March 13-14, 2020
Mar 13 00:28 Deb Fischer vs. Mazie Hirono fight Mar 13 05:23 COVID-19 update by the numbers 3-13-20 Mar 13 07:12 Wuhan results keep improving Mar 13 08:03 This is why scrutinizing Biden's COVID-19 speech is important Mar 13 09:06 Joe Biden revisits Neil Kinnock Mar 13 10:40 China's unacceptable threat Mar 14 07:38 Joe Biden's complicity with H1N1 Mar 14 10:29 Changing the federal judiciary Mar 14 11:52 The importance of learning COVID-19 lessons from children
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Deb Fischer vs. Mazie Hirono fight
Democrats have frequently shown that they aren't negotiating in good faith over fixing the coronavirus pandemic. Thursday afternoon, Sen. Deb Fischer, (R-NE), and Sen. Kirsten Sinema, (D-AZ), introduced the "bipartisan PREP Act." Prior to consideration of their bill, Sen. Fischer made a brief speech asking for unanimous consent to have the PREP Act debated. Here's what happened:
. @SenatorFischer's bipartisan PREP Act would expand medical professionals' access to vitally-needed respirators and create certainty for mask manufacturers. It is not controversial. The Senate could have passed it today.
But Senate Democrats refused to let it move forward. pic.twitter.com/OFMgOdC2eq
- Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) March 12, 2020
Sen. McConnell must've known that Democrats planned on doing something nefarious when he said this :
At a minimum, I hope that Senate Democrats will not block potential requests from our colleagues today to pass smaller, noncontroversial pieces of legislation right away that would bolster particular aspects of the fight against coronavirus.
Let's hope that Democrats put families ahead of special interests, equipping health care specialists ahead of listening to lobbyists and negotiating in good faith rather than the Democrats' gamesmanship.
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Democrats apparently aren't interested in doing the right thing for American families. Democrats are more interested in pulling stunts than they're interested in doing the right thing.
Posted Friday, March 13, 2020 12:28 AM
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COVID-19 update by the numbers 3-13-20
I thought it'd be useful to keep track of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and confirmed deaths. This article lists the number of cases by state. It also lists the number of deaths in each state. It's worth noting that Washington State has 442 confirmed cases, compared with 366 confirmed cases yesterday. As of this morning, there have been 31 deaths, compared with 29 yesterday. New York State has confirmed 328 cases as of this morning, compared with 228 confirmed cases as of Thursday morning. California has confirmed 221 cases of COVID-19, compared with 181 yesterday. Massachusetts reached the century mark this morning with 108 confirmed cases.
Washington went from 29 deaths in yesterday's report to 31 in today's report. California went from 3 in yesterday's report to 4 total deaths in today's report. Florida stayed at 2 COVID-19 deaths. (Praise the Lord.) New Jersey and South Dakota stayed at 1 each. Joining the list today is Georgia with a single death.
Posted Friday, March 13, 2020 5:23 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 14-Mar-20 03:41 AM
Still more flu case and deaths to date yet no one is talking about that and the world has lost its mind. Get a grip people.
Wuhan results keep improving
If this article is accurate, a glimmer of hope might have just arrived at the right time. The opening paragraph provides that glimmer, saying "China's Wuhan city, ground zero of the new coronavirus outbreak, reported five new cases on Friday, the second day in a row the tally has been less than 10, while no locally transmitted infections were reported in the rest of the country."
The article continues, saying "Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province, registered the five new cases on Thursday, the National Health Commission said, down from eight cases the previous day. The commission routinely reports new cases the day after the data is collected. Excluding Wuhan, Hubei has reported no new infections for eight consecutive days."
While there's still some challenges to defeat, this article highlights some of what the city has been through:
Wuhan residents have been under lockdown for over six weeks now as a result of COVID-19, and the death toll in the city of 11 million has surpassed 2,000 , higher than anywhere else in China.
