Two Decades Of Foreshadowing Ventilator Shortages

Larry Elder discussed a FOX NEWS article…

…to which I use the NEW YORK TIMES to make the point that the attack on Trump (as if this is his fault) is unwarranted:

….“So much that was predicted has come to pass,” said Marcia Crosse, former head of the healthcare section of the Government Accountability Office. Since the early 2000s, the GAO, the federal government’s leading internal watchdog, has issued a steady stream of reports about poor pandemic planning.

[….]

That is only the most recent warning. As early as 2003, the GAO cautioned that many urban hospitals lacked enough ventilators to treat a large number of patients suffering from respiratory problems that would be expected in an anthrax or botulism outbreak.

“Ventilators have long been recognized as a weak link,” said Crosse, who spent 35 years at GAO before retiring in 2018.

[….]

Federal policymakers concentrated heavily on pandemic preparedness in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and anthrax scare in 2001, which both exposed gaps in the nation’s emergency response system.

In 2005, the administration of President George W. Bush published a landmark “National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza.” The document, among other things, highlighted the need for plans to distribute necessary medical supplies from the nation’s Strategic National Stockpile and to support state and local efforts to “surge” medical personnel and facilities to handle an outbreak.

Medical equipment such as masks and protective clothing in particular were given high priority as planners recognized that doctors, nurses and other medical staff were most vulnerable.

After the swine flu epidemic in 2009, a safety-equipment industry association and a federally sponsored task force both recommended that depleted supplies of N95 respirator masks, which filter out airborne particles, be replenished by the stockpile, which is maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

That didn’t happen, according to Charles Johnson, president of the International Safety Equipment Assn.

The stockpile drew down about 100 million masks during the 2009 epidemic, Johnson said…..

Coronavirus Lies Via Democrats/Media (UPDATED w/CONVO)

(Jump to UPDATE — a quick convo on Facebook)

He takes forever to get to the points… but they are good points. President Trump’s critics are using the natural fear of the coronavirus as a political weapon.

CONSERVATIVE TREE-HOUSE was on it! (Feb 2nd):

In response to an escalating spread of the Coronavirus President Trump initiated a suspension of entry visa’s for persons traveling from China:  “The entry into the United States, as immigrants or nonimmigrants, of all aliens who were physically present within the People’s Republic of China, excluding the Special Autonomous Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, during the 14-day period preceding their entry or attempted entry into the United States is hereby suspended and limited” [link].

The travel restrictions went into effect at 5:00pm today.  Essentially President Trump is putting the health of Americans first. However, in an effort to politicize the Coronavirus, presidential candidate Joe Biden says travel entry restrictions are “hysteria, xenophobia and fearmongering”:

[…] “We have, right now, a crisis with the coronavirus,” Biden said in Iowa Friday. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia – hysterical xenophobia – and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science.”  (more)

And just like that Democrats become the party of pro-virus….

TREE-HOUSE points out with a link to the January 31st proclamation, that on this date (again, January 31st), the February ban was put into motion.

The NEW YORK POST has a good piece showing all the maligning when Trump got a jump on the virus… and now they are saying he waited too long — WHICH IS IT?

It’s a unique set of characteristics showing that President Trump understood early the need for decisive measures such as travel restrictions on China, which he imposed in January.

Yet for that sensible decision — in defiance of the World Health Organization — he was criticized by Democrats such as Joe Biden as xenophobic, and by China as racist.

“This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia — and fearmongering,” said Biden the day after the travel restrictions were imposed.

CNN ran a story warning that “the US coronavirus travel ban could backfire” and have the effect of “stigmatizing countries and ethnicities.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, called the ban “racist.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned it would increase “fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.”

[….]

At the press conference with Trump on Saturday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the highly respected head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, praised the “original decision that was made by the president … [that] prevented travel from China to the United States.

“If we had not done that, we would have had many, many more cases right here that we would have to be dealing with.”

Trump’s travel restrictions began on Jan. 31. Australia and Singapore instituted their own travel limits the next day. Trump’s move bought valuable time to slow the spread of the virus and ease pressure on the nation’s health system before a vaccine is developed — which experts believe is at least 18 months away.

But that hasn’t stopped the barrage of fake criticisms, including that Trump had left the nation dangerously unprepared to cope with a pandemic by cutting funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Not true. The CDC’s programming budget increased from $7.2 billion in 2019 to nearly $7.7 billion this year, the Associated Press fact-checking unit reported. Trump had proposed a cut, but Congress rejected it.

It’s reprehensible for the Democrats to make political hay by blaming Trump for the coronavirus or, as a New York Times op-ed piece called it, “Trumpvirus.”

In an editorial Saturday, the Gray Lady also reiterated its debunked claim that Trump has “muzzled” Fauci.

