ACTION

To help everyone stay calm and sane, as well as simply to offer some good perspective amidst the craziness, here are a few things to consider doing.

Perhaps most importantly, check up on friends and family. Use social media for good. Maybe even use that portable computer you’re holding to call loved ones (radical, we know). Make sure that neighbors have what they need. Offer help when you can, especially for seniors who may not be able to venture out to the store for needed supplies. During a period of “social distancing,” we humans are still geared to need community (yes, even you introverts). If you or someone you know is alone, pay special attention to them.

Go outside. Well, as long as it’s not pouring down rain, as it is this morning at our remote headquarters. Cabin fever is real and everyone needs some fresh air — especially kids. Eventually the skies will clear up, right?

Read books. Been too busy with kids’ sports or other public obligations to pick up that book you started on January 1? Settle back down and read it.

Further your education. There are all sorts of online learning opportunities that you can use to continue learning. Teach your kids basic life skills — like deep cleaning. Never stop learning or sharing knowledge.

If all else fails, there’s always Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, etc. With theaters around the country shutting down, NBCUniversal just announced it will release its current theatrical features on demand at home. Other studios, including Disney, will follow suit.

Here’s one you probably didn’t think of, courtesy of Ben Shapiro: “Buy a gift card. Small businesses are getting crushed right now. Many have been shut by local governments, and even the ones that haven’t are being destroyed by Americans following protocol and staying away from crowds. This means that if you have disposable income, you should seriously consider buying a gift card from a local business and using it later — or shopping online from them. It’s essentially an advance for businesses that could certainly use the hand right now.”

As a final and more personal note, if you’re like the staff here in our humble shop, life is incredibly busy even outside our hectic deadlines. Our jobs and deadlines don’t change even if we are working remotely. But as other parts of life slow down, we’re taking time to give thanks to our Creator for the blessings we may have been too busy to notice. We hope you’ll do the same and that you’ll fill the time wisely.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69283?mailing_id=4927&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4927&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Millennials are the largest generation and the ones most likely to be out and about. Thus, Birx asserted, they are the ones most likely to spread COVID-19. Birx then admonished them: “We’re protecting the Greatest Generation right now, and the children of the Greatest Generation. And [Millennials] need to communicate with each other.”

Also on Monday, Trump released a set of new guidelines for Americans to follow titled “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” The guidelines encourage avoiding gatherings larger than 10 people, as well as staying away from “eating or drinking in restaurants, bars and food courts,” opting instead for “drive through, pickup and delivery options.” Trump noted, “If everyone makes … these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus.”

Sen. rino-Mitt Romney (R-UT) called for the government to give every American adult $1,000 in an effort to mitigate the growing financial squeeze brought about by the pandemic. He’s the first Republican to propose something akin to former Democrat presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s “Universal Basic Income.” If the goal is to ensure Americans have more money during the COVID-19 crisis, however, a better idea would be enacting what Trump has called for — a temporary payroll-tax cut. That’s not great either, but there are no good options before us.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag-Schumer on Monday proposed a $750 billion plan that “would boost hospital capacity, expand unemployment insurance, increase Medicaid funding, provide aid to small businesses, and grant immediate forbearance on federal loan payments,” as reported by National Review. “We will need big, bold, urgent federal action to deal with this crisis,” scumbag-Schumer argued. The White House, meanwhile, pitched an $850 billion “stimulus” package.

Unfortunately, it’s almost always the case that politicians use crisis to expand the government’s role in everyone’s lives. Still, Washington politicos aren’t wrong about COVID-19 exacting a serious economic toll across the country. Especially hard hit have been restaurant workers, as Americans have heeded warnings and stayed home. We won’t know for months what the real economic cost will be.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69282?mailing_id=4927&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4927&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

It appears clear that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not backed off his proxy-war efforts against the U.S. in Iraq and Syria even after the U.S. took out his top terrorist, Gen. Qasem Soleimani. In fact, he seems to be escalating matters.

As Tom Rogan at Washington Examiner notes, “Iran’s escalation also takes another form. Iran is now more resolute in expanding its nuclear program. Again, Iran knows that doing so risks Israeli or U.S. military action. But Khamenei has evidently decided to roll the dice in a last-ditch effort to blackmail America into sanctions relief. The supreme leader’s escalation-reflex is likely exacerbated in an Iranian interest point of view by the Saudi decision this week to boost its oil export scale and send oil prices plummeting. U.S. sanctions have annihilated Iran’s oil economy, so what little Tehran is still able to export is critical to the regime’s finances.”

To top it off, Iran is struggling with the coronavirus outbreak. It’s the typical mindset of tyrannical regimes: The people don’t matter, only the leader’s agenda.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69232?mailing_id=4925&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4925&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

loose lips liar-Joe Biden is not the man who can bring unity. That’s largely because, when it comes to decency, he is very deficient. The media might tell you one thing, but there is plenty of evidence that loosew lips liar-Biden’s lack of decency not only exists but will make unity impossible.

For one thing, the deep divisions on multiple issues that drive the present state of contentious disunity have existed for a long time and have been growing toxic for a long time.

For instance, take gun control.

The fact is, far too many of the solutions proposed by the Democrats running for president involved punishing millions of law-abiding Americans for crimes and acts of madness they did not commit. Parkland, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas — all were cited as the justification for massive infringements on the Second Amendment.

