May 14-17, 2020
May 14 01:23 Is this Kevin McCarthy's red wave? May 14 07:10 Democrat Tony Evers' chaos May 14 16:34 CNN's fake news on COVID May 15 10:00 Legitimate unmasking vs. illegitimate unmasking explained May 15 11:26 Pelosi's priorities: bail out PEU pensions, spend money foolishly May 16 09:14 The definition of liberty May 16 10:23 Ordinary death vs. extraordinary death, Part II May 16 13:53 Wuhan Virus, Cuomo, Whitmer vs. DeSantis, Kemp edition May 17 10:31 Agenda Media in action
Prior Years:
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
Is this Kevin McCarthy's red wave?
Tuesday night, Mike Garcia was predicted to lose the special election in California's 25th District. Mollie Hemingway's article tells a different story. Mike Garcia didn't just win the special election. He won by a lopsided margin.
This isn't good news for Democrats. First, let's stipulate that special elections often have weird turnouts. With that stipulated, though, let's get to the important part. Kevin McCarthy is smiling because, as he told Sean Hannity tonight, there are 42 seats that are rated better than the seat Garcia just re-flipped. Republicans only need to flip 17 more seats in 2020 to retake the majority.
[Video no longer available]
Earlier this week, I wrote that the massive Trump army didn't disappear during the pandemic. Let's be clear about something. Leader McCarthy spoke about the robust ballot-harvesting operation that happened in this special election -- on the GOP side. If that muscle shows up in November, which I predict is likely, then it's virtually certain that Queen Pelosi will have to relinquish her Speaker's Gavel for a second time. This time, it will have been after just a single term as Speaker.
There's another thing we should be clear about. If we don't make retaking the House a high priority, then tyrants will have chairmen's gavels. Think about how devastating it'd be with Nadler, Schiff, AOC and Maxine Waters with gavels. But I digress. Here's what Ms. Hemingway wrote:
The case made by Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich was simple: Supposedly Americans strongly prefer Biden and Democrats over Trump and Republicans, and they are particularly upset with Trump and other Republicans' attempts to reopen the country as the global Coronavirus pandemic rages.
'On Tuesday, we'll get a taste of whether Democrats' electoral advantage on paper will hold up in practice, as California and Wisconsin hold special elections for two vacant congressional seats. The main event is in the California 25th Congressional District, a bellwether seat in the north Los Angeles suburbs, where both parties see a chance to add to their ranks in the House. But if Democrats are also competitive in the quickly reddening, rural Wisconsin 7th Congressional District, it could signal another blue wave in the fall,' they argued.
That "blue wave" crashed in Wisconsin :
Trump won Wisconsin by less than a point, but carried the district by 20 points, in 2016. Tiffany's win over Zunker was about 6 points less than that, based on preliminary results. Tiffany rejected Democrats' argument that the smaller margin was a sign that Trump's support was waning. " Any time you lose by 14 points, I don't think that's a moral victory ," Tiffany said. "This is a decisive victory here."
I'd totally agree with both points. I think Democrats are misreading things. While President Trump is working with any governor that asks for the federal government's help, Queen Pelosi keeps delaying bills that've put small businesses out of businesses. Democrats apparently haven't noticed that people don't like the draconian measures put in place by tyrants like Illinois's J.B. Pritzker, Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania's Tom Wolf. If that trio of Democrat governors were up for re-election this fall, I'd bet heavily that, at minimum, 2 of the 3 would lose.
This is funny:
It's almost like shutting down the economy, closing the beaches, crushing small businesses, violating religious liberty & filling skate parks with sand isn't terribly popular, even in California.... https://t.co/Ml34Ueh8pT
- Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 13, 2020
To steal a line from the original A-Team, "God, I love it when a plan comes together."
Posted Thursday, May 14, 2020 1:23 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 14-May-20 11:00 AM
Red Tide.