Yet at Saturday’s 2 p.m. press conference — hours before the Times’ deadline — Fauci emphatically denied the claim.

“I have never been muzzled, ever, and I’ve been doing this since the administration of Ronald Reagan,” Fauci said. “I’m not being muzzled by this administration. That was a real misrepresentation of what happened.”

What shoddy journalism to publish such an incendiary, anonymously sourced claim, without at least including Fauci’s denial.

The anti-Trump narrative rolled on, with increasingly silly attacks. The Washington Post speculated that the coronavirus could be “Trump’s Katrina,” referring to Hurricane Katrina, the response to which had been bungled by President George W. Bush.

When Trump announced a coronavirus task force with the most eminent experts in the nation, CNN blasted him for a “lack of diversity.”….

The media and Democrats push false Trump coronavirus narrative.

AMERICAN THINKER runs some good Tweets by Steve Guest (You can find the entire Twitter thread HERE):

MUZZLED?! CUT FUNDING?!

When the AP fact-checks Democrats… you know its bad. More from an earlier AMERICAN THINKER article:

To set the stage, here are a few indisputable facts:

On January 31, 2020, as China confirmed that 259 people had died and there were about 100 cases reported outside of China, President Trump ordered that the U.S. would prevent foreign nationals who had recently visited China from entering the country. He also ordered quarantined American travelers who posed a high risk.  

Democrats called Trump a racist.

Democrats were worried that Trump’s germ phobia would make him issue even more and worse racist orders.

President Trump held a press conference during which (1) he was surrounded by government scientists who explained what was going on (2) he appointed Vice President Pence, a competent, experienced administrator, to be the White House point person on coronavirus efforts.

Democrats called Pence a killer.

Democrats also announced that henceforth they would call coronavirus “TrumpVirus” because Trump had appointed Pence to oversee the administrative end of dealing with coronavirus and because Trump said there was no need for panic.

Nancy Pelosi complained that Trump had waited too long to act, even though when she spoke not a single American had died.

Elizabeth Warren said that she would end the “racist” border wall by taking all wall funds and putting them into coronavirus research (never mind that, since time immemorial, sealing borders has been one of the prime ways in which governments have been able to protect their citizens from epidemic disease).

Trump stated during the rally in South Carolina that the Democrats’ unceasing and dishonest attacks against him for his handling of the coronavirus risk were their latest hoax.

The media reported that Trump had declared that coronavirus itself was a hoax, one of the most blatantly dishonest bits of reporting ever to come from the media.

Leftists are actively hoping that coronavirus causes so much economic disruption that it will hurt Trump politically – never mind that it will also hurt ordinary Americans….


Facebook Back-N-Forth


A “Never Trumper” friend responded to the following post by me:

(hat-tip to JONATHAN SARFATI) President Trump’s TV press conference:

  • State of emergency declared in the US. $50 billion in aid available and states urged to set up emergency centers.
  • Laws waived to allow greater availability of hospitals and clear beds for urgent cases—i.e. hospitals can move elderly patients from hospitals to nursing homes more quickly.
  • Partnership with private sector to test for coronavirus more quickly (results within 24–36 hours). But he says only people should only take tests if they actually have cause to think they have it.
  • In discussion with pharmacies to make drive-through tests available. Google is developing a website to help people determine whether testing is warranted and direct people to the nearest testing location.
  • Large retailers are partnering with the administration to fight coronavirus by keeping the supply chain as intact as possible.
  • One said, “We are normally competitors, but today we are all working together to fight this virus.”
  • Student loan interest is waived indefinitely.
  • Secretary of Energy instructed to buy strategic reserve of crude oil as the price is very low.
  • Unified decisive action to combat coronavirus is imperative.
  • Coronavirus is now in 46 out of 50 states. Important to look after senior citizens and those with pre-existing chronic conditions.
  • Nursing homes restricting all visits except for essential staff and end of life situations.

His response was thus:

To which I responded thus:

Since I cannot view behind a pay wall. What is the date of that article JIM G? Important information for me to confirm Fact Check rating it half-true. Out of curiosity… what would have been done different with this “official” was there?? (I THEN LINKED TO THIS POSTThree weeks after it was identified Trump slowed the inflow of it drastically? (<< Against the advice of his Cabinet)

This would have been different?

That is the problem with government once something is put in place, it never is tore down after it (a) fails, or (b) succeeds in its proposed goal. The Trump Admin is different

JIM G. >>>

In reality, the pandemic expert — Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer — left the National Security Council (NSC) voluntarily after then-National Security Advisor John Bolton was appointed.

Bolton disbanded the unit that Ziemer was supervising as part of an effort to downsize the bloated NSC staff. The purpose of the unit, which had overseen the global fight against Ebola, had largely been fulfilled.