On their own, and in conjunction with pro-Second Amendment groups like the National Rifle Association, millions of Patriots objected to that injustice. They made those objections stick through successful grassroots action. Yet that grassroots action against injustice (writing lawmakers, educating their fellow Americans, and even working to defeat anti-Second Amendment officials through the electoral process) has been labeled  “domestic terrorism” by none other than New York’s attorney general.

socialist-Beto O'Rourke once promised, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.” loose lips liar-Joe Biden just hired socialist-Beto’s campaign manager as his own, and he plans to hire socialist-Beto as his “gun-control czar.”

It’s kind of hard to unify a country after stuff like that. It becomes doubly hard when, after that rhetoric, abusive investigations are launched with the intent of silencing certain voices. But yeah, media pundits, tell us again how it’s Second Amendment supporters who are the problem.

loose lips liar-Biden is no stranger to vilification of opponents. There is, of course, the moment he falsely claimed rino-Mitt Romney would put African Americans “back in chains.” It was a vicious slander — saying slavery would come back. But at the time, it looked as if rino-Romney had a chance to beat Barack scumbag/liar-nObama — and he did come within a few hundred thousand votes of flipping that election into an Electoral College win like Donald Trump pulled off four years later.

loose lips liar-Biden also was proud of the grotesque defeat of Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination in 1987 and sought to use it to launch his 1988 presidential campaign. Bork’s reputation over a long career of public service? Small price to pay for loose lips liar-Biden’s ambition. Karma struck when loose lips liar-Biden was caught plagiarizing speeches the next year, but that karma didn’t put Bork on the Supreme Court. Nor did that karma halt the vitriolic path we are on today. loose lips liar-Biden’s horrific treatment of Bork became the template for how Democrats treat Republican judicial nominees. Ask Brett Kavanaugh.

But the lack of decency also extends to inaction. Remember when John Lewis smeared rino-John McCain as a racist in 2008? loose lips liar-Biden was silent … and even seemed like he had discarded the friendship. While maybe that smear wasn’t decisive, loose lips liar-Biden said nothing — and even today proclaims his friendship with rino-McCain as he runs for president for the third time.

We’ll leave it to you to judge if his treatment of riho-McCain is that of a true friend. But the actions and inactions in politics probably aren’t the most relevant or dispositive when it comes to loose lips liar-Biden’s lack of decency. Let’s look at how he mistreated someone who was utterly powerless to resist him: Curtis C. Dunn.

In 1972, loose lips liar-Biden’s first wife and daughter were killed in an accident involving a tractor trailer. Anyone who has lost a family member to such an accident can comprehend the pain involved. But loose lips liar-Biden proceeded to falsely paint Dunn as a drunk driver. He reportedly apologized, but what kind of person — in a position of power and influence, no less — would unleash such a dishonest smear in the first place?

And all of this is to say nothing about loose lips liar-Biden’s angry outbursts against voters on the campaign trail. Among other episodes, he’s called a woman a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier” (whatever that means) and nearly picked a fistfight with a guy over banning the “AR-14.”

If America is to somehow bridge the Red-Blue divide that seems likely to tear it apart, it will need leaders who are, when it comes down to it, decent people. loose lips liar-Joe Biden’s actions over the years show he is lacking in that department — and he’s getting worse. To think he can bring about unity with a proven lack of decency is blind partisan foolishness.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69265?mailing_id=4927&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4927&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

That media mouthpiece is a state-run agency known as Xinhua. It is now casting China as heroic for containing the virus as long as it did. “We should say righteously that the U.S. owes China an apology, the world owes China a thank you,” an editorial stated. That would be the same China that blatantly lied about when the outbreak began, ignored offers of outside help for weeks, and arrested whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang, forcing him to sign a letter saying he spread “untrue speech” about the danger. Li subsequently succumbed to the virus.

In America, succumbing to communist thugs, to the point where loyalty and patriotism have been completely supplanted by the globalist agenda, has now reached catastrophic levels. It’s a catastrophe enabled by a self-anointed “New World Order” elitist class that no longer hides its contempt for ordinary Americans who’ve seen their cities and towns decimated by outsourcing leading to despair, homelessness, massive drug abuse, and now a communicable disease that threatens our entire way of life — even as they are told globalism is a “net benefit” for the nation.

Net benefit? Ordinary Americans were supposed to be mollified by cheap consumer goods, while elitists amassed historically unprecedented levels of wealth. Moreover, those same elitists lectured us about how the nationalist agenda of the Trump administration was akin to Nazism, and that any hesitation to embrace globalism was xenophobic. Even now, despite this being the second virus originating in China (SARs emerged in 2003), our own media insists that referring to COVID-19 as “Wuhan virus,” the “Wuhan coronavirus,” or the “Chinese coronavirus” is racist.

In the midst of a pandemic, it doesn’t get more intellectually or morally bankrupt than that. The hypocrisy is astounding: Many of the same media sources now browbeating Americans for their racism initially used precisely the same terms to describe the virus.

So what changed? Politics.

