some states have winner-take-all primaries, which prevents delegates from being splintered over a large field of candidates. On the Democratic side, all delegates—regular delegates who are pledged to one candidate and “superdelegates”—voted on the first ballot at the convention, which made the outcome more predictable and prevented lower-tier candidates from staying in the race on the small chance of a late ballot surprise.

House GOP to Pentagon: Don’t Get Cute With the Taliban

With the White House and the Taliban reportedly close to a negotiated drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a group of 22 GOP lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Wednesday deploring the prospect of a peace deal and seeking assurances that the terms of any agreement be made public.

Worth Your Time

This piece made us do a double-take: How, in the comparatively boring journalistic times of the late Obama era, did we miss the day when Barack Obama pardoned the guy who tried to steal a 1910 Honus Wagner baseball card from Charlie Sheen? Writing in Sports Illustrated, Jon Wertheim has given us a complete retelling of the theft from New York’s All-Star Café and its aftermath. Read it here.
Joe Biden’s discursive, meandering style has sparked a thousand online arguments this campaign season about whether he’s lost a step or whether he’s always been this way. But at a CNN town hall Wednesday night, Biden was not only sharp and lucid—his answer to a question about how his religious faith shapes his life, asked by a pastor whose wife died in the racist shooting at a Charleston church in 2015, was one of the most powerful moments of the campaign. The video of the exchange is well worth your time.

Toeing the Company Line

Thomas Joscelyn’s latest Vital Interests newsletter (🔒) laments the delay of the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment hearings—hosted by both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees—explaining why they matter and what to look for when they are eventually held. Check it out here!
David’s Thursday French Press(🔒) covers some positive news: Divorce rates are down, the percentage of kids living in intact married families is up, and the abortion rate is at an all-time low. David also has a web piece today, looking at the effort by some congressional Republicans to get William Barr to combat pornography. David points out that’s almost impossible to ban it, but it is possible to “zone” it away from children online.
Jonah has a piece today looking at what Bernie Sanders gets wrong about authoritarianism. Given the answer is “almost everything,” we think he kept it pretty short and to the point.
A reminder that you are receiving this version of TMD as a non-paying member. To get the full version, and to receive newsletters like Vital Interests or the French Press, become a member here and you’ll never miss another one.

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).

← Previous

Super Tuesday Contests Offer Big Rewards, Challenges in Democratic Presidential Race

By Reuters, Friday, February 28, 2020 7:29 AM

Here is what you need to know about this key day in the Democratic presidential nominating battle.

No Republican or Democratic convention has gone beyond a single ballot since 1952.

How the Democratic Nominating Battle Could End in a Messy ‘Brokered Convention’

By Reuters, Friday, February 28, 2020 7:28 AM

“We know the virus is easily spread.”

California Monitoring 8,400 People for Possible Coronavirus

By Reuters, Friday, February 28, 2020 7:28 AM

“They robbed the bank and now they are running away with the money.”

House Democrats to Introduce Bill Clawing Back Border Wall Funds

By Reuters, Friday, February 28, 2020 7:28 AM

“Mike would be reluctant to take actions that could upset that balance.”

Bloomberg Would Not Ban U.S. Oil Exports in Climate Plan, Unlike Rival Democrats

By Reuters, Friday, February 28, 2020 7:27 AM

“This could result in some transgender voters being disenfranchised.”

Trans Voters Could Be Turned Away in 2020 U.S. Election, Report Says

By Reuters, Friday, February 28, 2020 7:27 AM

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Eye Opener

Stock markets around the world take a nosedive as governments scramble to take urgent steps to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Also, 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in an Assad air raid in Idlib, the last Syrian province held by opposition forces. All that and all that matters in today’s Eye Opener. Your world in 90 seconds.