It is true that Ziemer and his unit have not yet been replaced….

(BREITBART)

It still should not be put in place, and more of the NSC should be disbanded. And?


A Couple Text Responses


This was in response to someone basically saying Trump got in the way of experts, and that he should just keep his mouth shut:

Dr. Fauci was interviewed at 3am the other morning [March 24th] (10 minutes of you time:DR. FAUCI INTERVIEWED BY WMAL) and the MSM hasn’t referenced his statements once. Also the quote you are probably referring to is this one: when he was asked if he was worried about this becoming a pandemic:

  • “No, not at all. We have it totally under control,” Trump said. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” (Jan. 22)

This was essentially three weeks after the first Chinese case was announced, and only 10-days after China shared the genetic information of the virus. (The first American known to have it was January 21st.) So I think you may be wanting something from the President that you wouldn’t expect from another. (In contrast to the below excerpted timeline) Trump ordered all flights from China halted January 31st.

By the time he declared a state of emergency (March 13), we had had 49 deaths by that time. It took the previous administration till there were a thousand Americans dead to declare an emergency. I think this is an “orange man bad” scenario. You should listen to Dr. Fauci’s wise words. 

And in another text stream I responded to the idea that South Korea did more tests with a note from a friend via Facebook:

Trump said the US did more testing in 8 days than South Korea did in 8 weeks. Because this is literally true (we did 360,000 in 8 days to their 350,000 in 8 weeks), Politifact decided that “more testing” meant per capita so they could claim it was false.

 

Some Examples of NYTs Faux Pas’

DAILY CALLER zeroes in on the first claim:

The New York Times has issued an absurdly written correction to a story about President Trump and Russian meddling.

White House reporter Maggie Haberman falsely claimed in her report that 17 intelligence agencies all agreed Russia tried to interfere in the presidential election, reiterating a thoroughly debunked liberal talking point.

[….]

Haberman’s story repeated a claim liberals began circulating following a declassified report from the Director of National Intelligence in October on the Russian influence campaign. Since the DNI heads up 17 agencies, it was easy to frame the declassified report as a consensus built on 17 separate assessments. In fact only the three agencies who reviewed the matter signed off on that consensus.

The former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said as much in a May Senate hearing. The assessment was a “coordinated” product from the FBI, the NSA and the CIA, he said, working under the “aegis” of the DNI. It was not signed off on by 17 agencies. That makes sense, as some of the agencies — Coast Guard intel perhaps most obviously — would have little to do with election hacking.

The Daily Caller News Foundation also addressed the claim in a fact check of a Hillary Clinton interview in May where she again repeated the phrase. Certainly, none of the other agencies disagreed on the record, but that’s to be expected if they didn’t conduct a separate analysis…..

(See also THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER)

MY PAST POSTS ON THE MATTER:

More on the second claim regarding the Steele Dossier being Russian propaganda — even though it was touted for over 2-years in the pages of the NYT:

Who knew? …On Saturday, the New York Times published a story about how the “Mueller Report [was] likely to renew scrutiny of the Steele Dossier.” The Times reports that the dossier’s contents could even have been a Russian disinformation operation aimed at then-candidate Trump. Which comes as no surprise to conservatives who have been following the story.

Remember, the Steele dossier came about because the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC paid a law firm, which then hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump. Fusion GPS then paid a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, who leaned on contacts close to the Kremlin to get information that was used in the preparation of the dossier.

Is it any wonder that those Russians, who wanted to sow discord in the United States, would jump at the opportunity to provide misinformation, knowing that the media would eat it up?

(THE BLAZE)

ALSO (hat-tip RED STATE):

As it turns out, back in January 2018, New York Times reporter Scott Shane, the lead reporter on this story, was a member of a panel that somewhat resembled the Star Wars cantina scene at the International Spy Museum titled “Unpacking the Russia Story with the Experts Who Have Covered It.” The video is cued up to the appropriate cut for your convenience:

And regarding the New York Times correction to a story about Trump’s tax plan:

The New York Times issued an embarrassing correction after a report that attacked President Donald Trump’s recently passed tax plan got the numbers about as wrong as could be.

The lengthy Feb. 23 feature, headlined, “Get to Know the New Tax Code While Filling Out This Year’s 1040,” sought to detail how Trump’s tax plan would hurt middle-class families. A hypothetical couple — christened Sam and Felicity Taxpayer — would see their tax bill rise by nearly $4,000, according to the story.

Then came the correction saying the family would actually see taxes go down.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman mocked the Times piece before the Old Gray Lady issued the correction.