A media ostensibly concerned with the well-being of Americans is more concerned with undermining a Trump administration that has proved largely antithetical to the globalist agenda. An administration that facilitated the creation of millions of new jobs supposedly impossible to create, because the “new normal” of low expectations  professed by the scumbag/liar-nObama administration was said to be an immutable reality.

And above all else, an administration that finally challenged the odious assertion by both parties that accommodating a totalitarian nation would eventually “democratize” it.

It was all a lie. “Fact is, choosing to invest in China versus the United States is not a simple dollars-and-cents, bottom-line calculation,” explains columnist Curtis Ellis. “Certain ‘externalities’ enter into the equation. Externalities such as national security. Externalities such as the continued existence of the United States. Externalities such as the continued existence of freedom of thought, freedom of religion, and individual liberty in this world. By now it should be crystal clear to anyone but the willfully blind that the communist party ruling China holds and promotes values antithetical to our own.”

Willfully blind? Willfully greedy, stupid, and corrupt is more like it. To the point where the massive theft of intellectual property, the “editing” of Hollywood entertainment, and the coerced silence of NBA players — to name only a handful of examples — is willfully granted in exchange for access to a billion Chinese consumers.

And now, as many people are discovering for the first time, drug companies and their supply chains are an integral part of the sellout. One that has left us as vulnerable as any outright war or terrorist attack could. “I have no doubt,” retired Brig. Gen. John Adams told Fox News, “that they would consider weaponizing their dominance of the pharmaceuticals market if they felt that that would give them an advantage over us strategically.”

The president is attempting to do something about it. On Friday, he declared a national emergency, fast-tracking testing for the virus, enlisting Walmart, Walgreens, Target, CVS, and others to facilitate the process. He is also  expected to announce an executive order that will tighten “Buy American” laws that would require federal agencies to purchase American-made pharmaceuticals and medical equipment.

That may be a heavy lift. The last plant in the United States to manufacture the key ingredients for crucial antibiotics like penicillin was Bristol-Myers Squibb, which closed its factory in East Syracuse, New York, in 2004. Even then, American politicians knew of the possible consequences of outsourcing critical drug-supply chains. But even then, as now, national security — because this is all about national security — took a back seat to bottom-line considerations.

“The coronavirus outbreak has been a wake-up call that we must combat America’s supply-chain vulnerabilities and dependence on China in critical sectors of our economy,” stated Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in response to Trump’s forthcoming order.

Our entire nation has been turned upside down in a way that may prove as deleterious as 9/11 — if not more so — and that’s what eoff for worldwide “interconnectedness”) — is finally seen for what it truly is: a mortal threat to our constitutional republic.

America will never be completely isolationist. However, going forward it might be useful to embrace a new trade and supply-chain strategy. One as easy as ABC:

Anybody But China.   

Utterly preposterous. Moreover, like so many others in his party, as well as their media lapdogs, the idea that politics “stops at the water’s edge” in times of crisis is officially dead.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69249?mailing_id=4925&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4925&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

That media mouthpiece is a state-run agency known as Xinhua. It is now casting China as heroic for containing the virus as long as it did. “We should say righteously that the U.S. owes China an apology, the world owes China a thank you,” an editorial stated. That would be the same China that blatantly lied about when the outbreak began, ignored offers of outside help for weeks, and arrested whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang, forcing him to sign a letter saying he spread “untrue speech” about the danger. Li subsequently succumbed to the virus.

In America, succumbing to communist thugs, to the point where loyalty and patriotism have been completely supplanted by the globalist agenda, has now reached catastrophic levels. It’s a catastrophe enabled by a self-anointed “New World Order” elitist class that no longer hides its contempt for ordinary Americans who’ve seen their cities and towns decimated by outsourcing leading to despair, homelessness, massive drug abuse, and now a communicable disease that threatens our entire way of life — even as they are told globalism is a “net benefit” for the nation.

Net benefit? Ordinary Americans were supposed to be mollified by cheap consumer goods, while elitists amassed historically unprecedented levels of wealth. Moreover, those same elitists lectured us about how the nationalist agenda of the Trump administration was akin to Nazism, and that any hesitation to embrace globalism was xenophobic. Even now, despite this being the second virus originating in China (SARs emerged in 2003), our own media insists that referring to COVID-19 as “Wuhan virus,” the “Wuhan coronavirus,” or the “Chinese coronavirus” is racist.

In the midst of a pandemic, it doesn’t get more intellectually or morally bankrupt than that. The hypocrisy is astounding: Many of the same media sources now browbeating Americans for their racism initially used precisely the same terms to describe the virus.

So what changed? Politics.

A media ostensibly concerned with the well-being of Americans is more concerned with undermining a Trump administration that has proved largely antithetical to the globalist agenda. An administration that facilitated the creation of millions of new jobs supposedly impossible to create, because the “new normal” of low expectations  professed by the scumbag/liar-nObama administration was said to be an immutable reality.

And above all else, an administration that finally challenged the odious assertion by both parties that accommodating a totalitarian nation would eventually “democratize” it.

It was all a lie. “Fact is, choosing to invest in China versus the United States is not a simple dollars-and-cents, bottom-line calculation,” explains columnist Curtis Ellis. “Certain ‘externalities’ enter into the equation. Externalities such as national security. Externalities such as the continued existence of the United States. Externalities such as the continued existence of freedom of thought, freedom of religion, and individual liberty in this world. By now it should be crystal clear to anyone but the willfully blind that the communist party ruling China holds and promotes values antithetical to our own.”

