May 12-13, 2020
May 12 02:25 Open the coronavirus floodgates May 12 08:25 Frank Figliuzzi's tea leaves May 12 16:04 Is Whitmer's EO falling apart? May 13 02:26 Properly identifying Joe Biden's Flynn distraction statement May 13 04:02 Hill.TV's Krystal Ball: the death of critical thinking personified May 13 10:38 Dealing with Joe Biden's BS May 13 15:20 Mark Kelly's China difficulties
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Open the coronavirus floodgates
It's long past time for the US to reopen the economy. Dr. Scott Atlas has spoken out against keeping people shut down repeatedly. His logic makes the most sense of any doctor I've heard. Saturday night, he said "There should be no fear and panic anymore. We know that. We know who the virus impacts. We know who to protect. And frankly, it's the same people we should have known from day one, because every third year medical student in the country would have been able to identify that older people with chronic underlying diseases like kidney failure, diabetes, heart failure and people who are immunocompromised are the people to protect instead of just locking down society in a broad, blunt way."
I wish Dr. Atlas would fax this information to Gov. Walz ASAP. Gov. Walz hasn't figured it out yet. He's still pretty much in 'Chicken Little" mode. In today's update, Minnesotans are told to take a defensive posture towards COVID-19. In this interview, Dr. Atlas highlights all the different treatments that haven't happened as a result of statewide shutdowns:
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Do we really want to deprive people of vaccinations, biopsies, cancer treatments, etc. just to stop COVID? That's the price the vulnerable have paid for these Democrats' one-size-fits-all strategies. Do we really think that COVID is that much of a life-threatening virus amongst healthy people? It isn't right to think of COVID as a trivial matter but it isn't as threatening as the MSM, which is filled with Democrats, have portrayed it, either.
Thus far, Republican governors haven't adopted one-size-fits-all strategies, with the possible exception of Ohio's Mike DeWine. That's the purview of the Democrat governors. (Think Walz, Whitmer and J.B. Pritzker.) It's time we got our swagger back. That being said, that swagger, just like after 9/11, doesn't return in the blink of an eyelash. It returns a bit at a time.
It requires paying attention to the CDC's guidelines. It doesn't require paying attention to the draconian orders of governors like Pritzker, Walz and Whitmer. Those orders don't make any sense. This doesn't, either:
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Pritzker is an idiot. His order is filled with contradictory items.
Posted Tuesday, May 12, 2020 2:25 AM
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Frank Figliuzzi's tea leaves
In his analysis article for NBC , retired FBI special agent, Frank Figliuzzi wrote "Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the FBI transitioned from an investigative agency adept at investigating what happened after the fact to an intelligence agency capable of forecasting and preventing harm from happening in the future. Forecasting is a lot easier when there are clear clues. And when it comes to assessing the trap Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump appear to be setting for us, the warning signs are plentiful. We don't need to read tea leaves for this. We only need to review tweets."
It's interesting that Figliuzzi wrote that "Forecasting is a lot easier when there are clear clues." Later, Figliuzzi wrote "Trump is clearly still sensitive about the 2016 election, and especially about concerns that he may not have beaten former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fairly. He therefore has a special interest in undermining accusations of Russian meddling, something he has done since entering the Oval Office. What better way to do this than to flip the script? He didn't have an advantage; in fact, he was the victim."
It's interesting that Figliuzzi is reading tea leaves that don't exist. What is Figliuzzi basing his opinion on that "Trump is clearly still sensitive about the 2016 election, and especially about concerns that he may not have beaten former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fairly ?" In transcript after transcript released last Thursday, the Obama administration's best tea leave readers testified under oath that they couldn't even find a hint of gossip that then-Candidate Trump or anyone associated with his campaign conspired with Russians. While testifying under oath, Jim Clapper said "I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election. That's not to say that there weren't concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence. : But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence."
Isn't that interesting? This is more interesting:
Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice said there was no smoking gun. "To the best of my recollection, there wasn't anything smoking, but there were some things that gave me pause. I don't recall intelligence that I would consider evidence that I saw: conspiracy prior to my departure."