It's still logical to not trust these stories. They're still being reported from a nation ruled by a brutal Chinese dictatorship. Still, it's worth noting that the reports coming from Wuhan have been improving after the lock-up started. This news report is worth viewing, especially the last part of it:
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While Democrats and the twisted media haven't admitted it, it's worth noting that President Trump was right in shutting down travel to and from China. That's proof that President Trump's decision wasn't based on xenophobia but common sense. Further, there's no disputing the fact that these tactics work.
Let's give President Trump some credit, too, for his handling of this crisis. Each crisis has its own unknowns. Let's stipulate that each leader faced with a crisis will make mistakes because of the unknowns. This speech by the Democrats' presumptive nominee isn't a display of leadership; it's a display of followship:
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It's also a portrait in criticism at a time when unity is needed. Mr. Biden chose to criticize our president rather than act like a statesman. That isn't surprising. It's part of who VP Biden is. While President Trump made difficult decisions in real time, VP Biden sounded like he didn't know what state he was in half the time. It takes chutzpah to act like that when the truth is that he's unfit for the job.
At one point in the speech, Biden said that travel bans might slow the spread of the virus but it won't stop it. Where did they dig this idiot up from? Of course, it won't stop the virus. That's why you have researchers working on a vaccine. Slowing it down is a huge deal though.
At one point, Biden said that "travel restrictions based on favoritism and politics rather than risk will be counterproductive", insinuating that that's what's happening. Then Biden said that the American people have the ability to meet this crisis. That's true. It's that I don't have confidence that a Biden administration would have the ability to meet this crisis.
That isn't a mean-spirited statement. Back in 2009, the Obama-Biden administration dealt with the H1N1 virus. Here's the statistics :
In 2009, the Swing Flu infected 60 million Americans and killed over 12,000.
That's on Biden's watch. Barring a total catastrophe, the death toll from the coronavirus likely won't come within 10,000 fatalities of the Obama-Biden death toll. That's just the facts.
Posted Friday, March 13, 2020 7:12 AM
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This is why scrutinizing Biden's COVID-19 speech is important
About 3 minutes into this speech, former VP Joe Biden made statement that's still frightening:
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Biden said "Banning travel from Europe or other parts of the world may slow it but, as we've seen, it will not stop it." That statement isn't frightening because it's wrong. It's frightening because of this article , which says "Are public health officials overreacting to the threat posed by the virus that causes the disease COVID-19? It's absolutely necessary, because it's worked in the past, says medical historian Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., a University of Michigan expert who has studied the effects of similar responses to past epidemics. 'An outbreak anywhere can go everywhere,' he says. And right now, 'We all need to pitch in to try to prevent cases both within ourselves and in our communities.'"
Markel then explains "The tall, skinny curve is bad - it means that a lot of people will get sick at once, in a short period of time because we don't take enough steps to prevent the virus from spreading from person to person. Most people won't get sick enough to need a hospital. But those who do could overwhelm the number of beds and care teams that our nation's hospitals have available."
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out that a hospital that gets filled with lots of very sick patients at the same time isn't likely to have as many of them survive as if a smaller amount of patients arrive at the clinic or hospital. Simply put so VP Biden can understand it, "flattening the curve" gives physicians the highest odds of treating patients successfully. Put differently, flattening the curve saves lives.
While that doesn't "stop it", slowing it down matters. That's probably beyond Biden's intellectual capacity but that's why I'm thankful that he's a former vice president, not the current president.
"If you don't have as many cases coming to the hospitals and clinics at once, it can actually lower the number of total deaths from the virus and from other causes," [Markel] says. "And, importantly, it buys us time for university and government scientists, and industry, to create new therapies, medications and potentially a vaccine."
Following the Biden Plan potentially leads to more fatalities than by following the Trump Strategy. Health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Debbie Birx and others have testified that President Trump's travel ban with China saved lives.
I'll trust experts like Fauci and Birx rather than trusting a blowhard politician like Joe Biden.
