[Breitbart] Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said China deliberately exported the novel coronavirus to avoid being the only country facing economic devastation via viral epidemic. She offered her remarks on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily in an interview with host Alex Marlow.
"There is a preponderance of opinion that this pandemic — this virus — originated from Wuhan," said Cheney. "It’s also without question — it cannot be challenged — that the government of China shut down travel from Wuhan into the rest of their country while they allowed travel from Wuhan into the rest of the world. That is without question, and that alone tells you [the Chinese government] knew that they had human-to-human transmission."
Cheney continued, "They knew it was so dangerous that they didn’t want it in the rest of their country, but yet they caused it to be exported to the rest of the world, and I think that they pretty clearly did that. I’m sure they understood the economic devastation this virus was going to cause, and I think they made a very clear, calculated decision that they didn’t want to be the only country having to face that devastation."
#1
She's probably right, though it is not impossible that China released it on purpose and sacrificed its own to credibly claim they were not committing an act of war.
[Hot Air] Has the pursuit of moral triumphalism on the Left led them to abandon their moral compass altogether? Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi makes that argument on his own eponymous site in a lengthy condemnation of the abandonment of civil rights by Democrats and progressives. From Russiagate to COVID-19 all the way into Judge Emmet Sullivan’s courtroom, Taibbi accuses the Left of becoming the authoritarians — perhaps even the fascists, although Taibbi doesn’t use that term — the Left claims to abhor.
Of course, one has to ask whether that was the point all along, but Taibbi starts with the presumption that their concerns over civil liberties were valid and authentic at some point. Taibbi’s essay presents this in a series of interconnected arguments that is tough to excerpt, but this gets to the heart of his cri de coeur:
#3
Taibbi along with Glenn Greenwald and Alan Dershowitz, maybe the political strategist Mark Penn as well, is one of the few honest men remaining on the left. He called BS on the Russian collusion fantasy from Day One.
Which is why he of course has to self-publish his stuff. Good thing he has a broad back and is quick with his fists.
[Fox News] Seventy-five years ago this month, Germany surrendered, ending the European theater of World War II. At the war’s beginning, no one believed Germany would utterly collapse in May 1945.
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, German invaders were on the verge of capturing Moscow. Britain was isolated. London had barely survived a terrible German bombing during the blitz.
A sleeping America was neutral, but it was beginning to realize it was weak and mostly unarmed in a scary world.
But how did the U.S. arm so quickly, build such effective weapons so soon, and from almost nothing field a military some 12 million strong?
Neo-socialist President Franklin D. Roosevelt unleashed American business under the aegis of successful entrepreneurs such as Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Co., William Knudsen of General Motors, Henry Kaiser of Kaiser Shipyards and Charles Wilson of General Electric.
They were all given relatively free rein from New Deal strictures to work and profit without burdensome government regulations. The result was a military juggernaut that overwhelmed America’s enemies.
The media turned from either propagandizing the success of the New Deal or hyping its failures to warning Americans of the looming existential threat that would soon make their differences irrelevant.
Most importantly, Americans lost their fears.
Does World War II offer any lessons regarding our wrecked economy and staggering unemployment from the lockdown reaction to the coronavirus?
Perhaps. Government cannot restore prosperity. Only entrepreneurs and risk-takers can. Americans must master their fears of the virus and dare to go back to work.
Otherwise, locked-down states will continue to borrow to pay out public assistance without creating wealth from labor, production and investment. Bankrupt states will beg the federal government to print money that it doesn’t have for bailouts to pay those who are not working and not creating collective wealth.
The media must stick to reporting on the virus and the ailing economy. Their often petty obsessions with destroying President Trump are long past monotonous.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/17/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
successful entrepreneurs such as Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Co., William Knudsen of General Motors, Henry Kaiser of Kaiser Shipyards and Charles Wilson of General Electric.
#3
Had a pleasant mid-1800s Asian dream last night ... a few tables over in the outdoor sandy beach restaurant in the Philippines the stone wheel table was prepared for a dish of live monkey brains. Instead of Asians with long chopsticks placed in a circle around the stone there was a ring of ravens waiting. The two largest would be known to Odin.
I told the wife this is good. With Covid we can not get entertainment I just hope the monkey chatters properly as its brains are sampled... and this beach setting does make clean up simple as the crabs will make quick work of it... and note Odin approves!!!
Then the monkey was led out... one well known to us from San Fran and we let out a cheer....
#6
Clem—- congress has been talking this up for decades. Many decades. They can issue special breaks but they are unable or unwilling To bring forth any meaningful reform.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/17/2020 13:13 Comments ||
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#7
I think too many special interests, Alaska. Even a flat tax could never take told here. Even former Eastern Bloc countries went to a flat tax at the beginning.
What I don't want to see is reform in a bad way, like a VAT.