Just where are these tea leaves, Mr. Figliuzzi? President Obama's Director of National Intelligence and National Security Adviser testified under oath that they didn't see anything that came close to being considered evidence of Russian collusion/conspiracy. We know that they searched hard for that proof. We've verified that they really wanted it to be true.
If President Obama's top clue sniffers couldn't find those clues, perhaps it's a good thing that Mr. Figliuzzi retired rather than misread other nonexistent tea leaves. Check out this interview with Brian Williams:
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What's astonishing is that Figliuzzi totally ignored the aforementioned transcripts. The statements speak for themselves, Mr. Figliuzzi. Res ipsa loquitur. Translated, that Latin sentence literally means "the facts speak for themselves." That likely means that Mr. Figliuzzi either is a disgruntled ex-FBI employee who got passed over for a job or he's another Deep State agent sent out to mislead the public. The other possibility is that he's a Deep Stater because he got passed over for a job. This is rich:
I fear the dismissal of the Case against the President's ally, Flynn, at the President's urging is just Step One of the dismantling of the rule of law in this country.
Step Two may be the arrest and prosecution of the President's enemies.
Then we are simply an autocracy.
- Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) May 11, 2020
President Trump is constantly accused of being a dictator by Democrats. They'll never learn. In this interview, Pelosi accused President Trump of wasting time, which led to people dying:
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Dictators are known for taking their time and letting the chips fall where they may. NOT. Whether it's Figliuzzi or Pelosi, Democrats can't quite figure out if he's a dictator, a traitor or someone who's just a lot smarter than they are. I'll go with C.
Posted Tuesday, May 12, 2020 8:25 AM
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Is Whitmer's EO falling apart?
It's just one judge's ruling but Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's executive order just sustained a major hit. This comes "after the Shiawassee County Sheriff said he wouldn't enforce the order." The article read "Karl Manke is ready for customers after a judge denied a temporary restraining order to close the barbershop."
David Kallman, Manke's attorney, said "We're thrilled, yea. The court just denied the TRO request that the attorney general filed earlier today, which means Karl can stay open. And the judge did what we asked, which is if they want to have a hearing, present evidence and try to convince the court that Karl should be shut down, show how the proof. Show that people are actually being harmed."
Later, Manke said this:
I had gone six weeks without a paycheck, with no money coming in. You know, I've been in this business 59 years. I'm entering my 60th now. I'm 77. I've always worked. I've never looked for handouts, I don't even know what they are. I had somebody call me and say why don't you get on food stamps. I don't want food stamps. I want to work.
Manke said that he's surprised by the amount of support he's received:
"I came into this last Monday alone, thinking I'm going to swing in the wind alone," he said, calling the governor's order to keep non-essential businesses closed oppressive and he doesn't need to be mothered by lawmakers. "I cannot believe the support that I've got. It's overwhelming."
Check this video out:
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Just short of 2 minutes into the video, Manke said "I've never seen anything like this at all. I've never seen this type of oppression by a government, not even in the 60s." It was difficult to hear Manke's speech at times because of all the horns honking as they drove past Manke's shop. That's what a backlash forming sounds like. They're mad as hell and they won't take Gov. Whitmer's oppression much longer. We The People should take up this battle cry:
"The government isn't my mother, never has been. It's time for us to take responsibility."
David Kallman highlighted the fact that the Michigan legislature refused to extend "the declaration of emergency", that declaration has lapsed. Since then, Empress Whitmer declared another state of emergency as a way of getting around the legislature's decision. That new declaration is a legal dead man walking since it wasn't authorized by the legislature. As Kallman said, that first declaration ended "according to state law."
Kallman then stated that "If you can walk down the aisle at Walmart, you can walk down the aisle at your church and you can walk down the aisle to Karl's barber shop." Kallman then stated that Manke is following the same protocols (hand-washing, social distancing) that other businesses are practicing. What is Gov. Whitmer's argument in light of those facts? That Walmart is better at hand-washing and social distancing? Her EOs are ridiculous and oppressive. The people know it, too.
