Coronavirus: Trump planning to deploy troops to Canada border, prompting backlash from Trudeau

‘Canada is strongly opposed to this US proposal and we’ve made that very clear to our US counterparts’

LONGEST UNDEFENDED BORDER IN THE WORLD TILL TRUMP

Oliver O'Connell New York THE INDEPENDENT 3/27/2020

White House officials are discussing the possible deployment of troops to the Canadian border.

The potential move is driven by US fears about the integrity of the border during the coronavirus pandemic and fears that people carrying the virus may enter the country illegally.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that he is aware of the discussions during his daily briefing.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters that Canadian ministers and diplomats have made it clear that this is not a plan Canada supports.

“Canada is strongly opposed to this US proposal and we’ve made that very clear to our US counterparts,” she said. Ms Freeland confirmed that Canadian officials learned of the proposal a few days ago.

American government officials inside Donald Trump’s White House are actively discussing putting troops near the Canadian borders in light of U.S. border security concerns around the coronavirus pandemic, sources tell Global News. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed the news while giving his daily briefing to reporters from Rideau Cottage, acknowledging that conversations are taking place. “Canada and the United States have the longest un-militarized border in the world and it is very much in both of our interests for it to remain that way,” he said. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland also weighed in during a briefing shortly afterwards with reporters, saying that Canadian cabinet ministers and diplomats have been working to try to make it clear to the Americans that this is not a plan Canada supports. “Canada is strongly opposed to this U.S. proposal and we’ve made that very clear to our U.S. counterparts,” she said, noting Canadian officials first learned of the proposal “a couple of days ago.”

In his press conference, Mr Trudeau said “Canada and the US have the longest unmilitarised border in the world, and it is very much in both of our interests for it to remain that way.”

The possibility of troops being stationed along the US side of the border was first reported by Canada's Global News, which cited sources as saying that they would be based approximately 15-20 miles from the border and would rely on remote sensors to pick up on border crossings.

Information would then be shared with Customs and Border Patrol agents who would take appropriate action. It is thought there would be no more than 1,000 troops involved.

The border beween the US and Canada has been closed to all but essential traffic since midnight on 21 March. 

MICHAEL MOORE'S CANADIAN BACON HIS ONLY NON DOCUMENTARY

Deep-sea fish seasonal migration discovered for first time

AS ABOVE SO BELOW
Movement of fish across sea bed ‘potentially mirrors great migrations of Africa’, say researchers

Harry Cockburn THE INDEPENDENT 3/26/2020

Ocean ecosystems are largely understood as being predominantly static. Is this about to change? ( Getty )

Something fishy is going on.

Thousands of feet deep down in the oceans off the coast of Angola in southern Africa, scientists have recorded mass movements of various fish species across the sea bed.

Using cameras at observatory platforms, they believe they have recorded the seasonal migrations of deep-sea fish for what is said to be the first time.

The scientists said the work reveals an “important insight that will further scientific understanding of the nature of our planet”.

The study has analysed more than seven years of African deep-sea photographic data, linking seasonal patterns in surface-ocean productivity with observed behavioural patterns of fish at depths of 1,500m.

6 Tropical fish found in Canadian waters

1 Spot fin butterfly fish

2 Short fin bigeye

3 Flying gurnard

4 Rudder fish

5 Band tail puffer

6 Scrawled filefish

The deep sea – areas with a greater depth than 200m – covers most of the world’s surface, however much remains unknown, with current assumptions being that deep-sea habitats are predominantly stable and unchanging.

This study now provides evidence of cycles of movement across the sea floor in deep-sea fish, with the study’s authors believing these movements are happening in other locations across the world’s sea floor.

Read more
Nearly 90% of dolphins in Indian Ocean ‘wiped out by fishing’

Fish may hold key to stopping ageing in humans

Lead author Rosanna Milligan, assistant professor at Nova Southeastern University, who started the work at the University of Glasgow, said: “We are extremely excited about our findings. They demonstrate a previously unobserved level of dynamism in the deep sea, potentially mirroring the great migrations of Africa which are so well characterised in animal systems on land.

“The work greatly enhances our understanding of how animals move across the deep sea, and the varying abundance of fish we observed from our sea floor observatories, compared to our previous satellite-derived estimates, as well as the patterns, point to the fact that what we’re seeing must be explained by fish behaviour.”

Dr David Bailey, senior lecturer in marine biology at the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, said: “Animal migrations are really important in nature because when animals move from place to place they transport energy, carbon and nutrients.

“If these animals are impacted in one part of their range, this effect is spread by the migration and they don’t arrive where they should be later.”