Democrat Tony Evers' chaos
Tony Evers, Wisconsin's Democrat governor, is upset with the Wisconsin Supreme Court's ruling on Evers' Wuhan Virus executive order. After the Supreme Court ruled against Gov. Evers' EO, Gov. Evers said "Republican legislators convinced four members of the Supreme Court to throw the state into chaos. Republicans own that chaos."
That's an incomprehensible statement considering what's been happening in Wisconsin. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's reporting "The ruling immediately lifts all restrictions on businesses and gatherings imposed by the administration's order but keeps in place the closure of schools until fall. It comes after Evers had already begun lifting some restrictions because the spread of the virus has slowed for now . "
This is what makes Gov. Evers' statement that much stranger:
To put any new limits in place, the Democratic governor and Republican-controlled Legislature will be forced to work together to deal with the ebbs and flows of the outbreak - something the two sides have rarely been able to achieve before.
The horror of it all. Evers thinks that it's the apocalypse if he has to work with -- gasp!?! -- Republicans? I can feel ice forming in Hades as I type.
I thought that J.B. Pritzker, Illinois's Democrat governor, was a drama queen. I'm not certain that Evers shouldn't fit into that same category.
[Video no longer available]
In less than a minute, Gov. Evers said that 'Wisconsin people aren't idiots. They'll do the right thing.' then says that those same people have been thrown into chaos. It doesn't work that way, Gov. Evers. Either they're smart and they make good decisions or they're idiots and they're prone to creating chaos. It isn't both.
Gov. Evers, the court has ruled. You can whine like you did in this interview or you can work with Republicans. Wisconsin elected you to govern, not to go on MSNBC and play a Democrat drama queen. It's time you grew up. If your ideas are worthwhile, Republicans will work with you. If they aren't, then they don't deserve support. It's just that simple.
Posted Thursday, May 14, 2020 7:10 AM
No comments.
CNN's fake news on COVID
This CNN fake news article appears to be built more on wishful thinking than on reality. It says that "More than 82,000 Americans have died of coronavirus as of Tuesday. A top model now forecasts that 147,000 Americans will lose their lives by August. Millions are out of work. And the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is warning that reopening the country too early could have serious consequences. Which is all to say that the news is not good for President Trump. Death and despair threaten to swallow his reelection hopes. A Tuesday CNN poll found that most Americans (54%) believe the US gov't is doing a poor job preventing the spread of the virus. And a majority (52%) still think the worst is on the horizon."
That same poll showed President Trump leading in the battleground states by 7 points against VP Biden. Not in that poll is the fact that 2 Republicans won special elections Tuesday night. Mike Garcia won by 12 points in California. When Tom Tiffany won in Wisconsin's 7th District by 14 points, Democrats insisted that represented a moral victory for Democrats because Trump won that district by 20 points in 2016. As Tiffany said, losing by 14 points isn't a moral victory. This is rich:
Major news organizations are reflecting this grim reality with clear-eyed reporting, bold headlines, and historic front pages. So what is Trump, Fox News and the right-wing media machine doing? They're constructing a separate alternate reality to keep their fans distracted from the news and outraged at the long-standing villains in the right-wing media universe. The general idea is that President Obama and others improperly used the levers of gov't to conspire against Trump to win the 2016 election, with the "deep-state" later working to kneecap him when he was in office.
This isn't an "alternate reality." It's just reality. The transcripts speak for themselves. Jim Clapper said under oath that he didn't find "any direct empirical evidence" that President Trump or anyone in his campaign conspired with Russians. In fact, Fake News CNN and MSDNC haven't talked much about the 63,000 pages of transcripts. Is that because those transcripts show that all 53 witnesses testified that they didn't have any evidence of Trump-Russian collusion? Trey Gowdy said that he asked every witness that testified if they'd heard unsubstantiated rumors of Trump-Russia collusion. He even drew a blank on that. That's what happens when political operatives attempt a coup against a duly elected president that the FBI hates. (Remember the Strzok-Page texts about the insurance policy.) These weren't unbiased FBI agents. They were Democrat operatives. If you disagree, tell me the difference between Peter Strzok and Marie Harf.