It's time for this selective oppression to end. The rule of law, due process and the right to pursue happiness (without endangering others) must mean something. They can't just be words on a piece of paper.
Posted Tuesday, May 12, 2020 4:04 PM
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Properly identifying Joe Biden's Flynn distraction statement
This morning on Good Morning America, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democrat nominee, said something stupid even by Biden's standards. Anyone that's watched him knows how high a standard that is. Biden's been an idiot virtually all his life. First, let's dig into what Biden told Stephanopoulos.
According to the article, Biden was asked "What did you know about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn and was anything improper done?" Biden initially replied "I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn, number 1 and number two, this is all about diversion. This is a game this guy plays all the time."
That's downright insulting. Actually, it's infuriating. For 3+ years, Robert Mueller and 19 hyperpartisan prosecutors and 40 FBI agents did their utmost to impeach President Trump. The upper echelon (singular, not plural) of the FBI, aka Comey, McCabe, Strzok and Page, in addition to former DNI Jim Clapper and Impeachment Committee Chairman Schiff, (D-Calif.), tried their utmost to impeach President Trump.
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When people brought up tidbits of truth that didn't fit with the Democrats' storyline, we were told those were distractions. This isn't a golden oldie but it's certainly proof that Democrats view this as a strategy:
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This nugget is just too good:
ADAM SCHIFF: This is a profound distraction from what Russia did from the issues that we're charged with investigating. It's quite by design and it's very much in combination with the referral of Christopher Steele in a criminal investigation.
Adam Schiff was the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at the time he said that. Schiff hadn't yet turned it into the All-Impeachment-All-the-Time-Committee. Democrats hated President Trump so much that they simply set out to impeach him without any evidence of Treason, Bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Democrats still don't have proof that President Trump committed any crimes. They don't have proof that anyone in the Trump campaign committed a crime worthy of impeachment.
That Vice President Biden would say that the Flynn scandal is a diversionary tactic to distract from the Wuhan Virus is reprehensible. If we hadn't panicked on how to best contain the Wuhan/Chinese Communist Party Virus, the Obama/Biden/Pelosi/Schiff scandal would be the biggest news story since 9/11. Entrapping the incoming national security adviser isn't small potatoes. That's a major civil rights violation. Don't be surprised if major Obama administration figures get sued over this. This isn't the type of thing that an 'I'm sorry. I won't do it again.' will fix.
Sleepy Joe isn't that bright. The worst news for Democrats is that Biden is the Democrats' best option. What's frightening for Democrats is that he's a worse candidate than Hillary. He might be worse than John Kerry, who once served in Vietnam.
Democrats sold out to the AOC/Bernie wing of their party. This November, they'll pay a price for that capitulation. That's why, contrary to Paul Mirengoff's post , there's little chance that President Trump loses to Biden. Further, the more people find out what's in Pelosi's Porkapalooza bill, aka the HEROES Act, the more they'll hate it. Democrats constantly complain about corporate welfare. Why don't Democrats complain about welfare for politicians? They're one of the beneficiaries amongst an brigade of beneficiaries from the HEROES Act. They're far from the lone special interest beneficiaries created by the Democrats. Sen. John Kennedy, (R-LA), put it perfectly in this interview last night with Sean Hannity:
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Posted Wednesday, May 13, 2020 2:26 AM
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Hill.TV's Krystal Ball: the death of critical thinking personified
If anyone personifies the death of critical thinking amongst pundits more than Hill.TV's Krystal Ball, I don't know who it'd be. Obviously, picking Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid or some well-established woman from CNN or MSNBC is the easy pick. Rather than do that, not that that bunch isn't worthy of that 'honor', I'm picking Krystal Ball. Let me explain.