“Even perennial tax-increase advocate Warren Buffett is now acknowledging the economic benefit of the Trump tax cuts, but The New York Times newsroom still won’t concede the point,” Freeman wrote on Feb. 27. “Will criticism from a liberal law professor persuade The Times to reconsider?”

Well, The Times did reconsider — but it may still not be 100 percent accurate…..

(FOX NEWS)


A FEW MORE


The New York Times had to issue an embarrassing correction to its story about another decades-old accusation of sexual misconduct against US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — because it failed to tell readers that the alleged victim doesn’t even remember the incident.

As The Post reported in its front-page story Monday, the Times piece omitted that crucial fact.

The Times article had been adapted from a book on Kavanaugh by two of its reporters, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly. The newspaper claimed that Max Stier, a former classmate of the justice years ago at Yale University, had allegedly seen Kavanaugh pull his pants down at a party, and his friends then pushed his penis into the hands of a female student….

(NY POST | See also the NEW YORK INTELLIGENCER)

5 Biggest Screw-Ups by The New York Times So Far This Year

  1. Corrects Claim That 17 Intel Agencies ‘Agree’ on Russia
  2. Mistakes Parody Twitter Account for North Korea’s Official One
  3. Flubs Story on Food Stamps and Soda—Twice
  4. Editor Forced to Correct Statement on Attorney General
  5. Corrects Editorial Attacking Sarah Palin With Debunked Conspiracy Theory 

(DAILY SIGNAL)

The New York Times was forced to issue four corrections to a failed hit piece against Foundation for Defense of Democracies founder Mark Dubowitz.

Last week, the Times published a piece aimed at portraying Dubowitz as corrupt, unethical, and incompetent because he opposed former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and applauded President Donald Trump for withdrawing the U.S. from the horrendous pact.

The embarrassing article falsely claimed that a GOP donor with financial ties to the United Arab Emirates gave FDD $2.7 million to fund an anti-Qatar conference; that Dubowitz “paid himself” twice as much as others who head think tanks; that Dubowitz created his own salary to far exceed his peers in the industry; and that the FDD is connected to Israel’s Likud Party.

Every single one of those claims is completely false, and the Times was forced to issue a lengthy correction admitting that its error-ridden piece had to be updated.

As noted by the correction, here’s the truth: Dubowitz’s compensation is determined by a board of directors, meaning he doesn’t arbitrarily create his own salary; his annual salary is almost identical with other think tank leaders; the FDD is not directly tied to the Likud Party in any way; and GOP donor Elliott Broidy gave $360,000 for the  FDD conference, not $2.7 million….

These weren’t minor errors where someone’s name was misspelled or the date of an event was wrong. This was intended to be a disgusting, salacious, hit piece against Dubowitz because he gave credit to Trump for pulling out of the Iran deal.

The piece is uniquely embarrassing because of the volume of the embarrassing errors and how easy it should have been for editors to catch the erroneous claims.

In fact, the errors are so egregious it appears like the Times deliberately inflated figures and peddled falsehoods to ramp up the heat on Debowitz….

(I LOVE MY FREEDOM)

ETC., ETC., ETC….

Gregg Jarrett Documents 6-Lies To The FISA Court

Gregg Jarrett filled in for Sean Hannity on Friday (11-27-19) and discussed aspects of the FISA Warrants I am sure many do not know. All of this can be found in his book, “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History“.

I add a quote from HotAir (just pass the 8-minute mark) discussing the New York Times saying the Steele Dossier is garbage and probably Russian propaganda. But this is after two years of them using it as “Gospel Truth” – here is that and a couple other noteworth articles:

  • NY Times: Say, This Steele Dossier Appears To Be False (And Maybe Was A Russian Disinformation Effort) (HOT AIR)
  • If This New York Times Reporter Suspected the Dossier Was a Fraud Why Is He Only Reporting on It Now (RED STATE)
  • NYT Finally Acknowledges That Steele Dossier Might Not Be That Factual (DAILY WIRE)
  • WTF MSM!? NY Times Admits the Dossier May Have Been a Russian Disinformation Operation (THE BLAZE)

At any rate, this is a great pre-cursor to the December 9th IG Report… which will be followed up by clarifications from Durham, surely.

The NYTs Rehashed Old News As New News (Trump Taxes)

Rush Limbaugh does a great job in comparing New York Time’s articles from 2016 to this story (2019), as well as the news coverage from those years. He ends the show with the first season of Apprentice, which aired in 2004 — where Donald admits to being dead broke at one point, a billion+ in the hole. It is soo funny what people glom-on-to. I add the opener video to The Apprentice to the beginning, but keep just the audio to Rush’s ending. (“I won, bigly…” This line has always cracked me up! Who says that? Trump does, that’s who.)