Willfully blind? Willfully greedy, stupid, and corrupt is more like it. To the point where the massive theft of intellectual property, the “editing” of Hollywood entertainment, and the coerced silence of NBA players — to name only a handful of examples — is willfully granted in exchange for access to a billion Chinese consumers.

And now, as many people are discovering for the first time, drug companies and their supply chains are an integral part of the sellout. One that has left us as vulnerable as any outright war or terrorist attack could. “I have no doubt,” retired Brig. Gen. John Adams told Fox News, “that they would consider weaponizing their domina

The markets surged upon the news, gaining 9% Friday. However, as we go to press this morning, stocks have plunged again, erasing Friday’s gains. Until the pandemic is under control, market volatility looks to be the new normal.

In the meantime, Trump’s emergency declaration frees up billions in financial assistance for states and local authorities, while the administration furthers COVID-19 testing via a combination of public and private cooperation. As The Wall Street Journal reports, “Roche, the drug company, has developed a test that received rapid FDA approval. Google is developing a website that Americans will be able to consult to see if their symptoms seem to require testing. If they do, then they will be able to drive to retailers like Walmart and Walgreens that are making their parking lots available for drive-through tests that involve a nasal swab. The samples will then be shipped to Quest and LabCorp, private labs that will assay the results and deliver them back to patients in 24 hours if all goes as planned.”

Also over the weekend, with a 363-40 vote, the House passed its rushed emergency COVID-19 bailout bill. Unfortunately, the legislation once again demonstrated just what craven political profiteers Democrats are. Never let a crisis go to waste. This was typified by Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to sneak in $1 billion in abortion-related funding, a move that had even Leftmedia pundit Joy Reid asking, “What does that have to do with COVID-19?”

Eventually, the abortion-funding loophole was stripped from the bill, but the legislation needs to have a lot more removed. Ironically, the bill will end up hurting small businesses, the very businesses that will likely be in most need of financial assistance, not added expenses. For example, Erick Erickson notes, “In addition to using this COVID-19 situation to spend money on things that are absolutely not related to it, House Democrats are insisting on [mandatory] paid leave. But the Democrats are exempting businesses with more than 500 employees. That puts the massive burden on small businesses that do not have the capacity to [afford mandatory paid leave].” An amendment now exempts businesses with fewer than 50 employees.

In short, the legislation is the usual swamp concoction of needed emergency funding combined with Big Government welfare expansions. The bill now heads to the Senate, where we hope majority Republicans will pump the brakes on the Democrats’ political profiteering. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set a measured tone, stating, “Senators will need to carefully review the version just passed by the House. But I believe the vast majority of Senators in both parties will agree we should act swiftly to secure relief for American workers, families, and small businesses.”   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69254?mailing_id=4925&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4925&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

That being said, there has been a lot of social-media misinformation about a “Stafford Act” presidential declaration of a “national quarantine” for most “nonessential” workers nationwide. Allow me to dispel that rumor, and to clarify the purpose of the current quarantines and “social distancing” measures — the motives of which are to prevent overwhelming our medical-response capabilities.

On Friday, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency as authorized by the Stafford Act, an important measure supporting the government and private-sector response to the COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S. This was a major step to reducing government regulatory and bureaucratic barriers to response and recovery, and it provides significant economic assurances for state and local governments and businesses nationwide. That was an important measure, and while there are no “good options” for dealing with this epidemic, some options are better than others, and the administration continues to implement those options.

For context, as I have written previously, the notion of containing the WuFlu epidemic is absurd. It was nationwide by February. And, to be clear, infectious-disease deaths associated with COVID-19 could far exceed the 2017-18 flu season, when the CDC estimated the U.S. flu death toll was 80,000.

About that “presidential quarantine”? There is NO proposed presidential declaration of a national quarantine, much less any Stafford Act or constitutional authority for such. Quarantines have obviously and necessarily been in the range of discussions for the last three weeks — and have been part of the pandemic table-top planning exercises for three decades. Because of misinformation circulated on social media – most likely disseminated by Chinese or Russian directorates of disinformation, in recent days some people have declared they have a “friend of a friend” who has a direct line to the White House or Pentagon. Nonsense.

The National Security Council released a statement refuting the misinformation yesterday: “There is no national lockdown. The CDC has and will continue to post the latest guidance on #COVID19 #coronavirus.”

For the record, such a “national quarantine” would be exponentially more economically devastating than the current state- and local-mandated measures, and the Trump national-security team is, appropriately, more leaving decisions about what to shutter and where, to state and local governments. The administration is rightly concerned that any centralized “one size fits all” approach would not be effective.

To that end, five states took additional measures over the weekend to close restaurants and bars — and that is how these decisions should be made. But it should be noted that state quarantine declarations could significantly impede commutes between states.

Accelerating the “national quarantine” rumor was a revised CDC guidance with more restrictive recommendations for group gatherings. But what most set of the misinformation bomb were remarks by the highly respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who also serves as the administration’s spokesman for the epidemic response.

According to Dr. Fauci: “I think Americans should be prepared that they are going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing. We feel that with rather stringent mitigation and containment, without necessarily complete lockdown, we would be able to prevent ourselves from getting to where, unfortunately, Italy is now. … With regard to domestic travel bans, we always talk about it, consider everything. But I can tell you that has not been seriously considered, doing travel bans in the country. … I don’t see that right now or in the immediate future. Everybody has got to get involved in distancing themselves socially. … Everything is on the table. Right now, myself personally, I wouldn’t go to a restaurant. I just wouldn’t because I don’t want to be in a crowded place.”

Dr. Fauci had earlier said, “I would like to see a dramatic diminution of personal interaction. … Whatever it takes to do that, that’s what I would like to see. … The virus is not a mathematical formula. There are going to be people who are young who are going to wind up getting seriously ill. So, protect yourself.”

He noted, “For most people, the coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. … The vast majority of people recover. People with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three weeks to six weeks to recover.”

Regarding the notion that the recommendations are overkill or overreacting, he added, “If you think you’re in line with the outbreak, you’re already three weeks behind. So you’ve got to be almost overreacting a bit to keep up with it. … People need to understand that things will get worse before they get better. … What we’re trying to do is to make sure they don’t get to the worst-case scenario.”

Dr. Fauci is an academician/physician and government-agency head — which is to say his views, while very informed from the medical perspective, are not tempered by other realities, like the economic implications for American workers and their families.

To better understand the motives behind “self-quarantines” and “social distancing,” these measures serve primarily two objectives.

First, the measures are NOT to “contain” the virus. It is assumed that about half of Americans will contract the coronavirus variant causing COVID-19 illness, and a fraction of those will require significant medical attention. Fauci’s reference to what has happened in Italy is a reference to the spike of those requiring medical attention, which overwhelmed Italy’s domestic medical capabilities.

Thus, the objective of increasing individual isolation here is to “flatten the infection curve” in order to retard the exponential rate of spread — how fast we get it — and thus not reduce the infections but spread the demand on our ability to provide medical attention over a longer period of time.

To be clear, the isolation measures being taken by citizens at higher risk — those over age 60 and those with medical conditions that make recovery more difficult — will prevent infections. But again, the coronavirus variant causing COVID-19 illness will remain in circulation nationwide for a long time, especially if it is not slowed by warmer weather as is often the case with seasonal flu epidemics. Wide distribution of effective vaccines is still at least 8-10 months out, if not longer.

The second motive behind increasing individual isolation is equally important. Retarding the rate of infectious spread allows more time to develop and ramp up medical-treatment protocols.

The key question about “hunkering down” is, for how long? Are we going to flatten the infectious-spread curve so long that we flatline the economy?

Here is what I can tell you for sure. Donald Trump has more business experience than any president in a century. As I noted above, while there are no “good options” for dealing with this epidemic, some options are better than others, and this president and his administration understand that as well as any president in my lifetime.

Moving forward, as Trump declared last week, “Everybody has to be vigilant and has to be careful. But be calm.” I would add for those who are in judicious contact with others, maintain an infectious and confident smile, and pass it along!

(Visit our updated COVID-19 contagion preparedness and response resource page, “WuFlu and You,” and see our related pages.)  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/69256?mailing_id=4925&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4925&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Unfortunately, leftist politicians like commie-Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren, and commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for not only limiting nuclear power but eliminating it. Thankfully, this extremist position does not appear to be winning the day. In fact, under President Donald Trump’s leadership, America’s nuclear industry is getting a much-needed boost. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is now working to accelerate the development of advanced nuclear reactors.

Furthermore, as Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) writes  at National Review, “In December of 2019, the NRC approved an early site permit for the Tennessee Valley Authority to build a small modular reactor at the Clinch River Site, in my district in Tennessee. In 2018, Congress passed and the president signed the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act, which eliminated financial and technological barriers that stood in the way of American nuclear innovation.”

Both China and Russia have been aggressively working to usurp American leadership on developing nuclear technology. Allowing either nation to become the world leader in nuclear technology would be a disaster for not just the U.S. but the world. Notwithstanding the Sanders-Warren-AOC trio, an encouraging development is growing bipartisan support in Congress for the U.S. to refocus efforts on maintaining our world leadership in nuclear development.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69133?mailing_id=4915&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4915&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

loose lips liar-Biden and commie-Sanders primarily debated — what else? — coronavirus. Both men coughed a bit too much, reminding Americans just how old and vulnerable they are during a time of crisis. And neither had command of the basics. As The Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Stiles noted, “Both candidates experienced difficulties while attempting to discuss the coronavirus (Wuhan) pandemic in relation to previous outbreaks. loose lips liar-Biden touted his role in the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s response to ‘the N1H1 [incomprehensible] as well as what happened in Africa.’ He meant the H1N1 virus and Ebola, which commie-Sanders repeatedly cited instead of the coronavirus. ‘I’ve got Ebola in my head right now!’ he said, after finally catching his mistake.”

The two traded barbs over Medicare for All, which is commie-Bernie’s “solution” for everything. “You have a single-payer system in Italy,” loose lips liar-Biden observed of a nation hit particularly hard by coronavirus. “It doesn’t work there. [The coronavirus] has nothing to do with Medicare for All. That would not solve the problem.” When commie-Sanders predictably fought back, loose lips liar-Biden said he didn’t “want to get into a back and forth in terms of our politics” … which is kind of the point of a debate.

