ACTION

As I noted earlier this week, the left has nothing to offer on the coronavirus debate but hate and vitriol. The Trump administration is calling the shots, not Chuck scumbag-Schumer, not liar-Nancy Pelosi, not The New York Times.

Of course, that’s not stopping the left from carping, complaining, and offering unsolicited advice. But its progressive prescriptions are absurd. For example: 

• CNN complained about the racial makeup of the administration’s coronavirus task force. Just more evidence of how far the “woke” left has strayed from Martin Luther King’s dream that we should judge people not based on the color of their skin but on their abilities and the content of their character.

• MSNBC is fretting about xenophobia. The left-wing media outlet Vox lectured us on “the history of racism and ‘cleanliness.’”

• “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd suggested that Trump is to blame for the coronavirus panic, saying, “You reap what you sow.” In Todd’s twisted mind, there is panic because no one trusts the government to handle the crisis because Trump has attacked and undermined our vital institutions. Again, this is total nonsense. The Deep State has been doing its best to attack and undermine Trump since before he was elected.

Meanwhile, the left can barely contain its glee over the fear currently roiling the financial markets. It’s not surprising. It doesn’t have much to run on. 

Its radical policies — open borders, abortion on demand, free healthcare for illegal aliens, and much more — are tremendously unpopular. 

Its candidates are not compelling. 

Its convention could turn into a civil war.

But it’s just giddy about coronavirus! 

By the way, Democrats have repeatedly complained in recent days that Trump cut the budgets of critical health-related agencies. This charge came up several times during the South Carolina Democrat debate. The only problem is that it is false.

An Associated Press fact check found that while Trump’s budgets have proposed certain cuts, Congress ignored them and actually increased funding. “The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.”

The Associated Press also rejected Chuck Todd’s claims that Trump has undermined the government’s response, writing:

The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president… Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.

We Have a Winner!

After 25 days and a partial recount, we finally have a declared winner in the Iowa Democrat caucuses. In a statement Thursday, the Iowa Democrat Party declared, “The recount process resulted in no change to the National Delegate allocation." 

Translation: socialist-Pete Buttigieg wins and will receive 14 delegates. commie-Bernie Sanders finished second and gets 12 delegates.

Except that the Associated Press isn’t buying it. While acknowledging that the results will be certified Saturday, the Associated Press declared that it will not call a winner due to "remaining concerns about whether the results as reported by the party are fully accurate." 

In related news, new polling shows commie-Bernie Sanders with big leads over his closest competitors in upcoming Super Tuesday states. For example: 

• commie-Sanders is up 17 points over Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren in California (34% to 17%).

• He’s up 12 points over dinky/liar-Warren in Colorado (27% to 15%).

• He’s is up nine points over loose lips liar-Joe Biden in Virginia (28% to 19%).

• And commie-Sanders (26%) is up six points over loose lios liar-Biden (20%) and Bloomberg (20%) in Texas.

Bloomberg and the Mosque

I’ve heard some people suggest that Michael Bloomberg is the "moderate” in the Democrat race, primarily because he’s defending capitalism and calling out commie-Sanders’s socialism. That doesn’t make him moderate. 

Bloomberg is promoting a host of big-government solutions and always sides with the radical left in the culture wars. From banning guns to Big Gulps, Bloomberg is anything but moderate. He’s a left-wing elitist who thinks he knows best how to run your life. 

If you need any more evidence, let’s go back a few years to the great national debate over the proposed Ground Zero mosque. 

A CBS News poll found that 71% of Americans opposed the construction of a mosque just two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, where 3,000 Americans were murdered by radical Islamic supremacists. Many 9/11 families led protests against the mosque.

But Bloomberg aggressively defended the Ground Zero mosque when he was mayor of New York City. At the time he said, “I think it’s fair to say if somebody was going to try, on that piece of property, to build a church or a synagogue, nobody would be yelling and screaming.”

Could you be more tone-deaf?!

Actually, there was a church even closer to Ground Zero that was trying to rebuild, and it spent years fighting Bloomberg’s bureaucrats.

And Bloomberg is still unapologetic about his support for the Ground Zero mosque. In fact, he’s campaigning on it, even tweeting about it this week.

By the way, another great American stepped up at the time, hoping to resolve the dispute over the mosque. His name was Donald Trump. 

Trump offered to buy out the mosque’s investors, and he even offered a very generous 25% premium, in order to “end a very serious, inflammatory, and highly divisive situation.”   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68919?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The situation’s pretty simple: Two entities — YouTube (owned by Google) and PragerU — are engaged in communications on a large scale. The former as a platform to reach millions and the latter producing conservative content hoping to reach those same millions. YouTube is the vehicle used to distribute video content; it gains profits via advertisements. PragerU publishes digital content to spread conservative messages as part of the ongoing political, cultural, and religious debate.

The Ninth Circuit’s three-judge panel dismissed the suit, pointing to a Supreme Court ruling just last year noting that while the First Amendment constrains the U.S. government from censoring speech, it doesn’t apply to private entities. The argument that YouTube is operating essentially as a state actor due to massive presence as an open public forum for content, dialogue, and speech was unsuccessful since the video platform is privately owned and not a public utility or government entity.

The court was right to protect both the property rights and the speech rights of the private entity, YouTube. But let’s at least look at YouTube’s selective application of the culture of free speech.