...he joined the Fed board in 2012, then was promoted to chairman in early 2018...
shook markets and alarmed lawmakers this week with a dire warning: The U.S. could suffer through years of sluggish growth and meager job gains well after the pandemic passes without further economic stimulus.
In a speech Tuesday, Powell urged lawmakers to set aside concerns about the mounting national debt and provide the fiscal support necessary to keep the economy from spiraling deeper into the worst downturn since the Great Recession.
"Additional fiscal support could be costly, but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery. This trade-off is one for our elected representatives, who wield powers of taxation and spending," said Powell, a Republican who had urged Congress to cut deficits shortly before COVID-19 roiled the global economy.
#5
I notice a very shotgun approach. While they did a lot of 'direction' they allowed winning and losing to occur. Some of that in turn was aided by exploiting success from outside (tech espionage, ignoring copyright and patents, et al). Let the others do the winning and losing and take the proven wins. Currency manipulation by central banks doesn't hurt the production machine either. Useful idiots always were welcome.
BLUF:
[France24] The reasons for its defeat were intellectual and doctrinal. It’s the old cliché of fighting the previous war. Commanders were too focused on lessons from the First World War; they couldn’t think about the actual war they had to wage in the present. They were unable to adapt. The Germans — by contrast — took risks. Are we now "unable to adapt?" Are our wonderful trading partners the Chinese, "by contrast" willing to take certain risks ?
#2
...They were also as a society crippled by the devastating losses of WWI, and a political system so dysfunctional that it makes our current ruling class look like the reincarnation of the Founding Fathers.
Allow me to strongly recommend William Shirer's 1969 book The Collapse Of The Third Republic - for my money, still the best single volume you're going to find on the subject. It was the last book that had direct access to most of the surviving political and military leaders involved, and Shirer was present for many of the most critical events. Still an amazing and thought-provoking book.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/17/2020 7:35 Comments ||
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#3
I cannot recall his name but there was a French General who commented to an aide while they were burning maps and documents, 'This is what comes of 20 years of socialism.'
#6
France had been killing off its best, brightest, and least cynical in the cycle of revolution, counterrevolution, and the Napoleonic wars since 1789.
#7
The internal divisions in French society probably contributed as much as any factor. These are on display in a marvelous novel called Suite Française, written by a Ukrainian emigre to France, Irene Nemirovsky.
#11
The top generals could not be found in the critical hours after the attack. It turned out they were all a sexual bicycle racing track placing bets and yes the bikes didn't have seats...
#14
Germans got inside France's OODA loop and never let up. Generals went as far as disobeying orders to stop advancing to keep the heat on.
Gamelin's insane Breda Variant to the Dyle Plan took the reserves out from behind the lines and put them on the Dutch border, to add Holland's dubious strength to the allied cause. When the Germans broke through, there were no reserves to stop them. Churchill was speechless.
#16
Don't forget this little piece of history. When there is no will....
At the Nuremberg Trials, German military commander Alfred Jodl said that "if we did not collapse already in the year 1939 that was due only to the fact that during the Polish campaign, the approximately 110 French and British divisions in the West were held completely inactive against the 23 German divisions."[11] General Siegfried Westphal stated that if the French had attacked in full force in September 1939 the German army "could only have held out for one or two weeks."[12]
#17
Mike Kozsowski is right on about Shirer’s book. It was one of the most detailed, thorough, and painful histories I ever read of the self destruction and complete defeat of a society.
I strongly urge every Rantburger to read it. It is an ordeal to get through but i could not put it down. One hell of an education.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/17/2020 15:29 Comments ||
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#18
Third'ed. Thank you Mike and Paul. A great book.
Long, detailed, goes back to the car-b-ques of 2005 and forward to the violence expected to resume at the end of the Wuhan coronavirus shutdown.
[GatestoneInstitute]
A few months ago, a police officer, Noam Anouar, who infiltrated Islamist circles... stated that no-go zones in La Belle France are now foreign enclaves on French territory. "The gangs operating there," he wrote, "have formed a parallel economy based on drug trafficking. They consider themselves at war with La Belle France and with Western civilization. They act in cooperation with Islamist organizations, and define acts of predation and rampage as raids against infidels". He noted that reclaiming these areas today would be complicated, costly, and involve calling in the army.
For years, successive French governments have chosen a policy of "willful blindness": they simply behave as if they do not see what is going on. They do not even try to find solutions.
While France's general population remains under strict lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic and police have been ordered to enforce the rules ruthlessly, people living in no-go zones are treated differently. Police officers have been told by the government not to stop them at all and to avoid going near where they live.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Breitbart] Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said China deliberately exported the novel coronavirus to avoid being the only country facing economic devastation via viral epidemic. She offered her remarks on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily in an interview with host Alex Marlow.
[The Hill] Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell
