Sunday, April 26, 2020

Weekend Data Dump

THIS POST WAS FLAGGED AND PUT BEHIND A WARNING SCREEN

I HAVE NO IDEA WHY AND WAS NOT TOLD WHY

LET'S SEE IF MY EDIT CLEARS IT

OVERNIGHT AFTER MY APPEAL, WHICH I MADE NEARLY 4 WEEKS AFTER THE PUNISHMENT, THIS WAS CLEARED. I MADE JUST A TOKEN PUNCTUATION CHANGE OR SPELLING CORRECTION--OR MAYBE I CLEARED UP AN UNCLEAR SENTENCE (I DON'T REMEMBER WHICH), IN ADDITION TO THE TOP THREE LINES OF THIS HEADER. 

CLEARLY, NOTHING ACTUALLY VIOLATED COMMUNITY STANDARDS. THIS WAS JUST SOMEONE HARASSING ME VIA GOOGLE'S PROCESS

Why I don't trust reporters. I rely on them. And I don't mean to say that all are untrustworthy all the time. But enough are untrustworthy by design or weakness when it comes to issues that are important to them to make me wary of taking what they say at face value. And sadly--and this is a weakness on my part, to be clear--the almost uniform slant to the left of this fact of life makes it difficult for me to have the same skepticism when something is skewed to the right. Not always. But I know that weakness is there. I try to be aware of it, however. And I try to compensate by avoiding opinion blogs and shows so I don't get caught up in herd movement. Anyway, it is convenient to be aware that I can't trust Ginia Bellafante as a reporter, however much she may do fine work as a Democratic operative.

Germany will buy 30 Super Hornets and 15 of the electronic warfare version Growler to replace old Tornado aircraft.  I assume the presence of the Growler means Germany really doesn't plan to purchase the F-35. The Growler is needed to help non-stealthy planes penetrate enemy air defenses while stealth allows planes to avoid detection to get through. Hey, I'm just happy Germany wants any types of weapons at all.

To be fair, everything is a speed bump or obstacle to achieving Brexit. Until Britain is out, I don't assume the continental proto-empire won't suppress this unpleasant interlude of defiance of the EU.

The Dignified Rant has obtained exclusive video of the new plan to get Biden out of his basement to campaign among the people and get campaign contributions safely during the Wuhan Flu:

It's like a Popemobile but just portable rather than being self-propelled. All government spending and regulation wishes will be granted, no matter how fanciful! And he's so life-like, too.

I've mentioned that when I've gotten a little annoyed at Trump using Wuhan Flu briefings to lean into campaigning, the media inevitably asks questions so obviously partisan and stupid that I instantly forgive Trump. Case in point was a reporter's "question" a week ago of whether his Tweets about "liberating" states with governors using tighter restrictions than he thinks necessary will provoke violence against those governors. FFS people. Get a grip. If the media would just shut up about its opinions and biases for the next 6 months, Trump would probably lose the November election. But they can't.

We have always thought #BelieveAllWomen is mandatory ridiculous. The Left and their media allies will bulldoze their way through this awkward transition period. Before long the transition and past position will be forgotten. And you're a hater if you think otherwise.

The Voice of America the CCP? What is going on there? One answer is that 6 months before the election Democrats are still stalling approval of Trump appointees. Hopefully payback will (eventually) be a bitch.

The headline is a bit misleading. What's wrong, I thought. But the "abrupt" end of 16 years of a continuous bomber presence on Guam is in order to end predictable basing.

The government should not financially prop up journalism. It will obviously survive because Democrats will end up paying for it because they do not want to lose its efforts on behalf of their team. Sure, the Democrats would like it if they didn't have to pay for it. By why should the rest of us go along with that subsidy?

This is awesome. Highly recommended.

Good grief, get a room Uri.

So the Russians weren't actually trying to get Trump elected in 2016? Well, duh. I could have saved everybody a lot of time and money. Putin got his money's worth, no doubt, with the Resistance amplifying the chaos Putin sought with ridiculously small amounts of money.

I was going to link to an Australian think tank's piece on pandemics until the author repeated the partisan lie that someone died taking a Wuhan Flu drug that Trump touted when in fact the man took a fish tank cleaner that had nothing to do with the touted potential of the drug. Now I won't. Shameful.

How stupid does Pelosi think we are?