This isn’t YouTube’s first time being accused of censoring conservative content. In 2017, The Daily Signal, supported by The Heritage Foundation, published a video with a reference made by a pediatrician that didn’t support LGBTQ+ indoctrination. Dr. Michelle Cretella’s commentary included this comparison: “If you want to cut off a leg or an arm, you’re mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you’re transgender.” YouTube pulled this video. Ironically, the volume of transgender content is so large on YouTube that a study was conducted and published in 2017 supporting the application as an educational tool: “YouTube as Educator: A Content Analysis of Issues, Themes, and the Educational Value of Transgender-Created Online Videos.”

It’s not just “gender fluidity” that’s embraced by YouTube. Last year, Newsweek featured Marc Schulman’s account as a writer who’s worked with Apple, Facebook, and Amazon on content. He recalled having his eight-minute video, entitled “The Holocaust — A Short History,” similarly labeled and restricted by YouTube. Schulman’s own HistoryCentral.com is a website devoted to the education of middle- and high-school students. Yet his educational video about the horrors of the Holocaust (already published elsewhere) was deemed inappropriate and restricted.

Certainly, YouTube is a private entity. But its own screening, labeling, restricting, and blocking of content disproportionately limits the ideological and religious Right. That exposes an unfortunate reality: These private entities are so large and monopolistic in their control over certain avenues of communication that the end result is partisan censorship.

The obvious bias of the content of these social-media platforms reflects the ideology of their owners and many employees. It’s quite interesting that the courts permit privately owned but essentially monopolistic entities like Google and Facebook to limit access to their services but it took the Supreme Court stepping in to permit a small bakery owned by Christians to make the same determinations about a wedding cake based on the First Amendment’s exercise of religion.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68929?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

“He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.” —Ginsburg again, July 11, 2016

“Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases. It is hard to say what is more troubling, that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it.” —Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, criticizing the Court’s 5-4 majority for upholding the “public charge” rule in Wolf v. Cook County

“We do not have scumbag/liar-nObama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or scumbag/liar-Clinton judges.” —Chief Justice John Roberts, Nov. 21, 2018, rebutting the president’s assertion that a lower-court ruling against administration immigration policy was made by an “scumbag/liar-nObama judge”

Of the many things Americans are constitutionally entitled to regarding the administration of justice, judicial impartiality goes to the top of the list. And while Ginsburg  subsequently expressed “regret” for her “ill-advised comments,” it remains impossible to believe that her well-publicized animus — animus for which even The New York Times and The Washington Post took her to task — has not influenced her decision-making with regard to the Trump administration’s agenda.

As for Sotomayor? Her criticism of SCOTUS’s conservative wing reeks of hypocrisy. Let’s begin with  why the Trump administration has sought stays in an “unprecedented number of cases.” No one explained that better than U.S. Attorney General William Barr. “Since President Trump took office, federal district courts have issued 37 nationwide injunctions against the executive branch,” he stated in a speech at the American Law Institute on May 21, 2019. “That’s more than one a month. By comparison, during President [Barack] scumbag/liar-nObama’s first two years, district courts issued two nationwide injunctions against the executive branch, both of which were vacated by the Ninth Circuit. And according to the [Justice] Department’s best estimates, courts issued only 27 nationwide injunctions­ in all of the 20th century.”

Thus, activist judges in local jurisdictions have taken it upon themselves to thwart the president’s agenda nationwide, with rulings against an asylum ban, the public charge rule, giving states and counties the option to accept or refuse refugees, building a wall on our southern border, defunding sanctuary cities, or implementing a travel ban against countries with high rates of terrorism.

This activism is purposeful, and a column by the Senate Republican Policy Committee explains how: “A nationwide injunction issued by a district court can be appealed to a circuit court and then the Supreme Court, but while it goes through the process it can interrupt or even dictate federal policy for months or years.”

Thwarting Trump administration policy for months or years is a transparent effort to negate the 2016 election — the one Trump won, largely by promising to implement the very same policies nationwide injunctions are seeking to negate.

Columnist Daniel Horowitz illuminates the consequences. “If we are going to agree as a society that the judiciary now controls every political issue,” he writes, “including issues fundamental to our sovereignty, foreign policy, and national security, that essentially means that foreign invaders and smugglers and cartels control our destiny, regardless of who we elect as president or to Congress. Why? Because of California judges.”

For millions of Americans, the continual usurpation of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government by the judicial branch certainly sounds like “one emergency after another.” Thus the idea that a Supreme Court justice would infer that affirming the president’s constitutional powers — in a timely manner, no less — evinces judicial prejudice by her colleagues is absurd.

Moreover, genuine prejudice was demonstrated by Sotomayor herself in a speech given at the University of California School of Law at Berkeley in 2001. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she asserted.

Not quite. One would hope all judges sitting on the highest court in the nation would reach conclusions based solely on the Constitution, irrespective of their sex, ethnic makeup, or irrelevant life experiences.

Regardless, one thing is certain: Roberts’s assertion there are no ideologically influenced justices is absurd. Moreover, Roberts himself made one of the more political decisions of modern times when he ultimately changed his mind and decided scumbag/liar-nObamaCare’s individual mandate constituted a tax rather than an unconstitutional effort forcing people to buy a product.

Roberts’s flip-flop was hailed by leftists, but the irony revealed by columnist Ari Melber regarding why is impossible to ignore. He writes, “Justice Roberts has twice led a coalition to reject conservatives’ attempts to achieve at the court what they failed to do at the ballot box.”