See my previous uploads on this here:

New York Times’ Antisemitism On Full Display

The cartoon was published in the International edition of the paper and appeared in the opinion section. It depicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog leading President Trump who is both blind and wearing a yarmulke. (HOTAIR)

RELATED: NYT Publishes Correction For Calling Jesus A Palestinian Man

  • At the bottom of the article the correction reads: “Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Jesus’s background. While he lived in an area that later came to be known as Palestine, Jesus was a Jew who was born in Bethlehem.”

Are “Hate Groups ‘Surging’ Across The Country”? (Yes n No)

The WASHINGTON EXAMINER goes after the partisan hate-group with this excellent article:

Newsrooms were on fire this week with terrible news: The number of hate groups in the United States has soared to record highs under President Trump.

There are most certainly hate groups in the U.S., and even one is one too many, but I’d encourage everyone to approach the numbers reported this week with calm and caution. There’s nothing partisan operatives would love more than for you to panic and to believe them when they suggest that the problem can be solved by expelling “the other team” from power. That the figures cited by newsrooms come via the decidedly unreliable and hyper-partisan Southern Poverty Law Center also doesn’t help anything.

The New York Times reported, “Over 1,000 Hate Groups Are Now Active in United States, Civil Rights Group Says.”

“Hate groups ‘surge’ across the country since Charlottesville riot, report says,” reads the headline from the Miami Herald.

“Trump ‘Fear-Mongering’ Fuels Rise of U.S. Hate Groups to Record: Watchdog,” U.S. News and World Report said in a headline that sort of gives the game away.

First, let’s keep things in perspective. Remember, for example, that the rise in the number of hate crimes is attributable in some way to the fact that there are more reporting agencies ( hundreds, in fact!) than ever before. It’s easy to say, “Oh, it’s all because of President Trump,” pointing to incidents like his disastrous Charlottesville statement. But the problem of bigotry is far older and deeper than the current administration. That the Trump White House isn’t helping anything is one complaint, but don’t fall for the suggestion that it’s the main driver.

Second, while we’re on the topic of taking things seriously, it’s important to remember that the SPLC is not an organization whose declarations should be taken seriously or treated as fact. As I’ve written before, much of its “hate group” reporting is trash.

In 2015, for example, the group put Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson on its “extremist watch list,” citing the one-time presidential candidate’s “anti-LGBT views.” Later, in 2016, the SPLC labeled women’s rights activist, female genital mutilation victim, atheist, and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali an “anti-Muslim extremist” because she opposes Islamic extremism. The British activist and extremist-turned-counterextremist Maajid Nawaz was placed in the same category. The SPLC lumps pro-family and pro-Israel organizations in with actual neo-Nazis.

The SPLC is not in the business of exploring and addressing racial and ethnic bigotry. IT’S IN THE BUSINESS OF CRUSHING ANYTHING TO THE RIGHT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

As for the report the SPLC just released this week, IT CONCEDES THERE IS AN UPTICK IN THE NUMBER OF BLACK NATIONALIST GROUPS SINCE 2017, BUT IT DOWNPLAYS THIS FACT BY CLAIMING THOSE GROUPS “HAVE LITTLE OR NO IMPACT ON MAINSTREAM POLITICS AND NO DEFENDERS IN HIGH OFFICE.” I must’ve just imagined noted-anti-Semite and frequent Democratic guest Louis Farrakhan.

[….]

Hate groups are real. Hate crimes are real. The SPLC is not. It exploits hate groups to raise money and further political interests unrelated to the problem of hate. Don’t fall for the SPLC’s lies.

(emphasis added — read it all)

Fact Checking WaPo, CNN, and NYTs On Trump’s SOTU

In a good bit today on the Glenn Beck Radio Program, a New York Times story that “fact-checked” the State of the Union Speech was itself run through the grinder. I include a short Stephanie Ruhle (MSNBC) audio clip, and then Brian Stelter (CNN) gets “fact-checked himself. Good clip to link in a response to a Leftist. Glenn and Stu (Steve Burguiere) are in their zone here. The segment that followed this section can be see HERE.

See also an excellent article at THE FEDERALIST entitled, “The State Of American ‘Fact-Checking’ Is Completely Useless“.

In another great segment Glenn Beck and Stu (Steve Burguiere) discuss where the New York Times and the Washington Post’s fudging their quotes and intended meanings. NATIONAL REVIEW has an excellent rebuttal to this in their article entitled, “Trump Was Right about New York’s Abortion Law”. In it we read:

  • The text of the law bears out rather than contradicts Trump’s comment. So long as the abortionist is willing to say that an abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s health — including emotional health — the abortion can take place at any time before or after 24 weeks. Two decades ago, during a debate over similar legislation, late-term abortionist Warren Hern explained that he would always testify that an abortion he wished to perform would avert adverse health consequences (Frank Murray, “Daschle Ban May Not Ban Anything; Abortionists Could Use Own Judgment,” Washington Times, May 15, 1997).