Early in their interview with Stephen Moore, Saagar Enjeti spoke about the difficulties being faced by families as a result of spousal and child abuse, rising opioid addictions, increases in alcoholism rates. That's before talking about the increased numbers of suicides and increased cases of depression. Less than 10 minutes in their interview, Ball went on a rampage. She asked Stephen Moore "Why not stay closed for safety's sake?"
What safety? Without realizing it, Ball argued that we should ignore the threats posed by increased opioid addictions and overdoses, increased spousal and child abuse and other dangerous situations. Ball is so fixated by COVID that she didn't think about all of the other physical or mental problems caused by the Democrats' extended shelter-in-place policies. Just because she isn't thinking about them doesn't mean they don't count.
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Earlier in her rant, Ball criticized capitalism itself, telling Stephen Moore that what he's "proposing is a fundamentally false choice between stay locked down and suffer economically because we've had a fully inadequate response, which you seem to agree with or let's just reopen and everything will just magically go back to normal. What about staying closed for safety's sake?"
That's a childish answer that doesn't deserve a serious reply. Rather than give her a reply based on rock-solid economic principles, Stephen Moore instead turned the debate into a fight. He said "Well, because if we keep our economy locked down for another couple of months, we're going to destroy the economic base of our country. We're gonna have devastation. We're gonna have not 30,000,000 but 50,000,000 unemployed. How many unemployed are you willing to have -- 50-, 60-, 80,000,000 people unemployed? At some point, it doesn't matter how many of these aid programs you pass out of Washington. We're gonna run out of food. We're gonna run out of items in the grocery stores. If you don't have production, you don't have an economy . It's that simple. "
The only way to changing the trajectory of the U.S. economy while protecting the most vulnerable populations is by opening the economy up while enforcing proven guidelines like social distancing and protecting the elderly. If people are willing to properly distance themselves in Walmart, why think they won't properly distance themselves in other stores, too? Why won't they wash their hands frequently in the neighborhood grocery store where they know the owner but they'll wash their hands in big box stores?
Ball got her ass handed to her and she deserved it.
Posted Wednesday, May 13, 2020 4:02 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 14-May-20 11:05 AM
"If anyone personifies the death of critical thinking amongst pundits more than Hill.TV's Krystal Ball, I don't know who it'd be." Helping you Gary, Pete Hegseth.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 14-May-20 10:07 PM
Pete has a brain. Krystal hasn't proven that to me yet.
Dealing with Joe Biden's BS
I'm dealing with Joe Biden's BS op-ed so you won't have to read it. Actually, it's highly likely that Biden didn't write it. I'm not certain that he's capable of stringing 3 consecutive coherent sentences together at this point.
The staffer's op-ed opens by saying "The coronavirus, to date, has taken the lives of more than 79,000 Americans. One of every 5 U.S. workers has filed for unemployment, with the unemployment rate now the highest since the Great Depression. It is an extraordinary moment, the kind that begs for urgent, steady, empathetic, unifying leadership."
Let's deal with the urgency issue first. Just 10 days after the first human-to-human case was reported in the United States, President Trump issued a travel ban with Chine, though he brought home 40 U.S. nationals from China, which he was obligated to do. President Trump's State Department worked tirelessly to get these U.S. nationals home. Upon arriving home, these people were quarantined immediately.
Meanwhile, Urgent Joe Biden criticized the decision :
"We need to lead the way with science, not Donald Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering," he wrote. "He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency."
Where's the urgency, Joe? All I hear is a politician attempting to sound relevant -- and not doing a very good job of it. Next, let's talk about how Andrew Cuomo, New York's Democrat governor, found himself out of bed space and ventilators. President Trump rescued him on both counts. He ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to turn the Javits Center into a 2,900-bed hospital. Then he ordered the U.S. Navy to equip the USNS Comfort for additional bed space. This was expected to take 3-4 weeks. It took the Navy 4 days to properly equip the Comfort and send it to New York Harbor. Meanwhile, that harbor wasn't deep enough to let the ship in so the Army Corps of Engineers went to work and made the harbor deep enough. Again, this was done in "Trump Time", a phrase first coined by Trump Trade Adviser Peter Navarro:
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Then Trump assigned Navarro the task of getting ventilators manufactured:
"In under 11 days, GM sourced materials, converted a manufacturing facility and trained a workforce to build life-saving ventilators in Kokomo, IN."