This isn't a wild conspiracy theory. The definition of theory is "a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation , in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact." These statements aren't conjecture. They're stated facts. Most importantly, they're stated facts in a case where the Obama intel community improperly surveilled Carter Page and other Trump advisers.
When a government throws the rules out the window, which is what the Obama administration did, to surveil American citizens, it's a huge deal. The Obama administration didn't get a warrant to unmask Gen. Flynn. Surveilling American citizens without a warrant is a violation of that person's Fourth Amendment rights. That isn't a distraction. That's a major crisis. Cases can get thrown out when the government violates a person's civil rights. If a person isn't read their Miranda Rights, all the information gathered from that interview is inadmissible.
That CNN thinks that violating Americans' civil rights isn't a big deal is disturbing. Then there's this:
Over the past few days, they've started hyping the supposed scandal as if it really was, in fact, worse than Watergate. Coverage is all over Fox News' programming, covered by both the supposed "straight news" anchors to the opinion commentators like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham. As WaPo's Phillip Bump noted earlier this week, mentions of Michael Flynn, who plays a central role in all of this, have surpassed mentions of the coronavirus on Fox News in recent days.
The Wuhan Virus isn't the threat to humanity that the press has insinuated. When a government improperly surveils the opposition party's presidential candidate based on gossip, that's a powder keg waiting to blow.
What does CNN think of the fact that the Obama administration surveilled Trump campaign advisers without proper predication? Would they scream bloody murder if that happened with Hillary instead of Trump?
Posted Thursday, May 14, 2020 4:34 PM
No comments.
Legitimate unmasking vs. illegitimate unmasking explained
John Solomon's article goes a long ways towards explaining the difference between legitimate unmasking requests and illegitimate unmasking requests. By now, Washington, DC, is awash with the Democrats' spin on why the Flynn unmasking wasn't a big deal. It's a new version of 'no big deal, just keep moving.' That isn't the truth. This is a big deal.
For instance, Solomon explained that "If a Treasury official like Raskin or the U.N. ambassador requested the unmasking because they were trying to deal with a foreign official confused by U.S. policy during the transition, that likely would be deemed a lawful intelligence purpose. But if an official requested the information because they personally did not like the incoming Trump administration or wanted to thwart Flynn during the transition through leaking or other means, it could be deemed an act against a political adversary and a misuse of unmasking."
According to this article , "The first request appears to have been made as part of a report on Nov. 30, 2016. Along with Biden, other Obama administration officials listed are Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper." That's long before the Flynn-Kislyak call. The Flynn-Kislyak call happened in late December.
A final question for the investigators resides in the policy question about whether unmasking has become too easy to do and therefore infringes on Americans privacy, specifically the Constitution's 4th Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure. On that front, there are already troubling revelations. Power, whose name was invoked for hundreds of unmasking requests, testified to Congress she did not make most of those requests attributed to her. That suggests some dangerous looseness in the unmasking system.
The political people who requested these unmaskings haven't earned the benefit of the doubt. They each have a history of dishonesty.
[Video no longer available]
It's worth noting that Solomon said that Flynn isn't the only member of the Trump team that the Obama administration unmasked. I suspect that there's a closet of shoes left to drop on this. It might not be an Imelda Marcos-sized shoe closet but it's still a shoe closet.
Posted Friday, May 15, 2020 10:00 AM
No comments.
Pelosi's priorities: bail out PEU pensions, spend money foolishly
Based on the HEROES Act, it's apparent that Nancy Pelosi's highest priorities are paying off progressive special interest groups and gaining power . Senate Republicans should offer a delete-all amendment to the bill when it gets to the Senate. In fact, they should send the bill to the proper committees of jurisdiction for a proper mark-up.
In that mark-up, they should strip out provisions that would send money to lobbying organizations. Fox Business Network's David Asman pointed to a provision in the Democrats' bill that would spend money "on 501(c)(6) organizations with less than 300 employees." Asman then noted that many lobbying firms are registered as 501(c)(6) organizations. Then he noted that none of those organizations have 300 or more employees.
Later, Asman pointed out that the HEROES Act has money in it for "associations that represent associations." There's a provision in the Democrats' HEROES Act that would give the federal government control of federal elections while taking that authority away from local governments. That's the first step to making mail-in ballots the law of the land.
These are just some of the disgusting provisions in the Democrats' bailout bill.
Pelosi noted that governors across the country are "planning their budgets," and could be forced to "cut services and/or raise taxes." "The Congress of the United States must honor its responsibility to the American people to lessen the blow of the coronavirus by making the serious investment of The Heroes Act to our state, local, tribal and territorial governments," she wrote. "The plan that we are voting on today will make a tremendous difference not only in the budgets of the states but in the lives of the American people: their public health, the education of our children, the sanitation so important to defeating the virus, with the support of so many essential workers."
It would bail out public employee unions pension funds. No thanks with that. The Democrats' bill would spend money on local government aid, aka LGA. That doesn't buy down property taxes, like Democrats in Minnesota dishonestly insist. Instead, that money is used to pay for stupid things like artistic drinking fountains. (Minneapolis did that about a decade ago. Back then, they spent $500,000 on 8 artistic drinking fountains.)
Those cities have spent money on other idiotic things, too. Minneapolis cut police officers and firefighters but bragged about keeping their bike trail coordinator on the payroll. Rather than spending money foolishly on these types of things, We The People should force cities and counties to spend money on core functions first before allowing them to spend a penny on artistic drinking fountains and bike trail coordinators. If they have to change their charter to tie the hands of their city councilmembers, that's fine. I'm totally ok with We The People micromanaging city government. About 7 minutes into this video, Kellyanne Conway positively torches Pelosi:
[Video no longer available]
Posted Friday, May 15, 2020 11:26 AM
No comments.
The definition of liberty
Marcie Bianco intended to lecture Americans throughout this op-ed . She tried lecturing us unsophisticated brutes from the Heartland when she wrote "liberty does not mean what you think it means." Actually, Marcie, I think it's you that doesn't understand what liberty is.
In the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence , the men who won our liberty wrote "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights , that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
In Marcie's words, "Liberty is a type of freedom defined and limited by civil society. It is not an unrestrained, unchecked license to do whatever one desires. Rather, liberty is a right constituted by the society - or, here, nation - one lives in."
While it isn't unreasonable to think that liberties are unlimited, it is unreasonable to think that liberty is defined only by society. While Bianco cites the Declaration of Independence, she wrote this:
And yet, as the quarantine protests make clear, a popular yet factually and legally inaccurate sentiment has infected the minds of many Americans. To paraphrase, it goes something like this: "This is America, and I am free to do whatever I want!"
That's offensive. That isn't what protesters have said. They've protested against tyrants like J.B. Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer, Democrats who insist that it's logical to say that it's ok to shop at Walmart but that it's dangerous to shop at a neighborhood hardware store. On the bright side, at least Democrats are accepting Walmart a little.
The belief that personal freedom is more valuable than the common good factors heavily in right-wing logic. And it has, particularly in the 21st century, been the strategic linchpin of right-wing efforts to squash social and economic justice movements, particularly through race-baiting, xenophobic rhetoric. Such rhetoric, which we are seeing starting to creep into anti-quarantine protests, is designed to stoke the fear of oppression in white American society.
I've watched tons of these protests. I don't know what the hell she's talking about. The first couple of protests were held in cars . I'd love hearing Ms. Bianco explain when she heard "xenophobic rhetoric." Better yet, I'd love finding out which protests she attended where she heard xenophobic rhetoric. It's quite possible that she's assuming things that she doesn't have proof for. Where is the xenophobic rhetoric at Karl Manke's reopening?
[Video no longer available]
The day after Manke reopened, vindictive Democrat Michigan Gov. Gretchen 'The Witch' Whitmer revoked Karl Manke's license. Marcie, I'd love hearing you explain how The Witch's vindictive action is a good-faith attempt at restoring Karl Manke's liberty. It's time to write Ms. Bianco's article off as the rantings of a spoiled progressive fascist.
Posted Saturday, May 16, 2020 9:14 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 19-May-20 03:29 PM
An aspect of liberty is a woman having control of her body.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 19-May-20 05:39 PM
An aspect of liberty is a woman having control of her body.That's true unless when that woman wants to return to work. Then her body belongs to dirtbags like de Blasio, Cuomo, Garcetti and Whitmer.
Ordinary death vs. extraordinary death, Part II
Why the Concern for Death Now But Not When Death Rates began to Increase?
By John W. Palmer
A month ago I expressed concern regarding the extra-ordinary treatment the nuevo corona virus, that reportedly came from Wuhan China was receiving by writing an essay tittle 'Ordinary Death v. Extra Ordinary Death'. In concluding that essay I made a plea for a change in reporting death. Here are the concluding sentences from the essay:
Hopefully, a positive side effect of COVID-19 can be renewed interest in primary prevention of the leading causes of death. We can't eliminate death but we can take actions to delay its appearance. Perhaps, if in addition to the daily posting of COVID-19 cases and death, everyone will start to post the ongoing count for the ordinary deaths.
My plea went unheeded. Now there is widespread reporting of the negative impact of the mitigations being demand by government of?cials. That negative impact came close to home late last week when I received a prayer request for a friend. Here is that request:
Dear Recites and Prayer Warriors, I am having an emergency ablation for uncontrollable a?b of my heart tomorrow morning @ 7:00 a.m. @ the VA in Minneapolis. I am praying for success because of Coronus 19. The procedure was to have been done earlier but got set back and now has gotten out of hand.
Fortunately my friend survived and is now recuperating. Unfortunately, not everyone has been so fortunate. The Daily Beast reported that "Amid social distancing, authorities nationwide are reporting a surge in fatal opioid overdoses. Addiction and recovery advocates say the U.S. is now battling two epidemics at once. In Franklin County, Ohio, for example, the coroner is warning residents of a continued spike in drug deaths, including six on April 24. One week before, the coroner announced that ?ve people died in a span of 12 hours. In February, overdoses were so prevalent the coroner said she might need a temporary morgue to handle the deluge. Montgomery County, Ohio - which is home to Dayton and was considered the country's overdose capital in 2017 - is reporting a 50 percent jump in overdoses over last year. Indeed, authorities in counties across Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York are also reporting rises in overdoses during the COVID-19 crisis."
Then, in this recent Wall Street Journal article , this was reported:
Mental-health crisis hotlines are reporting spikes in calls. According to Express Scripts, anti-anxiety prescriptions increased by a third between mid-February and mid-March. Many in despair will probably turn to alcohol or narcotics. CVS executives warned this week that delayed care could lead to a surge of non-coronavirus related health problems.
Next is this from Fox News :
Things have gotten so bad that the American Heart Association joined seven other medical groups to remind people to call 911 and go to the hospital if they fear they've had a heart attack or stroke. Interruptions of medical care are taking their toll on patients. Some doctors have postponed surgeries aimed at addressing early-stage cancer. The longer these "elective" surgeries are postponed, the more people suffer. Patients in need of treatment aren't the only ones at risk. The COVID-19 lockdown could lead to 22 million canceled or delayed tests for ?ve common cancers by June, according to a new report by the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. This reduction in testing could lead to 80,000 missed cancer diagnoses.
The same report found that colonoscopies dropped 90 percent between February and April; mammograms dropped 87 percent. New visits for cancer patients declined nearly 40 percent over the same period, while cancellations and no-shows nearly doubled.
In her opinion column , Liz Peek in her opinion column cited information documenting statistics on the lock down's impact on mental health:
Deaths by suicide and because of alcoholism or drug abuse sparked by the isolation measures are no longer matters of speculation; in March and April EMT calls for drug overdoses and suicides in Milwaukee, for instance, rose 54 percent and 80 percent, respectively, compared with the year before.