The idea that Trump is stoking hatred and white supremacy is ridiculous. Trump has orders of magnitude more African-American support that either Bernie or Warren--whose campaign events and staff pictures looked like chapter meetings of the German-American Friendship League--could manage to attract. Six months before the election and that somewhat life-like mannequin Biden can't point to any actual racist policy with his terrible accusation, apparently believing mysteriously opaque "dog whistles" are still more than enough to attract whatever small number of white supremacists are actually out there.

I reject the idea that health care for all is no different than government-provided police and fire protection or roads. Your are mistaken unless you also think every municipality no matter how small or rural has to have the same level of  protection that New York City has, complete with SWAT teams, helicopters, intelligence bureaus, transit police, and all the other things a big city requires. And do you think every fire department has to have fully staffed engine and ladder companies capable of rescuing people from skyscrapers and highly trained EMS units? Don't some have volunteer fire departments? As for roads, do some people have gravel roads and some superhighways next to them? Because if health care is a "right" then everyone must have, everyone no matter where they live has to have everything that everyone else has. If fire, police, and roads were treated as a similar "right" we couldn't afford them either.

Reports of his death weren't wrong--just early.

I see Yahoo! news is including some service in its news feed called ACCESSWIRE that appears to me to be a propaganda/marketing outfit masquerading as news, given this recent "headline" under its banner: "The Achievements of China's Peaceful Development Bring Wealth to the World". It was like a handjob for Xi Jinping. I feel like I have to take a long hot shower just reading it. I can't imagine how I'd feel having to write something like that. Perhaps I'm wrong, although a cursory search of the web doesn't make me think my impression is incorrect. Although it may simply stand out for not being the usual Democratic Party press releases masquerading as news that I'm used to. If I find out that outfit is legit news I shall surely mention it.

Hahaha!


From inmates to ingrates in record time.. It's almost as if there was a criminal element among those the mayor released. Tip to Instapundit.

If there are hundreds of thousands of people in Los Angeles County who got the Wuhan Flu already before we were aware it was in America doesn't that mean that either 1) We've overreacted to the Wuhan Flu--because nobody was screaming about a wave of deaths while it was spreading in California  uncovered by our media; or 2) California has a lot more Wuhan Flu deaths than we think because nobody checked their cause of death with this epidemic in mind? I'm just wondering. Or maybe the people who got the virus were the least vulnerable? Or the version of the virus wasn't as deadly? I really just don't know. And to be fair, knowing months after we had to make our decisions on responding does us no good on the actual response. Nor does knowing this fact (if it is true) about the current pandemic allow us to know whether this is true in the next pandemic.

One thing that I haven't seen brought up about Trump's Wuhan Flu briefings is his frequent and effusive spreading of credit to the people in his administration who are doing the work of responding to the flu. That is a good leadership quality. Journalists point out how Trump's subordinates compliment him in public. But nobody notes that Trump returns the favor many times over.

She shows no evidence of having any knowledge of economics despite majoring in economics.

Article: Protests cause people to get virus days or weeks before protest. Me: "It’s unclear whether journalism had any impact on the article's author." That's one way bias comes through in journalism. Imply cause and effect by noting what happens before something else happens.

While Trump's suspension of immigration should be temporary, it certainly should help get Americans currently out of work back to work by reducing competition for jobs once we ease out of lockdown. I eagerly await the loyal opposition two-step of claiming it is racist and xenophobic now only to be followed in several weeks by the claim that he didn't do it soon enough. This step hadn't occurred to me be once done it seems like an obvious step given my worries about restarting the dormant economy.

By the time this is published we may know whether Kim Jong Un's health issue is fatal or not. But the article says North Korea has nuclear weapons. But I still don't know if we know that. North Korea can certainly detonate nuclear devices at test facilities. They certainly have enough nuclear material for dozens of warheads. They may even likely have functioning nuclear warheads or bombs. But do they have nuclear weapons? That is, do they have functioning warheads or bombs carried by functioning delivery systems? That I do not know. And we don't know what is going on with Kim. But this is interesting.

Was poor leadership the real reason New York City has been hit so hard by the Wuhan Flu? The weaknesses in the other factors as causes when compared to other cities with the same factors hit less hard (that I had thought were crucial) seems to make that case. It is interesting that the author prefaces this damning assessment by attacking another author for allegedly taking glee in dense New York City's crisis. It's almost as if the author is desperate for local readers to hate that other author rather than him for breaking the news that state and local leadership bear more fault than so-called unique physical factors in New York City. Maybe Mayor De Blasio was subconsciously punishing New Yorkers for failing to support his presidential bid. Tip to Instapundit.