The study, “Evidence for seasonal cycles in deep-sea fish abundances: a great migration in the deep SE Atlantic?”, is published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

The ozone layer is healing, new study finds
It heralds a rare success in the reversal of environmental damage and shows that global action can make a difference

Louise Boyle New York THE INDEPENDENT 3/26/2020

The ozone layer is continuing to heal and has the potential to fully recover, according to a new study.

A scientific paper, published in Nature, heralds a rare success in the reversal of environmental damage and shows that orchestrated global action can make a difference.

The ozone layer is a protective shield in the Earth’s stratosphere which absorbs most of the ultraviolet radiation reaching us from the sun.

Without the ozone layer it would be nearly impossible for anything to survive on the planet.

In the past, human use of substances – chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – caused such life-threatening damage to the ozone layer that in 1987, an international treaty called the “Montreal Protocol” was adopted to ban them.

Read more
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Coronavirus: Air pollution and CO2 fall rapidly as virus spreads
Air pollution over Italy plummets as factories close and travel halted
Everyday domestic fuels to be phased out to combat air pollution
Pet dog becomes first canine in the UK to help combat air pollution

Antara Banerjee, a CIRES Visiting Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder who also works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is lead author of the study.

She told The Independent: “We found signs of climate changes in the southern hemisphere, specifically in the air circulation patterns.


“The challenge was showing that these changing air circulation patterns were due to the shrinking ozone hole following the implementation of the Montreal Protocol.

“The jet stream in the southern hemisphere was gradually shifting towards the south pole in the last decades of the 20th century due to ozone depletion.

“Our study found that movement has stopped since 2000 and might even be reversing. The pause in movement began around the same time that the ozone hole started to recover.

“The emissions of ozone-depleting substances that were responsible for the ozone hole - the CFCs from spray cans and refrigerants – started to decline around 2000, thanks to the Montreal Protocol.”

She added: “It’s not just ozone that affects the jet stream – CO2 also has an effect. What we are seeing is that there is a ‘tug-of-war’ between ozone recovery, which pulls the jet stream one way (to the North), and rising CO2, which pulls the other way (to the South).

“We are seeing the pause in the shifting jet stream because these two forces are currently in balance. That might change in the future when ozone has fully recovered and CO2 carries on pushing it south.”

The impacts of this “pause” in shifting wind patterns varies, meaning parts of the world will be affected differently.

She said: “In Australia, for example, before 2000 in the ozone-depletion era, it was suggested that winters were drying because the jet stream was moving further south and taking rain-bearing storms away from that region. Those changes might now stabilise which could be good news for Australia.

“For other regions like South America, ozone-depletion had caused an expansion of the tropics and led to more rainfall. Bands of agricultural production widened which was good for them but might now stabilise. That has implications for their economies and food security.”

Overall, it is good news for the fight against climate change.

She added: “The second most important point of the study, which I would say is a very good finding, is further evidence that the ozone hole is shrinking and that is thanks to the Montreal Protocol.

“It shows that this international treaty has worked and we can reverse the damage that we’ve already done to our planet. That’s a lesson to us all that can hopefully be applied to our greenhouse gas emissions to tackle climate change.

“If we keep adhering to this protocol then the ozone hole is projected to recover – at different times, in different parts of the atmosphere. In some regions, we think it might happen in the next couple of decades and in others much later in the century.”

ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT
House Democrats urged to remove ‘insidious attack’ on Social Security hidden within senate coronavirus bill

March 26, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams


“The only way to escape this trap is to avoid stepping into it in the first place. That’s why the House must remove the cut to Social Security’s dedicated funding before this bill passes.”

Progressives are demanding that the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives prioritize removing a little-noticed provision in the massive Senate-passed coronavirus stimulus bill that would allow employers to stop paying into Social Security for at least the rest of the year—potentially threatening the program’s long-term financial health.

“If Trump and Republicans retain power after November’s elections, they will make sure that corporations never repay Social Security.”
—Michael Phelan, Social Security Works

Section 2302 of the nearly 900-page legislation would let companies defer until next year their payment of the employer payroll tax, one of the primary funding mechanisms for Social Security. The bill would require that companies pay 50% of their owed 2020 payroll taxes by December 31, 2021.

While the section has thus far received little media attention, advocacy group Social Security Works said the language authorizes an “insidious attack” on the New Deal-era program and must be stripped out before final passage.

The House is expected to vote on the bill as early as Friday.

“The Democrats are walking right into the trap,” Michael Phelan, deputy director of Social Security Works, warned in an email Wednesday night ahead of the Senate vote. “If Trump and Republicans retain power after November’s elections, they will make sure that corporations never repay Social Security. Then, Republicans will use the reduced trust fund as an excuse to destroy our Social Security system.”

“The only way to escape this trap is to avoid stepping into it in the first place,” said Phelan. “That’s why the House must remove the cut to Social Security’s dedicated funding before this bill passes.”

