Tag Archives: ethics

Lost in the Reporting

Posted on by
Reply

The People’s Republic of China had a nearly complete map of the Wuhan Virus genome two weeks before that government published the data for the world to deal with. The article’s author went on to emphasize the value of those two weeks to the various efforts to find ways to deal with the virus.

The extra two weeks could have proved crucial in helping the international medical community pinpoint how Covid-19 spread, develop medical defenses, and get started on an eventual vaccine, specialists have said.

There is this, though, in the second paragraph:

Documents obtained from the US Department of Health and Human Services by a House committee and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that a Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the virus’s structure to a US government-run database on December 28, 2019.

That’s those two weeks prior to the PRC’s formal release. The US database was the National Institutes of Health’s genetic database, GenBank.

Hmm….

But NIH didn’t just sit on the genome. They deleted it on 16 Jan 2020, four days after the PRC’s official release on 12 Jan. Supposedly, NIH officials had asked Dr Lili Ren of the Beijing-based Institute of Pathogen Biology, who had uploaded the genome to GenBase, for more information and got no response. Furthermore, the requested information were submission-related technical matters that had nothing at all to do with the actual genome map she’d uploaded, nor had they with any of the science related to her upload.

So, rather than actually looking into the mapping, they just blew it off and deleted it after Ren didn’t answer—apparently without considering the possibility that she was actively blocked by the PRC from answering.

However, the sequence published on January 12, 2020 [by the PRC], was nearly identical to the sequence that was submitted by Lili Ren.

Again, I say, hmm….

The PRC was complicit in the spread of the Wuhan Virus Situation, but it’s clear that the Dr Francis Collins-run NIH delay and then suppression of Ren’s genome map was at least as complicit in the damage done our nation and the world at large.

Governor Crybaby

Posted on by
Reply

Now it’s Illinois’ Progressive-Democrat Governor JB Pritzker who’s joining the Greek Chorus (and giving a bad name to Greek Choruses) with his bodice-ripping (not that I mix metaphors, or anything) sobbing about all the illegal aliens coming into Democratic states, Democratic cities.

We have migrants that arrive from Texas virtually every day, hundreds, and we don’t have places to put them.

This is the first of his cynical tear-jerks. Texas hasn’t transported a single migrant to Illinois, or to anywhere else, come to that. Texas has transported illegal aliens—every one of whom makes the trip voluntarily—to Illinois and to other places.

Hundreds: wow. So many. Never mind that Texas and Arizona towns and cities are getting inundated by thousands of illegal aliens every day, and that the “immigration” deal on offer in the Senate would seek to dam that flood at…5,000 per day.

We don’t have places to put them. Then stop enthusiastically—zealously, even—inviting them in with your open arms Illegal Aliens Sanctuary status.

There are plenty of other cities where, you know, if he’s going to send people, they could be sent, but no. He’s choosing only Democratic states, Democratic cities….

This is the second of his cynical tear-jerks. No, Texas’ Republican Governor Gregg Abbott is not transporting any illegal aliens at all to Democratic states, Democratic cities. He’s transporting them to sanctuary States and to sanctuary cities. That those receiving jurisdictions happen to be Progressive-Democrat-run says volumes about the Progressive-Democratic Party, and nothing at all about the torrent of illegal aliens flooding across our border compared to the tiny trickle these sanctuary States and cities are getting.

Maybe Pritzker should sit down. His caterwauling is damaging to the Chorus.

A Debate Idea

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden plans to refuse to participate in any Presidential debates in the coming Presidential campaign season. He’s already cowering away from any primary debates with his opponent, Marrianne Williamson and Minnesota Progressive-Democrat Congressman Dean Phillips, even ducking whole primary campaigns, getting States to completely suppress Democrat voters cancel their primary contests.

The Republican Presidential nominee—likely former President Donald Trump, but it still could be Florida Governor Ron DeSantis or former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley—should challenge Biden to open debate, and when he refuses, the Republican candidate should follow the example set a few years ago by Clint Eastwood and debate an empty chair.

Then challenge again, and then debate the empty chair.

And again.

Hold these first debates before any State starts early voting, and then continue the debates throughout the fall. Each debate should focus on a single subject of national importance.

I have to wonder why Phillips is so reluctant to do that during the Progressive-Democratic Party’s primary campaign season.

A Candidate’s Stockholm Syndrome?

Posted on by
Reply

Stockholm Syndrome is an emotional condition in which a person develops a psychological bond with/dependency on his captor.

Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has spent his campaign engaged in two primary behaviors. One of them is his sycophancy regarding former President Donald Trump (R).

Donald Trump was the greatest President of the 21st century….

And

I’m worried for Trump. I’m worried for our country. I’ve stood up against the persecutions against Trump, and I’ve defended him at every step[.]

So when Trump engaged in one of his ad hominem attacks, this time aimed at Ramaswamy, Ramaswamy had this to say:

It’s an unfortunate move by his campaign advisors, I don’t think friendly fire is helpful[.]

He went on to say that he would not respond to Trump’s attack.

Ramaswamy’s other campaign behavior is precisely that friendly fire. For instance, regarding the second leading Presidential candidate:

Now, the same billionaires funding the lawsuits against Trump are the ones trying to prop up Nikki Haley. … They want to narrow this to a two-horse race between Trump & Haley, eliminate Trump (one way or other), & [sic] trot their puppet into the White House.

He’s also called all the Republican candidates other than Trump and himself “bought and paid for” and “super PAC puppets.”

That’s entirely consistent, though, with his syndrome: he’s aping Trump’s ad hominem tactics with his own “friendly” fire against fellow Republican candidates.

Timid President Fails Again

Posted on by
Reply

On the heels of the just-concluded Republic of China election, in which the DPP Presidential candidate won a plurality and so won the Presidency (giving the DPP, which opposes “reunification” with the People’s Republic of China, a third consecutive term in that office), but lost its legislative majority, our own Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden…messed up again.

We do not support independence [for the RoC]

That’s a clear signal of meekness to the PRC, and it magnifies the danger to the RoC.

As I noted in a comment in another venue*,

We betrayed the RoC 50 years ago, and that policy remains shamefully wrong today. It’s never a reasonable thing to support a wrong policy; its age confers no legitimacy.

It’s long past time we extended formal diplomatic recognition, again, to the RoC, and long past time we got off the dime on selling them/lend-leasing them the arms they need to mount an effective defense—and offense: there’s no defense like having the offensive initiative, which would allow the RoC to control the pace and depth of the fight. Waiting defensively to block or slip the enemy’s blows only allows too many of the enemy’s blows to land.

We also need to be far more active in air and naval patrolling of the Taiwan Strait and the waters close by the PRC-occupied islands of the South China Sea, along with low altitude overflights of those islands, and we should do so, but not exclusively so, in joint exercises with Australia, Japan, and the nations rimming that Sea.

*Claire Berlinski’s The Cosmopolitan Globalist is well worth the subscription.