March 26-29, 2020

Mar 26 07:36 Tina Smith's coronavirus lies
Mar 26 15:38 Democrats' partisan trinkets
Mar 26 19:23 Living in transformative times

Mar 27 09:11 Dr. Birx vs. media's scare tactics

Mar 28 11:06 The root of the MSM's problem

Mar 29 13:03 Biden's scare tactics
Mar 29 19:58 Tina Smith's hidden truth

Prior Months: Jan Feb

Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Tina Smith's coronavirus lies

As one of Tina Smith's constituents, I received an email from her this afternoon. Like most of her communications, it was mostly BS. For instance, Tina piled up the partisan BS when she said "As the threat of COVID-19 has expanded, I have participated in a strong effort in Congress to quickly ensure our nation's response rises to meet this national emergency. It is my strong hope that we can continue to work together to address this crisis and its long-term impact on people, their health, their jobs, and the economy."

The structure of the deal was put into place before Sunday. That's when House Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, decided to insert this crap into the bill:






Negotiating Pelosi's Green New Deal and the Democrats' other wish list items out of the bill slowed things down. While Tina Smith did what Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi told her to do, aid to hospitals and families got delayed. It's impossible to "quickly ensure our nation's response" while delaying the bill's passage by delaying the start of the debate of the bill. Sen. Smith should be ashamed of herself. Of course, she isn't the least bit ashamed.
Earlier this month, Congress has passed two wide-ranging packages to begin the nation's response to the coronavirus. My priorities have been to expand testing resources as quickly as possible, and to ensure that our hospitals and health providers-in populated areas, rural communities and small towns-have the resources they need to safely and quickly respond to the surge in the number of people needing care.

Big deal. Those should've been every senator's priorities.

Tina Smith is thoroughly corrupt. Holding up funding for medical supplies during a major pandemic is unforgivable. Holding up funding for medical supplies during a major pandemic to negotiate for funding for the Kennedy Center, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting or some of the other silly stuff Democrats put into the bill is disgusting on steroids.

Finally, it's time to retire Rahm Emanuel's saying that "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste." From now on, that should read "politicians should treat a crisis as a time to act like patriots, not politicians."

Posted Thursday, March 26, 2020 7:36 AM

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Democrats' partisan trinkets

David Catron's article , titled "A Plague of Democratic Partisanship", highlights the Democrats' willingness to delay the benefits of the stimulus plan for purely partisan purposes. Democrats had negotiated in semi-good faith with Republicans while Queen Pelosi vacationed in San Francisco. Saturday night, the queen re-entered DC. Hours later, the bipartisan deal was dead.

In its place, the Queen insisted that the following items be part of the coronavirus emergency stimulus legislation:

  1. Corporate pay statistics by race and race statistics for all corporate boards at companies receiving assistance

  2. Bailing out all current debt of postal service

  3. Required early voting

  4. Required same day voter registration

  5. 10k bailout for student loans

  6. For companies accepting assistance, 1/3 of board members must be chosen by workers

  7. Provisions on official time for union collective bargaining

  8. Full offset of airline emissions by 2025

  9. Greenhouse gas statistics for individual flights

  10. Retirement plans for community newspaper employees

  11. $15 minimum wage at companies receiving assistance

  12. Permanent paid leave at companies receiving assistance


That's just a partial list . At a time when the American people were hurting and some were literally dying, Democrats didn't hesitate to put people's lives at risk for some partisan trinkets. The Democrats' character, or lack thereof, shined through.

Next, ask yourself if that's the type of people you want leading the nation through a crisis. I don't require much time to figure out my answer. That definitely isn't the type of person I want in charge of the nation. Period. John Kennedy nailed it with this summarization:
[Video no longer available]
Amen, Sen. Kennedy. You're exactly right.