Social Security Works urged the public to call their representatives and pressure them to remove the employer payroll tax deferral:

The Senate bill would let corporations stop paying into Social Security for the rest of the year. But the House can still fix it.

Call your Rep. at 202-224-3121 TODAY. Tell them:
1. Remove the cut to Social Security’s funding
2. Increase Social Security benefits by $200/month
— SocialSecurityWorks (@SSWorks) March 25, 2020

In a letter to senators last week, Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, denounced the proposal to defer employer payroll taxes as a serious threat to “Social Security’s ability to pay future benefits to 64 million Americans.”

“Social Security is an earned benefit fully funded by the contributions of workers throughout their working lives,” said Richtman. “A payroll tax suspension or deferral chips away at that fundamental idea, making it easier each time it is enacted to turn to it again to meet some future crisis, until the payroll tax is permanently eliminated.”

Linda Benesch, communications director for Social Security Works, told Common Dreams Thursday that whether or not the attack on Social Security is stripped from the Senate bill, the group plans to fight alongside its allies in the Congressional Progressive Caucus to ensure that an expansion of Social Security benefits is included in an expected fourth stimulus package.

Social Security Works president Nancy Altman last week called on Congress to adopt a proposal introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would increase by $200 the monthly Social Security benefit for all recipients through the end of 2021.

“This will help beneficiaries afford housing, food, medicines, and other vital needs during this challenging time,” said Altman. “As a byproduct, it showcases Social Security’s efficiency and reach, which are so needed in this moment.”

---30---

The View hammers Gingrich for agreeing with GOP claim nurses will abandon work to get unemployment checks

NEWT IS A HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY TEACHER, NOT A HISTORIAN
A FAILURE AS SPEAKER,AS A WOULD BE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE 

AND AS A CHRISTIAN HUSBAND (FOUR TIME ADULTERER)

March 26, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris


“The View” hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin blasted the myth that nurses won’t want to work to help with the coronavirus crisis if the stimulus bill increases the unemployment benefits.

It was revealed Thursday that there have been more than 3 million unemployment claims even before the stimulus bill had passed. Prior to the coronavirus crisis, the unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, so the idea that people will want to be unemployed isn’t holding up to the evidence.

Goldberg called it outright “insulting” to assume that nurses would rather sit at home than fulfill their chosen profession and help people. But Newt Gingrich agreed with the claim

“Sure. As a practical matter, you have to — as I understand it — there’s one part of this where you can actually make more money not working,” said Gingrich. “That’s not a very good incentive.”

“That’s so disrespectful,” Goldberg said.

“I think when you have a problem on the scale, you’re going to have some things that aren’t quite right and you might be able to go back and fix later,” Gingrich rambled on. “They did the right thing to pass it. They did the right thing to pass it 96 to 0. get it to the president. I hope he’ll sign it tomorrow night or Saturday morning because the country needs to have a feeling that we are as a country can move and we can get things done. This is the third bill in a row they have passed now in three or four weeks which is a good sign. I think we have to take a deep breath, evaluate all this.”

“Lindsey Graham should be ashamed of himself,” said Goldberg.

Whoopi Goldberg Confronts Newt Gingrich for Suggesting Nurses Will Abandon Coronavirus Patients

Matt Wilstein,The Daily Beast•March 26, 2020

Newt Gingrich joined The View live from Rome on Thursday morning where he has been quarantined for weeks with his wife, U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Calista Gingrich. And yet despite living in the horror that could be America’s near future, the former Republican Speaker of the House had only mild criticism for the way President Donald Trump has handled the coronavirus crisis.

Gingrich acknowledged that the president and his task force should probably be “social distancing” during their daily press briefings. And he threw some cold water on Trump’s promise to get the economy up and running again by Easter. “I think the president's direction is right, but probably the speed won’t happen as fast as he wants it to,” he said diplomatically.

But the most contentious part of the interview came when co-host Sunny Hostin asked Gingrich to weigh in on the $2 trillion stimulus package passed by the Senate Wednesday night.

Joe Biden Blasts Trump on ‘The View’: We Can’t Just ‘Let People Die’

“Several Republican senators are worried unemployment benefits will be so enticing that people will stop working,” Hostin said. “Senator Graham even implied that the benefits would incentivize well-trained nurses to stay home and collect a check.”

She was citing a joint statement from Senators Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, and Tim Scott that read, “If the federal government accidentally incentivizes layoffs, we risk life-threatening shortages in sectors where doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are trying to care for the sick, and where growers and grocers, truckers and cooks are trying to get food to families’ tables.”

“Do you share their concern?” Hostin asked.