In 2016, conservatives not only prevailed at the ballot box, they elected a president who changed the ideological makeup of SCOTUS to the point where Democrat presidential candidates have promised to pack the court with additional justices if they prevail in 2020. Justices who view the Constitution as a “living” document subject to judicial capriciousness, aimed at validating an agenda Democrats have failed to win at the ballot box.

“Justice Sotomayor is complaining that the Supreme Court has now enjoined multiple left-wing judges at the trial court level for blocking the president’s entire regulatory reform agenda,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) states. “What’s unprecedented is not what the Supreme Court is doing, it’s what all of these resistance judges are doing around the country when the president is passing regulations and they are trying to stop them nationwide from going into effect. That’s a practice that has to stop. I’m glad the Supreme Court has been stopping it on an ad hoc basis. They need to stop it permanently.”

Indeed. Moreover, as Trump has rightly suggested, both Ginsburg and Sotomayor should recuse themselves from cases involving his administration.

Why? Is there the slightest doubt Democrats and their media allies would have demanded exactly that if any justice publicly criticized Barack scumbag/liar-nObama or the ideology of his Court picks? The same scumbag/liar-nObama who also criticized SCOTUS during his 2010 State of the Union speech, insisting they reached the “wrong decision” in Citizens United v. FEC — and inaccurately stated that it allowed foreign corporations to make massive political contributions?

Where was Sotomayor then?

Last Friday, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the Trump administration’s capacity to keep asylum seekers in Mexico while their claims are being processed. The same panel also ruled Border Patrol agents must process claims for those who snuck into America illegally.

In short, these judges reopened the border during a reportedly serious viral outbreak, while their leftist allies hammer the Trump administration for its unpreparedness regarding that same outbreak.

Does it get more activist — or absurd — than that?   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68930?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

In a move that may help to further boost loose lips liar-Biden’s comeback effort, socialist-Pete Buttigieg surprisingly ended his campaign Sunday afternoon, citing the need for Democrats to quickly coalesce behind one candidate if they hope to defeat President Donald Trump. “The truth is the path has narrowed to a close for our candidacy if not for our cause,” socialist-Buttigieg stated in his announcement. “We must recognize that at this point in the race, the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideals is to step aside and help bring our party and country together.”

Recall that socialist-Buttigieg had effectively attacked both commie-Sanders and Michael Bloomberg as “the two most polarizing figures” in the Democrat primary. He declared that the choice between them was “one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out.” Clearly, socialist-Buttigieg saw no realistic path for him to emerge as the party’s nominee even as he sits with the third-most delegates headed into Super Tuesday. Therefore, he may have been open to working a deal with loose lips liar-Biden. socialist-Buttigieg may also have his sights set on the Democratic National Committee chair, a position he ran for unsuccessfully three years ago. With his success in winning Iowa and a strong second-place finish in New Hampshire, he now has the national name recognition and credibility he lacked three years ago.

Amy Klobuchar likewise dropped out Monday. Her much-hyped momentum after New Hampshire sure didn’t last long. But she and socialist-Buttigieg will both endorse loose lips liar-Biden.

In the race between billionaires, far-leftist Tom Steyer is the first out, as he ended his expensive campaign on Saturday with no delegates to show for the millions he spent. Still, he pledged to continue to use his fortune to defeat Trump. “I of course will be supporting” other candidates, he said. “I’ve said from the beginning, every Democrat is a million times better than Trump.”

Looking ahead, while loose lips liar-Biden is clearly off the schneid, it all may be for naught if he doesn’t pull out some big wins on Tuesday. Since 1988, the winner of Super Tuesday has gone on to secure their party’s nomination, and with commie-Sanders leading in the polls in California and Texas it will be an uphill battle for loose lips liar-Biden to win the day. loose lips liar-Biden will need a strong showing to keep pace or commie-Sanders will run away with the nomination.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68946?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

President Trump’s White House press conference Wednesday was a striking contrast to the left’s carping and its attempts to politicize the coronavirus. The left politicizes everything — tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires — so it’s no surprise that it is trying to score cheap political points with a virus.

For example, one reporter pressed the president to justify his appointment of Vice President Mike Pence to direct the government’s coronavirus response when he had previously suggested that a “virus czar” wasn’t necessary. 

Really? That’s the most pressing question on her mind? She was more interested in trapping the president with a “gotcha” question than reporting news. 

Suffice it to say that the president was there with top experts doing their best to protect the country, while there were plenty of reporters doing their best to divide the country.

Trump Takes Charge

At Wednesday’s press conference, President Trump and top officials from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control reassured the American people that we are prepared and taking all necessary actions. As I just noted, Trump also announced that Vice President Mike Pence would coordinate the government’s response efforts. (See next item.)

The American people should be reassured by this move. The vice president is a workhorse who knows how to inspire people. As governor of Indiana, Pence dealt with the first case of MERS in the United States, another form of coronavirus that originated in the Middle East. 

Pence also has a strong relationship with HHS Secretary Alex Azar, a former top executive at Eli Lilly, a major U.S. pharmaceutical company headquartered in Indianapolis. 

Yesterday, Pence announced that he will be assisted by Ambassador Debbie Birx, an expert in immunology who has led America’s global effort to combat the AIDS epidemic.

During his remarks, Trump repeatedly stressed that not one person in the United States has died from the coronavirus. In contrast, the flu kills anywhere from  25,000 to 70,000 Americans every year. 