Finally, Reed Abelson writing in the New York Times on May 5, 2020 in an article titled 'Doctors Without Patients: 'Our Waiting Rooms Are Like Ghost Towns' another view on the lockdowns impact:
Some doctors estimate that the closure of hospitals to non-coronavirus cases and the reluctance of patients to burden 911 have increased mortality as much as the virus. The global depression will devastate life expectancies in the less-developed world. Overdose deaths and suicides brought on by joblessness and loss of hope will rise, as more and more businesses fold permanently.
With no change in how death is being reported, with the myopic focus on that new virus and with the emerging concerns that the treatment might be worse than the disease I decided to examine historic death rates and annual deaths in Minnesota. At this writing about 663 COVID-19 related deaths have been recorded in Minnesota. That means with a little over a month left in the reporting year COVID-19 related deaths look like they may move into the top ten causes of death in Minnesota. The 10th leading cause of death in Minnesota is suicide. In the most recent year for which data are available (2018) suicides accounted for 737 deaths.
In order to examine COVID-19 related death in the big picture of death in Minnesota the following data from the Minnesota Department of Health's 'Summary of Death 2018'. Table 1 reports the total number of deaths and the death rate per 1000 persons by year from 2005-2018 and for 1950-2004 deaths and death rate per 1000 are reported every ?ve years. No death rate per 1000 was reported for 1985.
The total number of deaths per year have increased from 1950 to 2018. The rate of increase in the total number of deaths has been accelerating since 2006 reaching the highest recorded number on record (44,730) in 2018. From 1950-2018, the lowest number of deaths in a year occurred in 1950 (27,897)( see Table 1 and the graph titled Deaths by Year).
From 1950 to 2018, the total number of deaths in Minnesota increased by 60%. However, using simple counts for examining changes in an event over time can be very deceiving. It is clear that the number of deaths in a year is related to the population at risk to die in that year needs to be accounted for. To control for variation in the population at risk, a comparison of death rate per 1000 persons is preferred over simple counts since rates can be compared in an apples to apples approach.
The scatterplot titled Death Rate by Year illustrates the trend in death rate in Minnesota from 1950 to 2018. The highest (9.4) death rate per 1000 Minnesotans occurred in 1950. Death rates declined consistently from 1950 to 2007 when the lowest (7.1 per 1000) death rate was recorded. The 57 year decline is a 24% reduction in the death rate. That meant the chance of dying in a given year was 24% lower in 2007 than in 1950.
The downward trend ended in 2008 when the death rate per 1000 went from 7.1 to 7.4. Annual death rates have consistently increased from the low of 7.1 recorded in 2007 to the contemporary high of 8.0. This was a 12.6% in eleven years. If that rate of increase continues the death rate per 1000 Minnesota's could reach 8.2 per 1000 this year. Independent of the Covid-19 outbreak the rate of death has been increasing.
With all the interest in preventing death the COVID-19 outbreak is generating why has the accelerating and troubling trend toward higher and higher death rates been ignored? Clearly the trend has nothing to do with the COVID virus since the rate increase predates COVID-19 by over a decade. Perhaps it's a case of ordinary events not being news?
With it becoming increasingly obvious that death related to the virus is not going to signi?cantly increase death in Minnesota and probably the death rate this year in Minnesota and the state and nation opening for business one good outcome from the outbreak might be a new found concern for increasing death rates in Minnesota and the USA.
For the good outcome to be realized people are going to need to be presented with the facts concerning why deaths and the death rate are increasing. Then they need to be given direction on speci?c behaviors with high potential to prevent deaths. If attention shifts away from death and reporting on death returns to relying on obituaries not linked to the cause of death nothing will change and the death rate will continue to climb higher and more and more deaths will occur each year in Minnesota.
You have heard it said: Don't let a crisis be wasted. No matter the cause or true magnitude of the most recent viral outbreak let's hope we all wake up to the need to manage risks and engage in behaviors that reduce the probability of death. Ignoring the upward trend in both the number of deaths and the death rate until the next epidemic caused by some novel disease wastes an opportunity to enhance life for many Minnesotans. It is past time to include consideration of ordinary death whenever the new cause of death is discussed. Improving people's behavior with regard to the leading causes of death in Minnesota probably has a greater chance of reducing both the number and rate of death in Minnesota.
