Friday, July 31, 2020

In the news, Thursday, July 23, 2020


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JUL 22      INDEX      JUL 24
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from al.com (Alabama Media Group)

Coronavirus update: Test positive for COVID? CDC changes quarantine rules
The Centers for Disease Control has updated its guidelines for what people should do if they are diagnosed with coronavirus. The revised quarantine guidelines say people who test positive for COVID should quarantine for at least 10 days after the onset of symptoms. Quarantine can end when the patient shows a general improvement in symptoms, including being fever free for at least 24 hours without the aid of fever reducing medicines. Asymptomatic patients can end isolation 10 days after the date of their first positive test.

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from BBC News (UK)

US arrests three Chinese nationals for visa fraud
The US has charged four Chinese nationals with visa fraud for allegedly lying about their membership of China's armed forces. Three are under arrest while the FBI is seeking to arrest the fourth, who is said to be in China's San Francisco consulate. FBI agents have also interviewed people in 25 US cities who have an "undeclared affiliation" with China's military. Prosecutors say it is part of a Chinese plan to send army scientists to the US. Members of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) applied for research visas while hiding their "true affiliation" with the military, US justice department attorney John C Demers said in a press release. "This is another part of the Chinese Communist Party's plan to take advantage of our open society and exploit academic institutions."

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from CNN

Convent outside Detroit lost 13 nuns to Covid-19 with 12 dying in one month
Coronavirus spread so quickly through a convent in Michigan that it claimed the lives of 12 nuns in one month, beginning on Good Friday. They were all members of the Felician Sisters convent in Livonia, outside of Detroit, ranging in ages from 69 to 99, the executive director for mission advancement, Suzanne English, confirmed to CNN on Tuesday. A 13th sister initially survived the virus but passed away from its effects in June.

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from Competitive Enterprise Institute

Report: Anti-Price-Gouging Laws Do More Harm Than Good
Policymakers called for price gouging laws in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when massive shortages—and rising prices—ensued nationwide for hand sanitizer, personal protective equipment, toilet paper, surface-cleaning products, and certain foods. A new Competitive Enterprise Institute report urges those policymakers to resist a rush to a hasty, ill-considered government “solution.” “No one likes price increases when there is a crisis or a shortage,” said Ryan Young, CEI senior fellow and author of the report. “But, unfortunately, price gouging legislation makes the situation worse and for longer. Keeping money prices low has a tradeoff: other, non-money prices go up even more. That means worse shortages, longer lines and shipping times, fewer choices, and lower quality goods and services. Legislation cannot make these problems go away but can make them worse.

Environmental Protection Agency Finalizes Reforms to Its Environmental Appeals Board
The Trump administration has placed a high priority on streamlining the delays and red tape holding back many private sector projects. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final rule making changes to its Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) is another useful step toward that goal. Job-creating projects, from pipelines to ports to mines, are routinely subject to years of federal permitting delays. In some cases, these long delays are tantamount to denials, as investors are simply forced to give up and allocate their capital elsewhere, including other countries with less onerous red tape. For example, under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Environmental Impact Statements required of major projects have averaged four and a half years to complete, and there is no guarantee that there won’t be other non-concurrent federal delays after that. Although the problem has been gradually getting worse for decades, it was exacerbated by the Obama administration’s efforts to impose climate change considerations as yet another hurdle in the permitting process.

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from The Federalist
RIGHT BIAS, HIGH, online magazine

Democratic pundits still don't seem to grasp that demographics both shape and are shaped by politics. It’s not a one-way relationship, it’s symbiotic. Universal theories can have a certain tidy attraction. In science, they can result in revolutionary breakthroughs — Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity comes to mind. In the messy realm of human affairs, however, universal theories have a tendency to fall apart. ... Any system aimed at electoral dominance by dividing people into groups then using the power of government to redistribute resources from a disfavored group to the favored group will soon find itself out of groups to take resources from.

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from Fox News (& affiliates)

Portland mayor tear-gassed by federal agents, riot declared
A riot was declared in Portland just after midnight Thursday morning after Mayor Ted Wheeler’s tense visit with protesters-- where he was booed, told to resign, given a list of demands and tear-gassed by federal agents. His visit ended with his security detail engaging in a struggle with protesters late Wednesday night as they worked to get the mayor to safety, a report said. Earlier, he moved with protesters to the fence outside of the federal courthouse where he stood at the front and was tear-gassed along with the crowd, according to New York Times correspondent Mike Baker.

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from The Guardian (UK)
LEFT-CENTER, HIGH, British daily newspaper published in London UK

Sheffield cathedral to disband choir to take account of diversity
In a break with centuries of tradition, Sheffield cathedral is to stand down its choir in order to make a “completely fresh start” with a new team of choristers that reflects and engages with an increasingly diverse city. A statement published on the cathedral’s website on Wednesday said “significant change” was needed. The cathedral’s governing body, the Chapter, had decided on “a new model for Anglican choral life here, with a renewed ambition for engagement and inclusion”, it added. Although the cathedral’s music department had been the subject of a review, the closure of the choir was unexpected and is likely to infuriate traditionalists in the Church of England and classical music circles.

Mike Pompeo says free world must change China or 'China will change us'
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has called on “free nations” to triumph over the threat of what he said was a “new tyranny” from China, in a provocative speech likely to worsen fraught US-China relations. “Today China is increasingly authoritarian at home, and more aggressive in its hostility to freedom everywhere else,” Pompeo said in a speech on Thursday at the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California. “If the free world doesn’t change Communist China, Communist China will change us,” he said. Pompeo said Nixon’s worry about what he had done by opening the world to China’s Communist party in the 1970s had been prophetic. “President Nixon once said he feared he had created a ‘Frankenstein’ by opening the world to the CCP,” Pompeo said. “And here we are.”