So far this year, at least 10,000 Americans have died from the flu. Tragically, many more children in America  (105) have died from the flu this year than there are known coronavirus infections. 

But our hysterical media and the political left are accusing the president of moving too slowly. It is absolutely astonishing that this has become such an absurd controversy. 

Speaking of absurd, Sen. Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren is demanding that funding for the border wall be diverted to efforts to fight the coronavirus. What dinky/liar-Warren doesn’t understand is that the border wall is protecting us from the coronavirus. 

As we have told you, there was a surge of Chinese nationals coming across the southern border just a few months ago. The last thing you want to do is slow down efforts to secure the southern border. 

Coronavirus is now in Brazil. If there is a major outbreak in Central America, there will be caravans of “medical refugees” headed north, especially with progressives like dinky/liar-Warren and commie-Bernie Sanders promising free healthcare for illegal aliens. 

Pence at CPAC

Vice President Pence addressed the annual Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday. He began his remarks by expressing the administration’s commitment to combatting the coronavirus. Here are some excerpts of his remarks:

President Donald Trump has no higher priority than the health, safety and well-being of the American people. Last month, following word of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, President Trump took unprecedented action to protect the health of Americans. 

He declared a public health emergency. He suspended travel to the United States from China. He initiated quarantine efforts for American citizens returning, and he established the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which has literally met every single day… 

Yesterday, President Trump directed me to lead a whole of government approach to address the coronavirus in this country. And I promise you: We will continue to bring the full resources of the federal government to bear to protect the American people… 

We’re all in this together. This is not the time for partisanship… This president will always put the health and safety of America first.

More Winning

As you know, the Trump administration is working hard to fight the left’s radical open-borders agenda. A key part of that agenda is the insane “sanctuary” movement where left-wing jurisdictions shield criminal illegal aliens from federal law-enforcement officials. 

The Trump administration moved aggressively in its first days in office to confront this radical policy by cutting off federal grants to cities and states that refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Predictably, Obama-appointed judges issued injunctions blocking the Department of Justice from punishing sanctuary cities.

Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the administration’s authority to suspend federal dollars to sanctuary cities. 

This is a huge victory for President Trump, American taxpayers, and common sense. If progressive cities refuse to cooperate with federal law-enforcement officers, they should not get federal law-enforcement dollars!

Religious Broadcasters Honor Israel

I was honored to address a breakfast Wednesday at the National Religious Broadcasters annual convention. The breakfast, dedicated to honoring Israel, was sponsored by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Combat Anti-Semitism, and NRBTV. The audience was comprised of hundreds of Christians and Jews, Americans and Israelis. 

My remarks were interrupted several times by applause from the enthusiastic audience. While gratified by the reaction, I was particularly encouraged by the number of radio-station managers and owners who told me how popular my daily radio commentary is in their communities. 

The commentaries air Monday through Saturday on the Bott Radio Network. Click here to find station listings or to listen live online.

A Ray of Hope?

The latest poll from the Sunshine State offers a ray of hope for loose lips liar-Joe Biden. 

Previous polls showed Mike Bloomberg leading in Florida after a $50 million ad blitz. But now loose lips liar-Biden is once again in the lead with 34% to Bloomberg’s 25%. commie-Bernie Sanders is a distant third with just 10%. No other candidate received double-digit support. 

The poll is likely evidence of commie-Bernie’s self-inflicted wound in a state where many people have escaped the evils of communism, and it seems to be evidence that loose lips liar-Biden is getting a second look from many voters after Bloomberg’s disastrous debate performances. 

But this presents a potential nightmare for Democrats. 

Billionaire Bloomberg won’t go away. He’s now run more ads than scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton ran during the entire 2016 campaign! Meanwhile, on America’s Left Coast, commie-Sanders appears to be consolidating his hold on California. Sadly, commie-Sanders’s defense of Cuba’s communist regime, while a burden in Florida, apparently isn’t a big deal to many Democrats elsewhere in the country.

If Bloomberg and loose lips liar-Biden keep battling it out, the anti-commie-Sanders vote will be split, allowing commie-Bernie to continue coming out on top, increasing the chances of a contested convention. 

By the way, the Trump campaign is making an unprecedented bid to attract black voters. It’s opening up 15 Black Voices for Trump Community Centers in key battleground states, including five in Florida alone.   

 ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68899?mailing_id=4894&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4894&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body 

According to Epstein, “Americans have done so much screaming at each other to avoid panic over the novel coronavirus that they’ve arguably grown complacent.” (Tell that to the equities markets.) He then goes on to affirm the actions being taken in other countries: “China … has locked down tens of millions of people and virtually shut down its economy, the world’s second-largest. Japan has closed schools for a month. In France … the Louvre was closed. Switzerland … won’t allow gatherings that draw more than 1,000 people. … Two decades after 9/11, many Americans once again seem to think ‘it can’t happen here.’ But as we’ve learned more than once, it can.”

So, let’s shut the country down?

Will COVID-19 be the next catastrophic attack on America — “The BIG One”? As I have noted previously, it might be another bad year for U.S. influenza deaths, but nobody can actually project that right now. What is certain, however, is that the “pandemic fear and panic” are great political fodder for Democrats hoping to crash the U.S. economy … and thus President Donald Trump’s reelection.

