Paul Jacob about why Joe waits, China stalks, the WHO walks back, and more:
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Watch: Not the Change…
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First African-American Author
On October 18, 1775, African-American poet Phillis Wheatley was freed from slavery, upon the death of her master. Widely appreciated in her day, she was the first African-American to publish a book.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
Paul Jacob on evasions by Biden, Mark Cuban, and others:
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Look, Hitler — No Einstein!
On October 17, 1933, Albert Einstein fled Nazi Germany for the United States.
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Sam Walton
“There is only one boss: The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube . . . they sucked us in by pretending to be non-biased platforms for everybody, yet now suppress content that chiefly rubs against one set of clients, supporters of the Democratic Party.
The current case regards the water-damaged computer of (reportedly) Hunter Biden, the content of which reached the New York Post by way of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But the bigger story is that Twitter won’t allow links to the Post’s reporting, going so far as to lock the Post’s primary account; Facebook has also tried to suppress the story.
Now it’s blowing up everywhere.
It’s bad for the Bidens: emails suggest the former Vice-President played more of a role than previously claimed in what has always looked improper — no, corrupt — except to most mainstream media.*
No wonder, then, that we hear calls for government regulation of social media.
Shivers down my spine.
But what I have not heard? Giving Democrats a dish of what they love: federal campaign finance law.
Does not social media’s clearly uneven content suppression amount to material support for one set of political candidates over others? Why not stick Democrats with their own beloved regime?
But great minds think alike: while proofreading the above, I found a tweet by Lee Spieckerman, a Texas media specialist: “The @TheJusticeDept should immediately begin investigating @jack [Twitter’s CEO] for illegal in-kind campaign contribution to @JoeBiden.”
While I oppose campaign finance regulation, we must not** let such regulations only be used by one side against the other.
Yet maybe if we make the threat, social media will come to its senses, and Democrats will see the error of McCain-Feingold.
Too crazy? Or the right amount of 2020 crazy?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* A state-connected Chinese bank and a well-connected Russian woman lathered Hunter up with millions and billions of dollars for only one plausible reason: his father’s position in our government. Hunter Biden joined that Ukrainian oil company board after Joe Biden became point-man for our country’s Ukrainian policy.
** In the past, I have addressed this notion of applying bad regulations equally, including campaign finance laws specifically.
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Yorktown Siege Ends
On October 16, 1781, George Washington captured Yorktown, Virginia, after the Siege of Yorktown.
October 16 is a traditional date to award Nobel Peace Prizes, good (Desmond Tutu, 1984), and bad (Henry Kissinger, 1973). Two Nobel laureates were born on October 16, as well: Austen Chamberlain, English statesman, saw daylight first in 1863; Eugene O’Neill, American playwright and Nobel Laureate for Literature, made his debut in 1888.
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Richard Henry Lee
[T]o say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying.
Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794), letter to Edmund Jennings Randolph (August 10, 1753 – September 12, 1813), Governor of Virginia, October 16, 1787.
When the World Health Organization did an about-face, last week, advising against the lockdowns that have constituted the most-touted and most common extreme pandemic response around the world, many wondered: what could the WHO be up to?
David Nabarro, the organization’s special envoy for Covid-19, explains that lockdowns are useful only to buy time “to reorganize, regroup, rebalance” health care resources, and that we are obviously not in such emergency conditions now.
J.D. Tuccille, writing at Reason, provided us with the most astute news angle from the WHO’s apparent turnabout: “At long last, months into the pandemic, the debates over the proper response to COVID-19 have begun.”
We can hope so, anyway. Enough with bullying by government edict or inane “follow the science” rhetoric!
But what the WHO’s new clue should highlight is how we got here. The lockdowns were first offered as a way to do precisely what Mr. Nabarro said, buy time to reorganize medical resources so as not to induce chaos — you know, “flatten the curve.”
It did not take long, however, before a very different rationale for harsh “mitigation efforts” became the rule: buy time for a vaccine.
This plan was strenuously argued against by a trio of doctors in their eyebrow-raising “Great Barrington Declaration.” Continuing the lockdowns until a vaccine emerges “will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.”
The lockdown obsession may misdirect our attention from actual treatments for the disease — which President Trump has touted from the beginning. Indeed, Trump’s quick exit from his own bout with the malady may serve as an effective reminder that our options are not limited to (a) quivering in sequestration till vaccinations roll out or (b) mass death.
There is hope.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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