One thing loose lips liar-Biden did do, however, was make a play for commie-Sanders’s voters when the inevitable day comes that commie-Bernie has to admit defeat. loose lips liar-Biden did this by tacking to the extreme left on various policies. “The first 100 days of my administration,” he said, “no one will be deported at all.” On energy, he declared, “No more subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry, no more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling including offshore, no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill. Period. Ends.” loose lips liar-Biden also insisted, “We should be talking about things like I’ve been talking about for years: high-speed rail, taking millions of automobiles off the road.”

“loose lips liar-Biden 2020: No oil, no cars.”

Seems like a winning message for the “moderate” in the race.

As for commie-Sanders, he again reiterated his support for all the great things authoritarian regimes in Cuba and China have done to for their citizens. “China is undoubtedly an authoritarian society. But will anybody, will any economist, deny that extreme poverty in China today is much less than what it was 40 or 50 years ago? That’s a fact.” And his response to loose lips liar-Biden’s radical climate agenda was, “All well and good, but nowhere near enough.” Good grief.

Even so, back to coronavirus, loose lips liar-Biden offered what is essentially the bottom-line assessment of why he’s virtually certain to prevail over Sanders: “People are looking for results, not a revolution.” The problem is that loose lips liar-Biden seems ready to bring revolution, too, just packaged a little more neatly.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69253?mailing_id=4925&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4925&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

What we know of the novel COVID-19 is that it is highly contagious and poses the most serious threat to the elderly and those with chronic health problems. The World Health Organization, which has officially labeled it a pandemic, notes that for at least 80% of those who contract the virus, their symptoms will be “mild” — fever and a cough. The biggest concern is overloading the healthcare system, which means that isolation has become the go-to response.

Cancellation of all public events seemed to really take off with the NBA announcing on Wednesday evening — immediately after President Donald Trump’s speech meant to quell fears — that it was suspending all games indefinitely. The following day, all other major sports leagues followed suit. Simultaneously, the popular March Madness college basketball tournament followed the cancel campaign, which then bled over into classes — colleges and universities all over the nation have suspended classes and are having students take their courses online.

Then Disney announced it is closing its theme parks, all of New York City’s Broadway theaters have canceled  shows and shut down, and the Mormon Church has  canceled all church gatherings worldwide for at least a month.

With all these cancellations and the rippling impact it’s having on everyone, the greater problem caused by COVID-19 may not be health related but rather economic devastation.

Here is just one example we in our humble shop have experienced thus far. For months we have been planning and preparing to host a booth at the upcoming NRA Annual Meeting in Nashville. That event was canceled on Thursday over coronavirus concerns. That’s certainly a hit to our small business, but others are faring far worse.

Schools have closed their facilities all across the country, instructing students to stay home and take their classes online. What are families with two working parents supposed to do — leave their children home alone? And, like it or not, many kids get one or even two meals a day from their school, adding another hardship for these families.

Or what about all the businesses that depend upon sports leagues and the entertainment industry? How many restaurants and hotels will have to cut staff or reduce hours because there are no games or public entertainment attracting people, or because people are simply self-isolating? And that’s not to mention the bear market, which has cost millions of Americans a significant chunk of their retirement savings. (That’s why the Federal Reserve announced it will pump $1.5 trillion into short-term markets for stabilization.) The economic ripple effect of these mass cancellations after all the recent market volatility is already enormous.

However, much like the 2008 recession, those who will feel the least impact are mainstream-media talkingheads and DC politicians. Worse, they’ll be the ones to tell us what a great job they did when this is all over. In the meantime, hang tight, keep calm, take care of your family and neighbors, and wash your hands.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69221?mailing_id=4921&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4921&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Former Vice President Joe Biden continued to have success in the Democratic primaries Tuesday, with wins in Michigan and several other states. It increasingly looks like it’ll be a Trump-loose lips liar-Biden matchup come November.

Everything both men do between now and Election Day will be put under a microscope. Which is why I think the loose lips liar-Biden campaign should be worried about something that happened Tuesday in Michigan.

As Biden was touring an auto plant in Detroit, a worker asked him why he wants to take Americans’ Second Amendment rights away. 

The auto worker highlighted a policy-related problem of loose lips liar-Biden’s. loose lips liar-Biden is often portrayed as a “moderate” or “centrist” politician, and he may have been long ago. But in recent years he has lurched to the left along with his party. And that includes on guns. In fact, just days ago loose lips liar-Biden appeared to offer former Rep. socialist-Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) a role in addressing gun control in his administration. socialist-O'Rourke, you may remember, was previously a presidential candidate who infamously promised to confiscate people’s guns, even suggesting that police would visit people’s homes to implement an assault-weapons ban.

Perhaps feeling a little sensitive about being called out for his extreme position on gun control, loose lips liar-Biden immediately escalated things with a heated, profanity-laced response to the auto worker’s question. He got in the guy’s face, called him a horse’s you-know-what, and invited him to take things outside. loose lips liar-Biden ended by telling the worker that he doesn’t work for him. (Watch the exchange here.)

So, was this an isolated incident? Well, no — loose lips liar-Biden has a habit of threatening people who confront him over his far-left positions.

