ALL DUE CREDIT: In the Same Poll Where Trump Triumphs on COVID-19 Response, the Media Come In Dead Last.

ISRAEL WHO?

Yesterday: “The WHO has become another pointless organization pandering to the world’s worst actors.”

MICHAEL LIND: The Pandemic is an Alien Invasion.

As in a 1950s science fiction movie, the war against the alien invaders will be won by the combined forces of mobilized science and industry. The role of economic policy is secondary and has two purposes: providing wartime resources to science and industry and cushioning the collateral economic damage done by the government’s order that everyone hide from the aliens.

That’s not what we’re doing now. In battling the coronavirus, America’s political leadership is making two harmful mistakes. One mistake is focusing on the indirect economic consequences of the measures taken to slow the pandemic while neglecting the urgent need to contain and neutralize this lethal microbe. The other mistake is trying to deal with the crisis by means of ordinary legislation, rather than delegating authority temporarily to a bipartisan agency which can carry out fiscal policy quickly, backed up by the Fed with monetary policy.

Too few opportunities for corruption and graft.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Senate Unanimously Passes Coronavirus Relief Bill—Someone Should Check on Granny Boxwine. “Pelosi engaged in some of the most shameless politicking for personal gain of her career, and that’s saying quite a lot. Thankfully, it was all for naught. However, as Tyler mentioned in his headline, she was gambling with people’s lives. This should be a permanent stain on her career, but the thoroughly evil press is no doubt working on ways to run interference for her.”

It’s all true, but mostly I enjoy that Kruiser starts my day by making me do things like add “Boxwine” to my SpellCheck.

YOU WILL BE MADE TO CONFORM: Mayor Garcetti announces water and power will be shut off for nonessential L.A. businesses that don’t close.

CLOSE QUARTERS: 3 Sailors on USS Theodore Roosevelt Have COVID-19; Port Calls Canceled as Navy Investigates Outbreak.

CHUTZPAH: Biden: Trump should stop talking.

How about a deal? Trump will stop talking just as soon as Biden learns to speak in complete sentences.

ELITES GOTTA ELITE:

We don’t actually have the worst ruling class in history. For example, there was, uh, Caligula in that movie.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Johns Hopkins Study: USA More Prepared for Pandemic Than Any Other Country.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The China Syndrome: Structuring the Post-Coronavirus World. “We once might have smugly laughed off China’s wet markets as a Third World aberration, a medieval leftover, somehow still lingering around as a quaint vestigial bit of Chinese culture in a rapidly developing country. What we’ve learned in recent months however is that those wet markets are an even more serious security risk than Osama bin Laden looking for American flying schools from his computer in a secret location somewhere in Afghanistan. The viral threat emanating from China’s sub-Western health practices has at least an outside chance of killing more American civilians than soldiers have died in all of our wars. That’s how serious the threat is.”

This one is just for our VIP members, and I hope you’ll use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.

BREAKING: Bernie Sanders Threatens to Hold Up Coronavirus Stimulus Bill Over GOP ‘Anti-Worker Objections.’

Remember in November that so many leading Democrats put the parochial interests of some of their smallest constituencies ahead of the interest of the nation.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Hunkered Down: Parenting in the Time of Coronavirus. “It was the eighth time we’d had to break up a fight between our boys, ages nine and 14, that my wife Melissa and I realized that maybe we weren’t providing them with enough structured activities during the Virus Insanity Shut-In Time (VISIT) — and it was only Day Three out of an expected four weeks. VISIT, like fish, can start to stink after three days.”

RIDING OUT THE STORM: Austin Now Under Heavy Manners.

DON’T SQUEEZE THE CHARMIN SUPPLIES: This is why everyone is hoarding toilet paper.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘Hunt’ Producer Jason Blum: ‘Hollywood Out of Touch with America.’ “There shouldn’t be Red State, Blue State movies. There should be good movies.”

SHAMEFUL: With Lives and the Economy on the Line, Nancy Pelosi Stalls Wuhan Coronavirus Relief Bill.

THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS: Stay Alive, Joe Biden. “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”

Unhinged:

In all likelihood, the desire to oust Trump will be piercing in the coming days, as death and chaos escalate. The president has been reckless, duplicitous, and morally hazardous in his leadership during a pandemic that is likely to be the defining event of a generation—forget about a campaign cycle. But the many union members looking at their closed casinos and the mothers in lockdown with their children and the students forced off their campuses and the older Americans living in complete isolation may find it impossible to imagine that their earlier fears about another four years of Trump have abated, or that the ferocity of their desire to get him out of office has lessened. Indeed, the emotion of this moment may displace any that has come before it.

Biden’s team appears to understand this, and to believe that what matters most now is keeping their candidate alive in the American imagination as an alternative to Trump. His appearances these days have an almost parallel-universe quality to them: Biden’s audience-less remarks from his home in Delaware have the suggestion of an Oval Office address, and their content seems intended to offer a glimpse into the twilight zone where someone else, someone more empathetic and capable, is president. It’s as if Biden is telegraphing to his public: You have already imagined that I can beat Trump; now imagine what it will be like when I am president.

The Atlantic published this column from CBS News’ Alex Wagner, and in almost 20 years of blogging I’ve never read so many words bearing so little relation to reality, all to promote a Weekend at Bernie’s-style Democratic White House.

MEETINGS IN THE TIME OF CORONA: Look better on video calls using pro photography techniques.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Now That You Got Your Boxes Delivered From Amazon – Should You Touch Them?

THEY CALLOUSLY OVERPLAYED A WEAK HAND AT A DANGEROUS TIME: Congressional Democrats are tanking Biden’s 2020 odds.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Putin dons hazmat suit, as Russia admits virus numbers likely far higher.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Latest Coronavirus Mutation — My New Ways to Hate the Media. “As the world has descended into coronavirus panic, the scum masquerading as journalists in this country have been working overtime to plumb new depths of irresponsibility.”

THAT MANY? HEADS WILL ROLL: CBS Allows a Scant 10 Seconds on Own Poll Showing Majority Support for Trump on Corona.

I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR A WHILE NOW: Let’s Just Say It, Shall We? Joe Biden Is Probably Not Okay. “You can watch the wheels come off of his presentation in this video that Breitbart posted to their Twitter feed. Things seemed to be going fairly normally for a little while as Biden obviously recites some remarks while reading them off the teleprompter. But then the prompter obviously must have failed. At that point, Joe went to full ramble mode. The video is only a bit more than thirty seconds in length, but it feels a lot longer. Frankly, it’s pretty uncomfortable to sit through, but make sure you have the sound on for this.”

Biden can’t pull off a fake presser, but wants to manage the entire executive branch.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: LA County Sheriff halts efforts to close gun stores after county counsel intervention.