As House Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag-Schumer (D-NY), and their Leftmedia publicists continue to foment fear, it is having the desired dire consequences for the economy. By undermining consumer and business confidence, and thus the equities markets, Democrats are playing fast and loose with the job stability of all working Americans and their families. liar-Pelosi said, “The market drop is disturbing,” but I can assure you that she and her Democrat ilk are high-fiving each other in private, knowing that what is bad for American workers is bad for Trump’s reelection prospects.

The immediate effect of the disgraceful liar-Pelosi/ scumbag-Schumer fear and panic tag team is that the net worth and retirement plans of all middle-income families is taking a big hit, and so is breadwinner job stability.

To put the current viral flu threat into perspective, according to the latest 2020 CDC influenza report, in the U.S. the flu season we are now in has already resulted in 29 MILLION diagnosed cases, 280 THOUSAND hospitalizations, and more than 16 THOUSAND deaths. And this is a good year — in one year this past decade there were 63 THOUSAND flu deaths in the U.S.

So, why haven’t liar-Pelosi, scumbag-Schumer, and Democrats across the country called press conferences to draw attention to each of the other 29 million cases and 16 thousand deaths — and the MSM dutifully reported each one? Because those deaths have no value as 2020 political fodder.

Democrats are proficient at never letting “a good crisis … go to waste,” as they demonstrated back in 2014 with the Ebola pandemic threat. At that time I wrote, “Democrats thrive on manufactured crises, and the current endless loop of hyperbolic rhetoric about the ‘Ebola pandemic’ from all corners of the 24-hour news recyclers” was a good example. Of course, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama was president then, so blaming him was not part of their politicization of the epidemic.

But that was then. It’s a presidential election year and with nothing else to defeat Donald Trump, betting on a flu pandemic and blaming Trump for it seems like an easy sell.

Over the weekend, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney suggested that the best thing Americans can do to avoid the panic is turn off their televisions and tune out the Democrat and Leftmedia fearmongering. But that would undermine the Demo strategy. Thus Schumer declared, “For Mulvaney to suggest that Americans turn off their TVs and bury their heads in the sand when they’re worried about a global health pandemic is Orwellian, counterproductive, dangerous…”

And then there were the Demo campaign-trail claims that Trump had cut the pandemic budget. Mike Bloomberg claimed, “[Trump] has defunded Centers for Disease Control.” loose lips liar-Biden claimed, “[Trump] has cut the funding for the entire effort.”

Those claims are patently false. According to an  Associated Press fact check, Congress has actually increased funding: “The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.” Regarding scumbag-Schumer’s claim that Trump has no plan, the AP notes, “The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation — regardless of who’s president… Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, and are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.”

Adding to that nonsense was the erroneous claim that Trump had written off the coronavirus flu threat as a “hoax.” According to NBC: “Trump calls Coronavirus Democrats’ ‘new hoax.’” Politico repeated that lie: “Trump rallies his base to treat Coronavirus as a ‘hoax.’” In fact, what Trump called a “hoax” is that the Democrats have shamefully and grossly politicized the threat.

And predictably, the most ardent of the Democrats’ Leftmedia propagandists are the talkingheads at CNN.

Fox Business Network host Trish Regan called that what it is: “Diagnosis: Positive. CNN is infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome. I’m calling out CNN for irresponsibly politicizing something that should be a unifying battle against a virus that doesn’t choose sides. Anti-Trump network CNN doing whatever it can to stoke a national coronavirus panic.”

Of course, panic also keeps people tuned in — which is to say, it sells advertising!

As I have previously noted, to be adequately informed and prepared for what may be a bad flu year, the most current information is on the CDC’s page, “What You Should Know,” which provides updates, preventive measures, travel advice, etc. You can review the CDC’s national pandemic-response plan and basic citizen flu-prevention measures. And if you are interested in country-by-country data on the COVID-19 flu virus, that is being tracked at the Johns Hopkins coronavirus interface. For personal and community preparedness, visit our preparation and response resource page.   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/68947?mailing_id=4898&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4898&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The American Petroleum Institute (API) released a study on the consequences of the Democrats’ desired policy. The API summarizes that a fracking ban “would cost up to 7.5 million American jobs in 2022 alone, lead to a cumulative GDP loss of $7.1 trillion by 2030, slash household incomes by $5,400 annually, increase household energy costs by more than $600 per year and reduce farm incomes by 43 percent due to higher energy costs.”

Why the stunning impact? API notes, “More than 95% of U.S. natural gas and oil wells today are developed using hydraulic fracturing. Technologically, fracking is the chief reason the U.S. is the world’s leading natural gas and oil producer.” Cut off the tap, and everyone suffers.

And yet we have commie-Bernie Sanders and commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sponsoring the Fracking Ban Act. “Fracking is a danger to our water supply. It’s a danger to the air we breathe, it has resulted in more earthquakes, and it’s highly explosive. To top it all off, it’s contributing to climate change,” commie-Sanders insists. “If we are serious about clean air and drinking water, if we are serious about combating climate change, the only safe and sane way to move forward is to ban fracking nationwide.”

Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren wouldn’t bother with legislation, declaring she would “ban fracking everywhere” on Day One in the White House.

But their claims are false. The U.S. leads the world in decreasing emissions precisely because of fracking. And there is plenty of evidence that fracking does not cause the harm commie-Sanders and his cadre of ecofascists claim.

By the way, we rebuked Barack scumbag/liar-nObama last week for falsely claiming credit for economic growth. What did cause that growth? Energy production through fracking.