The Wuhan Flu is not scary for the people of Afghanistan who have many diseases and unnatural ways of dying to make this scarcely noticeable.  Also, the Taliban don't want to abide by the terms of the peace agreement, had no intention of abiding by the terms of the peace agreement, and won't admit that they couldn't enforce observance of the terms of the peace agreement if they wanted to. As long as the Taliban are wrong about America wanting to get out of Afghanistan with a paper peace agreement regardless of Taliban failure to adhere to the terms of the agreement, this could turn out badly for the Taliban. We'll see.

My mom was in the hospital at the beginning of February for a number of days. Across the hall was a man in a room, clearly up and walking around without a mask. But anyone who went in was masked and there was a staff member always just inside the door (masked) or outside (sometimes unmasked) keeping him from leaving his room. Once security was called when he got loudly agitated and stepped out. At the time I wondered if he had the Wuhan Flu. I still wonder.

Yes, I will never forgive them with colluding with the Democrats on this shameful campaign.It is clear that for much of our elite media, protecting Democrats is their only standard.

An article on the man we put a bounty on, Muhammad Kawtharani, the Hezbollah official in charge of pulling Iraq into Iran's orbit.

The P-8 turns out to be effective and wanted.

Why are Democrats mad that Trump has suspended immigration for now because of the Wuhan Flu? Don't Democrats say that Trump has turned America into a racist dictatorship that targets brown people and that he has screwed up the Wuhan Flu response? One could think Democrats must hate brown people under the circumstances.

China is cracking down in Hong Kong just in case the pro-freedom opposition does well in September legislative council elections. Peking's attitude is that they can vote all they want as long as it doesn't affect how Hong Kong is ruled. It is bad news for Hong Kong that China's international reputation has already taken so many hits from its role in making the Wuhan Flu a pandemic that suppressing pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong is just bouncing the rubble at this point.

Thanks Belgium! "A Belgian F-16 fighter patrolling the Baltic region on Friday morning intercepted two Russian Air Force fighters flying over a US destroyer off the coast of Lithuania."

Iran lied about its past nuclear programs (denying it ever had them), built secret nuclear facilities, and lived under an IAEA inspection program incapable of discovering Iran's lies and hidden facilities. But other than that the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) was just great. Thanks Obama! And we know this only because of that Israeli intelligence operation that targeted an Iranian warehouse stocked with Iranian documents.

Was the Tripoli government paying for the Turkish expeditionary force with Libyan oil money? And will the new EU blockade of Libya actually stop Turkish arms shipments?

Democrats have been calling Wuhan Flu shutdown protesters Nazis and morons, when all the protesters want to do is work. Because they have been forbidden to work. The timing of going back to work is surely up for debate. But the motivation for the protests is certainly just. So good job, Democrats, for reminding me of why I can never vote for you ever again that I developed during the whole demonization of so-called "deplorables" since 2016. Also, I dare Democrats to accuse these lockdown rioters of being hate-filled ignorant hicks.

China doesn't really seem to have the Wuhan Flu under control despite assertions that only foreigners are bringing new cases into China. Also: "Chinese state media are continuing to claim that the virus is a U.S. bioweapon." If you wonder why I call the covid-19 coronavirus the "Wuhan Flu," this is one reason. One, up until this virus it was routine to identify a virus by its point of origin. Morons in the West suddenly decided it is racist to do that. Which is convenient for the Chinese Communist Party. If China stops lying about the virus and openly and loudly admits that they have lied about the charge that America is at fault, I might stop calling it the Wuhan Flu. This isn't how China can gain my cooperation.

If it turns out that heat kills the Wuhan Flu, will Earth Day revert to a rational promotion of nature conservation and pollution control instead of being a Global Warming hysteria-fest?

Huh. I'm sure that contracting process was totally legit. At least it was rescinded. The media will draw no wider conclusions from the incident. Because she has a (D) after her name. Move along.

I've worried about how we simply "re-start" our economy. This will help.

It is the 22nd and it is snowing in Ann Arbor. I really think everyone with an SUV should be able to drive as much as they want.

Madeleine Albright, who lost her status as our worst secretary of state because of the great effort John Kerry made to supplant her, is confused about the suspension of some immigration to help restart our economy post-Wuhan Flu. Namely, it is the Statue of Liberty sitting in New York City's harbor and not the Statue of Unrestricted Immigration. People who think America is hostile to immigration--even under Trump--have no idea what most other advanced countries do. I bet Albright will never even mildly caution the left's darling Prime Minister Ardern who "terminated all travel to and from New Zealand with almost zero exceptions" to combat the Wuhan Flu.