Good stuff Glenn and Stu!

 

Chimney Sweeps and Coal Miners Are Racists

I have to post this crap because there are two “like-minded” stories about similar issues. The first story deals with the iconic Mary Poppins. A movie that has delighted generations of Disney fans. THE EVENING STANDARD notes however, that in a New York Times piece, a professor writes that the movie is racist (why the NYTs would publish such nonsense is telling):

The classic family film Mary Poppins has been branded racist by a US academic who accuses Dame Julie Andrews of ‘blacking up’ with soot while dancing with chimney sweeps.

In a piece for the New York Times, Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner criticises one of the film’s iconic moments, when Mary Poppins joins Dick Van Dyke’s Bert to dance on a rooftop for the classic song Step in Time.

He writes: “When the magical nanny (played by Julie Andrews) accompanies her young charges, Michael and Jane Banks, up their chimney, her face gets covered in soot, but instead of wiping it off, she gamely powders her nose and cheeks even blacker.”

The article goes on to show support for the differing side regarding the movie… and the professor complains that the racist alt-right “likes the movie a lot” — I guess supporting his silly position. I assume anyone defending the Disney movie is now “alt-right.” Here is more:

Fans were divided over the professor’s remarks. 

One wrote online: “I think this is a reach.  She was friends with a chimney sweep.  When she went out and danced with him she got soot on her face if I recall this correctly.”

Another wrote: “Mary Poppins wasn’t flirting with black face! It was soot in their faces from being a chimney!!!”

A third said: “This is a candidate for the stupidest New York Times article of all time.”

However others agreed with some of the points raised.

Michael Schulman, ,a writer for the New Yorker said: “This made me think about class, too – how Mary Poppins, a posh domestic, scrambles the class divide and introduces Jane & Michael to the much more fun world of pleb chimney sweeps. Further scrambled in the sequel when the Bankses are also in the poorhouse.”

Author Mr Pollack-Pelzner posted online after his article was published: “The chief reason I wrote this article was the hope that a Disney exec would read it, take another look at the forthcoming Dumbo remake, and ask if there was anything just a little bit racist they might want to rethink before it hits the big screen.

“Here’s one thing I’ve learned about the alt-right, after I wrote this article and received a zillion hate messages in response: they sure like Mary Poppins!”

Wow. His reasoning is “rock solid.” [/sarcasm]

This second story is a couple of weeks old, but worthy considering the above. And yes, this has to be the sign of the Apocalypse. The AZ CENTRAL notes the following:

A few weeks ago, I attended a holiday party at a downtown Phoenix restaurant. I walked around to view the photographs on the wall.

Then a photograph caught my attention.

Friends said, “It’s coal miners at a pub after work.” It was a photograph of coal miners with blackened faces. I asked a Latinx and white woman for their opinion. They said it looked like coal miners at a pub after work. Then they stepped back, frowned and said it’s men in blackface.

I asked the waitress to speak with a manager. Instead, I spoke with a white restaurant owner. I explained to him why the photograph was offensive. Evidently, someone else had made a similar comment about the photograph before.

Yet, the photograph remained on the wall. He said he would talk to the other owners and get back to me. While leaving, I asked him had he spoke with the other owners. He had not spoken with them, but mentioned Google said it’s coal miners after work….

Gawd. He even uses “Latinx.” The Left is nutz!

 

“Children Will Not Know What Snow Is” (The Debate Is Over)

A few new articles:

(Originally posted early 2015)

(NYT)There was the February 9, 2014, Times article headlined “The End of Snow,” which ran on the front page of the paper’s Sunday Review section, and which the ever-shrewd Matt Drudge remembered, and linked from his Drudge Report site, amid the snowmaggeddon roughly a year later. “In the Northeast, more than half of the 103 ski resorts may no longer be viable in 30 years because of warmer winters,” the article warned. “It’s easy to blame the big oil companies and the billions of dollars they spend on influencing the media and popular opinion. But the real reason is a lack of knowledge. I know, because I, too, was ignorant until I began researching the issue for a book on the future of snow…. This is no longer a scientific debate. It is scientific fact.”


Via Gateway Pundit

The United Kingdom is suffering through their longest winter in 50 years. 5,000 deaths blamed on the bitter cold.

The Daily Mail reported, via Doug Ross (2013):

Today is officially the first day of spring – but it will bring little respite to freezing Britain as snow continues to fall, closing schools and causing chaos on the roads.

The country is on track to suffer its coldest March in more than 50 years as conservationists warned that the prolonged winter weather was damaging wildlife.

