Free Republic

NEW YORK - First, it was the media that was at fault. Then, Democratic governors came under fire. China, President Barack Obama and federal watchdogs have all had a turn in the crosshairs. And now it’s the World Health Organization that’s to blame. President Donald Trump is falling back on a familiar political strategy as he grapples with the coronavirus pandemic: deflect, deny and direct blame elsewhere. As he tries to distance his White House from the mounting death toll, Trump has cycled through a long list of possible scapegoats in an attempt to distract from what critics say were...

Senator Bernie Sanders, berated his staff, forced female staffers to sleep in the same rooms as men, exposed them to sexual harassment, spread hate, allied with terrorists, all to win two elections he lost. The only thing the socialist got out of his failed campaigns was membership in the 1 percent. That and memories of flying around the country and the world on private jets, and his three homes, and bulging bank accounts paid for by an army of gullible idiots who believed in his cause more than he did. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could be locking up the...

There now seems to be a magic word that triggers many liberals including those who work at Politico. And that magic word is "hydroxychloroquine." Why? After all the early reports from doctors around the world reveal that it can be an effective treatment for coronavirus. So what's not to like? Well, President Donald Trump, that's who. Since the Orange Man has stated that hydroxychloroquine could be a great aid in treating coronavirus, liberals reflexively reacted that it must be bad. All evidence pointing to the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine must now be written off by them as some sort of Trump...

World leaders must “behave” if they want to avoid a wave of new fatalities related to the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization’s top official said in response to President Trump’s criticism of his performance.“We will have many body bags in front of us if we don't behave,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Wednesday when asked to address Trump's specific criticisms of the WHO. “When there are cracks at national level and global level, that’s when the virus succeeds. For God's sake, we have lost more than 60,000 citizens of the world.”WHO officials have taken criticism, especially from American...

Giacomino Nicolazzo is one of Italy’s most beloved writers. Born and raised in Central Pennsylvania, he lives in a small village in Lombardy where he writes his books. Montecalvo, Lombardy, Italy. As I sit here in my involuntary isolation, it was just reported that overnight 743 more people died and 5.249 new cases have been reported. This brings the total cases of infection to 69,176 and the body count to 6,820. We take relief in knowing that 8,326 people have recovered so far. (Numbers as of 3/24, 8:30pm in Italy.) Most towns here in Italy, from the upper reaches of...

“She hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest places of the city, Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled” (Proverbs 9:3-5 KJV).

Where have we heard that number before? Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the jihad terror group Hamas, on Thursday boasted that if Israel didn’t come across with more ventilators for “Palestinian” coronavirus victims in Gaza, the jihadis “take them by force.” As if that weren’t enough, Sinwar added: “If ventilators are not brought into [Gaza], we’ll take them by force from Israel and stop the breathing of 6 million Israelis.” Of course, Sinwar wasn’t articulating any new imperative for the jihad group: a new genocide of the Jews has always been a cherished Hamas aspiration. As The Palestinian Delusion explains,...

Over a dozen House Democrats led by California Reps. Norma Torres and TJ Cox are calling on the Trump administration to halt its efforts to produce county-specific social distancing guidelines, citing concerns over the potential misclassification of low-income and rural communities that lack access to coronavirus tests. Nearly two weeks ago, Trump sent a letter to U.S. governors outlining a plan to classify counties in the U.S. based on their risk factors and rescind social distancing guidelines accordingly. The president has showed a priority on re-opening the economy, which has been halted as a result of social distancing measures and...

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Wednesday his son, Danilo, 22, contracted the coronavirus. "When it all started, my Danilo told me surrender is not an option. My firstborn is infected with coronavirus and admitted to the Infectious Diseases Clinic," Vucic said on social media. "Son, you will win it. Daddy loves you, we all love you!” Serbia has 2,666 COVID-19 cases with 65 deaths. The government declared a state of emergency and imposed a nighttime curfew from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. (1600 GMT to 0400GMT) local time.

