DETERRENCE: Australia joins U.S. ships in South China Sea amid rising tension.

DECOUPLING: 22 Republicans Urge Bill Barr to Hold China Accountable for ‘Heinous Crimes’ Regarding Coronavirus.

RIPE FOR GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER: Ilhan Omar Wants to Cancel Rent for Coronavirus — and Upend the Entire Housing Market in the Process.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: ‘The Evil Called Barack Obama’ and the Genocidal Slaughter of Nigerian Christians.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Crenshaw Destroys Maher: Why Late Night Avoids Conservative Guests.

The Texas Republican appeared on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday. The two had a sober conversation about a number of topics, including election tampering and the current pandemic.

Maher bombarded Crenshaw with a series of tough, targeted queries. Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who lost an eye during a tour of duty, didn’t flinch.

Did anyone expect otherwise?

Click over for the whole thing.

#WALKAWAY: Georgia Dem Who Endorsed Trump Quits Office Because Of Party Harassment.

LIVE ON TAPE FROM HOLLYWOOD: Exclusive VIP Gold Live Chat with VodkaPundit and Stephen Kruiser—Wednesday

The show started at 3:30pm Eastern, but Kruiser and I usually go for about two hours.

(Classical reference in the headline.)

ENTERTAINMENT IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS: Netflix just added more than 15 million subscribers.

BAD SCIENCE: Five Problems With the Study That Claims ‘More Deaths’ From Treating Coronavirus With Hydroxychloroquine.

CONRAD BLACK: Democrats Get Outmaneuvered By Trump’s Cunning.

But the president has flipped the table: he has met the public health challenge and is “flattening the curve.” And he has met the economic challenge with an imaginative economic package and now with a scientifically economic validated restart.

The Democrats — in a year when they can’t do anything right except sandbag Bernie Sanders, when they defended the infamous Chinese performance for a long time, and upheld the corrupt leadership of the World Health Organization — are still calling for Americans to hide like moles, whatever the financial hardship and the danger of starvation, severe economic loss, and public demoralization.

Don’t get cocky.

IN WHICH BATTLESWARM BLOG CREATES THE PERFECT VISUAL FOR NEGATIVE OIL PRICES: Less Than Zero.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: After pushback, Whitmer cancels coronavirus tracing contract awarded to Democrat political intel giant.

DON’T TRUST CHINA. CHINA IS ASSHOLE:

The mainland People’s Republic of China is both the biggest and worst part of the global supply chain. Since the latter won’t change under Communist rule, the former is going to have to.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Who Sounds Drunker: VodkaPundit Or Joe Biden?

TO BE FAIR, HE ALSO THINKS CUBAN HEALTH CARE IS FREE: Michael Moore Admits He Had No Idea Where the Juice To Power Electric Cars Came From.

FLASHBACK: How a Young Joe Biden Became the Architect of the Government’s Asset Forfeiture Program.

CHUTZPAH: Chinese envoy Cui Tiankai takes veiled swipe at Donald Trump for politicising outbreak.

Nearly everything Beijing has done regarding the Wuhan virus has been politicized.

Deadly, too.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Earth Day Musings—Where In the Heck Are My Floating Polar Bears? “I think I’ll spend the day not polluting my mind with any International Mother Earth Day propaganda.”

YES: It’s time to shift tack — and contain the virus while reopening Colorado’s economy. “This is not a trade-off between lives and the economy. It’s a trade-off between lives and lives. Lives lost to CoVid-19 and lives lost to deaths and despair through depression, overdoses and suicide. We need to move beyond the policies we had in place when a larger storm was forecast. The projections have changed and now the policies need to change to match the current risk.”

WELL, THAT’S A TAKE: Biden says he isn’t soft on China, Trump is.

A Biden-aligned super PAC, American Bridge, is running a $15 million ad campaign of its own hitting Trump on China. “Everyone knew they lied about the virus,” the narrator said against the backdrop of eerie music. “China … President Trump gave China his trust.” Last week, the Democratic National Committee’s sixth installment of its “In Focus: Trump’s Disastrous Coronavirus Response” was titled “Trump rolled over for China.” The DNC memo asserted, “Trump’s failure to stand up to China is one of his biggest vulnerabilities.”

The Trump-approved America First Action Super PAC is already running an ad going after four decades of Biden’s China policy. But the main focus is on China and the coronavirus.

“Joe Biden attacked Trump after the China travel ban,” said the spot’s narrator, followed by audio of the ex-vice president calling it “xenophobia and fear-mongering.” The ad continued, “For forty years, Joe Biden has been wrong about China.” America First then cuts to a speech in which Biden declared, “I believed in 1979, and I believe now, that a rising China is a positive development.”

Trump, by contrast, has inveighed against this position for decades before entering politics. “I ran on China and other countries, the way they were ripping us off,” Trump recalled during Sunday’s White House press briefing. “They were ripping off our country. And China understood that.” But his desire to strike a trade deal with China, as well as secure the regime’s cooperation in getting needed medical supplies to the United States, has led him to equivocate publicly on Xi.

“The president can be harsh with foreign governments, but he also knows how to sweet-talk foreign leaders to get what he wants,” said a Republican strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “Everyone knows that.”

This makes Biden look sillier and more full of it than usual — a high bar.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Does China Have This Under Control?

Every now and then, some report slips out indicating that China is still dealing with a significant problem.

On April 6, “an official newspaper said there could be 10,000 to 20,000 such [asymptomatic] cases in Wuhan. The report was swiftly deleted online.”

Chinese authorities are still claiming they’ve defeated the virus at home, and almost all of the new cases are coming in from travelers abroad. Unsurprisingly, this official spin is fueling xenophobia and racism among Chinese citizens. You probably saw the reports of out-in-the-open discrimination like the McDonalds in Guangzhou declaring that “black people” were not permitted inside. In Beijing, ambassadors from African nations say they and their staff are being hassled and harassed.

Today, “the province of Shaanxi [in northwestern China] reported 21 new infections from abroad, as well as seven cases with no clinical symptoms, all travelers on a commercial flight from Moscow bound for the Chinese capital of Beijing.”

In the capital city, “Beijing’s Chaoyang district, home to dozens of foreign embassies, has been designated a high-risk area after a family of three became infected, the first new cases in the city for 27 days according to the Beijing Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.”

Chinese state media are continuing to claim that the virus is a U.S. bioweapon.

Commies lie.

TAKINGS: Will States Owe Businesses Just Compensation for Forced Closures When the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Over?

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: Mayor De Blasio Says He Needs Ventilators, While Governor Cuomo Is Giving Them Away to Other States.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: Somebody Should Tell the Governor That California Is Re-Opening With or Without Him.

BIG TECH: Vimeo Categorized the Christian Faith as ‘Hateful,’ Blacklisted Group Says.