Meanwhile, the Obama-Biden administration didn't replace the ventilators used during the H1N1 crisis. That crisis happened in 2009. Talk about lacking urgency.
In a crisis, give me a leader who gets the important things done immediately over a man with empathy, whatever that means. President Trump fits that description perfectly. Is he a little rough around the edges? Yup. Does he get the important things done in "Trump Time"? That's his specialty.
The truth is that everyone wants America to reopen as soon as possible - claiming otherwise is completely absurd. Governors from both parties are doing their best to make that happen, but their efforts have been slowed and hampered because they haven't gotten the tools, resources and guidance they need from the federal government to reopen safely and sustainably.
That's BS. Here in Minnesota, the people have dragged Tim Walz kicking and screaming to open the economy just a little. In Michigan and Illinois, Democrat Governors Gretchen Whitmer and J.B. Pritzker are still trying to keep their economies closed. They've been hampered by themselves, not the federal government. That's before talking about Democrat Governors Cuomo and Murphy. They're in a class all of their own.
Biden suffers from Obama Disease. That's when you see things as you want to see them instead of seeing things as they actually are. It isn't lethal but it's crippling.
Posted Wednesday, May 13, 2020 10:38 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 14-May-20 11:03 AM
One thing to credit Biden; he doesn't tweet.
Mark Kelly's China difficulties
This article highlights the difficulties that will soon plague Mark Kelly's senatorial campaign. Running as a pro-gun control Democrat in Arizona is a stiff fight as it is. The article now highlights the fact that Kelly's firm, World View Enterprises, "announced during a visit to Beijing that Tencent had invested an undisclosed sum of money in the Tucson-based space travel venture. In April 2016, as part of a subsequent, $15 million investment round, World View announced that it had received more funds from Tencent, along with three other venture capital firms."
That was then. This is now:
Tencent was already under intense U.S. scrutiny before the COVID-19 world crisis. In addition to the surveillance suspicions, Tencent also sparked a U.S. backlash for suspending its streaming of National Basketball Association games after the Houston Rockets' general manager praised Hong Kong democracy protests last fall.
Now it's radioactive. A recent University of Toronto study found that WeChat has been censoring keywords relating to the COVID-19 outbreak since at least Jan. 1. Several prominent lawmakers in recent weeks have deemed Tencent an arm of the Chinese Communist Party and a threat to U.S. national security. Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley in late April introduced a bill aimed at preventing Chinese espionage by prohibiting U.S. federal employees from conducting official business over platforms run by Tencent, Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese companies and barring U.S. tax dollars from being used for any international contracts with those firms.
It's not just a GOP concern. The United Nations in mid-April backed out of a deal with Tencent to provide videoconferencing and text services at the organization's 75th anniversary after U.S. officials, lawmakers and human rights groups complained. Louis Charbonneau, the U.N. director for Human Rights Watch, called Tencent "an enabler of Chinese government oppression."
Normally, it's 3 strikes and you're out. I'm not certain that it's 2 strikes in this instance. Being anti-gun in Arizona is a difficult challenge by itself. Being supported by the Chinese Communist Party while they're hiding information about the Wuhan Virus isn't positioning yourself well.
Kelly isn't just anybody, either:
Mark Kelly, the former NASA astronaut who commanded the second-to-last space shuttle mission and spent 25 years in the Navy.
Arizonans hate the Chinese Communist Party. Couple that with the fact that Arizona has a significant ex-military population and things get plenty complicated pretty fast. It isn't that this will kill Kelly's candidacy automatically. It's just that I'd consider it another heavy weight for Kelly to carry as he attempts to win a tight Senate race. This ad won't help his cause:
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Posted Wednesday, May 13, 2020 3:20 PM
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