Earlier in the primaries, when an Iowa man asked him a question, loose lips liar-Biden called him fat and challenged him to a push-up contest. He called a female student a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier” at a town hall in New Hampshire.

loose lips liar-Biden has even threatened physical violence against President Trump. He once told an interviewer that he’d “take him behind the gym and beat the hell” out of Trump if they were in high school.

This is particularly problematic because one of the themes of the loose lips liar-Biden campaign is that with him as president, the country would turn away from the boisterous figure of Donald trump and get back to “normalcy.” But Trump rarely gets enraged like this, especially at voters.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether loose lips liar-Biden has lost the mental edge needed to run for president, let alone to perform as commander-in-chief. But there’s another question to consider: Do voters want to put their trust in a man who has a tendency to bully and threaten the people for whom he would in fact be working?

scumbag/liar-Hillary in the Hot Seat

Here’s some interesting news you may have missed. Lost in all the headlines about coronavirus and Super Tuesday comebacks, scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton had a huge setback.

The folks at Judicial Watch are doggedly pursuing answers to many important yet unresolved issues surrounding the former secretary of state’s private email server. I’m pleased to report that they recently won a big legal battle in that ongoing effort.

Judge Royce Lamberth has ordered scumbag/liar-Clinton to submit to a sworn deposition. She’s responded to questions in writing before, but Judge Lamberth found her responses grossly inadequate. The judge wrote that her answers were “incomplete” and “unhelpful” and “left many more questions than answers.”

Now scumbag/liar-Hillary will finally face a real grilling! Of course, we know that scumbag/liar-Hillary was interviewed by the FBI. But that interview was a total joke and she was handled with kid gloves. It wasn’t recorded and she was never put under oath. 

Among other things, Judge Lamberth wants answers to the following questions:

• How did scumbag/liar-Clinton come to believe that her private emails would be preserved, as is required by law?

• When did she learn that State Department records management officials did not know about her private server?

• Why did she think that using a private server for official State Department business was permissible in the first place?

One reason scumbag/liar-Hillary’s emails remain an ongoing issue is that the government is still finding new messages. Judicial Watch informed Judge Lamberth that the FBI turned over 30 new emails in December and the State Department has no explanation for where they came from. 

scumbag/liar-Clinton has until mid-May to complete the sworn deposition.

Are Dem Voters Rejecting Socialism?

The consensus in the media, including conservative media, is that loose lips liar-Joe Biden’s primary victories show that even Democrats are rejecting the socialism of Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders. I beg to differ! 

Exit polls conducted in states voting Tuesday by Fox News asked Democrat voters whether they supported or opposed a “single payer” healthcare system (commie-Bernie’s proposal), which essentially eliminates private insurance and puts government in charge of all healthcare.

In every state this proposal was supported by more than 60% of Democrat voters. But, these same voters supported loose lips liar-Biden over commie-Sanders. Clearly, they aren’t rejecting socialism; they simply believe that loose lips liar-Biden will have an easier time winning in November. 

If he wins, these left-wing Democrats believe and will insist he take over U.S. healthcare. Conservatives must fight back against the idea that somehow loose lips liar-Biden is a moderate.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/69172?mailing_id=4919&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4919&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

On the “pro” side, good reasons exist for why there hasn’t been another 9/11 since 2001: Intelligence activities authorized under the post-9/11 FISA and PATRIOT Act statutes, much better cooperation between federal (and state) agencies, and the use of the hyper-secretive federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) search warrants have all bolstered national security and made us all safer. It’s also axiomatic that a government must be able to keep certain secrets to maintain such protections: If a foreign state or terrorist actor gains knowledge of the intelligence activities conducted against it, it will most certainly act to evade or counter those activities. So at least some level of trust must be vested by the public in government to empower it to conduct such activities that are deemed critical to the nation’s overall safety and security.

As former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy has noted, two key PATRIOT Act provisions — the so-called “roving wiretap” and the “lone wolf” sections — remain critical to protecting the public from foreign state and terrorist actors. Roving wiretaps allow government agents to attach the communication-related search warrant to the foreign agent instead of the agent’s phone, so a new warrant is not needed to continue surveillance every time a new “burner” phone is used. The lone-wolf provision permits the government to monitor foreigners, not U.S. citizens or legal residents, who are engaged in highly suspicious, terrorist-related activities without directly connecting them to a foreign state or terrorist organization. The idea is that such connections are often hard to make and take time and intelligence gathering to firmly establish. But this provision is effectively authorization to monitor under “duck theory” intelligence operations: If it walks and quacks like a duck, chances are it’s a duck. The longer government agents are able to observe behaviors highly correlated to known terrorist activities, the more likely such connections will be found. These two measures seem sensible enough to us, by themselves. But the collective capabilities and protections of the federal government are not without a price.

