Re-posted from The Conservative Tree house By Lee Cary —— Bio and Archives—April 15, 2020

Jim Acosta, once the undisputed champion of rudeness among White House alleged journalists, has been dethroned by Paula Reid of CBS News.

Long live the Queen.

Reid ascended to the prestigious Throne of Rude

Reid ascended to the prestigious Throne of Rude as a result of her performance in a recent virus-update press conference. If you didn’t see it, here is the video.

Not one to rest on her recently achieved laurels, the next day Reid asserted her presence at a White House meeting between Trump and a few recovered victims ofCOVID-19. Although directed four times to leave the room, she refused to budge.

So, what’s driving Paula’s recently displayed antics? A case of histrionic personality disorder? Or, she just hates the Orange Man?

Perhaps it’s more complicated than that.

Maybe it’s about autarchy.  I’m not ashamed, I had to look it up.  It has multiple spellings—most recently as “autarky”.  In short—sovereignty.

Why might Trump’s movement towards autarchy, particularly in the context of China, light-up Paula Reid? She a card-carrying globalist? A Charlie Chan fan? Connoisseur of Chinese food?

You can ask a similar question. What lit-up the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, when, according to The Hill, it “criticized President Trump’s decision to halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday, saying it is not in the best interest of the country.”

What lit-up the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Best interest of which country? All of them except the U.S.?

The Chamber sides with China. More from The Hill:

“‘The Chamber supports a reformed but functional World Health Organization, and U.S. leadership and involvement are essential to ensuring its transparency and accountability going forward,’ Myron Brilliant, the Chamber’s executive vice president and head of international affairs, said in a statement.”

Who’s not all for transparency? (no pun intended) Well, we’ve learned that WHO is not—all for transparency. And Trump is holding WHO accountable for hiding the truth of China’s virus early on.

Brilliant added:

“However, cutting the WHO’s funding during the COVID-19 pandemic is not in U.S. interests given the organization’s critical role assisting other countries—particularly in the developing world—in their response.”

What is WHO’s critical role? Giving the virus extra time to spread globally by withholding information? All that led to was more critical care needed for more virus victims.

The Hill also notes that “The American Medical Association also criticized the president’s announcement, calling the move a ‘dangerous step in the wrong direction’ and urging Trump to reconsider.” (Would it surprise you that only 29% of U.S. physicians are members of the AMA.)

What follows might move us closer to understanding Reid’s sudden outrage at Orange Man

What follows might move us closer to understanding Reid’s sudden outrage at Orange Man.

Let’s start here:

“Jason Kolsevich who also goes by the name Jason Reid is an American entrepreneur. He is a director at Water Street Partners and former analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit. He is the husband of CBS White House Correspondent Paula Reid.”

So, what are these partners and what does he do for them?

“Jason is a Director at Water Street Partners. His roles include serving as a global client base of TMT, financial services, consumer, industrial, and energy companies – and focuses on business strategy, transaction structuring, and Board governance engagements. He previously served as a consultant and later a senior consultant. Prior to joining Water Street, he served as a contributing author for Economist Intelligence Unit and also as an economist (postgraduate fellow) for International Monetary Fund.”

What does Kolsevich/Reid’s very successful employer do?

“Water Street Partners advises clients on transaction and governance. Our transaction work specialized in joint ventures and other non-M&A partnerships, both in new deal formation and restructuring. On governance, we advise clients on corporate and joint venture governance, working with boards, management teams, and individual shareholders. We support clients around the world and across industries.”

Kolsevich/Reid’s bio reads, in part:

“Jason lived in China and worked as an analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, the International Monetary Fund, private equity investors and the American Chamber of Commerce.”

What’s the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) doing in China? Ask Wikipedia.

“The American Chamber of Commerce in the People’s Republic of China (AmCham China) is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization whose membership compromises more than 3,300 individuals from 900 companies operating across China. The chamber’s mission is to help American companies succeed in China through advocacy, information, networking and business support services. The chamber provides information, networking opportunities, business support services, and advocacy to promote a mutually beneficial bilateral business environment for the United States and China. AmCham China is the only officially recognized chamber of commerce representing American businesses in Mainland China. AmCham China has more than 50 industry and issue-specific forums and committees.”

CBS Reporter Paula Reid’s husband, Kolsevich/Reid, works for a D.C. firm that helps U.S. businesses partner with other businesses across the world, including, of course, China

So, CBS Reporter Paula Reid’s husband, Kolsevich/Reid, works for a D.C. firm that helps U.S. businesses partner with other businesses across the world, including, of course, China, which, by the way, has a miserable reputation for not honoring Proprietary Information Agreements.