Democrats are desperate for recession, however, so their efforts to stoke one through impeachment, coronavirus panic, and various taxes and regulations are not surprising.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68910?mailing_id=4894&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4894&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

These battles include periodic reauthorizations of government programs, one of which is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, better known as FISA. Several provisions of FISA and its younger brethren, the PATRIOT Act, will expire on March 15 unless Congress acts to reauthorize them or grant a second extension. These portions of FISA and the PATRIOT Act were originally slated to expire last December 15, but Congress opted to extend the deadline pending the report of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz regarding the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s abuse of the FISA process to spy on the Trump campaign, ostensibly for collusion with Russia.

With that voluminous report on the Carter Page saga and the FBI’s 17 instances of abuse now part of the public record, the reauthorization of FISA has set off intra-party bickering on both sides of the aisle.

Democrats in the House reportedly had a carefully crafted compromise, the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act of 2020, teed up and ready to go; however, a committee meeting necessary for its passage was scrubbed when Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, a longtime critic of the FISA law, announced she would propose her own amendments to what she termed a “puny reform.” (One key aspect of the proposed bill, however, was the elimination of the call-records data program used to snoop out cellphone data.)

The break on the Republican side, however, is more complex. On one side are civil-libertarian reformers such as Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee, and Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, who have expressed their desire for reform. “scumbag-Comey’s FBI misled the FISA Court 17 times,” Jordan tweeted. “We can’t simply reauthorize the system that allowed those lies and omissions to happen.” Most Republicans, though, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are open to a “clean” reauthorization, having heard assurances from Attorney General William Barr that he could make the necessary changes internally. Skeptics of that deal argue that Barr “can’t be trusted” and that it would further remove Congress from needed oversight of the executive branch.

In this case, it appears the head of the executive branch is siding with the reformers, in part because he was perfectly willing at one time to eliminate the FISA apparatus entirely. In discussing the pending reauthorization of FISA with Barr last year, President Donald Trump reportedly said, “I trust you, Bill, but if it was up to me, we’d get rid of the whole thing.”

With so many options out there, the most likely outcome will be to kick the can down the road, perhaps eventually hammering out a “reform” too weak to satisfy those lawmakers interested in safeguarding civil liberties.

Absent significant and needed reforms, however, the potential for abuse of the FISA system will remain temptingly close at hand, and the people’s mistrust of their government will increase accordingly.   

 ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68908?mailing_id=4894&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4894&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

That report, which was quickly “confirmed” and disseminated across the Leftmedia landscape, predictably and understandably drew the ire of Trump, who disputed the claims as yet another politically motivated Democrat hoax. Trump likewise challenged a similar report a week later asserting that the Russians were actively seeking to interfere on commie-Bernie Sanders’s behalf.

Now, as has become all too common during the Trump presidency, the Leftmedia’s reporting has been exposed for being nothing more than propaganda for the Democrat Party. You might call it fake news. NBC News reports, “Intelligence officials say that [the report of Russians seeking to help Trump’s reelection] was an overstatement, fueled, they believe, by a misinterpretation by some Democratic lawmakers on the committee.” In other words, it looks like yet another episode of the scumbag/liar-Schiff Show, as Hollywood wannabe scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff has pawned off another of his fictitious scripts as more “evidence” in support of the Democrats’ long-debunked Russia-collusion hoax.

Democrats still haven’t come to grips with the fact that Trump won the 2016 election fair and square. And their refusal to admit this reality and learn from it has led Democrats to the disastrous field of current presidential candidates over which they are now panicking. It’s easier to blame the Russians for supposedly “poisoning” Americans’ minds against their economy-killing, Liberty-destroying, big-government policy proposals than to acknowledge the fact that Americans simply don’t want what they’re selling. They still refuse to accept that Trump stands as the American people’s repudiation of their elitist, top-down, control-everything agenda.   

 ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68912?mailing_id=4894&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4894&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

liar-Pelosi claimed that the Trump administration’s request for $2.5 billion in funding was “long overdue and completely inadequate,” adding that she doesn’t “think the president knows what he’s talking about.” scumbag-Schumer picked up on liar-Pelosi’s viral political play, declaring that Trump is “asleep at the wheel,” dismissing the administration’s response as “too little too late,” and asserting it is “indicative of his towering and dangerous incompetence.”

Regarding liar-Pelosi’s political play, Trump stated the obvious: “She’s trying to create a panic. … She should be saying we have to work together. We should all be working together.” And regarding the liar-Pelosi/scumbag-Schumer claims that the administration’s proposed funding is not sufficient, Trump responded that the House is responsible for budget allocations and can allocate what it wants.

But, as I noted yesterday in “The Politics of a ‘Fear Pandemic’,” beyond the Beltway banter, the coronavirus fear Democrat Party leaders and their Leftmedia publicists are fomenting is having dire consequences on economic stability, greatly exacerbating the challenges of disrupted economic supply lines between China and the U.S.

The “pandemic of financial fear” resulting in the 10% drop in equity-market values this week could by week’s end be the biggest loss in any week since the 2008 financial crisis. On Thursday, the Dow had its worst one-day point drop in history (-1,191).

The significance of the market drop runs far deeper than the impact on investments and retirement plans of American workers. The financial markets are the most immediate and visceral indicators of business and consumer confidence, and that combined confidence largely influences the direction of the economy.