Posted Thursday, March 26, 2020 3:38 PM

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Living in transformative times

Anyone who doesn't think that we're living in transformative times hasn't read this post on Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit blog. If you're depressed after a difficult day, read this post. If the coronavirus has you feeling the blues, read this post. After it revives you, which it will, pay it forward. Here's just a little portion of the post:

Restaurants and schools have said, 'we've got kitchens and staff; we can feed the poor kids who used have school lunch.'
NBA basketball players have said, 'Hold our basketballs while we write checks to pay the arena staff.'
Construction companies are saying, 'Here are some high-end masks for medical staff and doctors'.
Distilleries are making sanitizer out of distilling 'heads and tails' which are normally discarded. Nasty shit to drink, but effective sanitizer.
People are tipping grocery check-out clerks and thanking them for taking the risk.
Local, state, and county governments are taking control of everything the feds cannot do. Some are doing it wrong, but for the first time in decades : they're doing it. Federalism is re-emerging, and the smallest unit of government is the individual and the family. This, too, is re-emerging after decades of dormancy.

Have we defeated COVID-19? Nope. Am I confident we will? Yup. Should we still listen to Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx? If you know what's wise, we will.

Back when I worked at Fingerhut, a friend of mine had a great sign in his office. It read "The difficult, we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer." Exactly right. We're Americans. We won the 'War to end All Wars.' Then we won the war after that. We conquered the moon. We built the interstate highway system. Before that, we built the Transcontinental Railroad without GPS. I'm not certain that they had maps back then.

This is part of what I call the American DNA. It starts with my friend's sign in his office. If we can dream it, we can build it. If we can build it, we can perfect it. President Obama didn't understand the underlying principle behind American exceptionalism. President Trump does. He came from the generation that was taught by the greatest generation. Thank God for that minor miracle.

Posted Thursday, March 26, 2020 7:23 PM

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Dr. Birx vs. media's scare tactics

Dr. Deborah Birx is a natural treasure. She's the voice of calm expertise in a time of panic. Yesterday, Dr. Birx addressed the media on the point of computer models that the media is citing.

In her presentation, Dr. Birx said "I'm sure you have seen the recent report out of the U.K. about them adjusting completely their needs. This is really quite important. If you remember, that was the report that says there would be 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and 2.2 million deaths in the United States. They've adjusted that number in the U.K. to 20,000. Half a million to 20,000."

A few days ago, this report was used to frighten people. The implication at the time was that President Trump wasn't doing a good job of eliminating the virus. Dr. Birx continued, saying:

Models are models. We are -- there is enough data of the real experience with the coronavirus on the ground to really make these predictions much more sound. So when people start talking about 20% of a population getting infected, it's very scary, but we don't have data that matches that based on our experience.

And the situation about ventilators. We are reassured in meeting with our colleagues in New York that there are still I.C.U. Beds remaining and still significant, over 1,000 or 2,000 ventilators that have not been utilized.

The media should devote infinitely more time on reporting actual statistics than on these frightening and misleading computer models. As Dr. Birx just showed, the model wasn't accurate. Finally, Dr. Birx finished by saying this:

Please for the reassurance of people around the world, to wake up this morning and look at people talking about creating DNR situations, Do Not Resuscitate situations for patients, there is no situation in the United States right now that warrants that kind of discussion. You can be thinking about it in the hospital. Certainly, hospitals talk about this on a daily basis, but to say that to the American people and make the implication that when they need a hospital bed it's not going to be there or a ventilator, it's not going to be there, we don't have evidence of that.

Almost 3:30 into this video, Dr. Birx gets into that presentation:
[Video no longer available]
It's time for the media to stop frightening people. It's time for them to start reporting.

Posted Friday, March 27, 2020 9:11 AM

Comment 1 by Chad Q at 27-Mar-20 06:44 PM
Trying to predict the infection and death rates is no different than predicting temperature rises for global warming. If you input bad data, you get bad results. Only difference is there's really people getting infected and dying.