The unrelenting cold weather is showing no signs of slowing this week as snow continues to fall across the North…

…The last time March was so cold was in 1962, when the average temperature was 2.4C (36F) – or 4.1C below the norm.

Here is a headline and portion from “experts” in their field scaring the public:

Snowfalls Are Now Just A Thing Of The Past
Monday 20 March 2000

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

[….]

Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

Michael Jeacock, a Cambridgeshire local historian, added that a generation was growing up “without experiencing one of the greatest joys and privileges of living in this part of the world – open-air skating”.

[….]

Warmer winters have significant environmental and economic implications, and a wide range of research indicates that pests and plant diseases, usually killed back by sharp frosts, are likely to flourish. But very little research has been done on the cultural implications of climate change – into the possibility, for example, that our notion of Christmas might have to shift.

…read more…

Thesis/Antithesis Becomes Synthesis

As Tim Blair notes, “Britain’s Daily Mail once ran with the warmies, but no longer.” Today, the Daily Mail reports:

The eco-debate was, in effect, hijacked by false data. The forecasts have also forced jobs abroad as manufacturers relocate to places with no emissions targets …

Academics are revising their views after acknowledging the miscalculation. Last night Myles Allen, Oxford University’s Professor of Geosystem Science, said that until recently he believed the world might be on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than five degrees this century.

But he now says: ‘The odds have come down,’ – adding that warming is likely to be significantly lower. Prof Allen says higher estimates are now ‘looking iffy’.

(Ed Driscoll)

WUWT mentions that “figures released by the Met Office show the UK mean temperature for the 2012/13 winter finishing at 3.31C. This is below the long term 1981-2010 average of 3.83C.” WUWT continues:

The winter ranked 43rd coldest since 1910, and continues the trend towards colder winters. In the last five years, only 2011/12 has been above the 1981-2010 average. The average over these five years has been 3.03C.

Interestingly, the average winter temperature for 1911-2013 stands at 3.52C, so by 20thC standards the last few years have been genuinely cold.

From video description:

So much focus of the media has been on ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’ that other studies are ignored. This work focuses on another cycle known to cause ‘mini-ice ages’. We are due to go into one anytime from now until the end of the century.

From January 8, 2010 All of Britain covered by snow

Anti-Semitism IS NOT Increasing! The ADL’s Big Lie

(Jump to new material) First, here are the two articles by David Bernstein Dennis Prager is reading from:

  • Has There Been a Surge of Anti-Semitism Under and Because of Trump? || In short, probably not. And about that ADL study everyone is citing… (REASON.org)
  • Correcting the ADL’s False Anti-Semitism Statistic || The spread of misleading information on hate crimes is counterproductive in the fight against real and rising anti-Semitism (TABLET MAGAZINE)

Dennis Prager is livid at the lies (The Fake News) we are “bathed in” on a daily basis. This is a great segment to pair with an earlier upload of mine, titled: “Antisemitism In America ~ #FakeNews” (DENNIS PRAGER).

TABLE MAG:

The ADL also reports that “college campuses saw a total of 204 incidents in 2017, compared to 108 in 2016.” How many of these incidents were of the alt-right nationalist variety, and how many were related to leftist anti-Israel activism? There is no way of knowing from the ADL study, but to the extent the latter was the cause, that could hardly be blamed on Trump.

Finally, it’s worth noting, that despite showing a 57 percent increase in incidents overall, from 1,267 to 1,986, the ADL study shows a 47 percent decrease in physical assaults, from 37 to 19. This is obviously inconsistent with the meme that 2017 saw a surge in violent anti-Semitism. Physical assaults are also the most objective sort of incident to document, which adds to concerns about the robustness of the rest of the data.

[….]

I have no desire to let Trump off the hook for his very real flaws, and I am not nor have I been a Trump supporter or apologist. But the Jewish community’s assessment of the dangers of anti-Semitism should be based on documented facts, not ideology, emotion, partisanship, or panic. And the truth is this: The claim that anti-Semitic incidents increased 57 percent in 2017 is contradicted by the very ADL study on which that claim is based.

REASON.org:

Those who wish to blame Trump have an ace in the hole, an Anti-Defamation League study that purports to show an almost 60 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents between 2016 and 2017, which is implicitly blamed on Trump. This study has been cited on over and over in response to Pittsburgh.

There are several problems with relying on this study for Trump-bashing, however. The first is that the study includes 193 incidents of bomb threats to Jewish institutions as anti-Semitic incidents, even though by the time the ADL published the study, it had been conclusively shown that the two perpetrators of the bomb threats were not motivated by anti-Semitism. One can only guess why the ADL chose to inflate its statistics in this way, but none of the explanations speak well of it.