I don't understand how so much of our media can spend so much time running interference for China, where the Wuhan Flu originated and which was able to become a pandemic so easily because China and its people at WHO lied about the virus for so long. China lies and can't be trusted. And Bay asks if China decided to let the rest of the world suffer so China wouldn't be crippled alone. I noted that possibility, too: "Well, I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility that the Chinese Communist Party decided that they didn't want to endure the Wuhan Flu epidemic alone while foes escaped it. I mean, I speculated along similar lines. All I'll say is that the option isn't beneath the CCP. And if they were planning to do this, how different would it be than their policy of secrecy and denial to the world?" Although my rule of thumb is that stupidity and reflexive secrecy and lying are better explanations for China's actions than a conscious "attack."

SOUTHCOM may have more assets than it has had in a long time but it still isn't enough to be a military threat to Maduro's regime in Venezuela. SOUTHCOM has so little that anything at all increases their usual force levels by a large factor. So yeah, the additions aren't aimed at Maduro.

So far I am persuaded that shutting down our economy was the correct response to a virus as easily transmitted as the Wuhan Flu coronavirus. But the purpose of shutting down is to buy time to deal with the virus and not to wait until we have the virus totally defeated.

Unless Joe Biden has no say in the matter--and that's possible given his condition--the Democratic vice presidential nominee will not be Michelle Obama. Vice presidents are supposed to be less appealing than the presidential candidate. If Mrs. Obama is the candidate, the knives will be out for Biden to resign or be 25th Amendment removed shortly after inauguration should Biden win in November.

Yes, while our country is focused on the Wuhan Flu, problems in the world go and get worse. They may or may not wait for us to get past the Wuhan Flu. I'll bet on the latter.

Yes, Russia has a large nuclear arsenal. They'll need it if China ever invades Russia to reclaim their territories in the Far East.

The answer will always be less than what soldiers are told to carry.  If exoskeletons are mass produced, I guarantee that there will be shattered exoskeletons and knees because suddenly the troops can be overloaded by no more than they have already been overloaded, so what the heck, right?

If we get tired of expending the effort to win in Afghanistan, are you telling me that jihadis won't be telling that to recruits for generations to come about how Allah is on their side if they only endure? We already paid the big price to get this far. Why get out when the price is pretty small going forward? Or do you really think jihadis will lose their thirst for our blood if they win there?

I am not fully on board the conclusions drawn from the fact that while New York City has been hit pretty badly by the Wuhan Flu the rest of the country hasn't had anything nearly as bad. It is a statement of fact. The same disparity could be said for the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda terror attacks. America was hit then and America is being hit now. That doesn't mean a blank check for NYC or anywhere else. But let's not act is if NYC isn't America, too. New Yorkers can deal with their dysfunctional city government later.

Yeah, I don't want to hear another Goddamned word about Democrats being the party of "science" in the Wuhan issue or anything else. The words are English but strung together they make no sense at all.

While I am not happy with the direction of Hungary lately, I suspect that the author is going overboard in saying democracy has died there. Which coming from a pro-European Union angle is pretty funny when you consider that the EU is a proto-imperial state eager to remove the prefix that is trying to eject America from Europe by weakening NATO; and when you remember that Europe is democratic and free because of America's post-World War II influence--through NATO. And even if Hungary is leaning authoritarian, I'll still side with it over the entire EU going authoritarian by design.

It will be interesting to see how the Russian spring draft is pulled off in a Wuhan Flu environment.

If we're still turning food crops into ethanol  when oil is dirt cheap because demand has dropped so much during the Wuhan Flu, the people in charge of that should be figuratively shot. The world  needs food right now more than it needs inferior vehicle fuel.

A United States Space Force telescope to track satellites and orbital debris should go live in western Australia in 2022.

I swear to God it seems as if the left has found the Wuhan Flu so useful (tip to Instapundit) that they are about a month from replacing the "O" in their COEXIST bumper stickers with this:
File:En.Wikipedia-VideoWiki-Coronavirus disease 2019.webm
Seriously though, the debate has gone from shutting down until we flatten the curve of infections to shutting down until we are 100% safe from the virus. How much longer before some on the extreme Left argue that Covid-19 has as much right to live on this planet as we do (and maybe more)? I just don't think we have to destroy the economy to save it.