But up until Trump came on the scene, Presidents had pretty much seemed not to care about that. Gotta’ wonder why.

Trump closes down China to incoming flights to the U.S.

He states an intention to work toward U.S. companies to return essential manufacturing capabilities from China to the U.S.

He’s all about…Autarchy.

That sure can’t be good news for businesses and consultants whose job it is to set up joint ventures between China and America that have, historically, on balance, favored China.

Is that what set Paula off? A family self-interest?

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By Matthew Vadum —— Bio and Archives—April 15, 202Cover Story | 

—American Thinker

The late Sage of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken, once wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Polling suggests that America’s governors and mayors have done the terrified, beaten-down people’s bidding after saturation media coverage of panic-inducing epidemiological modeling made Americans strangely docile.

Counting COVID-19 deaths adopted during this pandemic had been corrupted by politics

If a poll released by Zogby Analytics on April 10 is to be believed, a supermajority of likely voters are fine with the lockdowns—and perhaps the harsh un-American tactics—used by states and localities to secure compliance with their emergency fiats aimed at the Chinese novel coronavirus that causes the occasionally deadly disease COVID-19.

According to the polling firm, social distancing policies enjoy bipartisan support, while 84 percent of “likely voters at least somewhat support federal, state and local governments telling Americans that they can’t go to work to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.”  The older you are, the more likely you are to support the lockdowns.  Only 889 likely voters were polled.

Even if we assume the poll results reflect reality, they are almost three weeks old; the survey ran from March 24 through 26.

Death forecasts since then have been drastically revised downward and the public mood seems a little less bleak.

Peak Fear is probably behind us.

Three weeks ago, re-opening the country was barely on the radar as the nation attempted a partial trial run of the Green New Deal and do-gooder snitches started turning America into East Germany.  Back then Americans, shocked and awed into becoming couch potatoes, were still struggling to figure out how to wear face masks to the grocery store, if only they could find them.

Most of us hadn’t figured out yet that the method of counting COVID-19 deaths adopted during this pandemic had been corrupted by politics, designed to maximize the COVID-19 body count.  Nor did many know about the relative arbitrariness of the death certification process itself that predates the virus by many years.  (See my April 9 American Thinker column, “The CDC Confesses to Lying About COVID-19 Death Numbers”)

But today, searching for a way out of the lockdown and reopening America is being widely discussed, in part because President Donald Trump and other public figures, including governors and local leaders, have begun talking about it in earnest.  Even law-and-order conservatives have been appalled at reports of heavy-handed actions by overzealous police officers who have been saddled in many jurisdictions with poorly drafted enforcement instructions.

My guess is support for our collective national suicide attempt and the sick coercive egalitarianism behind locking up everyone for the benefit of a vulnerable sliver of the population has been steadily falling off since the Zogby poll was conducted.  Since then, joblessness has been shooting up, businesses large and small have been collapsing, and people have started thinking long and hard about what the future holds.  (See my March 27 American Thinker column, “Dictatorship of the Immunocompromised?”)

Now it is time to take the country back.

Don’t accept the silly argument I keep hearing that it is too difficult to determine who “the vulnerable” are in order to isolate them and let Americans get back to work.  Politicians wrote their emergency edicts, some of which are incredibly detailed, quickly, not wanting to be blamed if mass death followed.  Figuring out who the people are who still need to be shielded from the Chinese contagion and balancing competing interests in society while making a plan for the liberation of the country has to be easier than policing an America that has been turned into a minimum-security prison.

It is time to turn the pain for despotic politicians up to 11, to borrow a phrase from This Is Spinal Tap (1984).  Send emails, melt down telephone switchboards at all levels of government, visit lawmakers, write letters to the editor, make videos on social media, and in general make your views known.  Put pressure on politicians, including, yes, President Trump, who despite his strong leadership has inexplicably surrendered so much of his bully pulpit to unelected bullies like Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The politicians are listening and they’re beginning to get worried.  They took draconian steps because it’s what they thought you wanted.

Now you need to correct that impression if you want your God-given freedoms back.