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from KING 5 (NBC)
Broadcasting & Media Production Company in Seattle, Washington

Inslee shuts indoor service at bars, restricts indoor dining
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Thursday he is tightening restrictions throughout the state in restaurants and bars, for weddings and funerals, and at gyms in a further effort to stem a surge in COVID-19 cases. “I care about businesses opening and people getting back to work, but public health and economic activity go hand in hand,” Inslee said. “Our suppression of this virus is not at the level it needs to be to continue allowing for more activity. If we let this virus get even more out of control, it will have devastating effects on our health and on our economy.”

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from Mises Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, MIXED


The COVID Panic Is a Lesson in Using Statistics to Get Your Way in Politics
Indeed, so unimportant are the deaths and illnesses uncounted in any any government tally, that politicians are now talking about another round of stay-at-home orders and lockdowns. Los Angeles city officials are threatening to impose new lockdown measures, and at least one county in Texas has implemented a stay-at-home order. Those who support these measures need only point to the official statistics: "see, we must do something to keep this COVID-19 number from getting bigger!" The number will be there for all to see. But the child abuse, the suicides, and the cancer deaths? There's no Worldometer number to point to. There's an important lesson here. Since the nineteenth century, government bureaucrats, politicians, and other advocates for more government action have sought greater use of government statistics as a means of justifying government interventions in the marketplace. In this way of thinking, that which is measured is that which merits government planning.

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from NBC News (& affiliates)
LEFT-CENTER BIAS

Former Pennsylvania Democratic congressman charged with bribery, ballot stuffing
Former Rep. Ozzie Myers was expelled from the House in 1980 after he was videotaped receiving a $50,000 bribe from an undercover FBI agent.

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from Reason Magazine
Magazine in Los Angeles, California

The Economics of Cancel Culture
A wave of hasty firings is sweeping across the country, driven by demands from what some call the "cancel culture." The New York Times editorial page editor James Bennett ran an op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) that displeased the paper's readers and some colleagues, so he lost his job. The chief curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gary Garrels, lost his job, too, after he was accused of being a racist for saying he would still collect art from white men. But the list of those who lost their jobs is much longer, and the rationale is sometimes as stunningly weak as someone liking the wrong tweet.

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from Reuters
International news agency headquartered in London, UK

Water wars: Mekong River another front in U.S.-China rivalry
The Mekong River has become a new front in U.S.-China rivalry, environmentalists and officials say, with Beijing overtaking Washington in both spending and influence over downstream countries at the mercy of its control of the river’s waters. It’s a confrontation in which the Trump administration - which has largely maintained funding for an Obama-era environmental and development programmes in the Lower Mekong - is losing ground. The two powers’ struggle recently moved into the realm of science - with the U.S. and Chinese governments each touting different reports about whether China’s 11 dams on the river were harming nations downstream.

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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington

Sue Lani Madsen: Initiative aims to limit governor’s power to make emergency proclamations
How much emergency power should the executive branch hold? In a system of government designed around checks and balances at every level, state legislators are wondering where they fit in. Initiative 1114, which is sponsored by Restore Washington, an independent political movement focused on keeping government in check through the initiative and referendum process, seeks to provide the answer.

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from Stars and Stripes

VA opposes bill to grant dental care to all veterans
The Department of Veterans Affairs voiced its opposition Thursday to legislation that would require the department to provide dental treatment for all veterans enrolled in VA health care. The bill, introduced by Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., aims to phase in dental care at the VA within four years. Now, the department provides dental treatment only to veterans whose dental issues are related to their military service. Brownley said that is equal to about one in 17 VA enrollees being eligible for dental care. “Current law restricts the VA’s ability to provide dental care to most veterans,” Brownley said. “The cost of private-sector dental care is often too expensive, leaving too many veterans without dental care at all.” The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs considered the bill during a hearing Thursday. The VA was strongly opposed. ... In response, Brownley cited a 2019 report, in which the VA said “poor oral health can have a significant negative effect on overall health.” She argued providing dental care for veterans would lead to better health outcomes and lower costs in the long term.

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from Townhall.com
RIGHT BIAS,  MIXED,  American conservative website and print magazine

Rolling Stone Editor on Why ‘White Fragility’ May Be the ‘Dumbest Book Ever Written’
If there is one non-conservative writer who you should read right now, it's Matt Taibbi. The Rolling Stone editor has been a surgeon in dissecting the Left's uncontrollable descent into insanity. Even if you disagree with most of his work, which I'm sure you will, his analysis of the Left's "woke" awakening is spot on and devastating. Taibbi torched these clowns for their historically illiterate and unhinged tantrum over Independence Day. Now, he's going off on the institutional Left's latest craze: fawning over Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility," a cacophony of intersectionality nonsense that appears to have driven Taibbi crazy just reading it.

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from Zero Hedge
EXTREME RIGHT BIAS, CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE, MIXED, website registered in Bulgaria

St. Louis Prosecutor's Office Busted Altering Evidence; Reassembled Non-Operable McCloskey Pistol To Classify As Lethal
The pistol Patricia McCloskey waved at protesters who broke down a gate to trespass on their private street was a non-operable 'prop' used during a lawsuit they were involved in, so a member of Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner's staff ordered the crime lab to disassemble and reassemble the gun - allowing them to classify it as "capable of lethal use" in charging documents filed Monday, according to KSDK5.

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