With over 18,000 deaths per year caused by cancer and heart disease a 5% reduction in these two causes of death will save more lives than all of the cover death this year. With the ten leading causes of death in Minnesota accounting for over 30,000 deaths per year it would only take a 3% reduction in these causes to save as many lives as lost to COVID this year.
Finally, if behavior changes cut the number of COVID-related deaths along with a new focus on the other contributors to death in Minnesota many more people's lives will be save than continuing a myopic view of death in Minnesota. I hope Minnesotans will make the behavior changes needed to reduce death from all causes and stop focusing almost exclusively on the new kid on the block.
Author's note: As this essay was nearly complete this important commentary was published by the Wall Street Journal: Medical Lockdown Will Cause a Disease Surge Patients who are sick with conditions other than Covid-19 aren't seeking screening and treatment. By Jeff LeBenger and Mike Meyer May 11, 2020 6:12 pm ET.
John W. Palmer, Ph.D. is a retired professor of health and safety. He can be reached via email at palmertss@cloudnet.com
Posted Saturday, May 16, 2020 10:23 AM
No comments.
Wuhan Virus, Cuomo, Whitmer vs. DeSantis, Kemp edition
When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp reopened Georgia's economy on April 24, pundits galore criticized him. Kemp was even criticized by President Trump and Sean Hannity. Almost a month later, those pundits are lucky that they aren't dining on crow.
On April 20, former journalist Ron Fournier urged readers on Twitter to "mark this day" and wrote that "two and three weeks from now, the Georgia death toll is blood on [Kemp's] hands."
Fournier isn't the only pundit eating crow:
"Atlantic" writer Amanda Mull claimed Georgia was engaging in "an experiment in human sacrifice," while numerous pundits and public officials insisted that the state would soon see a skyrocketing body count due to a second wave of the disease.
It's time to admit that letting people back outside while insisting on proper social distancing is the fastest path to economic recovery. Gretchen "the Witch' Whitmer's orders aren't working. DFL Gov. Tim Walz's plan wasn't working in Minnesota. Now he's been forced into reversing himself and reopening. J.B. Pritzker's restrictions haven't helped Illinois reopen.
By comparison, Georgia and Florida are bright shining examples of Republican governors' successes. This headline wasn't unusual at the time:
Coronavirus is ravaging New York, and Florida could be next. Are we ready?
Gov. DeSantis implemented a plan that a) focused on protecting the elderly first, b) didn't shut down Florida's economy and c) let people get outside while employing proper social distancing. This should be the blueprint for the entire nation. Pundits ridiculed the Department of Homeland Security when DHS announced that COVID germs died much faster when exposed to sunlight. Those discredited pundits aren't laughing anymore.
The other thing that needs to be highlighted is the fact that Democrat governors haven't done their jobs. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf won't let rural counties open even though the only deaths in those counties happened in LTC facilities. It's like these Democrats are intentionally attempting to keep the economy struggling as much as possible. It's like the Democrats are taking their marching orders from Bill Maher:
[Video no longer available]
Democrats must think that they can get away with cheering for a painful recession. That won't work. Cheering against the US is unpatriotic and won't work. This article highlights the difference between Andrew Cuomo, who got tons of great press, and Ron DeSantis, who got criticized for breathing:
"The death rate in Florida is about three per 100,000. In New York state it's 27.5 per 100,000. So, [that's] nine times worse," he added. "Absolutely tragic [and] totally, totally unnecessary!"
Cuomo failed his constituents. Ditto with Gretchen Whitmer. That's what happens when you elect incompetent Democrats. Meanwhile, when you elect competent Republicans like DeSantis, South Dakota's Kristi Noem, Georgia's Brian Kemp and Iowa's Kim Reynolds, you have better outcomes.
Posted Saturday, May 16, 2020 1:53 PM
No comments.