Posted Friday, March 13, 2020 8:03 AM
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Joe Biden revisits Neil Kinnock
The Trump campaign felt a sense of deja vu when they listened to Joe Biden's coronavirus speech. There's a good reason for that. The article starts by saying "Joe Biden's coronavirus remarks today sounded awfully familiar. Listening to him, we felt a sense of deja vu. Here's why: Biden blatantly ripped off President Trump, and bizarrely called on him to do things he has in fact already done. Joe Biden said 'no efforts should be spared' to get private labs and universities working to rapidly expand testing for coronavirus. President Trump already acted on this weeks ago, ordering the FDA to allow hundreds of private labs and academic hospitals to rapidly begin testing for coronavirus."
That isn't the last 'similarity' from Biden's speech. Here's another:
Joe Biden said that small businesses will need relief from coronavirus' economic impact. President Trump already moved decisively to provide $50 billion in liquidity to small business owners, and is asking Congress for even more.
Here's another copycat portion of Biden's speech:
Joe Biden said it is critical for insurance companies to waive copays for coronavirus testing. President Trump already got it done, securing a commitment from the nation's insurance providers to waive all copays on coronavirus testing and expand coverage of coronavirus treatment in all their benefit plans.
Joe Biden wants to prove that he's a leader in the worst way. This is proof, unfortunately, that he's a follower. He's making authoritative-sounding suggestions that others have already made. That's following the leader. That isn't leadership.
Joe Biden hasn't been a leader. As a senator, Biden was one senator out of 100. If he got something wrong, it frequently wasn't even noticed, much less life-altering. President Trump has been an executive his entire adult life. Every decision he's made impacts people's lives. He's felt that pressure his entire adult life.
During his first presidential campaign, Biden quit because he plagiarized parts of Neil Kinnock's speech . Now he's stealing major parts of President Trump's speech on the coronavirus. If he couldn't steal other people's lines and ideas, he'd be a total idiot. Watching this portion of Joe Biden's speech makes me feel sad for him:
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I feel sad because he's using President Trump's ideas one minute, then criticizing President Trump in the next sentence. Does he think we won't notice that he's plagiarizing again?
Posted Friday, March 13, 2020 9:06 AM
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China's unacceptable threat
According to this article , the Chinese have threatened the US in a dangerous, unacceptable way. According to the article, "In an article in Xinhua, the state-run media agency that's largely considered the mouthpiece of the party, Beijing bragged about its handling of COVID-19, a virus that originated in the city of Wuhan and has spread quickly around the world, killing nearly 5,000 people and infecting thousands more. The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls which would plunge America into 'the mighty sea of coronavirus.'"
Mike Bloomberg and Joe Biden are China sympathizers. They've partnered to defeat President Trump. Considering Bloomberg's and Biden's China first policies, this morning's news is unacceptable. This news is particularly worrisome considering how dismissive Joe Biden has been. This video is the height of dismissiveness:
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President Trump took tons of criticism from Democrats for slapping tariffs on China. He was right in exposing the Chinese manufacturing dominance. If not for the efforts of President Trump, we wouldn't have learned about the US's reliance on China for our health care needs:
Though the United States is a global leader in research, much of the manufacturing of life-saving drugs has moved overseas. The last American manufacturing plant to make a key component in penicillin shuttered in 2004. Since then, Chinese pharmaceuticals companies have moved in and taken over, supplying between 80 percent and 90 percent of U.S. antibiotics, 70 percent of acetaminophen and about 40 percent of heparin, according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
This situation must be fixed immediately. Joe Biden has kissed China's backside too often to stand up to China. It requires a president with a titanium spine, which President Trump has, to fix this situation. President Trump already has stood up to China. It's a certainty that he'd stand up to them again. It's virtually certain that Biden wouldn't stand up to them.