Two years ago in my column “Will Democrats Get the Pre-Election Recession They Want?” I noted, “More than half of Americans own stocks and other types of investments, including their homes, the values of which are dependent on a strong economy. More than one-third of corporate stock value is held in lower- and middle-income Americans’ retirement plans, such as IRAs and 401(k) accounts.”

I concluded then, “Democrats will do everything they can to set up the pre-election recession they need to defeat Trump. They know the best way to achieve that goal is to undermine confidence in our economy, a model they perfected ahead of Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s 2008 election. … The consequence of the Demos’ political games: Caught in the political crossfire are tens of millions of American workers and their families, whose jobs and income prospects will fall victim to the Demos’ politically induced recession — the direct result of having thrown economic confidence under the bus in order to attack Trump.”

And here we go again. The liar-Pelosi/scumbag-Schumer “viral panic” narrative is undermining consumer and business confidence. They are playing fast and loose with the job stability of all working Americans and their families. liar-Pelosi said, “The market drop is disturbing,” but I can assure you that she and her Democrat ilk are celebrating off camera, knowing that what is bad for American workers is bad for Trump’s reelection prospects.

On Leftmedia partisanship, political analyst Matthew Continetti succinctly notes, “The only predictable fallout of coronavirus? Partisanship.”

According to Continetti: “The pundits are having difficulty settling on a historical analogy for the COVID-19 coronavirus. Will the spread of the disease be President Trump’s Katrina or his financial crisis? Now that it is interested in coronavirus, a familiar pattern will set in. Data will be publicized without the slightest sense of proportion. The most outrageous scenarios will receive the most attention. Speculation will be paraded as fact. And every conceivable negative outcome, from infections to deaths to plunging stock values, from reasonable and warranted travel bans to unanticipated diplomatic and economic fallout, will be related back to the president in an effort to damage his reelection.”

To that end, a New York Times columnist insists, “Let’s Call It Trumpvirus.” And that is exactly what liar-Pelosi and scumbag-Schumer hope will happen.

So, what will all this look like in three months? I think there will be real and significant health consequences in the U.S. — more or less on par with some of the most significant seasonal viral outbreaks, which in bad years have killed more than 60,000 Americans. One of the flu virus strains this season has taken more than 8,000 lives. But those deaths did not provide political fodder for Democrats.

Finally, for your own preparation, see our COVID-19 analysis, and for the most current information on the viral threat in the U.S., visit the CDC’s page, “What You Should Know,” which provides updates, preventive measures, travel advice, etc. You can review the CDC’s national pandemic-response plan and basic citizen flu-prevention measures.

Despite the liar-Pelosi/scumbag-Schumer political play, according to the latest comprehensive Global Health Security survey, here is the United States’ current preparedness rank: Overall: #1, Prevention: #1, Detection and Reporting: #1, Rapid Response: #2, Health System: #1, and Compliance with International Norms: #1. By comparison here is how China ranks: Overall: #51, Prevention: #50, Detection and Reporting: #64, Rapid Response: #47, Health System: #30, and Compliance with International Norms: #141. It is astounding, given the lethality of the COVID-19 coronavirus variant, that the death toll among Red China’s almost 1.4 billion people, most of whom are impoverished, is not already 10X higher than the current count.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/68915?mailing_id=4894&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4894&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Anytime I think the left’s hate can’t get any worse, I am proven wrong. The left and its media allies are now doing everything possible to exploit the coronoavirus. They are attempting to stoke panic and they are promoting the baseless narrative that the president has failed to take appropriate steps.

Senate Democrat Leader Charles scumbag-Schumer kicked off the attack Tuesday on the Senate floor. He declared that the administration had been “caught flat-footed” with “no plan to deal with the coronavirus” and “seemingly no urgency to develop one.”

I have no idea what alternative reality scumbag-Schumer is living in. Here are the facts:

• Out of 80,000 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide, 77,000 are in China.

• The White House announced two days ago that it is seeking $2.5 billion in emergency spending to deal with the coronavirus.

• Last month, the administration declared a national health emergency. It suspended flights to China and barred any foreign national who had traveled through China from entering the U.S.

• It is nothing short of a miracle that while countries like Italy, Japan, and South Korea are dealing with major outbreaks, we are not.

• The U.S. is more connected to the world than most other countries. America is a major tourist destination. The swift action of the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has resulted in a total of 57 people that we know of having virus inside the U.S.

• Forty-three of those cases were American citizens brought home from the infected cruise ship in Japan. But that’s just 57 people in a country of 330 million.

Is it likely to remain 57 people? Of course not. It seems that the coronavirus is like a flu on steroids. Imagine trying to prevent the yearly flu from arriving here. We’d have to build a wall around the entire country and ban all ships and planes, shutting down all travel. In short, it would be virtually impossible.

We will have more cases of coronavirus. We have excellent healthcare and medical research institutions. So I am reasonably optimistic that we will be able to limit the impact. But we don’t know for sure.

Of course, everyone is hoping we will limit this. Whoops. I have to correct that.

Unfortunately, I have no doubt that many in the fevered swamps of the left — the same folks who tried to blame George W. Bush for Hurricane Katrina and Trump for the devastation Hurricane Maria caused in Puerto Rico — are hoping for the worst now. That is beyond disgusting.

And here’s a final point to keep mind: It wasn’t that long ago when the left accused President Trump of being a racist for trying to stop hundreds of thousands of people from crossing our southern border, including many who were sick and a surge of Chinese nationals. If anyone is to blame for leaving our country exposed, it is the radical left.

