YOU DON’T SAY: Gulf states using COVID-19 contact tracing apps as mass surveillance tools.

The study analyzed a collection of contact tracing apps, which are designed to inform and monitor physical contact between people in the event someone contracts COVID-19, from 11 countries: Algeria, Bahrain, France, Iceland, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Norway, Qatar, Tunisia, and United Arab Emirates. It found three particularly egregious apps that collected satellite location data from users, instead of relying simply on Bluetooth signals, and matched accounts with real identities.

In one extreme case, some citizens who downloaded the BeAware Bahrain contact tracing app became contestants on a televised game show called Are You At Home? The show involved a host randomly video calling phone numbers of Bahraini individuals using government-collected data to check if they were adhering to social distancing guidelines and offering monetary rewards to those that were. By signing up for BeAware Bahrain, users were automatically enrolled into Are You At Home?, which is produced by state-controlled television channel Bahrain TV.

Truman Burbank, call your office.

YOUR AGENDA IS SHOWING: The media races to capitalize ‘B’ for Black, keep ‘w’ for whites lowercase. Apparently the reason is that all blacks look alike, but whites are different: “Black is an ethnic designation; white merely describes the skin color of people who can, usually without much difficulty, trace their ethnic origins back to a handful of European countries.”

JUDGE REJECTS BID TO STOP SATURDAY’S OKLAHOMA TRUMP RALLY.

TODAY IS THE 48th ANNIVERSARY OF THE WATERGATE BREAK-IN, which would eventually birth: The hero-journalist trope — Watergate’s go-to mythical media narrative.

YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE: Boy Scouts of America says it supports BLM, will require new “diversity and inclusion merit badge” to become Eagle Scout.

#METOO IS SO 2018: Nebraska Dem Refuses to Bow Out of Senate Race Amid Sexual Harassment Scandal.

CRYBULLIES: Oxford will ‘decolonise’ degrees. “Oxford University has revealed plans to “decolonise” its maths and science degrees and will allow students of any subject who have been affected by the Black Lives Matter furore to seek lenient marking.”

More to come, once I find another version of this story outside The Times‘ paywall.

DONT TRUST CHINA. CHINA IS ASSHOLE. GOP Report: China’s Coronavirus Cover-up Turned ‘a Local Pandemic Into a Global Pandemic.’

The headline of course refers to the Communist People’s Republic on the mainland, and not the well-run Republic of China on Taiwan.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Snow in Mid-June? Yellowstone Expecting Snow on Wednesday.

(Classical reference in headline.)

ANALYSIS: TRUE. No, we haven’t ‘defunded education for years.’

They say that if you repeat a lie often enough, it will become the truth.

Several viral social media posts claim legislators have been draining education funding for years. A tweet from a high school football coach asserting that “they’ve been defunding education for years” has garnered over a half-million likes in just a few days. . . .

The problem is that we haven’t actually defunded education. We’ve done the opposite.

On average, the United States currently spends over $15,000 per student each year, and inflation-adjusted K-12 education spending per student has increased by 280% since 1960. In California, where the previously mentioned football coach resides, inflation-adjusted spending on K-12 education has increased by 129% since 1970. Furthermore, data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that nearly a third of all state budget expenditures go toward education.

This is a particularly pernicious myth in the education debate because increased education spending generally isn’t associated with better results. Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek reviewed nearly 400 studies on the topic and concluded that “there is not a strong or consistent relationship between student performance and school resources.”

That shouldn’t surprise anyone. Pouring more money into the same broken system won’t fix the deeper problem — government monopolies have weak incentives to cater to the needs of their customers by spending money wisely.

Why won’t this myth ever die?

Because it’s useful to people who want taxpayer money.

A BILL WHITTLE ‘FIREWALL’: America’s Failed Social Experiment: Are You On Team Red or Team Blue?

This one is quite good and well worth 13 or so minutes of your time.

THERE’S NO IQ TEST TO WORK AT THE NYT: The New York Times Recoils at the Predictable Consequences of the Mandatory COVID-19 Precautions It Supports.