Indeed, on the “con” side is a host of horribles, many of which have been ostentatiously paraded before the American public over the past four years by unwitting Democrats who were late by at least one presidential election to recognize the unintended consequences of their actions. A few of the “floats” in this parade include using the most powerful intelligence apparatus in the world as a weapon to target political enemies; stockpiling “big-data”-sized records of millions of calls made in the U.S. because that data “might” be needed, a violation of Fourth Amendment protections; conducting “deep state” shadow-government activities (note to leftists: using the phrase “resist” does nothing to help paranoia — justified or not — aimed at this perception); abusing authorities and powers in serial fashion; and making false arrests and trumping up charges to “squeeze” enemies of the deep state. The list is virtually endless and has taken its toll, culminating in the defenestration and public humiliation of the FBI and virtually all of the so-called “intelligence community.” The collective esteem of these once-venerable organizations will take a very long time to rebuild, if that’s even possible.

So what to do? The people entrust their governments with the authority and responsibility to take care of them. That hasn’t changed and it never will. If a government cannot take care of its people it will ultimately fall. Moreover, abuses can and will happen in every government. Governments are composed of humans, after all, and humans err. So the question really is how to deal with these realities. Do we — as has been suggested for both the FISA and PATRIOT Acts — trash such well-intended government measures and “start over,” or do we try to use the most recent lessons learned to surgically excise the “badness” and keep the “goodness”?

To us, at least, the answer seems very dependent on the level of “surgery” needed. Are we talking mole removal, or are we talking organ transplants? We think using a let’s-not-throw-baby-out-with-the-bathwater perspective is a good approach to solving this problem, at least initially. Is there a way to avoid the abuses we’ve just seen without scrapping decades’ worth of well-intentioned legislation? If so, a foundational “must” to preclude such ash-heaping is to restore intra-governmental accountability.

In our view, putting federal court judges — who are largely unaccountable to the people — in charge of making calls on intelligence activities is a total nonstarter to such a restoration. Federal judges should be put in and made to stay in their proper lanes: deciding matters of federal law, not segueing into the lanes of foreign intelligence in which they have neither expertise nor any business being in. And they should certainly not be put into positions in which under-the-cover-of-secrecy political temptation and intrigue are likely to find footholds and metastasize, as these continue to do. Congressional oversight, periodic reviews, and power-of-the-purse checks on executive-run intelligence programs provide at least some measures to remedy the rogue operations such as those we’ve witnessed over the past half decade. Pulling federal judges out of their FISC roles as de facto buffers from such accountability is perhaps a modest measure and may not resolve all the problems associated with FISA and the PATRIOT Act. But getting unaccountable federal judges out of the mix can only help to restore the badly needed direct paths of accountability so clearly missing under the present statutory construct.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69163?mailing_id=4919&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4919&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body 

But seriously, everyone should calm down.

That was what Trump was trying to convey last night. His tone and remarks were largely spot on:

Today, the World Health Organization officially announced that this is a global pandemic.

We have been in frequent contact with our allies, and we are marshaling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people.

This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history. I am confident that by counting and continuing to take these tough measures, we will significantly reduce the threat to our citizens, and we will ultimately and expeditiously defeat this virus.

From the beginning of time, nations and people have faced unforeseen challenges, including large-scale and very dangerous health threats. This is the way it always was and always will be. It only matters how you respond, and we are responding with great speed and professionalism.

The president reassured the American people that his administration is taking solid efforts to combat a real threat — a threat that is particularly dangerous to the elderly and sick. He also recommended things that should be common sense: “For all Americans, it is essential that everyone take extra precautions and practice good hygiene. Each of us has a role to play in defeating this virus. Wash your hands, clean often-used surfaces, cover your face and mouth if you sneeze or cough, and, most of all, if you are sick or not feeling well, stay home.”

Part of the panic today, however, is driven by Trump’s unfortunate lack of basic clarity on some really key details. That was nowhere more problematic than on Europe:

To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days. The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight. These restrictions will be adjusted subject to conditions on the ground.

There will be exemptions for Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings, and these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing. These restrictions will also not apply to the United Kingdom.

Trump’s comments — in a prepared speech — were so unclear that he took to Twitter to clarify: “Very important for all countries & businesses to know that trade will in no way be affected by the 30-day restriction on travel from Europe. The restriction stops people not goods.” The administration was also forced to clarify that only foreigners, not returning Americans, would be banned from traveling here.

Businesses depend upon certainty, and Trump accomplished just the opposite with that portion of the speech.

Another blunder was his claim that health-insurance companies “agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments.” Actually, what they agreed to was waiving fees for testing.

Those quibbles aside, the Trump administration’s  actions have been laudable. No president can stop the spread of a virus. He can effectively manage the federal response, and, outside of testing failures, Trump is doing that.

Democrats, on the other hand, can’t believe their luck. As usual, they’re exploiting a crisis for political gain. Trump is right that our “vast economic prosperity gives us flexibility, reserves, and resources to handle any threat that comes our way,” but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt or that Democrats won’t make the pain worse to increase their chances in November.

In any case, the president’s final words truly resonated. “No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States,” he said. “We have the best economy, the most advanced healthcare, and the most talented doctors, scientists, and researchers anywhere in the world. We are all in this together. We must put politics aside, stop the partisanship, and unify together as one nation and one family. As history has proven time and time again, Americans always rise to the challenge and overcome adversity.”

Finally, he noted, “Our future remains brighter than anyone can imagine. Acting with compassion and love, we will heal the sick, care for those in need, help our fellow citizens, and emerge from this challenge stronger and more unified than ever before.”   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/69182?mailing_id=4919&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4919&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body