Well, I certainly thought that cool logic rather than the feverish fantasy Resistance world analysis would indicate that in 2016 Putin preferred the more predictable, corrupt, and blackmailable Clinton over Trump. But so far that "revelation" is in the "big if true" category.

Russia's retreat from space. If the Russians can afford to attack space from the ground, they'll settle for that Anti-Access/Areas Denial (A2/AD) capability. So Anti-Orbital/Space Denial?

Could the stress of the Wuhan Flu exacerbating and creating new problems spark another Arab Spring to get better governance? Probably. But if not soon, eventually. It's a long process.

European NATO states were just getting better at moving troops and supplies within Europe (from the core NATO states to the eastern frontier) when the Wuhan Flu hit.

Good Lord, people. I saw that Trump press conference. Trump did not suggest injecting bleach into your veins to fight the Wuhan Flu was a good idea. He asked if there was a way such a thing could be done given that disinfectants kill the virus. Heck, injected poison is essentially used to fight cancer. So the question wasn't out of bounds. I'd rather he asked something like that in a private meeting rather than musing in public, but the press went too far in attacking this line of thought. They were clearly eager to make a mountain out of a mole hill rather than enlighten the public, and the press should be embarrassed more than Trump. If imprecise language is the way we interpret all statements regardless of context, Biden should be in a nursing home by now.

The Israelis have a policy of not killing Hezbollah fighters in Syria to avoid a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon? That's odd. I have long expected Israel to have a decisive showdown with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Is this policy just to lull Hezbollah into complacency while Israel struggles with forming a government that could actually pull the trigger?

Heh.

I'm a skeptic of the doomsday predictions of climate change and the socialist policies global warmers advocate in response. But I don't take Bill Gates's purchase of coastal property as proving global warming won't accelerate (the completely normal and longstanding) rise in ocean levels. If he likes the view, he'll buy it. He could afford to buy it if the water levels engulfed it next year. He'd hardly notice the monetary loss before buying new coastal property further inland a little ways. Rich people can afford to do that. Don't look for deeper meanings.

Wuhan Flu virus Oxford University vaccine trial. Good! One thing for sure is that this moron with a worthless PhD will have nothing to do with developing a vaccine.

Perhaps I should reconsider my pledge to call the covid-19 coronavirus the Wuhan Flu out of common practice and to rebuke the Chinese Communist Party for its role in hiding the epidemic and turning it into a pandemic. But if naming the flu suddenly is a way of blaming Asians as the CCP alleges and much of our Democratic Party media suddenly agrees with, perhaps I'm wrong. The people of Wuhan are victims, too, of the CCP. Maybe we should all call it the Xi Jinping Flu. If he wants all the power he should get all the blame. I'm going to ponder this

Okay, this settles my internal debate on the issue: "From Asia to Africa, London to Berlin, Chinese envoys have set off diplomatic firestorms with a combative defense whenever their country is accused of not acting quickly enough to stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic." Xi Jinping Flu, it is. 

I'm not so sure that the Wuhan Xi Jinping Flu  vindicates preppers. I never did stockpile toilet paper. I even gave some to my mother. And I still haven't bought more for myself since the product reappeared on shelves. My preparation consisted of luckily buying a box of N95 masks four years ago or so and stocking up on canned goods gradually to have alternatives to fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables in the three weekly shopping trips before schools were shut down. And my pantry is still better stocked than it was before the lockdown. I bought very little in my last shopping trip, buying mostly for my mom--who could also now go a while if she had to. Is my attitude vindicated?

The European Union toned down their report on Chinese disinformation about the Xi Jinping Flu under pressure from China in what I can only assume was not a lack of EU backbone, but a case of professional courtesy from the wannabe autocrats to the actual autocrats. But either explanation could apply. And in retrospect either could explain the EU's whitewash of Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008. It is not in America's interest to support a stronger EU--or any EU at all that has political aspirations rather than being a free trade zone.

Malaysia, China, and Vietnam are involved in a standoff over control of the South China Sea, with American and Australian warships in the region. This is our view: "The U.S. doesn’t take a position on territorial disputes in the region even while staking a national interest in freedom of navigation, which involves challenging any claims that aren’t consistent with international laws. As China gets more assertive in enforcing its claims, it’s increased the risk of a potential confrontation with the U.S. that could quickly escalate." We have two interests. One, the South China Sea under international law is an international waterway no matter who owns islands or exclusive economic zones. And two, while we don't take a position who who owns what in the area, we insist ownership be decided by legitimate negotiations rather than by force or bullying pressure.