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Global markets dive amid coronavirus panic

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THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Washington Examiner’s Examiner Today Newsletter

View this as website

HIGHLIGHTS

‘You can’t get a straight answer’: Businesses struggle to plan through coronavirus damage to Chinese supply chains

The coronavirus outbreak has injected a high level of uncertainty for many businesses who depend on products from China but are clueless as to when they will arrive.

Growing Republican fear of coronavirus election risk for Trump as markets tumble

Stock markets plunged on Thursday amid fresh warnings that the coronavirus outbreak is worsening, deepening fears among some Republican figures that a global pandemic could damage President Trump’s reelection campaign.

Ralph Northam expected to sign gay and transgender protection bill that religious leaders fear will lead to discrimination

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to sign a bill protecting gay and transgender people that many religious leaders fear will put faith-based institutions at risk of fines and lawsuits.

Spy law stalls in Congress amid bipartisan reform demands

Attorney General William Barr last week urged Congress to renew a critical surveillance tool that helps federal law enforcement officials monitor and prevent terrorism and espionage.

Bloomberg apologizes for referring to transgender people as ‘it’ and ‘some guy wearing a dress’

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has apologized for widely condemned comments he made about transgender people.

Lindsey Graham: Republicans will ‘for sure’ take back House if Bernie Sanders is Democratic nominee

Sen. Lindsey Graham predicted that Republicans would reclaim power in the House of Representatives if Sen. Bernie Sanders secures the 2020 Democratic nomination.

‘I’ll resist’: Eric Swalwell declines to bash Trump over his coronavirus response

Rep. Eric Swalwell declined the opportunity to take a shot at President Trump and his administration’s response to the coronavirus when given the opportunity to do so.

Biden suggests funding abortion access in poor countries during response to overpopulation question

Joe Biden said that the United States should fund organizations that help women in poor countries get abortions as part of an answer to a question about overpopulation and women’s empowerment.

Goodbye to marijuana drug testing at work?

There’s no shortage of online advice for beating an employer drug test meant to check for marijuana use, whether it’s getting a friend to take the test, taking supplements, or flushing chemicals out of your system.

‘The majority is in play’: House Republicans clamor for more Bernie Sanders

The rise of Democratic contender Bernie Sanders has top House Republicans optimistic the party will recapture the majority this November, and they have their fingers crossed he will seize the nomination.

Police chase with hearse carrying body ends in crash

A man was arrested after a police chase involving a stolen hearse, which contained a casket and a body.

‘Surgery is imminent’: Fox Nation host reveals she’s getting treatment for brain tumor

Fox Nation host Britt McHenry announced she is receiving treatment for a brain tumor.

THE ROUNDUP

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AMERICAN THINKER

Recent Articles

More than Just the ‘Anti-Greta’

Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
Greta Thunberg has met her match. Read More…

What’s Really Behind the Left’s ‘Cancel Culture’

Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
The left was last seen calling for MSNBC host Chris Matthews’ head. What drives this lunacy? Read More…

Leftist Bullies Attack AG Barr

Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
Barr is a man who dares in this age of political correctness to speak unequivocally of “moral duty.” I Read More…

Breadline Bernie Makes It Harder for the Left to Hide Its Love Affair with Communism

Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
Though it somehow has flown under the radar for a lot of Democrats, Bernie Sanders is just what the Left really looks like without its ultra-thin mask of political moderation. Read More…

Fake News and the 2020 Election

Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
Fake news is already having an effect on the 2020 election. Read More…

Walking Away from Leftist Institutions

Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
What if, from schools to entertainment to news media, individuals now have the power to walk away from the institutions the leftist cult controls? Read More…

Recent Blog Posts

There’s a very good reason the media is silent about the Milwaukee mass shooting
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
It’s not just because of coronavirus that the media is staying mum. The shooter doesn’t fit the Left’s preferred shooter narrative. Read more…

A political dirty trick in San Diego’s District 53 race that might just backfire
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
Careful for what you wish for, Democrats. Read more…

