It’s Friday, February 28th, 2020…but before we begin, consider this hopelessly-misleading headline from FOX News:

Transgender athletes may be banned from some sports amid Alabama legislation

“…The new legislation will force transgender athletes to compete under their gender assigned at birth if it passes. Alabama is currently pushing for the transgender athletes ban that many across the country have already established.

A bill that is sponsored by Alabama state Rep. Chris Pringle and is known as the “gender is real legislative act” or “girl act,” calls for transgender athletes in K-12 public schools to compete based on the gender listed on their birth certificate…

…According to Pringle, transgender students will still be able to compete, they just have to compete under the gender assigned to them at birth.“

Forget about “according to Pringle”: did “journalist” Jayla Whitfield bother to read the bill so as to personally ascertain precisely what the legislation says?!?

‘Cause if she had, she’d know the bill doesn’t “ban” anyone from anything.

And Whitfield’s disconcerting disinterest in the facts surrounding this story isn’t limited to her mere misrepresentation of the impact of the legislation.  Still worse, she allows others to peddle patent, prevaricative propaganda masquerading as truth:

“However, LGBTQ organizations like GLSEN claim they are fighting to protect transgender students from discrimination. Eliza Byard, the executive director of GLSEN, said there is no evidence of transgender student dominance in athletics.“

Oh,…

…really?!?

Here’s the juice: the majority of modern-day reporters, and…evidently…editors, are either lazy as sloths or deceitful as demons.  And when a zealot lies about one aspect of a cause, you can take it as gospel their entire undertaking is grounded in duplicity.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, writing at his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty records the…

Coronavirus Chronicles

…in which he offers…

Reasons You SHOULD NOT Be TOO Worried about the Coronavirus in the United States

“The Associated Press fact-checkers point out that the Democratic accusations that the administration is unprepared are based upon a budget proposal that was never enacted: “Trump’s budgets have proposed cuts to public health, only to be overruled by Congress, where there’s strong bipartisan support for agencies such as the CDC and NIH. Instead, financing has increased. Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness — the front lines in detecting and battling new disease. But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump.”

All across the United States, since 9/11, hospitals and first responders have been training and running drills to deal with bioterrorism and mass-casualty events. This means for roughly eighteen years, everyone in the medical profession has been thinking: “If the worst-case scenario happens, what is my role in responding? How do we contain it, treat the sick, and minimize the danger to everyone else?”

What’s more, the outbreaks of the past years — swine flu, H1N1 flu, SARS, MERS, and Ebola — have given doctors, clinics, and hospitals good dress rehearsals for something on this scale…

…If you’re a nonsmoker who is in good health and takes basic preventative steps such as washing your hands, you’re probably going to be fine…at least, based upon what we know so far.“

Again, “so far”; which brings us to the…

Reasons You SHOULD Be at Least a LITTLE BIT Worried about Coronavirus

“Even if the United States is about as prepared as any country can be for a severe viral outbreak, a lot of other countries are not. And even the most technologically advanced, economically prosperous, and well-run countries are going to find this a serious challenge.

The government of Japan just closed all the public schools in the country for a month. The Japanese also reported that a woman who had the virus and appeared to recover had tested positive a second time.

Hong Kong is closing schools for two months.

Saudi Arabia halted travel to Mecca.

Milan, Italy, is not completely shut down, but the cathedral, opera house, schools and universities, and many bars and restaurants are shut down.

Joint military exercises with South Korea are being scaled back.

The quarantine of Wuhan began January 23. It’s still in place.

China has roughly 60 million men over age 60 who are regular smokers. If the coronavirus spreads throughout that population and kills just five percent of those, we’re looking at 3 million deaths.

Besides the severe economic consequences, I don’t think anyone really knows how the Chinese people would respond to a public-health crisis and disaster on this scale.

Beyond all of that, the United States and most Western countries are probably reasonably well prepared for this. Poorer and less developed countries probably won’t be well prepared. Any regime that has a history of being less than fully honest about the country’s problems is in for some serious trouble ahead.“

Can you say “Uncle Bernie’s Vision for America”, aka “Communist China”, boys and girls? We KNEW you could!