Sen. Marco Rubio is aware of the problem:
Rubio said Beijing's comments should concern all Americans and that China is keenly aware that in a moment of crisis "they can threaten to cut us off from our pharmaceutical supplies, they could trigger a domestic problem here that would make it difficult or us to confront them." "It's a tremendous amount of leverage," Rubio said.
It's time the US stood up to China once and for all. They need us much more than we need them. Let's teach them that we're totally willing to use leverage against them by pulling our manufacturing plants out of China. With China's economy on the rocks, let's see who blinks first. We've already seen who blinked first the last time during the Phase One trade talks.
Our health systems are superior to China's. We have plenty of raw materials, manufacturing capacity and innovation, too. If China wants to get into a fight over this, let's let them know in no uncertain terms that they'd better prepare to lose that fight.
Posted Friday, March 13, 2020 10:40 AM
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Joe Biden's complicity with H1N1
Joe Biden tried to sell himself as a leader on Wednesday. Because large portions of Biden's speech seemed plagiarized , conservatives wondered why Biden wasn't scrutinized for the 2009-10 outbreak of the H1N1 Swine Flu. Before we get into the H1N1 statistics of 2009-10, let's check the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus statistics website .
According to that website, US health officials have confirmed 2,174 coronavirus infections. That ranks the US eighth in the world. Of the 5,429 deaths worldwide attributed to coronavirus, just 41 are from the United States. That's seventh in the world, far behind 3,075 in Hubei, China, 1,266 in all of Italy and 514 in Iran.
Early in his speech on the coronavirus, VP Biden said "We will lead by science. The World Health Organization has now officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Downplaying it, being overly dismissive or spreading misinformation is only going to hurt us..." Let's focus on the "being overly dismissive" portion of that sentence for a moment.
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This chart shows how much deadlier the 2009-10 H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic was than this virus:
In the US 2009-10 Swine Flu Pandemic, 60,000,000 people got infected. Over 12,000 people died. Coverage of the pandemic was virtually nonexistent. President Obama didn't declare a national emergency until months after Swine Flu had been detected. Here's the current top-of-the-page headlines on Drudge:
I'd say that someone's a little freaked out. Six patients per bed? That might happen if we didn't flatten the curve. Thankfully, President Trump restricted travel from China and Europe. If he hadn't done that in January (while Democrats were trying him for impeachment), we would've had a much bigger explosion of COVID-19 cases.
Sleepy Joe said that shutting off travel is racist and xenophobic. He's more worried about winning popularity contests than he's worried about saving lives. Joe's policy, as stated in his speech, is to work with other countries so we don't get shut out from the family of nations.
President Trump's policy is to prevent the loss of American lives to the greatest extent possible. Period. With President Trump, America First isn't just about economics. His job, as he sees it and as Americans see it, it to put America first in all aspects of life without apologies.
David Gergen's op-ed offers insight into a Biden administration:
For months, commentators have wondered whether there will be a return to normality after President Trump leaves office. In his address Thursday on the coronavirus pandemic, Joe Biden left no doubt that if elected, that's exactly what he intends. His speech was for the most part well crafted, his ideas were reasonable, his words calm and reassuring, and he related well with working people and the vulnerable. In short, this was a classic presidential speech.
Biden's speech was, for the most part, plagiarized from President Trump's speech. (Old habits die hard. Think Neil Kinnock.) Does that mean that Gergen likes President Trump's policies?
The MSM protected President Obama. The MSM constantly attack President Trump for making the right decisions. President Trump isn't politically correct. He just makes terrific decisions. I prefer a leader that makes the right decisions frequently over a follower (Biden) who plays nice with others. Democrats want to be liked. Republicans strive to be right.
Posted Saturday, March 14, 2020 7:38 AM
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Changing the federal judiciary
Fred Barnes' article highlights the GOP's strategy for making the federal judiciary more conservative. According to Barnes' article, "Eligible appeals court judges (appointees of Republican presidents, to be specific) are being asked to switch to senior status, a form of semi-retirement that allows them to continue hearing cases but opens their seat for a new nominee. This could create as many as 28 vacancies on the appeals courts."