The Democrats and the virus: Truth is hard, propaganda is cheap!
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
They live for any crisis they can weaponize for an assault on the President. They are as shameless as they are calculating. As always, they believe they can fool the American people and that their lies will not be exposed Read more…

Democrats freak out over Mike Pence’s role coordinating coronavirus efforts
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
Leftists accuse Pence of killing people with HIV in Indiana. The facts, however, show that Pence carefully analyzed data and then acted appropriately. Read more…

The 9th Circuit rules that social media is not bound by the First Amendment
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
While the Court rejected PragerU’s argument that the tech giants are equivalent to public utilities, there may be other ways to skin that First Amendment cat. Read more…

With Bernie seemingly unstoppable, a reminder that his socialism is dangerous
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
Bernie calls himself a democratic socialist but the reality is that he’s a garden-variety socialist, which is a big problem for America. Read more…

New Way Forward Act is totally backward
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
Defending “undocumented aliens” on the taxpayer’s dime. Read more…

Bernie to Biden: The Democrat candidate spectrum is a mess
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
What a sad state of affairs the Democratic primary has become. Read more…

Real socialists don’t want fake socialist, real communist Bernie Sanders
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
Democrats in Florida are suing to keep Bernie off the ballot. Read more…

Hope for America from CPAC
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
I was struck by the huge number of young conservatives in attendance at CPAC. I met two people who really excited me. Read more…

Chris Wallace is right about Jim Acosta
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
President Trump does a great job making a fool out of Jim Acosta. Read more…

New Sanctions Turn the Screws on Venezuela’s Maduro
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
In a new effort to get tough on Maduro, the president’s team recently imposed economic sanctions on Rosneft Oil to thwart Russia’s efforts to help Maduro. It’s a smart move. Read more…

Swamp journalists must abandon their appetite for umbrage
Feb 28, 2020 01:00 am
…or irrelevance will follow. Read more…

Ilhan Omar is getting so obnoxious, she could swing Minnesota red in November
Feb 27, 2020 01:00 am
An outrageous tweet is the opposite of “Minnesota nice” and bringing shame on the entire state. Read more…

Bernie Sanders is hiding critical heart health information
Feb 27, 2020 01:00 am
What would happen if the Democrats’ nominee is incapacitated or worse between July and November 3? It’s an important question — as serious as a heart attack. Read more…

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MANHATTAN INSTITUTE

February 28, 2020

Featuring the latest analysis, commentary, and research from Manhattan Institute scholars

NEW YORK CITY & STATE

Photo: Helena GH/iStock

Coronavirus’s Next Victim: The New York State Budget

“This week’s stock-market plunge amid mounting fears of a global economic slowdown triggered by the coronavirus couldn’t come at a more crucial time in New York state’s budget-making process.”
By E.J. McMahon
New York Post
February 28, 2020

Photo: Terraxplorer/iStock

Capital Crunch: What a Recession Would Mean for NYC’s Housing

“With the recent plunge in stock prices and other signs — such as an inverted U.S. Treasury debt yield curve — suggesting an elevated risk of a slowing economy, New York City housing observers need to think about what could happen in the event of a recession.”
By Eric Kober
Economics21
February 28, 2020

Photo: chuyu/iStock

Stopping Green Energy Companies From Blackmailing New York Consumers

“In New York, electricity is bought and sold in a wholesale market. Like other markets, it has rules to prevent participants from gaming the system to their own advantage … But renewable-power producers in the state want to be exempt from those pesky rules — because, after all, they’re green.”
By Jonathan A. Lesser
New York Post
February 28, 2020

ECONOMY & FINANCE

Photo: Screenshot via CNBC.com

CNBC: Fed Most Likely Will Cut Rates in a Risk Averse Move, Researcher Says

Allison Schrager, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, joins “Squawk Box” to discuss U.S. growth and the potential impact of the coronavirus outbreak

HOUSING POLICY

Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Bloomberg’s Foolish Apologies

The former New York mayor shouldn’t retract his past comments on loan practices that hurt minority communities.
By Howard Husock
City Journal Online
February 27, 2020

Photo: georgeclerk/iStock

Give Housing a Fairer (Public) Hearing

“Most Americans will never attend a zoning board hearing. … Two new books bring us inside hearing rooms in Massachusetts and California, where the urgent need for more housing is colliding with the misgivings and outright hostility of neighbors.”
By Salim Furth
Economics21
February 27, 2020

CULTURE & SOCIETY

Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Don’t Revive the ERA

American women already enjoy full constitutional rights, and a new Equal Rights Amendment would bring them no benefits—but it could do significant harm.
By Inez Feltscher Stepman
City Journal Online
February 27, 2020

EDUCATION

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Measure What Matters

On family structure and student outcomes
By Ian Rowe
City Journal Online
February 27, 2020

PODCAST

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How the Plastic Panic Hurts Us—and the Planet

John Tierney joins Brian Anderson to discuss the campaign to ban the use of plastic products and the flawed logic behind the recycling movement—the subjects of Tierney’s story, “The Perverse Panic over Plastic,” from the Winter 2020 Issue of City Journal.

CIVIL SOCIETY AWARDS

Nominations are open for the Manhattan Institute’s 2020 Civil Society Awards. This fall, four winners will each receive a $25,000 award for their efforts to keep our social fabric from fraying, assist those who need it most, and help people change the course of their lives. Nominate an outstanding nonprofit by March 20, 2020. Learn more at civilsocietyawards.com.

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THE BLAZE

Bombshell: Top Dem leaders are planning to stop Bernie Sanders at the convention, says NY Times

February 28, 2020

More from TheBlaze

Garth Brooks wore a ‘Sanders’ jersey at his Detroit show and people on social media are freaking out

Chiefs’ Travis Kelce joined in kneeling protest, but he’s facing backlash over his comments about visiting the White House

Fox Nation’s Britt McHenry reveals that she has a brain tumor

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One last thing …

Village People say President Trump has been ‘respectful’ of their songs, has every right to play them at rallies — and leftists go nuclear

The Village People’s iconic disco-era tune “Macho Man” blasted through the speakers at a stadium as President Donald Trump made his entrance during a visit to India earlier this week — … Read more

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NBC

From NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann

FIRST READ: Trump’s retreat on Coronavirus response leaves void for Dem candidates to fill

In his five years on the national stage, Donald Trump has rarely missed an opportunity to seize the political advantage.

And it’s why his reluctance to be in charge of the federal government’s coronavirus response – and instead passing the buck to someone else to lead it – is so striking.

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

This should have been a week when the president of the United States asserted himself, especially with the Democratic presidential candidates bickering at Tuesday’s debate, with the Dem Party more divided than ever, and with the president politically stronger than he was months ago.

Instead, he’s run away from the issue – and has allowed others to flex their muscles.

“Managing a crisis is what Mike Bloomberg does. In the aftermath of 9/11, he steadied and rebuilt America’s largest city,” goes a new Bloomberg TV ad on the coronavirus.

“What I would do were I president now, I would not be taking China’s word for it,” Joe Biden said on CNN this past Wednesday. “I would insist that China allow our scientists in to make a hard determination of how it started, where it’s from, how far along it is. Because that is not happening now.”

“I’m going to be introducing a plan tomorrow to take every dime that the president is now taking to spend on his racist wall at the southern border and divert it to the coronavirus,” Elizabeth Warren said on Wednesday.

Trump has retreated.

And he’s allowed some of the candidates vying to replace him to step forward.

TWEET OF THE DAY: Working hard? Or hardly working?

Whistleblower says HHS blew it

“Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers to receive the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, without proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint,” the Washington Post writes.

More: The workers did not show symptoms of infection and were not tested for the virus, according to lawyers for the whistleblower, a senior HHS official based in Washington who oversees workers at the Administration for Children and Families, a unit within HHS. The whistleblower is seeking federal protection, alleging she was unfairly and improperly reassigned after raising concerns about the safety of these workers to HHS officials.”

