LEGITIMATE CHINA GOVERNMENT ACTS LEGIT: Taiwan shows up China, sending hard-hit countries lifesaving coronavirus supplies.

LET’S: Let’s Zoom Xi. He has questions to answer.

China caused this disaster, but now wants to claim the credit for saving us from it. Liberally exporting testing kits (some of which don’t work) and face masks (most of which probably do, but I still got ours from Taiwan, thank you very much), the Chinese government is intent of snatching victory from the jaws of a defeat it inflicted.

The worst of it is that some people in the western world are so unhinged by Trump derangement syndrome, or so corrupted by Chinese money or, in the case of Italy, so disillusioned by the less than altruistic responses of their fellow Europeans to their exceptionally severe COVID-19 outbreak, that they actually swallow this toxic stream of hypocrisy and mendacity. Was anything dumber this year than the mayor of Florence’s “Hug a Chinese” campaign in February?

Let us try to restore sanity with five questions that we should ask Chinese President Xi Jinping the next time we Zoom, FaceTime, Google Hangout or WeChat him.

Read the whole thing.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Will a Coronavirus Quarantine Baseball Season Be Awesome or Really Weird? “Major League Baseball is teasing me now. Ed Morrissey wrote a post yesterday at our sister site HotAir about a plan that baseball officials are working on to be able to stage a bizarro baseball season in this most bizarro of years.”

It’s a crazy idea, but it just might work. And crazy baseball is better than no baseball.

FASTER, PLEASE: The Coronavirus Pandemic Is Not Stopping Border Wall Construction.

OLD HABITS DIE HARD: CBS News Goes Full Fake but Accurate With Correction on Viral Crying Nurse Video.

THE BOMBING BEGINS IN FIVE MINUTES: Broad coalition forming to close China’s bat, cat, and dog meat markets.

(Classical reference in the headline.)

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: All China’s Lies. “A roundup on what China is lying about today.”

If this becomes a regular feature, it could keep Battleswarm Blog very, very busy.

CASH ONLY, PLEASE: G7 Nations Should Sue Communist China for $4 Trillion Over Coronavirus Malfeasance, Report Says.

WORST RACIST AND/OR RUSSIAN STOOGE EVER: Trump administration designates White supremacist group in Russia as terrorists.

MEMORY HOLE: What the Media Wants You to Forget About Their Biased Coronavirus Coverage.

HEADS EXPLODE: Dem Lawmaker in Detroit Says Hydroxychloroquine and Trump Helped Save Her Life.

HISTORY: 500-year-old manuscript contains earliest known use of the ‘F-word.’

OH: Dem Governor Who Banned Hydroxychloroquine Gets Caught Hoarding It.

COLD WAR II: GOP sounds alarm after ‘quasi-official’ Chinese outlet gains access to coronavirus press briefing, promotes Beijing.

“Only last week, there were multiple flights coming from China full of medical supplies,” the reporter from Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV began during Monday’s briefing. “Companies like Huawei and Alibaba have been donating to the United States, like 1.5 million N95 masks and also a lot of medical gloves, and much more medical supplies.”

“Sounds like a statement more than a question,” Trump interjected.

The reporter then asked if Trump was willing to work “directly” with China; Trump responded that China should honor its trade deals with the United States.

“Are you cooperating with China?” she pressed. “Who are you working for, China?” Trump responded. “Who are you with?”

The reporter smiled. “Um, no, I’m working for — Hong Kong Phoenix TV.”

“Who owns that? China?” Trump asked.

“It’s based in Hong Kong. … It’s a privately owned company.”

But it turns out that Phoenix TV, which has aggressively sought to expand in the United States, has closer ties to the Chinese government than the reporter let on.

While we were enjoying our cheap consumer goods, Beijing was busy figuring out all-new attack vectors for Cold War II.

I’LL PASS: Ankle Trackers, Tickets, Beatings: Welcome to the COVID-19 Surveillance State Stasi.

SALENA ZITO: Truck drivers make it possible for everyone else to work from home.

Truckers have become a new wave of front line responders in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic — starting with Eby, who gets the piglet to the farm to be fattened, and the next driver who gets the fattened pig to the butcher, and the next one who gets the refrigerated meat to the store.

Before the realities of this pandemic, trucks were often ignored. Their impact on our daily lives was considered an annoyance, as they chugged slowly up the winding hills of our back roads on the way to that grocery store, hospital, department store, or Amazon distribution center.

Never mind that they are filled with those essential things we have to have or nonessential things we thought we had to have. Too often, people mindlessly assume what they buy at Target or Walmart or Whole Foods comes from the back room, not from a farm upstate, or a factory four states away.

“I’m glad that our industry is finally getting a little bit of a positive spin,” said Richards, “So many times, you run up and down the highways and all you see is plaintiff attorneys advertising, wanting to sue truckers.”

Read the whole thing.

IOWAHAWK FOR THE WIN:

INDEED: Thank god for the internet. “I was 12 the first time I logged onto whatever was called the internet then. There were no websites to speak of, not really. No ecommerce, no banner ads, no data tracking, no spyware. iPhones hadn’t been invented yet; we called apps ‘programs’; and I had an EGA monitor on my PC (a whole 16 colors of range). But the first time I telnetted into a chatroom about raves, made new friends in Australia, or downloaded files to load into a music tracker, I felt the same elation that I feel now. This force, propelled by people, connected by copper and light, letting us make new connections. Connections we need now more than ever.”

HMM: Is the Coronavirus Curve Already Flat?

ORANGE MAN BAD: Media Backlash to Trump-Backed Meds for COVID-19 Shows That He ‘Could Find a Cure’ And Still Get Bad Press.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Nikon’s Online Photography Classes Are Free Through April.

You don’t have to use their gear to take their classes.

ALSO: Through June the US Naval Insitute has opened up the complete archives of Proceedings, which has published some very good reads going all the way back to 1874. Naval History, too, although I’m much less familiar with it.

CYBERSECURITY: NYC schools pull the plug on Zoom following FBI warning. “Schools aren’t the only ones banning Zoom, either. On March 28, Elon Musk’s SpaceX banned the program, instructing employees to use email, text, or phone calls as alternative methods for communication. Additionally, the Australian Ministry of Defense has also banned any use of the software.”

As of this writing, Zoom is still available on Apple’s App Store and on Google Play, but I wonder how much longer that will last.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Dems Are Suddenly Fans of Due Process Now That Crazy Joe the Wonder Veep Has Been Accused. “One merely has to look at Biden’s history of creepy public touching to find any allegation against him worth looking into. But he gets a pass because he’s a Dem and they’re desperate to pretend he’s not all of the things that those of us who are sane can plainly see that he is: a drooling moron and a full-on creeper.”

WHAT A NASTY BUG: Latest Coronavirus Science: Heart and Brain Damage May Be More Common Than We Thought.

HE’S LOSING IT: Joe Biden Produces a Word Salad So Bad That It’ll Make You Question Everything. “We cannot let this, we’ve never allowed any crisis from the Civil War straight through to the pandemic of 17, all the way around, 16, we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle, way they, we can both have a democracy and … correct the public health.”

Sooth.