Second, the ADL report itself acknowledges that some of the rise in incidents may simply be due to better reporting (“more people are reporting incidents to ADL than ever before”).

Third, “college campuses saw a total of 204 incidents in 2017, compared to 108 in 2016.” How many of those incidents emanating from traditional forms of anti-Semitism that one might associate with Trumpian populism, and how many from leftist/pro-Palestinian sources? The ADL doesn’t say.

Fourth, the ADL counts ambiguous incidents as anti-Semitic incidents, so long as they were reported as such. For example, the report states, “Jewish graves or cemeteries were desecrated seven times in 2017. The desecration of Jewish headstones is a classic anti-Semitic act employed for hundreds of years. The majority of the cemetery desecrations occurred in the first months of the year, at the same time as the bomb threats were called in to Jewish institutions, which contributed to a sense that the Jewish American community was under siege.” The problem is that desecrations of cemeteries of all faiths is not uncommon, and are often the product of either bored teenagers or vagrants. In fact, at least some of the cemetery incidents counted by the ADL were ultimately determined by police not to be anti-Semitic in origin. The desecraton of a cemetery in St. Louis got a particularly large amount of attention. The police eventually caught the perpetrator, and determined that he was just “mad and drunk,” not anti-Semitic. The ADL has not updated its study or press release to reflect such facts. Other questionable “anti-Semitic” incidents I’ve seen reported include graffitti with a swastika and “TRUMP.” Is the “author” supporting “Trump the Nazi” or attacking Trump by accusing him of being a Nazi? My inclination would in most cases be to suspect the latter, but surely it’s at least unclear….


NEW STUFF


AMERICAN GREATNESS has an excellent rebuff of David French’s recent article claiming “white supremacy” is growing thanks to us honkies.

But David French at National Review has other post-election targets in mind—namely, the imaginary cabal of white supremacists taking over the Republican Party.

Outlandish Claims, Distorted Evidence
French’s November 15 column, “The White-Supremacy Surge,” is more cowbell to amplify the media’s nonstop drumbeat that Donald Trump and his supporters are bigots, anti-Semites, and neo-Nazis. (A despicable Washington Post column over the weekend suggested that massacres and death squads might be in the offing because of Trump.)

Sadly, French’s incendiary analysis wasn’t far from that Post screed. It is a literary junk drawer of anecdotal evidence and conjecture scattered with overworn insults about Trump supporters.

In an attempt to boost his inaccurate claim that white supremacy is surging, French cited a sketchy study while overlooking exculpatory data in the very same report, and he mentioned random racial crimes that are vile but no indicator of a coordinated white supremacist movement. “Trump’s words have emboldened white supremacists,” French outlandishly declared, again without evidence.

In an effort to prove his case, French conflated a rise in white supremacy with a speculative rise in hate crimes. According to a May 2018 report from California State University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism—the paper French cites in his column—hate crimes increased by 12 percent in 2017 in 10 major cities. (The report documents the number of allegations, not convictions, reported to police. Dr. Brian Levin, one of the authors, confirmed to me via email that the center’s data “cover hate crimes reported to police at time complaint is made and is not dependent on how it is eventually charged.”)

A closer look at the statistics included in the report not only fails to bolster French’s claim, the data show that whites are the third-most frequently targeted group of victims, after black and LGBT people. Jews, Mexicans, and Muslims are less likely to be a victim of a hate crime than a white person, according to the study. Further—and highly relevant here—there is no proof that white supremacists committed most of the offenses noted in the study.

Then this: “We are forecasting a small to moderate increase for hate crime for 2017. Only a small number of agencies have partial year data for 2018, but most are down significantlywe are forecasting a significant national decrease in 2018 but only for the first half of the year.” (Emphasis added.)

So, despite the hysterical warnings from French and his collaborators in the media, there was only a small increase in hate crimes last year and those numbers dropped significantly in the first half of the year. This means there is no “surge” either in hate crimes or white supremacy. (The synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh last month singularly will change that forecast for the year. Trump also has been blamed for that massacre by French’s NR colleague, Jonah Goldberg, even though the shooter did not vote for Trump and criticized the president for being “surrounded by kikes.”)

[….]

He slammed Breitbart and The Federalist for allegedly endorsing white supremacy. (The author of the Federalistpiece he misrepresents is Jewish.) Non church-going Trump voters are closet racists, French concluded, because not enough of them have “warm feelings” for blacks, according to one survey: “The white-supremacist surge is a symptom of a greater disease, and it’s a disease with no easy cure.”

[….]

A greater threat to civil society, in reality, is contemptible pieces of writing like French’s, which are intended to malign innocent people based on race and political affiliation, and further divide the country he laughably claims to want to save.