By the way, if you loved Obama’s reaction to the Fort Hood terror attack…

…you’ll…perhaps quite literally…die for:

Thus do Progressives react to The Donald’s quite-sensible measures to control the spread of the latest iteration of an undeniably Chinese-sourced pathogen.

You’ll forgive our French if we permit Staff Sergeant Barnes to respond to both George W. Casey, Jr. and Presidential biographer Jon Meacham:

Speaking of the inevitable wages of Communist police states, courtesy of NRO, Chris Rufo reports…

Seattle Is Socialism’s Laboratory, and It’s Not Pretty

Massive new taxes and stifling regulations, taxpayer-funded homeless encampments, violent protests…

“Democratic socialists are in the middle of a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. Led by the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and the “squad” of newly elected congresswomen, the hard-left coalition has laid out an ambitious agenda to transform the United States into a democratic socialist nation. While many commentators have dismissed the rhetoric around the Green New Deal, Housing for All, and End Cash Bail as pie-in-the-sky abstraction, in Seattle, the socialist coalition is quickly translating this agenda into a political reality.

…While conservatives and moderates have typically dismissed the socialist movement as a “big-city problem,” the new socialist agenda is no longer confined to the municipal boundaries of places such as Seattle, San Francisco, and New York. Increasingly, the hard-left coalition has turned these cities into “laboratories for socialism,” with the goal of eventually commercializing their policies through the national Democratic Party. Already, Bernie Sanders, the current front-runner in the Democratic primary, has proposed a nationalized version of the Seattle agenda: Tax Amazon, enact national rent control, construct public housing, and end cash bail.

But Seattle’s socialists have gone one step further. In order to consolidate their newfound power, the progressive-socialists have begun to manipulate the democratic process in their own favor: first, by providing all Seattle voters with $100 in taxpayer-funded “democracy vouchers,” which are easily collected by unions, activists, and socialist groups; and second, by implementing a ban on corporate spending in local elections by companies like Amazon. At the same time, black-bloc activists and Antifa militants intimidate any potential opposition by disrupting events, vandalizing homes, and even orchestrating death threats against political adversaries.

…If nothing is done, the laboratories of socialism in America’s cities will become a national problem. It’s time to shut them down.“

For those of you who missed the KOMO documentary Tucker mentions above, you can view it here; it’s WELL worth watching, as it offers a glimpse of where most Dimocrats would take the entire country given half a chance.  They’re just not as honest about it as Bernie.

Meanwhile, as Townhall.com‘s Bronson Stocking reports, the Progressive powers-that-be continue to tip-toe past their own graveyard, as…

Superdelegates Oppose Handing Bernie the Nomination if Candidate Falls Short in Delegate Count

“…[Quoting The New York Times] “From California to the Carolinas, and North Dakota to Ohio, the party leaders say they worry that Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist with passionate but limited support so far, will lose to President Trump, and drag down moderate House and Senate candidates in swing states with his left-wing agenda of “Medicare for all” and free four-year public college.” (This from The Times!!!)

…Sanders, the front-runner, argues that the candidate with the most votes should be the candidate to win the Party’s nomination. But his opponents want to see the nomination process follow established protocols…”

You know, “follow established protocols”: like when they handed the nomination to Hillary in 2016…or let Michael Bloomberg enter the Las Vegas debate while shutting out candidates of color (meaning any color other than green!!!)…or the dozen or so other times Dims have broken their own rules to shut out a candidate the people preferred.

Such subterfuge may have worked in the past, but that was then; THIS…

…is now!  What a difference decades of coddling criminals…

…makes.

Which brings us, incongruously enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s this gem from Peter Jameson:

Finally, we’ll call it a month with the Crime & Punishment segment, courtesy today of the latest Baltimore mayor to end their term of office in stir:

Former Baltimore mayor sentenced to three years over corrupt children’s book deal

While the rest of us lived happily ever after.  The End!

Magoo