2020 VISION: Here’s everything you need to know about Saturday’s SC primary

Fifty-four pledged delegates are up for grabs on Saturday – 35 awarded proportionately by congressional district and 19 awarded proportionately by the statewide vote.

A candidate must meet a 15 percent threshold to qualify to win delegates.

Polls open at 7:00 am ET, and they close at 7:00 pm ET. (The state allowed in-person absentee voting from Jan. 30 to Feb. 28, but you needed an excuse to participate early.)

South Carolina is an open-primary state, so voters can participate in any primary – as long as they choose one ballot.

The South Carolina GOP canceled its presidential primary.

On the campaign trail today: One day before South Carolina’s primary, Joe Biden makes stops in Sumter and Spartanburg… Bernie Sanders travels to St. George, Aiken and Columbia before heading to Massachusetts for an evening rally in Springfield… Pete Buttigieg is in Charleston, Fairfax, Sumter and Columbia… Elizabeth Warren stumps in Greenville and Warrenville.. Tom Steyer hits Sumter and Columbia… Outside of South Carolina, Mike Bloomberg campaigns in Tennessee… Amy Klobuchar is in Virginia and Tennessee… And President Trump holds a rally in North Charleston, S.C. at 7:00 pm ET.

Dispatches from NBC’s campaign embeds: Something you may not hear from Democratic candidates a lot – campaigning against higher teaching salaries, but Michael Bloomberg toed that line last night, NBC’s Maura Barrett reports from Arkansas: “When touting his record in NYC, Bloomberg gave the stat about raising teachers’ salaries by 43 percent. He pointed to someone in the crowd who said something we could not hear, but he responded, ‘Teacher? You should be happy. You’d think the teacher’s union happy? Enough is never enough. Don’t ever make that mistake.’”

And sometimes, it’s interesting what candidates aren’t saying. NBC’s Gary Grumbach reports on Bernie Sanders in South Carolina: “Sanders talked generally about his movement, in no uncertain terms. ‘We are building a movement that cannot be stopped,’ Sanders said. ‘It is a justice movement. It is a movement for economic justice. For social justice. For racial justice. For environmental justice. And when millions of people stand up and fight back nothing on earth can stop us.’ Things Sanders didn’t talk about: Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic/Republican/media establishment. This is all interesting, because he’s focused so heavily on those topics in the past few months. Stopping now, after winning the Nevada caucuses, is notable.”

DATA DOWNLOAD: And the number of the day is … 74 percent.

Seventy-four percent.

That’s the share of South Democratic primary voters in 2016 who said they wanted to a candidate to continue Barack Obama’s policies, according to the exit poll from that contest four years ago.

Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by more than 60 points among these voters, 81 percent to 19 percent.

By contrast, 16 percent said they wanted a candidate who held more liberal policies than Obama’s, and Sanders won those voters, 55 percent to 45 percent – one of the few demographic groups Sanders carried in that 2016 contest.

THE LID: Procrastinators unite! (Maybe tomorrow)

Don’t miss the pod from yesterday, when we looked at how a dearth of long-term planning can mean a big scramble for campaigns — even if they do well in early contests.

ICYMI: News clips you shouldn’t miss

Stocks are on track for their worst week since 2008.

Here’s what Democrats in Trump districts are saying about Sanders’ rise.

Mike Bloomberg says he’ll run “right to the bitter end” if no one has a majority of delegates going into the convention.

The DNC held a briefing with Democrats on Capitol Hill as concerns about a contested convention rise.

The pro-Warren super PAC is pumping another $9 million into a Super Tuesday ad buy.

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CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY

Highlighted Articles/Interviews

Committee on the Present Danger: China Panel at CPAC 2020

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD.—On Feb. 27, the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC) held the seventh in a series of non-partisan, topical and timely 2020 Policy Battlespace Threat Briefings at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland.