Sixth Avenue near Rockefeller Center almost deserted last week (YouTube screen grab, cropped)

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By Klaus Rohrich —— Bio and Archives—April 15, 2020

As the subject of world history has become less about facts and more about the evils of Western Civilization, due to the perceived sins of our ancestors, I dread the truth of George Santayana’s famous quip, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

From the perspective of the year 2020, things are looking a lot like they did a hundred years ago. Back in 1920 the world had just finished a Great War, and a massive pandemic, estimated to have killed upwards of 100 million people. Considering that the global population in 1920 was approximately 1.8 billion people, the number of deaths caused by the Spanish Flu pandemic represented nearly 5% of the global population.

The 1920s were also a decade that saw explosive economic growth

The 1920s were also a decade that saw explosive economic growth, driven largely by the post-war boom and easy credit. That, plus the Smoot-Hawley Act brought on the Great Depression, which lasted an entire decade and was finally ended due to the stimulative effect of World War Two.

Back then, no one thought very much about global warming. But they did have a massive anti-alcohol lobby that managed to get the Volstead Act passed in Congress prohibiting the sale, distribution and consumption of ‘spirits’ in the United States. The prohibitionists of yore would be today’s climate change protesters.

The 1920s also saw massive social, economic and political disruptions due to the various competing socialist philosophies. Russia was taken over by Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and other radical socialist organizations, who then fought it out to ultimately become the Soviet Union.

Italy was undergoing tectonic political upheavals in the 1920s that resulted in Benito Mussolini becoming that country’s leader under the Fascist Banner. It appears Mussolini founded the Fascist Party because he was kicked out of the Italian Socialist Party for being too far to the left.

There’s not much one can add about the turmoil in Germany during the 1920s, except That it was precipitated by socialists, anarchists and communists fighting among each other. How many people today know the meaning of the official NAZI Party name, National Socialistiche Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP).

Translated from the German, it means National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Note the word, ‘Socialist’ in the NSDAP’s official name. The only disagreement Hitler’s socialism had with Stalin’s socialism was in how to run the economy. Everything else was pretty much similar.

In Asia, an ambitious imperial power began to flex its military muscle by invading its neighbors and declaring the Pacific and Indian Oceans as vital parts of their empire’s sphere of influence under the so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, then aligned with Germany and Italy against every British and American interest around the globe.

Anti-Semitism was a growing force during the 1920s and ultimately resulted in one of history’s Greatest Genocides.

Not to put too fine a point on this, doesn’t today feel an awful lot like it might have felt 100 years ago?

Consider

• America’s longest-ever war (18 years!) has just ended in defeat
• The economy has been on steroids with growth in the past three years eclipsing that of the previous five
• Household debt in North America is at the highest levels ever.
• Pandemic? Check!
• Civil unrest? Check!
• Rise of socialism? Check!
• Rise of Fascism? Check
• Huge increase in Anti- Semitism, particularly in Europe? Double check!

When is the last time “Climate Change” was considered the world’s most pressing issue?

Oh, and let’s not forget about that Asian Empire. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is currently under new management, but essentially retains its original goals with a much more sophisticated degree of raw power, deception and mendacity.

And when is the last time “Climate Change” was considered the world’s most pressing issue?

The Future?

Given all that we know about the past, what can one think about events starting to play out this decade?

How many deaths, globally, will be attributed to COVID 19? Will this pandemic be as lethal as the Spanish Flu and will there be a second wave of infections lasting into 2022?

There is little doubt that there will be a significant economic downturn. The only question is, ‘how significant?’ Will the coming recession last six or eight months, or will it stretch into a depression, lasting years? And if indeed, a depression is the case, how will the economy be able to recover? Will we need a War to regain overall economic viability?

Numerous countries’ populations are under what amounts to martial law

These are very troubling questions and I am particularly concerned about the direction in which we are heading. Numerous countries’ populations are under what amounts to martial law. Yet few people seem concerned about regulatory overreach. Will this become a permanent state of affairs?

A large part of my pessimism is also based on the fact that the people charged with leading us through troubled times appear to be as clueless as anyone. In an emergency isn’t there a hierarchy of actions predicated on the mitigation of damage? Aren’t the actions taken by authorities based on solid information? It certainly gives credence to William F. Buckley’s preference to entrust governance of the US to the first 400 people in the Boston telephone directory than to the Harvard faculty.

There are a lot of Individuals welcoming the New Normal, even though no one knows what it looks like. If the decade that followed the “Roaring Twenties” is any indication, it will certainly be interesting.

