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So far, 16,000 people have died and 280,000 people have been hospitalized during the 2019-2020 flu season, according to preliminary estimates from the CDC. "The flu season began early this year and took off aggressively," added Schaffner. "It began prominently in the southeastern states but quickly spread. So far, there is no sign that the momentum of the annual epidemic is slowing." In total, the CDC estimates that 29 million people have gotten the flu so far this season.

Donald Trump, the most anti-immigrant president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is running against a Democratic presidential field that almost unanimously favors providing government-run health insurance to illegal immigrants. Surely there is some middle ground between Stephen Miller-style family separation and a massive expansion of the welfare state to millions living outside the law? The Libertarian Party, still the country's number-three political grouping (however distantly), has a platform very copacetic toward immigrants, if not quite via state largesse. "Libertarians believe that people should be able to travel freely as long as they are peaceful," the party's immigration plank reads. "A truly...

After Richard Nixon's landslide 1972 victory over Democratic opponent George McGovern, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael gave a speech in which she said: "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them." 2020 Democrats, at least the sensible ones, find themselves in a full-blown panic over the prospect of a nominee who is outside their ken. How scared are they? About the prospect of Sen. Bernie Sanders leading the Democratic ticket,...

Cuba has made less educational and health care progress than most Latin American countries over the last 60 years, data show. On CBS’s 60 Minutes, Senator Bernie Sanders recently praised the achievements of communist Cuba. An interviewer asked him about his 1985 comments that Cubans supported communist dictator Fidel Castro because he “educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed society.” In response, Sanders defended those comments, by stating that when “Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program.” But Castro did not give Cubans literacy. Cuba already had one...

You might not have heard -- because Trump is still president, so MSNBC and CNN were required to give hair-on-fire coverage of some mundane action he’s taken this week -- but on Monday, Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and a criminal sexual act. I have some random thoughts on the case and the whole #MeToo movement. Apologies in advance that this has nothing to do with Donald Trump, Dictator. 1) Every time I hear about Weinstein’s predations, I wonder how many waitresses, real estate agents and housewives in Los Angeles might be celebrated actresses today, except that when Weinstein...

Why are wealthy left-wing donors across the country, the abortion industry, and national gun-control groups more interested in your local school board and city council races than most of the people who live in your own town? Because they’re funding efforts to ensure their far-left agenda pervades our entire society – from getting their abortion curricula into our schools to changing our election laws – and they want to make sure that no city, no town is left to stand against them. National left-wing organizations are collecting and funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to flip local city councils, school...

Trump edges Biden, other Dems, except Sanders, in Pennsylvania. Assuming, that is, that Muhlenberg College isn't a tool of Putin.

Saw a trifecta of doctors the past two days and a plethra of nurses and technician all aiming me to start chemo and radiation treatments next week on Wednesday. First, the good news, Monday last PET Scan, says my oncologist, shows the cancer has not spread very far at all and "highly treatable." So my chemo and radiation treatment should only run 4 or 5 weeks he says. He gave me several new meds including 2 for nausea. However, Carrie, the nurse that will be doing the actual chemo told me that they believed they had mostly got the nausea...

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he will ask all elementary and high schools across the country to temporarily close beginning Monday. The development comes after a man in his 80s who was infected with the new coronavirus died in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido. Fifteen new cases of infection were reported there on Thursday. Hokkaido's governor said the man who died had pre-existing conditions. Naomichi Suzuki said, " The patient was more susceptible to respiratory problems compared to healthy people." Officials say 2 of the 15 new cases are children under 10 years of age. The latest cases bring...

President Trump is right to call out Justice Sotomayor, and other unelected black robed social justice activist hacks who are masquerading as non-partisan upholders of the rule of law. Remember when the United States Supreme Court carefully guarded their time-honored independence from the politics of the Executive and Legislative branches? In those days, rarely were they ever seen or heard from outside of rendering opinions, and they kept those decisions based on the law, not politics. Those days are over thanks to judges who believe it is their role to act as a super legislature. Recently Justice Sotomayor showed her...