Agenda Media in action
This article is proof that the Agenda Media isn't interested in digging into stories to figure out what's actually happening. The article essentially opens both barrels at President Trump without digging into the story it's purportedly covering. Here's what I'm talking about:
It turns out President Donald Trump's status as the most accessible person to ever hold the office is more a curse than a blessing. Day after day, he fills the air with the ack-ack of disinformation and misdirection, needlessly alarming the public and sending reporters on wild goose chases to either confirm or disprove his allegations. On Thursday, in an interview with Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo, Trump repeated his newest figment that Joe Biden and Barack Obama are guilty of some unnamed crimes for which they are deserving of "50-year sentences."
Strong meat! The heinous crimes - to which he has applied the "Obamagate" moniker and calls "the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR" - is a relatively new creation of the Trump Disinformation Laboratory. He only started talking about it on May 10 and has yet to specify exactly what Obamagate is aside from telling reporters in a press conference that it's 'obvious' and that he wants Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to investigate it.
I know Mr. Schaefer isn't that stupid. At least, I hope he isn't. Obamagate refers to the fact that President Obama knew about the Obama administration's FBI and Obama administration's DOJ entrapped Michael Flynn in an attempt to get him to turn on then President-Elect Trump. What's with this foolishness then?
Despite a lack of interest from his minions in Congress (Graham has said he has no plans to grill Obama), Trump's foggy demagoguery has mobilized the entire press corps to determine what the hell Trump is talking about. Explainers from Reuters, the Washington Post, the Guardian, CNN, and elsewhere struggle to decipher Trump's vague but strident accusations with little success. We can say this much with certainty. It appears linked to the counterintelligence operation against Gen. Michael Flynn in late 2016, and the requests from Obama administration officials that his identity be 'unmasked' from intelligence reports so they could understand who, exactly, was talking to the Russian ambassador. Flynn lied to the FBI about speaking to the ambassador about sanctions and later pled guilty to lying to the FBI about those conversations. (Unmasking, by the way, is a routine, not nefarious thing, which the Trump administration has requested thousands of times.) But until Trump uses his words to make his charges about Obama more specific, we can only guess at what the actual crime might be.
First, if Mr. Schaefer was the least bit interested in covering the story, he'd know that everyone from then-VP Biden to then-DNI Clapper to then-UN Ambassador Power to the then-Ambassador to Micronesia requested this unmasking. If Mr. Schaefer was a legitimate journalist, he'd ask why the US ambassador to Micronesia needed to know who was talking to Russian Ambassador Kislyak.
Next, unmasking is routine for intelligence analysts . It isn't routine for ambassadors, whether they're the ambassador to the UN or to Micronesia.
[Video no longer available]
The crime isn't the unmasking. The crimes would likely come from illegally applying for FISA warrants to surveil Carter Page or from leaking classified information to the Washington Post's David Ignatius. Though the DOJ hasn't identified the unmasker that leaked, it's a safe bet that one of the unmaskers leaked that information to Ignatius. Let's be clear about this. It isn't a crime to receive leaked information. It's a crime to leak classified information. This is a lie:
Now it could be that Obama did commit the biggest political crime in the history of the USA. If there's a shred of evidence, I want Obama investigated. If the investigation bears fruit, I want him to have a fair trial. If he's found guilty, I want him punished. But show me that shred of evidence first or I'm going back to bed.
Mr. Schaefer doesn't want President Obama punished. It's just that he's obligated to say that. Further, Schaefer's complaints about President Trump point to the fact that the MSM hates digging into the Democrats' misconduct. Tara Reade is just the latest example of the MSM's disinterest.
Posted Sunday, May 17, 2020 10:31 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 19-May-20 03:24 PM
Never heard of "Agenda Media" before. How did you find them? Who are they? Your link is to Politico, an item by some guy named Shafer.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 19-May-20 05:36 PM
I coined that term in March, 2006. You wouldn't recognize the term because the Agenda Media's responsibility is to push the progressive agenda. To you, the Agenda Media sounds like straight news.