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By Daniel Wiseman —— Bio and Archives—April 15, 2020

This latest Cuomo edict comes a mere 10 days after he “recommended” that residents of New York State wear a mask during COVID-19 to protect OTHER people, even though there is no comprehensive study proving that a healthy person who maintains social distancing of six feet can infect someone else. This is the definition of capricious, a causeless change of mind befitting a child. Why is Cuomo’s new addition to his Executive Order also anti-American? Because protecting others from infinitesimal risk is not anyone’s responsibility under our constitutional system.

Government ought to leave us alone as much as possible

In America, we are responsible to keep ourselves safe and then next to protect our families. Under the Constitution, Americans have no unlimited obligation to the “community,” except to follow reasonable laws, even when one disagrees with them. If citizens want to participate in the insane, overblown reaction of the New York State government to the COVID-19 “crisis,” that’s fine. But the real “crisis” remains the state and federal government closing the economy which potentially puts all Americans in far more danger with lost liberty and a decimated country.

Americans don’t belong to the state, and that’s what Cuomo is saying by requiring people to wear masks on their face. “We The People,” are the ultimate authority in this country, and we need to remember that more than ever as we live through the COVID-19 hysteria.

Government ought to leave us alone as much as possible, especially in this case when not wearing a mask poses only minimal,hypothetical risk to others.

Living in New York State under Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Order has caused hardship for all, but as good citizens, we have adhered to “sheltering in place,” working remotely, and for some, being classified as a worker in an “essential” industry. Anybody who cares about civil liberties and freedom has chafed under these restrictions, but we have endeavored to help “flatten the curve” of COVID-19. But, as I’ve written previously and it’s worth saying again, millions of Americans die prematurely each year from cancer, heart and lung disease, alcohol and drug abuse, car accidents, unintentional injuries, and suicides and we do not shutter society and our national economy for these maladies. COVID-19 is a relative piker in terms of being lethal, especially when one considers that it mainly kills the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. Similar to the flu, COVID-19 mostly shortens life as compared to the horrific deaths mentioned above which kill Americans of various ages and health.

Government ought to leave us alone as much as possibleSo far, President Trump has merely recommended that Americans wear a face covering, and not of the surgical N95 kind which are in short supply and needed by medical personnel to treat COVID-19 patients. But, as I predicted to friends earlier this month, Cuomo’s recommendation then would become today’s requirement.

We need to get this country open and working, as soon as possible. Already, in the last three weeks, more than 15 million Americans have lost their jobs. Divorces, domestic violence, and alcohol abuse have increased. Soon, there may be widespread societal unraveling and civil unrest if and when unemployment numbers explode. It’s not money versus lives, as Democrats are fond to say; it’s Americans’ lives devastated compared to some lives lengthened.

Being forced to wear a mask takes prevention to absurd extremes. Incredibly, Cuomo has said his actions are designed to save even one person and that New Yorkers will enforce others to wear a mask!

So far, I have been able to quarantine myself, get exercise, and work remotely with minimum inconvenience by following Cuomo’s original executive order first issued in March. But the Shut Down America crowd ignores the reality of Life: People Die. We are all going to die of something, some day, sooner or later.

Wearing masks to reduce infinitesimal risk represents tyranny masquerading as science.

What’s happening with the COVID-19 response is that the cure is worse than the disease

The World Health Organization and the CDC have repeatedly said that most people do not need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. As recently as February, the U.S. Surgeon General even urged the public to stop buying medical masks, warning that it would not help against the spread of COVID-19.

But now Cuomo says we New Yorkers may be “sick, with no symptoms,” asymptomatic. Therefore, how people choose to breathe has become a POSSIBLE health risk! You can be sure that forced COVID-19 testing is around the corner.

Also as recently as February, the World Health Organization stated that viral transmission of COVID-19 was likely “rare.” This means with Cuomo’s new directive a person with no symptoms is being required to cover his or her mouth to prevent droplets from going into the air, so that people who ARE wearing masks and are staying six feet away will not likely contract COVID-19. It strains credulity that an otherwise healthy person not wearing a mask and maintaining social distancing poses a societal risk.

What’s happening with the COVID-19 response is that the cure is worse than the disease. We can’t save America by destroying America. In short, there is no significant scientific evidence that wearing a mask in public does any good unless you have COVID-19 and are trying to protect others from catching it.

We cannot live in a world where there is no risk. We ought to be able to isolate the most susceptible from early death from COVID-19 and keep our country and our economy moving.

Only criminals wear masks in our country, not regular people. We make exceptions for our Fictional Crime Fighters: The Lone Ranger, Batman, and Robin, and for today’s Real Live Heroes: Doctors and Nurses doing their jobs.