If this was a television show, the loud accusations about Trump's responsibility for that fish tank cleaner guy would turn out be to cover up for a murder. If it was a television show, of course. Which it isn't. But I'd watch it if it was an episode of Elementary. Tip to Instapundit.

Can the West actually decouple with China economically? Of course we can. China wasn't always such a big part of the global supply chain and so obviously the West can go back to that. It will take time and effort but it can be done. But total separation isn't necessary except to punish China for being a lying communist dictatorship that is a threat to the world and its own people.  Key trade items can be moved out of China and that may be enough without shutting off imports of Chinese toys, low-tech household items, and clothing. The question is will we decouple as needed when the Xi Jinping Flu crisis is over and we try to go back to normal.

Hey, good for Sweden for shutting down the last of the awful Chinese Confucius Institute espionage and propaganda centers. America should follow suit with the 86 here right now. The world should follow suit.


I'm not so sure that putting the Theodore Roosevelt's commander back in charge of the carrier as the Navy is going to do is a good idea. But perhaps the Navy thinks the Xi Jinping Flu is so out of left field that his inappropriate if good-intentioned letter-writing actions in response to the threat to his crew should not outweigh his overall record. It is also possible that his reinstatement is for the purpose of letting him finish his command tenure on the ship in recognition of that highly unusual situation, his intentions, and his overall record prior to retirement because higher command may not be able to have full confidence in him, however unfair the situation was for him to deal with.

Oh good grief, now the media condemns Trump for celebrating the defeat of the actual Nazis? Look, we have an interest in trying to split Russia from China. Noting that Americans and Russians participated in the destruction of Nazi Germany is a good thing. That doesn't mean we throw Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania under the Russian bus. But trying to reduce tensions to maybe pave the way for Russia to flip from aligning with China is just fine.

If anybody has any interest, you might want to see my Game Night Blog for the April move to virtual gaming under Xi Jinping Flu lockdown.

There's no way anybody would exploit that interesting fact to carry out voting fraud, right? Tip to Instapundit.

I keep reading stories that toss in offhand remarks about how Trump is blowing our Xi Jinping Flu response. I just don't see a national screw up. Some missteps, sure. But that's normal and we seem to have recovered from them. And we don't even know if the basis of judging we've screwed up reflect comparable statistics given our broad definition of pandemic deaths versus other countries who count differently or don't even reveal what is going on.

This Biden theory is insane. But sadly typical of nuts who claimed the same about Bush 43. And I assume there were nuts who thought Obama would not leave office. Although I concede the media was the wind beneath his wings in his election campaigns. And let me call out in particular the more bizarrely insane allegations of Yale University moron with a PhD professor Bandy Lee. A professor. At Yale. I don't think that term "elite institution" means what they think it means. Tip to Instapundit.

The ability to come to a decision three months after the decision had to be made is not a skill set as important as Pelosi apparently thinks it is. Especially since it is her second shot at the same decision. When she harshly opposed it. And to be clear, at the time Pelosi opposed Trump's partial end of air travel from China as a racist decision; and now says that the partial nature of the decision was wrong and that Trump failed to stop Americans from coming home from China. Fascinating.

Over the years I've mentioned I don't follow events in Yemen very closely because I think it is a clusterf**k that defies any resolution to its divisions. Yeah, the cluster got bigger: "Yemen's southern separatists on Sunday broke a peace deal with the country's internationally recognized government and claimed sole control of the regional capital of Aden, threatening to resume fighting between the two ostensible allies." And the separatists declared their autonomy. Killing jihadis and denying Iran a win to establish a base on the Red Sea are all I hope for.

Detroit has been hit hard by the Xi Jinping Flu. But the story on the percentages of African Americans in Detroit who have been infected or died is either below or at, respectively, their share of the city population. This doesn't mean that we should do any less to help Detroiters. But it undercuts the idea that African Americans in Detroit are disproportionately suffering, no? And honestly, the statistics in the first article surprised me because given the factors that make Detroit more vulnerable to any virus I assumed African Americans have been suffering disproportionately. Apparently not. At least not in Detroit. Perhaps state-wide it is different because of the concentration of African Americans in southeast Michigan where the virus is concentrated.

No! Way! Obviously, Biden deserves presumption of innocence and due process. My point is that the media is obviously in the tank for Democrats.  It's almost as if they peddle fake news.