“Sure, as a practical matter you have to,” Gingrich replied. “As I understand it, there's one part of this where you can actually make more money not working. That’s not a very good incentive.”

Of course, the unemployment relief in the stimulus package would only benefit workers who are laid off due to the economic crisis—not doctors and nurses who are needed more than ever in this moment.

As he continued talking, Whoopi Goldberg could be heard off-screen saying, “That’s so disrespectful!” She added later, “Lindsey Graham should be ashamed of himself.”

“It just seems to me the suggestion that nurses who are on the front line are not going to work and sacrifice the way that they have because they're going to be making a few hundred dollars more is ludicrous,” Hostin told Gingrich, “but that's just my opinion.”

“It's insulting! It's insulting!” Goldberg added. She repeated, “Lindsey Graham should be ashamed of himself to say something like that in the middle of all of this.”

COUGH FOR JESUS
Here’s what it is like at Liberty University — which has refused to shut down due to coronavirus
March 26, 2020 By Agence France-Presse


by Alec MacGillis

Three Liberty University students, a young man and two women, sat eating lunch on Wednesday afternoon at a small table in the common dining area of the student union on the sprawling campus perched high above Lynchburg, Virginia. They compared notes on the suntans and burns they’d gotten on beaches during spring break last week. They joked about what it would be like to take the college’s gun-range classes remotely. A fourth student with a backpack strolled up to the table to chat with them for a few minutes.

The young man seated at the table mentioned that he was thinking of going to a Starbucks off campus but wasn’t sure it was safe to do so given the coronavirus raging across the country, which has sickened at least 65,000 people nationwide, more than 400 of them in Virginia and a few of them in Lynchburg.

His mention of the risk was striking given the context: There he and more than a dozen other students were, sitting in clusters around the dining area despite stickers scattered haphazardly across tables: “Closed for Social Distancing.”

This is the odd tension on display now in Lynchburg, where Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr. has caused a stir by keeping the campus of the large evangelical Christian university open to students despite the calls of state officials and public health experts for social distancing to slow the virus’s spread and despite the university’s having recently shifted all instruction online to conform with state orders.

Falwell has minimized the threat of the coronavirus for months — two weeks ago, he compared it to the H1N1 “swine flu,” which experts say is not a comparable case — and he initially vowed not to follow the lead of other colleges in shutting down on-campus instruction, until Gov. Ralph Northam’s March 17 ban on gatherings of more than 10 people gave him no choice.

Falwell’s decision to keep the campus open to students this week after spring break was in keeping with his provocatively contrarian approach, and it buttressed the vows of President Donald Trump, whom Falwell has supported since early in the 2016 campaign, to lift social-distancing strictures as soon as possible. “I think we have a responsibility to our students — who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here — to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life,” Falwell told the Richmond Times-Dispatch this week.


At the same time, Liberty’s decision to keep the campus open has met with such criticism — from a faculty member worried about her colleagues’ safety since they are still required to hold office hours, and from city leaders and the governor’s office— that the university is clearly feeling pressure to show that it is trying to minimize any public health risks. This has produced an odd dissonance between earnestly worded safety signs and notices on campus and Falwell’s ongoing ridiculing of coronavirus worries as alarmist, which make it hard for students to take the safety exhortations seriously.

Calum Best, a senior business and finance major from Alexandria, Virginia, and a member of the student government, has seen the effect of that dissonance since returning from break. He sees Falwell and other university officials calling the safety worries overblown in the national media, and then he sees classmates hugging and taking pictures of each other on the student center steps, or a group of at least a half dozen huddled together for a study session, or a professor of his standing in close conversation with another student and a campus security officer, or classmates heading off to game nights or group dinners at off-campus apartments. In an unusual turn, a university known for its strict “Liberty Way” — no premarital sex, alcohol, smoking or cussing — is now in a sense the most permissive. There aren’t even any more curfews in the dorms, since many residential advisers are gone.

“The real problem is just providing students a capacity and a venue to come back and do stupid things,” Best said in an interview. “Consistently, consistently, leadership is overemphasizing the effectiveness of the measures they’ve actually taken and downplaying the significance of this virus.”

Best added that there is a case to be made for keeping campus open — for foreign students, or students who really rely on the campus meal plan, or students like him whose parents are worried about having him at home and possibly infecting them — but it would need to be executed much better than what he has observed.

“It is a genuinely tough decision to close a university,” he said. “We can imagine a world in which they actually did everything they could to encourage sanitary measures and social isolation on campus. It wouldn’t necessarily be a terrible thing to keep campus open if you could be ensured of the reliability of safety measures. But they’re not.”