The root of the MSM's problem

The Media wing of the Democrat Party, aka the MSM, aka the Hate Trump Media, can't make up their minds. When President Trump shut down daily press briefings, the MSM insisted that they reopen the daily briefings. Instead, President Trump invited the MSM into cabinet meetings and meetings with heads of state.

Another popular option was taking questions on his way to Marine One. During these press availabilities, President Trump frequently would take 30-45 minutes of questions. People loved these availabilities because they'd get real information. President Trump wouldn't just explain what he did but he'd explain why he made a decision. When reporters tried playing gotcha with him, things didn't turn out well for the journalist:
[Video no longer available]
The average American doesn't buy that calling a virus that started in China is racist. The woman who asked the question isn't really a reporter. She's more of a grandstander.

Mollie Hemingway's recent article highlights the dilemma that Democrats are in:

When polls showed that President Donald Trump was receiving unusually high marks for his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, the first stage of grief the media went through was denial:


The MSM's problem isn't whether they should televise the daily coronavirus briefings. The MSM's biggest problem is that the American people appreciate getting such a comprehensive briefing on this crisis.

The MSM is supposed to be in the information dissemination industry. The truth is that the MSM is often in the pundit/opinion-giving industry. That would explain this:

Things got worse when additional polls showed Trump receiving high ratings at the same time that the media received poor ratings. A brand new Gallup study - 'Coronavirus Response: Hospitals Rated Best, News Media Worst' - was particularly bad news. When Americans were asked about nine different institutions and political leaders, they gave majority approval to all but the media. President Trump has a 22-point net approval rating while the media's net approval rating was negative 11 points. The RealClearPolitics approval average for Trump was its highest during his entire presidency.

The Democrats' biggest crisis isn't that they're televising the briefings. It's that people don't trust the media. That's because the MSM is in the pundit/opinion-giving industry when they're supposed to be in the information dispensing industry. Getting rid of jackasses like Jim Acosta and replacing them with them with people like Catherine Herridge, Sharyl Attkisson or Lara Logan would go a long ways towards repairing the damage done by the grandstanders.

Posted Saturday, March 28, 2020 11:06 AM

Comment 1 by Chad Q at 29-Mar-20 07:34 AM
NPR Seattle (and I'm sure more to follow) is refusing to broadcast the breifings. I could be wrong but aren't they along with all the tree hugging and hippie crap NPR/PR radio stations across the US solely taxpayer funded? If that's the case, pull their funding and let them find their own source of funding like real radio stations have to do.

Biden's scare tactics

Joe Biden's staff must've written this op-ed on life after COVID-19 for him. It's impossible to picture him empathizing with young people like that. In the op-ed, Biden wrote about the need for social distancing and how life wasn't fair to young people. Then he spoke to people aged "20-54."

But based on recent data from the Centers for Disease Control, it's also clear that adults of all ages, including younger people, need to practice social distancing and self-isolating for their own personal protection. Of the cases in the U.S. thus far, almost 40 percent of COVID-19 infections that required hospitalization were among people aged 20-54.

That statistic is worthless by itself. How many of those young people who were hospitalized had compromised immune systems? What percent of those that were hospitalized were near the upper end of that age range? A 20-year-old's immune system isn't as compromised as a 54-year-old's immune system.

That paragraph is mostly there to frighten people. It isn't there to inform people. To inform people, there needs to be greater specificity. That's missing from Biden's op-ed. What isn't missing from Biden's op-ed are scare tactics:

People under the age of 60 are not immune to coronavirus. Young people are not assured to only experience a mild case if you catch it. There are no guarantees that you will not die from it. Increasingly, we are hearing heart-rending stories of deaths from people in their 20s and 30s.

That's why we all have to follow the CDC guidelines to minimize the risk of our own exposure to the virus, and to slow its spread to others. Wash your hands. Stay at least six feet away from other people at all times. And yes, stay home. Do it for yourself. Do it for your family and neighbors. Do it to save the lives of those you've never met.

Thanks, Joe. We've been doing that for over a month. Leadership is about telling us what we need to do a month+ after we need to do it.