Utilizing this strategy is smart. There's no sense in not exercising this option. That being said, the activists need to activate and grow Mitch McConnell's majority and get President Trump re-elected so we can transform the federal bench. At some point, a Democrat will get elected president. Eventually, there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate. Pushing that date out further into the future means, potentially, another Supreme Court justice or 2 and 15+ conservative appellate court judges. Those are game-changers.
Democrats are frightened at the possibility of having their policy-making tool of preference, the courts, changed for a generation. Barnes notes that Democrats only have themselves to blame for this situation:
But Democrats have only their former Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to blame. He abolished the filibuster for appeals court nominees in 2013. Even with a thin Republican majority, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has kept his caucus united in approving judges. Were the filibuster alive, conservatives would have to lie about their views to be confirmed.
Mitch McConnell deserves lots of credit for getting tons of judges confirmed but so does Harry Reid. At the time, most pundits thought that Reid wouldn't be foolish enough to eliminate the judicial filibuster. They were wrong. Now, Democrats will pay the price for a generation. Most of the judges getting confirmed are in their 40s, with a small percentage being in their 50s.
McConnell has touted the confirmation of judges by saying that the Senate is in the personnel business. He's right about that in that the Senate is where judges and cabinet secretaries get confirmed. He's virtually guaranteed his re-election by confirming a record amount of judges.
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Posted Saturday, March 14, 2020 10:29 AM
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The importance of learning COVID-19 lessons from children
People have been panicking over the COVID-19 virus for the past 2 weeks, if not longer. The stock market has frequently taken hits, too. The Trump administration has, correctly in my opinion, talked about how the fundamentals of this amazing economy are still strong. Despite those things, it's time to learn from children. If this story doesn't help settle you down, then you're hopeless.
It's a story about a brother and sister here in Minnesota. The boy's given name is Brandon. Brandon's sister's name is Cameron. According to the story, Brandon's mother Sheletta Brundidge, a comedian and mother of four said that "Brandon 'has crippling anxiety because of his autism diagnosis. We watch the news every day and he was watching it and was taking in all the fear and panic...it just made him so scared.'"
Sheletta shared this video with Fox News:
My son Brandon has crippling fear cause of his #autism. His sister taught him a scripture she learned at @FellowshipMiss2 Church to help. Stop letting your fear of #Coronavirus be bigger than your faith in God. Plead The Blood, pray and wash your hands. Amen! pic.twitter.com/R2nnSDo3EA
- Sheletta Brundidge (@ShelettaIsFunny) March 13, 2020
The verse that Miss Cameron taught Brandon is found in II Timothy 1:7 . It says "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." Far too often, people attempt to solve things on their own. If I were king for a day, I'd banish the phrase "God helps those that help themselves."
The truth is that God helps those that trust Him. King Solomon, the wisest and richest man that ever lived, wrote a book known as Proverbs. In chapter 3 of Proverbs, Solomon wrote "Trust in the Lord with all your heart; Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct your path."
In the past 2-3 weeks, people have tried getting by on their own. Solomon instructs us that trusting in the all-powerful God who created the universe is better than trusting in our own instincts. Miss Cameron essentially taught Brandon to trust in the Lord rather than worry about the fear that the world produces daily. In Brandon's world, things went from chaotic to peace-filled in seconds.
It seems to me that we're better off paying attention to Cameron's and Brandon's interaction than if we just buy the world's panic. If you don't do anything else, thank God for giving you insight into His world. Better yet, thank Him for giving you peace that surpasses human understanding just because you asked Him.
Posted Saturday, March 14, 2020 11:52 AM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 15-Mar-20 08:19 AM
Seems to me that "God grant me wisdom" is enough. Just notice that so far this year, the FLU has killed 10,000 Americans, while the Wuhan virus has killed only 352. The media-driven panic is worse than the disease.