Students have received scant information from administrators about how to keep themselves safe from the virus, Best said. As damaging, he said, is the general message from the top, which has included Falwell spinning conspiracy theories about COVID-19 being a North Korean or “elite liberal” plot. “They could also just not be misleading and deceptive in their communications about the virus, and they’re deliberately choosing to do that,” Best said. He has been scolded for his outspokenness already: this week, Liberty’s senior vice president of university communications, Scott Lamb, called him at night to take him to task for a nonpublic Facebook post criticizing Falwell for hypocrisy for not yet issuing refunds to students who now have to settle for online classes. (Lamb did not respond to a question about the call.)

University officials estimate that about 1,900 students have returned to campus so far — a fraction of the 15,500 who normally attend classes there, about half of whom live in campus housing — but they say they expect that number could grow as high as 5,000. The feel on campus is of a college during summer break, when a small minority of students hang around for jobs or summer-term classes. As sparsely populated as the campus is, though, it’s startling to see students congregating in ways that are not happening at the countless colleges that have shut down.

At the student center, students dutifully stand 6 feet apart in line for their pita wraps and salads. But then they sit together to eat in the communal dining area, in ways that are no longer allowed at any restaurant in Virginia.

In the Jerry Falwell Library, named for the college’s famous founder, the father of the current president, social-distancing signs abound and some of the couches are piled on each other and strung in police tape. But some of the small glassed-in study rooms have at least four students grouped around the table, putting them much closer than six feet from each other. On Wednesday, a “Closed for Social Distancing” sign on a table didn’t stop one student from spreading her books and notes out across it for a study session. A librarian came through the periodical room, where The New York Times is conspicuously unavailable, and chided two students for sitting too close to each other. “You need to be 6 feet apart,” she said. “If one of you can’t lie down in between you, you’re too close.” As she walked away, they traded eyerolls.

In Green Hall, a large building on the north end of campus that includes a food court, students disregarded the distancing marks in the lines for the Dunkin Donuts and Chick-fil-A until food service workers reminded them.

Near Green Hall, a graduate student from Pennsylvania was leaving his job serving as an assistant to professors, which he said was what had required him and many other graduate assistants to return to campus after break. He questioned the decision to reopen the campus, even with the purported distancing measures. “They could have avoided all that if they just didn’t have anyone here,” he said.

Nearby, Ingrid Lindevaldsen, an undergraduate fashion major, was getting in her car to head back to her off-campus housing. She said that the university could have done a better job of limiting the students on campus to foreign students and those who truly had no other option. She herself had to come to campus to use the sewing machines for one of her classes, but she said she tried to leave as soon as possible once that was done. “I try to stay away, because there are so many kids here,” she said.

Adding irony to Falwell’s insistence on keeping the campus open is that Liberty is better positioned than most other universities to weather enforced distance learning. It has developed a hugely profitable separate operation called Liberty University Online, with as many as 95,000 people around the country taking courses in a given year. Many traditional undergraduates at the college already take some of their courses online. (The online classes have a reputation for being much less demanding.) If the coronavirus scare carries into the fall, colleges with a heavy online presence like Liberty would seem well poised to capitalize.

So far, though, the crisis has caused only turbulence for the online operation, due to the university’s insistence that the several hundred people who work for LUO — manning call centers, processing course registrations — continue reporting to work at the former insurance building where LUO is housed, according to several Liberty employees. A few employees with health conditions have been allowed to work from home, but on Wednesday, the LUO parking lot was still full of dozens of vehicles. “I’m just a worker,” shrugged one employee who was taking a break in his car when asked about the requirement to report to the office. “I come to work here.”

A similar scenario has played out at the Guillerman Financial Center, where about 250 people handle all of the university’s tuition and financial aid in an open office divided into two large spaces. One employee told me that workers have been growing increasingly anxious about infection and wondering how the office can be allowed to continue operating, given that it contains far more than the 10-person maximum and is hardly “essential.” “There are a lot of people coughing in that building,” the employee said. “I know it’s scaring a lot of people. Every time people cough, someone would say, ‘my God.’”

But on Wednesday morning, the staff was suddenly instructed to spread out more through the building, into training rooms, into supervisors’ offices, according to the employee. And in the early afternoon, they were told to disperse even further: go work from home for the next couple days. Their understanding, the employee said, was that a state inspector was headed to the building that afternoon.

Asked about the continued use of the two office buildings for hundreds of employees, Lamb, the university spokesman, pointed to an official statement from Falwell on Monday arguing that that the governor’s ban on gatherings of more than 10 did not apply to Liberty’s offices, because they were exempted the way any business workplace would be. “To the extent possible, in our workplace, we are adhering to social distancing recommendations, enhancing sanitation practices on common surfaces, and acting on appropriate workplace guidance from government officials,” Falwell said in the statement.