This is like Sleepy Joe accusing President Trump of xenophobia when President Trump shut down travel with China on January 31. According to Dr. Fauci, that decision saved lives and bought the US time. Next, Biden plays the con-job card:

This virus is already threatening economic impacts that could rival the Great Depression, and we are going to rely on the energy, the innovative spirit, and boundless capacity of our young people to help rebuild our economy when it's over. We're going to have to figure out how to get more help to folks who were left out of this bill. For example, I support forgiving at least $10,000 in student loan debt per person right now to provide meaningful relief. It's the responsibility of all those in Congress to act now to ensure that our young people get a fair shot.

It isn't just young people who have the gift of innovation. Smart people of all ages participate in innovation. What's required is capitalism and competition.

A few Fridays ago, President Trump brought together CEOs of major companies in the Rose Garden at the White House to talk about ramping up testing for COVID-19. CEOs and presidents of companies like CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Target and other companies pledged to donate parts of their parking lots to do drive-through testing so they didn't need to tie up space in clinics. About 15 minutes into this video, multiple CEOs spoke about their companies' contributions:
[Video no longer available]
In other words, President Trump did 2 weeks ago what Joe Biden is just thinking about today. In a crisis, time matters. Peter Navarro has coined a new phrase that's appropriate for this. He's talked about doing things at "Trump time." In other words, getting things done faster than government is used to moving. Amen to that.

Let's implement Trump time. Let's vanquish Biden's scare tactics.

Posted Sunday, March 29, 2020 1:03 PM

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Tina Smith's hidden truth

This afternoon, I received another email from Tina Smith. Apparently, she's like other Democrats in that she doesn't intend on telling me the whole truth with regard to the relief package that Steve Mnuchin and Mitch McConnell negotiated with Chuck Schumer and signed by President Trump. It's apparent that she won't tell the whole truth based on this paragraph from her email:
Minnesota and the nation are facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis in the coronavirus pandemic. Thankfully, with a new bipartisan assistance package signed into law Friday, help is on the way. It will provide significant and urgently-needed help for our health care system, families and small businesses. Minnesotans are coming together to respond to this economic and public health catastrophe. Soon, families will see direct financial help, local businesses will find a lifeline, and our heroic health care workers will know we have their backs. This pandemic will touch all of us, and this effort is a major step forward in our country's response. There will be more work to do, and I'll keep working to get help to people in Minnesota and across the country as quickly as possible.

Notice what isn't included in Tina Smith's email. What isn't included is the fact that Tina Smith filibustered this "significant and urgently-needed help for our health care system, families and small businesses." Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar and the 45 other Senate Democrats filibustered this bill in an attempt to force Republicans into including such coronavirus-fighting provisions like 100% forgiveness of Post Office debt, required early voting in states, required same day voter registration, retirement plans for community newspaper employees, $15 minimum wage at companies receiving assistance, $30,000,000 for the Kennedy Center in DC, major provisions of the Green New Deal and permanent paid leave at companies receiving assistance.

Kevin McCarthy is right. History won't treat the Democrats kind in this chapter:
[Video no longer available]
Why did Tina Smith delay for a whole week $140,000,000,000 to the hospitals for personal protection equipment, ventilators and other urgently needed supplies? Why did her fellow Democrats join with her in withholding these vitally important supplies? Last week, Tina Smith was the picture of partisan bickering. This week, Tina Smith is painting herself as the portrait of bipartisanship.

Last week, the real Tina Smith filibustered urgently-needed medical supplies that were needed to save lives. This week, the phony Tina Smith pretends to care about the lives that the coronavirus is attacking. Last week, enacting the Green New Deal, forgiving Post Office debt and requiring same-day voter registration were Tina Smith's highest priorities.

Nothing changed -- except the side of her face she's talking out of. Then again, that's typical Tina.

Posted Sunday, March 29, 2020 7:58 PM

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