THIS DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE ON THE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE:

Lost in the coverage is the fact that today less than 6% of Americans tested each week are found to have the virus. Cases have stabilized over the past two weeks, with the daily average case rate across the U.S. dropping to 20,000—down from 30,000 in April and 25,000 in May. And in the past five days, deaths are down to fewer than 750 a day, a dramatic decline from 2,500 a day a few weeks ago—and a far cry from the 5,000 a day that some were predicting.

The truth is that we’ve made great progress over the past four months, and it’s a testament to the leadership of President Trump. When the president asked me to chair the White House Coronavirus Task Force at the end of February, he directed us to pursue not only a whole-of-government approach but a whole-of-America approach. The president brought together major commercial labs to expand our testing capacity, manufacturers to produce much-needed medical equipment, and major pharmaceutical companies to begin research on new medicines and vaccines. He rallied the American people to embrace social-distancing guidelines. And the progress we’ve made is remarkable.

We’ve expanded testing across the board. At the end of February, between Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labs and state public health facilities, the U.S. had performed only about 8,000 coronavirus tests. As of this week, we are performing roughly 500,000 tests a day, and more than 23 million tests have been performed in total.

We’ve also vastly expanded our supplies of crucial medical equipment. In March, there were genuine fears that hospitals in our hot spots would run out of personal protective equipment like N95 masks, gloves or, even worse, ventilators for patients battling respiratory failure. The Strategic National Stockpile hadn’t been refilled since the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, and it had only 10,000 ventilators on hand.

Since then, we’ve increased the supply of personal protective equipment by the billions. Our administration launched Project Air Bridge—a partnership between the federal government and private companies—that, as of June 12, had conducted more than 200 flights from overseas to deliver more than 143 million N95 masks, 598 million surgical and procedural masks, 20 million eye and face shields, 265 million gowns and coveralls, and 14 billion gloves. In addition, we’ve worked with the private sector to ramp up ventilator production. Today, we have more than 30,000 ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile, and we’re well on our way to building 100,000 ventilators in 100 days. No American who required a ventilator was ever denied one.

Yeah, you never hear about ventilators anymore. I can remember when they were a big deal.

WELL, YEAH: ‘Defund the Police’ Really Means ‘Kneecapping the Police’ in Atlanta and New York City.

THAT’S A GOOD DESCRIPTION: The Supreme Court’s Dereliction of Duty on Qualified Immunity.

YEP: CHINA IS ON THE BALLOT IN 2020.

Following the Cold War, the stated rationale for U.S.-PRC relations was one of economic self-interest and idealism: Economic liberalization would lead to political and cultural liberalization. Relatedly, the story went, an integrated and prosperous China would be a peaceful and stable one.

For decades, Joe Biden has been one of the most senior proponents of this view. During the height of the 2000 debate that resulted in the granting of permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to China, putting it on a glidepath to World Trade Organization accession that would accelerate its drive toward superpower status, Biden asserted that PRC “prosperity…has put China on a path toward ever-greater political and economic freedom.” This view persisted in the administration Biden served.

It was the Obama Administration—during much of which then-Vice President Biden managed the “China portfolio,” explicitly engaging the then-general secretary-in-waiting Xi Jinping—that was responsible for the plan which would have seen U.S. government employees fund their foes. Every member of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) responsible for the 2017 decision to tilt its Thrift Savings Plan’s (TSP) international fund toward Chinese equities, was an Obama appointee. They pressed ahead with the plan in spite of withering bipartisan criticism.

It was good for Hunter Biden.

D*MN IT, BABYLON BEE. YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO REPORT NEWS. SATIRE. LOOK IT UP:  Seattle Protesters Abolish Police, Replace With Squads Of Armed Individuals Tasked With Enforcing Set Of Agreed-Upon Rules.

SURPRISINGLY CREDIBLE – DAMN THOSE SNEAKY GREGORIANS:  Reading of Mayan calendar suggests end of the world is next week.

Also…. a whole week off?????

WHICH LEADS ALL OF US TO WONDER WHY THEY NEVER CALL, THEY DON’T SEND FLOWERS…  OKAY, PEOPLE, ALL OF YOU FLOSS AND USE DEODORANT!  Milky Way galaxy could be home to over 30 alien civilizations: study.