All this commotion, both in the office buildings and in pockets of the campus, stands in contrast to the handsome, historic downtown of Lynchburg, where there was barely a soul in sight on Wednesday afternoon. In one of the few businesses that were still open, a small gift store, owner Ron Schoultz was making protective face masks out of patterned cotton fabric to sell for $15 each. He flared immediately when asked about the decision by the big college on the hill to welcome hundreds of carefree students back to campus.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “It’s awful. It’s putting everyone else at risk.”

Will Young contributed reporting.

Liberty University is staying open because Jerry Falwell Jr. wants to own the libs
Bonnie Kristian

Illustrated | Getty Images, AP Images, iStock
March 24, 2020

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.'s allegiance isn't faltering.

President Trump spent the first few weeks of COVID-19's spread downplaying the seriousness of the risk and Falwell has taken up the charge. But the difference between Falwell and your average pandemic skeptic is he runs the largest Christian university in the country, and he has decided to use that position to make a potentially deadly political point.

While other universities, including private, Christian schools, have closed their campuses and emptied their dorms of all but the few students who truly have nowhere else to go, Falwell has taken Liberty in a different direction. Virginia's prohibition on gatherings of more than 10 people prevents most classes at the Lynchburg school from meeting in person, so the bulk of Liberty's instruction has moved online. But the dorms, normally housing about 16,000 students, remain open and ready to welcome residents back from spring break.

"Most of the students, from what we can tell, are coming back, and they're gonna live in the dorms, and they're gonna do their classes online," Falwell said in a radio interview on March 18. "They don't want to sit at home in the basement and have to do their own laundry," he added, laughing with his host. In the same conversation, Falwell referred to the novel coronavirus as "this flu," said he's "not worried about it," and declared the media response to be "just politics," an effort to "destroy the American economy just to hurt Trump."

Falwell's estimate that "most" students would return isn't quite accurate — the school actually anticipates around 5,000, a third of the residential student body — but that number is still far higher than those housed by comparable schools. In Lynchburg, for example, other universities' remaining on-campus population is in the double or even single digits. Liberty is also keeping its fitness center open, operating dining halls on a take-out or limited seating basis, and requiring faculty without a health exemption to hold in-person office hours and teach online courses from campus instead of in their homes. (In an unfortunate slip of the tongue, Falwell initially resisted moving to online instruction because, he said, the school's extant online classes, which instruct about 85 percent of Liberty's student body under normal conditions, are "really not the same quality of education" as residential courses.)

Falwell has never been coy about his politics and priorities, and here he has mostly stayed true to form. Though in his official capacity Falwell cast his decision as a way to let students "enjoy the room and board they've already paid for and to not interrupt their college life," he has elsewhere made his political rationale inescapably clear: Liberty's dorms are open because Falwell wants to own the libs.

Thus recent posts on his personal Twitter account, which models Trump's feed in its intemperance if not its pace, see Falwell repeatedly using the pandemic as an occasion to praise the president, critique former President Barack Obama, and accuse the media and Democratic politicians of making the "corona flu" an excuse to "destroy the U.S. economy."

Liberty University professors outside of the law school do not have tenure, a fact Falwell has touted as a "sound business decision" to suppress dissent from administration decisions. It is rare for current faculty to disagree with Falwell publicly, as doing so puts their livelihoods at stake. Thus it is not surprising that Marybeth Davis Baggett, the faculty member who spoke out against Falwell's coronavirus policy, first on Facebook and then in a Religion News Service article picked up by The Washington Post, has already secured employment elsewhere for the fall semester.

"Falwell cavalierly assumes no responsibility for at least an enabling and at most an incentivizing the students' decision to return," Baggett wrote. "Rather than provide the steady leadership needed at this sober time, Falwell has chosen to indulge and endanger the students." On her Facebook post, she shared dozens of private messages from Liberty faculty, staff, students, and alumni expressing dismay that the campus is open and that work which could be completed remotely is required to be done on campus. (I've received an unsolicited off-record message from a Liberty employee to similar effect.) Baggett concluded her article with a call for the decision to close Liberty's campus to be taken out of Falwell's hands by Liberty's board of trustees. Falwell responded by calling her "the 'Baggett' lady" on Twitter, linking to a new statement reiterating his plan for the school that often seems to function as his personal fiefdom.

As classes resume at Liberty this week, Falwell shows no sign of backing down, evincing a pointedly lackadaisical attitude about the risks of continuing campus life. He told the Lynchburg News & Advance he wants to "to give [students] the ability to be with their friends." And in the statement Liberty published Monday, Falwell described himself walking around campus, meeting and joking with returning students (a bid to be Liberty's own Typhoid Jerry, perhaps). A petition for the university board to fire Falwell will almost certainly go unheeded unless, as Baggett warns, his plan leads to a "disaster for which he would be primarily to blame."