Click here to watch the whole panel.

How do you solve a problem like Ilhan Omar?

There is always a temptation in politics, and indeed in all human life, to reduce people to symbolic representations. Storytelling — or, if you prefer the D.C. swamp lingo, “the narrative” — remains the evolutionarily prescribed way to relay complex information to large groups of people and ensure they retain the core message. Narratives need heroes and villains, someone who will embody within himself the key ideas being transmitted.

Read the piece by Center Director and Senior Analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, Kyle Shideler.

As China cracks-down on Hong Kong’s leading freedom fighters, we must push back

While Americans are focused on China’s coronavirus and the financial pandemic now afflicting their pension plans, the Chinese Communist Party’s puppet government in Hong Kong is seizing the day.

Three leaders of massive demonstrations last August have been arrested, a seemingly small addition to the 7,000 protestors Beijing’s proxies are believed to have previously taken into custody. But the prosecution of Jimmy Lai, the founder of Hong Kong’s freest newspaper, Apple Daily, and opposition politicians Lee Cheuk-yan and Yeung Sum, suggests that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping intends to institute a wider crack-down in their city.

The coronavirus is not only distracting us, it is discouraging Hong Kong’s freedom fighters from massing in the streets. It behooves the U.S. government, therefore, to redouble its efforts to protect them and their movement by impressing upon Xi that further oppression will entail real costs.

This is Frank Gaffney.

DAVID GOLDMAN, Author of How Civilizations Die, Best known for his series of essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler:

Implications for Chinese political order as a result of the coronavirus
How accurate are the numbers the Chinese are providing regarding the coronavirus?

KEVIN FREEMAN, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy, Host of Economic War Room on TheBlaze TV, Author of “Game Plan” and “Secret Weapon”:

The coronavirus’ effect on American medical supplies
How long would it take for the coronavirus to impact American medicine?
Why the US cannot be dependent on China

SAM FADDIS, Former CIA Ops Officer, Spent twenty years as an Operations officer in the Middle East, South Asia and Europe, Former Candidate for Congress:

The Faustian bargain the US made with China
Analyzing the work conditions in China
Do the Chinese have the coronavirus under control?

DIANA WEST, Nationally syndicated columnist, Blogs at Dianawest.net, Author of Death of the Grown Up, American Betrayal, and Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy:

Remembering the life of Philip Haney
The ongoing investigation into the death of Philip Haney

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AMERICAN SPECTATOR

Today’s Top News

February 28, 2020

That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Dumber

A resilient people overcoming SARS, the Y2K bug, acid rain, and killer bees confronts yet another existential challenge in the Wuhan coronavirus.

Daniel J. Flynn
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Whither the Anti-Trump Uprising?

Long before the recent caucuses and primaries, countless pundits, pollsters, and political scientists began predicting that high Democratic dudgeon produced by the dark doings of President Trump would drive unusually high turnout at the polls.

David Catron
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George Soros’ Man in Philadelphia

District Attorney Larry Krasner is trying to overturn death sentences for horrific crimes in the name of criminal justice reform. This week, he ran up against much-needed resistance in the courts.

George Parry
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Now They’re the Disastercrats

Have you ever seen anyone so enthralled with the idea that Stephen King’s The Stand might play out in real life as today’s Democrat Party and its allies in the mainstream media?

Scott McKay
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The Best Friend Israel Ever Had

Jewish leaders praised President Trump in emphatic terms during a reception Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “He has been the greatest friend for Israel any American president has ever been,” declared Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America.

Robert Stacy McCain
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Dems Join Trump’s Anti-Socialist Campaign

Well, what a difference a year makes. Now, with a lifetime socialist surging through the Democratic primary, Pete sings a different tune. He’s flashing the “s-word” to effectively end a debate. Today, at least when talking about his chief rival, Pete sounds the siren, warning the world of the old codger’s socialism.

Paul Kengor
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The American Spectator

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