The corrupt media misses the real news, as usual. – In a wide-ranging interview with Laura Ingraham to be aired on Fox News Thursday night, Attorney General William Barr slams the corrupt news media for “waging a jihad” against hydroxychloroquine simply because President Donald Trump has spoken positively about it. This is the focus of headlines about the interview by media outlets both leftist and conservative this morning. Here is an excerpt in a Washington Times piece about Barr’s HCQ-related comments: Attorney General William P. Barr Wednesday accused the media of attacking hydroxycholoroquine solely because President Trump has suggested it...

SAN DIEGO - A U.S. Border Patrol agent wouldn’t let Jackeline Reyes explain why she and her 15-year-old daughter needed asylum, pointing to the coronavirus. That confrontation in Texas came just days after the Trump administration quietly shut down the nation’s asylum system for the first time in decades in the name of public health. “The agent told us about the virus and that we couldn’t go further, but she didn’t let us speak or anything,” said Reyes, 35, who was shuttled to a crossing March 24 in Reynosa, Mexico, a violent border city. She tried to get home to...

Research indicates the majority of coronavirus cases in New York trace back to Europe, with the first cases circulating in the area by mid-February. “The majority is clearly European,” Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who co-wrote a study currently awaiting peer review, told the New York Times. A separate research team at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, studying different cases but also analyzing coronavirus genomes taken from New Yorkers beginning in mid-March, reached similar conclusions, the Times reported. The virus is believed to have originated in a wet market in Wuhan, China,...

Some commenters responding to this daily series providing some information about the Chinese virus have repeated what seems to have become something of a mantra among libertarians who, understandably, dislike the idea of widespread lockdowns, with the loss of freedom and the economic damage that they entail. That mantra is that the Chinese virus is no more infections or no more fatal than flu, and that if we had allowed everyone to acquire immunity by catching the infection and throwing it off all would be well. Look at today’s graph. Though the downtrend in the daily compound growth rate in...

"Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5). Someday God will reverse the curse and return the earth to His people. God said to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Gen. 1:28). But their sin cost them their sovereignty and brought a curse upon the earth (Gen. 3:17-18). The apostle Paul said, "The anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing...

Fletcher Horne was inspired by the stories he saw on the news and that his father, Dr. W. Mark Horne, told him of healthcare workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For weeks, President Donald Trump has dominated television coverage with daily White House briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, declaring himself a “wartime president” and touting his administration’s response. But Trump’s tendency to pepper his news conferences with misstatements, untruths and scientifically questionable advice has armed Democrats with a wealth of ready-made sound-bites to use against him ahead of the Nov. 3 election. The challenge for Democrats - and their presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden - is how to highlight what they see as Trump’s failures in handling the crisis without appearing too crassly political when Americans are dying and losing...

According to NC Senator Warren Daniel.

BANGKOK - People queued to buy wine, beer and spirits in Bangkok on Thursday after the Thai capital announced a 10-day ban on alcohol sales to try to limit social activities before the traditional new year and curb the spread of the coronavirus. “The announcement prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages at all shops … from April 10 to April 20,” Bangkok Metropolitan Administration spokesman Pongsakorn Kwanmuang told a news conference. At supermarkets in downtown Bangkok, shoppers wearing facial masks crowded in to the alcohol section. “I don’t know how long the ban will take, so I bought a lot...

Focusing only on coronavirus deaths and illnesses doesn’t tell the full story of what is happening in America. Other patients, waiting with no end in sight, deserve not to be forgotten. I’m one of many Americans waiting in limbo for a surgery because of coronavirus. I have a hip problem that cannot be solved with physical therapy, and my quality of life is miserable while I wait for the hospital — cleared out to make way for potential COVID-19 patients — to reschedule my procedure.Each step I take is a deep, painful grinding feeling that makes my leg ache, and...

CHICAGO — Family members say a former Marine who served two tours in Afghanistan was killed in a Chicago subway tunnel Tuesday after he was pushed onto the tracks and struck by a Red Line train. Al Balde and his daughter came to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office Wednesday to identify the body of 27-year-old Mamadou Balde, who was killed Tuesday.