Like Baggett, my hope and prayer is that the risk Falwell's choice courts will never come, that the campus will not become a grim experiment in what happens when the intemperate right's pandemic imprudence is allowed to set policy for thousands. Firing may be the comeuppance Falwell is due for his politically motivated recklessness, but it would be a comeuppance bought at a tragic price.

Jerry Falwell Jr. says he’s ‘protecting‘ students by calling them back to Liberty University amid pandemic

March 24, 2020 By Shawn Langlois

Jerry Falwell Jr. serves as the president of Liberty University,

founded by his father in 1971. Getty

‘I think we have a responsibility to our students — who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here — to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they’ve already paid for and to not interrupt their college life.’

That’s Liberty University President and fierce Donald Trump supporter Jerry Falwell Jr. telling the News & Advance that school’s back in session for up to 5,000 students who will be allowed to return from their spring break to the Lynchburg, Va., campus.

This while, according to the Virginia Department of Health, there are at least 290 cases of COVID-19 in Virginia, including 45 people who have been hospitalized and six who have died.

Classes will resume online for the semester in order to comply with a state ban on gatherings of more than 10 people. Campus buildings, like the library and residence halls, will, however, remain open, and instructors are expected to hold office hours. Dining halls will be takeout-only operations.

“I think we, in a way, are protecting the students by having them on campus together,” said Falwell, who has been downplaying the pandemic in recent weeks. “Ninety-nine percent of them are not at the age to be at risk, and they don’t have conditions that put them at risk.”

Earlier this month, Falwell went on Fox News to suggest coronavirus concerns were overblown and the media was using the pandemic as a tool to take down President Trump.

“It’s just strange to me how so many are overreacting,” he said. “The H1N1 virus in 2009 killed 17,000 people, it was the flu also I think, and there was not the same level of hype. You just didn’t see it on the news 24/7 and it makes you wonder if there’s a political reason for that.”

COVID-19, the coronavirus-borne disease that has killed more than 18,000 since being identified in December, is not an influenza subtype. H1N1 was.

Not everybody at the school is on board. Longtime English professor Marybeth Davis Baggett called on Liberty’s trustees to overrule Falwell’s decision to keep campus open.

“Lives are at stake,” Baggett told the News & Advance. “I think this decision is a recipe for disaster, and I have been trying to push that as much as I have been able to internally.”

SEE
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/from-jerry-falwell-jr.html


https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/03/jerry-falwell-jr.html

White House called off General Motors deal to build ventilators after haggling over cost: report

March 27, 2020 By Travis Gettys

The White House has reportedly pulled out of an agreement to build life-saving ventilators because officials decided they were too expensive.

They had been prepared to reveal a joint venture Wednesday between General Motors and Ventec Life Systems to produce up to 80,000 badly needed ventilators when the announcement was suddenly called off, reported the New York Times.

The decision came after the the Federal Emergency Management Agency asked for more time to evaluate the estimated cost of more than $1 billion, with several hundred million paid up front to General Motors to change over an auto parts plant in Kokomo, Indiana, to build the ventilators.

The deal isn’t dead, but government officials said they’re considering at least a dozen other proposals.

They’re also concerned that the initial promise to quickly build 20,000 ventilators has since dwindled to just 7,500, and even that number isn’t certain.

“Longtime emergency managers at FEMA are working with military officials to sort through the competing offers and federal procurement rules while under pressure to give President Trump something to announce,” the Times reported.

Those FEMA efforts are being overseen by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a White House adviser, who has said Vice President Mike Pence tasked him two weeks ago with producing more test kits, but has now focused on ventilators.

Two officials told the Times that the decision to pause the General Motors deal came from Col. Patrick Work, who is working at FEMA, and some government officials were concerned about building too many ventilators.

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#KAKISTOCRACY

Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner is now in charge of the effort to manufacture ventilators: report

March 26, 2020 By Bob Brigham


President Donald Trump’s son-in-law has taken it upon himself to lead the federal government’s efforts to manufacture new ventilators after months of inaction, The New York Times reported Thursday.

“The shortage of ventilators has emerged as one of the major criticism of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus. The need to quickly equip hospitals across the country with tens of thousands more of the devices to treat those most seriously ill with the virus was not anticipated despite the Trump administration’s own projection in a simulation last year that millions of people could be hospitalized,” the newspaper reported. “And even now, the effort to produce them has been confused and disorganized.”

“At the center of the discussion about how to ramp up the production of ventilators is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior White House aide, who has told people that he was called in two weeks ago by Vice President Mike Pence to produce more coronavirus test kits and who has now turned his attention to ventilators,” The Times reported.

