Thursday, September 3, 2020
Good News
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has notified states to be prepared to distribute Covid-19 vaccines by November 1st. This notice comes as initial vaccine trials show promising results and as health officials are warning of another Covid outbreak this winter.
So, having a vaccine ready sooner rather than later is good news, right? Well, not everyone seems to think so.
The deranged media and other progressives, who have been demanding a vaccine for months in order to reopen the economy, are now accusing the president of pushing out a dangerous vaccine for political purposes. They just cannot accept good news.
There is something fundamentally wrong when people are constantly hoping for bad news and the continued suffering of the American people.
If American companies were lagging in the worldwide race to develop a vaccine, the same people who are complaining about the possible early production of a vaccine would be accusing the president of incompetence if we didn't have one before Europe or Japan.
Riots Are Not New
As we have noted, there has been an effort in recent days to convince the American people that the riots that have occurred over the past three months are a recent phenomenon and that conservatives are somehow responsible. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Remember the Oakland riots in 2010? Remember the Occupy Wall Street riots? What about the Ferguson and Baltimore riots? They took place during the Obama years.
Barack Obama regularly prejudged confrontations between the police and citizens, always to the detriment of the police. Yet his own Justice Department cleared Officer Darren Wilson and found that the "hands up, don't shoot" narrative from the Ferguson riots was a total lie.
Now some liberals are prejudging the situation in Kenosha, insisting that Officer Rusten Sheskey be charged with a crime for the shooting of Jacob Blake. The evidence we have now does not support such a rush to judgment. Police officers should not be presumed guilty until proven innocent.
Blake was charged with sexual assault. He was at the home of the woman he assaulted. She called 911. Officers responded and attempted to arrest Blake. He struggled with police and resisted arrest. He was armed with a knife. He escaped, and reached inside his car.
The standard in such cases is whether a reasonable man would fear for his life or the lives of others. Officer Sheskey knew Blake had at least one weapon and likely concluded he was going for another. Plus, he knew there were children in the car.
State and federal authorities are investigating all aspects of the Blake shooting. In the meantime, we should be urging calm. But some progressives are stoking hatred against law enforcement.
The Father's Views
Kudos to Breitbart's Joel Pollack for delving into Jacob Blake Sr.'s social media presence. He has a long record of disturbing anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and hateful posts.
I'm not suggesting that this online history has any relevance to the confrontation between his son and Kenosha police. But I am raising it in the context of why high-profile public officials are meeting with a man who has said things like this:
"The same pink toe Jewish people that control the interest rate control the media they control Minds and money."
"The Chicago Police are murderers they are the biggest gang in Chicago."
"I'm with Farrakhan."
Blake Sr. also posted a picture of Jesus in a toilet.
Barr Busts Left's False Narrative
Attorney General William Barr, perhaps the best attorney general we have had in recent years, went on CNN yesterday and busted the left's false narratives on police shootings and election interference.
"The fact of the matter is, it's very rare for an unarmed African American to be shot by a white police officer. There were ten cases last year, six of them the suspect was attacking the police officer physically. So they are rare things compared to the 7,000-8,000 young black men who are killed every year."
On election interference, Wolf Blitzer asked which country – Russia, China or Iran – was being the "most aggressive" and "most assertive" in attempting to influence the election. Barr said, "I believe it's China."
Blitzer seemed surprised and pushed Barr to explain why he believes that. Barr calmly responded, "Because I've seen the intelligence."
Reopen The Schools
Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden said that the continued shutdown of America's schools was "a national emergency," and he suggested that the federal government needed a plan to reopen them.
Well, there is wide agreement on the first point at least. The president and the CDC have repeatedly insisted that we need to open the schools.
There are more than 13,000 school districts in the country. They have been opening every year for more than one hundred years. They know how to open. But each district is different and will have different needs. But I don't believe the federal government can impose a one-size-fits-all model on all 13,000 districts.
There's no magic here. The local officials know who is at risk and who isn't, what the conditions are in their area. Some are better prepared than others.
But when you look around the country, it's been liberal governors, big city mayors and the teacher unions, who are the ones keeping the biggest school districts shut down.
Here's what you need to know:
- The CARES Act provided $340 billion to state and local governments, with tens of billions going specifically to schools.
- President Trump has said that if schools don't reopen, their federal tax dollars should be refunded to parents.
- Senators Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and others have sponsored legislation to provide funding for school choice.
- Senate Republicans are proposing a "skinny stimulus" bill, which includes additional funding for schools, but Pelosi and Schumer have rejected it.