Former Vice President Joe Biden is reclaiming his frontrunner status in Florida, according to a survey released on Thursday by St. Pete Polls. The poll shows Biden pulling ahead of the pack in the Sunshine State with 35 percent support. Meanwhile, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg fell into second place with 25 percent support. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has taken the lead in polls nationally after back-to-back wins in the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses, is running in a distant third in Florida. The St. Pete Poll pegged his support in the state at 13 percent,...

The Border Patrol’s taken a lot of heat for efforts to expand the border wall—-and there’s probably no spot hotter than the project in the Organ Pipe National Monument. Wednesday the Patrol invited media to the site to try to show it is doing sensitive, environmentally responsible work as it expands the border wall... Jim O'Laughlin is a contractor who oversees all the border wall projects financed with Defense Department money. He says, “This.is looked at as actually less damaging than some of the other ways and even some of the hydraulic hammers you can use will not break through...

I’m a big fan of accountability – if you break the rules there has to be consequences, or else there are no rules. But I’m also for sanity and proportional punishment, which is why I think it’s time (well past, to be honest) to lift the lifetime ban on Pete Rose and allow him into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Pete Rose bet on baseball, he also lied about it when caught. All of this is well known and not irrelevant, but the price for that has been paid. Rose is baseball’s hit king, slapping out 67 more hits and Ty...

The Trump administration took another step toward expediting construction of a border wall, announcing it is waiving federal contracting regulations to fast track construction in four states, including Arizona. The targeted regulations, dealing with contracting, pricing and wage regulations, need to be waived “to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads” to stop drugs at the border, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said in a notice set to be published in the Federal Register. A Department of Homeland Security statement said the agency will “waive procurement regulations in six high-traffic border sectors to build an additional 177 miles...

Former president Barack Obama on Wednesday called on South Carolina television stations to stop running an ad from a super PAC supporting President Trump that uses Obama’s words out of context in a misleading attack on former vice president Joe Biden. The Committee to Defend the President, a pro-Trump group, circulated an ad that falsely suggests that words Obama spoke in the narration of his own 1995 book were meant to describe Biden.... The ad then runs audio of Obama reading an unrelated passage from his book, “Dreams from My Father,” about a conversation he had with a barber in...

“Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet” (Proverbs 27:5-6).

BOTHELL, Wash. — The superintendent of Northshore School District said Wednesday in an email to families one of its high schools will be closed Thursday after a staffer's family member was placed in quarantine for possible coronavirus. Northshore School District superintendent Michelle Reid said Bothell High School will be closed Thursday "out of an abundance of caution." Reid said a staff member at Bothell High School returned to work Monday after a week of international travel. The staffer said a family member traveling with them became sick Tuesday and was taken to the hospital. The family member is being treated,...

A woman in Japan tested positive for the coronavirus for the second time on Wednesday, as the country grips with 190 cases separate from the Diamond Princess cruise ship outbreak, according to multiple reports. The tour bus guide in her 40s first tested positive in late January and was released from the hospital after recovering. She was readmitted after having a sore throat and chest pains, according to the local government. It's a first known case of a second positive test in Japan, which prompted Health Minister Katsunobu Kato to inform Japan's central government of the need to review previous...

Donald Trump has at least five strong historical arguments for his re-election. One, he is an incumbent. Incumbent presidents have won 14 of 19 re-election bids since 1900. The few who lost did not enjoy positive approval ratings. In a Gallup poll from earlier this month, Trump enjoyed his highest approval rating since his inauguration, squeezing out a 49 percent favorable rating vs. 50 percent unfavorable. Two, the public perception of the economy usually determines any presidential election -- as incumbents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Herbert Hoover learned the hard way. Currently, the U.S. is...

Today’s CG from The Arkansas Gazette. Everyone by now should recognize the author's first name, then it's off to the final lap of the Daytona 500. BWZ HBBO JWZAOBVZ UY GBMVF J PBQRTZ BE KUBHMJNFL. —GUQQUJT ZQQZML AFJWWUWH