The newspaper noted that the White House had been preparing to announce on Wednesday a joint venture between General Motors and Ventec Life Systems to manufacture up to 80,000 ventilators. The Federal Emergency Management Agency canceled the announcement.

The newspaper noted Kushner “has been directing officials at FEMA in the effort. Two officials said the suggestion to wait on the General Motors offer came from Col. Patrick Work, who is working at FEMA.”

After you read this, feel free to scream — as I just did: https://t.co/VepuEqhvtF. pic.twitter.com/SIxcJsi35w
— David Gura (@davidgura) March 27, 2020



"At the center of the discussion about how to ramp up the production of ventilators is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior White House aide…" https://t.co/m7RxHw7YLg
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 27, 2020

Trump flops after being asked what he’s doing to protect Asian-Americans from hate crimes: ‘I don’t know’

March 26, 2020 By Matthew Chapman

At Thursday’s coronavirus press conference, President Donald Trump reiterated his commitment to fighting the rise of hate crimes against Asian-Americans spurred by the outbreak, but choked the instant a reporter asked him what he was specifically prepared to do about it.

“What are the concrete measures that you are taking to combat the hate crimes against Asians?” asked the reporter.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Trump. “All I know is this: Asian-Americans in our country are doing fantastically well. I’m very close to them, as you know. And they’re doing fantastically well, and I think they appreciate the job we’re doing. But I did want to put that statement out, the social media statement, because, to me, Asian-Americans are a great part of our country.”

Watch below:
“I don’t know” — Trump on what he’s actually doing to prevent anti-Asian American hate crimes pic.twitter.com/lNYRJL3dF7
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2020

CAN I GET AN AMEN
Nearly 3 dozen who attended church event test positive for coronavirus
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM IS AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM
Janelle Griffith, NBC News•March 26, 2020

Nearly three dozen people who attended a recent children's event at a church in Arkansas have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to church officials.

Donald Shipp, a deacon at First Assembly of God church in Greers Ferry, about 75 miles north of Little Rock, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that 34 people who attended the event in early March at the Cleburne County church had tested positive for the coronavirus, and that an unknown number of others were awaiting test results.

Danyelle McNeill, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Health, said a number of coronavirus cases have been associated with a church in Cleburne County, which she did not identify.

"We are still investigating newly reported cases and can’t definitively say they are all connected to one church," McNeill told NBC News on Thursday. "This is a cluster within a larger outbreak in that area of the state."

There were at least 310 reported coronavirus cases and two deaths in Arkansas as of Thursday morning.

Mark Palenske, a pastor at the church, said in a lengthy Facebook post late last week that he and his wife, Dena, were among those to test positive for COVID-19.

He said that when such a virus spreads on the other side of the world, "your first inclination is to assume that time and distance are on your side."

But "that false assumption" recently caught up with him and his wife, he said.

The couple and dozens of others from their church initially could not get tested, according to Palenske.

"One local doctor had a very small number of commercial tests and the rest is history, I suppose," he wrote.

He said that before even receiving positive test results, the church had followed medical advice and canceled services.

The couple's symptoms began with headaches followed by intense body aches and lethargy, as well as waves of chills, sweating and nausea, Palenske wrote in his post.

"Dena had a very scary morning a few days ago, which included a seizure of sorts and required hospitalization," he said.

His wife's condition has since improved and they are both back home, he said. Palenske said he could not pinpoint "where the virus came from."

"Even though we were the original positives, there are people who have been sick longer than we have," he said. "It clearly made its way through a special weekend of children’s ministry at our church."

He requested that people pray for health care workers, and he advised that people "take this medical threat more seriously."

"Maybe you assumed that it couldn’t happen to you, just like I did," he wrote. "Please adhere to the social instructions that you are receiving locally and nationally."


Christian pastor who thought COVID-19 is just ‘mass hysteria’ among the first in Virginia to die from virus

March 26, 2020 By Sky Palma


One of the first deaths in Virginia from coronavirus was a 66-year-old Christian “musical evangelist” who fell ill while on a trip to New Orleans with his wife. As the Friendly Atheist’s Bo Gardiner points out, Landon Spradlin had previously shared opinions that the pandemic was the result of “mass hysteria” from the media.

On March 13, Spradlin shared a misleading meme that compared coronavirus deaths to swine flu deaths and suggested the media is using the pandemic to hurt Trump. In the comments, Spradlin acknowledged that the outbreak is a “real issue,” but added that he believes “the media is pumping out fear and doing more harm than good”

“It will come and it will go,” he wrote.

That same day, he shared a post from another pastor that told the story of a missionary in South Africa who “protected” himself from the bubonic plague with the “Spirit of God.”

“As long as I walk in the light of that law [of the Spirit of life], no germ will attach itself to me,” read a quote from the post.

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