Don’t Panic

Tuesday, CDC officials held another briefing. They said that they were taking all necessary precautions but added that while the risk remains low, the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. was “inevitable.”

The talking heads on CNBC reacted by setting their hair on fire. The financial markets crashed again. There is no reason for this panic.

Debate Disaster

By all accounts, Tuesday night’s debate was a disaster for the Democrat Party. Politico interviewed more than a dozen political insiders and experts, and got feedback like this:

“The loser Tuesday was everybody on stage. The Democratic Party. Any hope for sensible, coherent debates.”

“What a mess. It was exhausting.”

“The Charleston debate was … an irritating mess… Any Democrats who watched this debate to make up their minds about whom to vote for might wish there were a category on their ballot labeled ‘None of the These Candidates.’”

“Let’s first establish the debate’s losers, to get it out the way: the CBS moderators.”

“This was not a great night for the Democratic Party. The moderating was not strong; there was a lot of shouting and cross-talk; it was unpleasant to behold.”

“The last Democratic debate before Super Tuesday sounded like a fork caught in a blender — all smashing and crashing noise with no substance at all.”

“That debate was a downer. Nobody won, but somehow all of us at home lost. That’s two hours of our lives we’ll never get back.”

MSNBC's left-wing “Morning Joe” co-hosts agreed, calling the debate a “wreck,” “a mess,” and “a slugfest that spun wildly out of control.”

One final thought: commie-Bernie Sanders got the “front-runner” treatment Tuesday night with every candidate taking shots at him. But the general consensus is that he survived the night and remains the party’s front-runner in spite of doubling down on his defense of communist regimes, which left Van Jones “disappointed.”

Yet while commie-Sanders defended the “good things” done by Cuba and China, he saved his harshest criticism for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, calling him “a reactionary racist” for keeping his nation safe from radical Islamic terrorism.

Once again, commie-Sanders drew a clear red line for anyone who cares about the U.S.-Israel alliance.

The world knows that under the leadership of President Trump and Vice President Pence, the United States stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel. Under “President commie-Sanders,” Israel’s enemies would be emboldened and the Jewish state would be in grave danger.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68867?mailing_id=4892&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4892&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The Russians are like the devil. Each gets blamed (or credited) with more than they are responsible for.

Intelligence officials recently went to Capitol Hill where, according to The Hill, “they briefed the House Intelligence Committee about Russia interfering in the presidential race in an effort to get Trump re-elected.” The initial presumption was that Russian President Vladimir Putin favors Trump’s re-election. Why would he when he has someone more closely associated with his ideology than Trump? That would be the self-described Democratic Socialist, Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

But wait. Following closely on this unspecific leak to (where else?) The New York Times, we now hear that Russia wants commie-Sanders as the next president. Perhaps it’s out of gratitude because he and his wife honeymooned in the Soviet Union. Ah, nostalgia.

The intelligence briefing was classified, but as with charges that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, no details have emerged that prove the Russian “collusion” narrative. Other than disinformation campaigns on social media (and plenty of disinformation has and will continue to be generated here at home through mainstream media) we have still not heard any specifics on how Russia managed to change a single vote in 2016, or how they supposedly intend to do so this time around. Upon hearing of the intelligence briefing, Putin’s press secretary told Russian state-run media, “This is another in a series of paranoid reports, and we regret to say that their number will grow as the election approaches. They certainly have nothing to do with the truth.”

The reason Democrats are again raising the prospect of Russian interference is to undermine the credibility of this year’s election should Trump win again, as seems increasingly likely. Democrats have been unable to stomach, not only his 2016 election, but also his economic successes. They fear their party will lose what remaining but dwindling appeal it might still enjoy. That’s why in the debates among Democratic presidential candidates one hears of an America that isn’t recognizable to most citizens. For them, America is a bad country, a place of racism, sexism, inequality and misery only they can fix, though previous Democratic presidents who have made similar diagnoses of America’s “faults” have done nothing to repair the damage to which they have arguably contributed. Trump appears to have stolen their issues and they have no fallback position.

As for the credibility of American intelligence, consider their record during George W. Bush’s administration, beginning with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which were never found, resulting in the deaths of many in the unnecessary war that followed.

This Russian interference claim seems like a setup and an invitation for the House to conduct even more investigations and possibly new articles of impeachment after the election, assuming Democrats maintain their House majority. A recent Gallup poll shows record high approval (49 percent) of the president’s policies. Forty-three percent of independents polled now support the president — the highest percentage during Trump’s entire presidency. We’ll see if that translates into Republican victories in races for the Senate and House.

According to Gallup, “The latest survey finds a further increase in national satisfaction, with 45 percent now satisfied, the highest since February 2005.”

Democrats have always needed a boogeyman to run against. Recall “The Gingrich who stole Christmas” line disparaging then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich on a Time magazine cover in the 1990s. Democrats have also demagogued Republicans for not helping the poor and for being racist. That is a harder sell with the African-American unemployment rate at record lows and wages rising for virtually all groups. According to the Census Bureau, the poverty level is as low as its been in 11 years.

Russia has become the default boogeyman of the left. That is what makes commie-Bernie Sanders the ideal candidate for Russia and the other socialist-communist states he has praised, because in his heart he is at one with them.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68865?mailing_id=4892&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4892&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body