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Going Rogue

March 27, 2020

Today could be a high drama day in the House, as Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is reportedly threatening to “go rogue” and hold up passage of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill. He and some other conservatives are angry that the Democrats managed to stuff so much irrelevant leftwing pork and government expansion into what is supposed to be a rescue bill for idled American workers and businesses. There are worries on both sides that Massie will prevent a quick voice vote and demand a full vote that would require members who are absent to travel back to Washington to form a quorum and cast votes.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/extreme-precautions-ordered-in-house-ahead-of-historic-vote-on-largest-stimulus-package-in-us-history

Democrats are furious over the tactics and many Republicans are upset that their golden issue of Pelosi holding up the bill for a week while Americans suffered will now be overshadowed by one lone Republican holding it up. Look, I agree that there are many things in this bill that shouldn’t be there. Democrats tried to stuff it as full of leftist goodies as a piñata. Here’s just one example of the kind of irrelevant issues it lavishes money on that we’ll be discovering for months:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/coronavirus-relief-package-contains-over-11-billion-international-development

It’s precisely the type of bill that makes you lament that the President doesn’t have a line-item veto. But if there were ever an example of letting the perfect become the enemy of the good, the rumored Massie stall may be it. It’s time for Washington to end the political games and help the rest of the country, which is already acting heroically without their help under incredibly difficult conditions.

Speaking of that, check out this lengthy Facebook comment by Bart Hall, reeling off all the ways that Americans are stepping up to deal with the crisis, help each other and create innovative solutions to problems in record time, either without Washington’s help or in direct defiance of pointless federal regulations. He also speculates on the possible positive effects of so many people learning just how useless, and even obstructive of progress and innovation, all those nanny state regulations are. Warning: a bit of profanity, forgivable under the circumstances.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/362781

And as always, the Christian conservative site The Babylon Bee nailed the useless grandstanding of Washington politicians perfectly with this headline: “Government Accidentally Shuts Itself Down With Ban On Non-Essential Businesses.”

https://babylonbee.com/news/government-accidentally-shuts-itself-down-with-ban-on-non-essential-businesses

While you’re at that site, you should read some more stories for great laughs to help ease your homebound boredom and anxiety. This may be my recent favorite: “Quarantined Journalist Really Starting To Annoy Family By Calling Them Racists All Day.”

https://babylonbee.com/news/quarantined-journalist-reduced-to-only-calling-their-household-members-racist

Just before midnight Wednesday, the Senate unanimously passed a $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill, the biggest in US history. Details of who gets what are here:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/final-vote-coronavirus-stimulus-bill-now-imminent-amid-tensions-over-provisions

It’s a compromise bill, meaning that it removed most of the leftist goodies Democrats tried to stuff into it, but not all. Republican did remove the demands for CO2 limits on airlines that can’t even fly at the moment, diversity hiring quotas and other irrelevant “progressive” pipe dreams. But here’s what survives: in addition to banning large companies that take out loans from fighting union organizing efforts (a boost to the Democrats’ electoral base), it contains such “emergency” funding as $75 million for the notoriously liberal Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $25 million for House staff and salaries, $350 million to resettle more immigrants and migrants at a time when millions of Americans are losing their jobs, and $150 million to the National Endowment for the Arts.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-coronavirus-bill-75m-corporation-for-public-broadcasting-npr-big-bird

As I said last night on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, it’s as if President Trump were a fireman, rushing around to put out fires at every business in America, and instead of helping, the Democrats are backing trucks up to the back doors and looting them. This irresponsible and unconscionable opportunism in exploiting the pain of American workers and businesses to promote their own political interests is one more reason why this November, voters must show up at the polls and remove them from power in the House, reduce their power in the Senate, and keep them far, far away from the White House.

The bill now goes to the House, where Nancy Pelosi and Republican leaders say they hope also to get a unanimous vote to fast-track it so they don’t have to delay it with more debate, especially with some members absent due to the coronavirus.

Oh, but wait: look who’s talking about delaying all that desperately-needed help for American workers because she cares so much about American workers!

https://www.westernjournal.com/ocasio-cortez-warns-open-single-handedly-delaying-coronavirus-bill-necessary/

This news is especially ironic, considering AOC’s own former chief of staff who helped write the “Green New Deal” called Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to block aid to working people while she tried to stuff the Senate relief bill with leftist political issues such as carbon emission limits “ridiculous.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-is-ridiculous-aocs-ex-top-aide-torches-pelosi-for-coronavirus-stimulus-games/

FYI, this is the aide who was often referred to as “AOC’s brain.” You’ll notice that he no longer holds that position.

Joe Biden is struggling

March 26, 2020

Joe Biden, still struggling to appear relevant despite being about as easily overlooked as the star of that new “Invisible Man” movie, is continuing his embarrassing and barely coherent “competing coronavirus briefings” against President Trump from his house. In his latest dispatch from Cloud Cuckooland, Biden said Trump should “stop talking” and let medical experts speak. He mocked Trump’s hopes of getting the economy reopened by Easter and said, “This curve is going up and up and up because we did not act when we should have acted.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-blasts-trumps-coronavirus-response-sidelines-stop-talking/

Boy, where to begin? Obviously, with the fact that when Trump cut off travel from China back in January, acting quickly when he should have, Biden attacked him as a fearmonger and xenophobe. When Biden released a “plan” for dealing better with the crisis than Trump, most of it was stuff Trump had already done. In case Biden hasn’t noticed, Trump has assembled a team of the best doctors in America, and they are present and speak at all his press conferences. The leading voice among them, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has debunked the idea that Trump isn’t listening to them (apparently, Joe doesn’t keep up with the news; he’s also still repeating the debunked “fake news” that Trump called the virus a “hoax.” He was talking about the false media narrative parroted by Biden that he didn't take it seriously.)

And as for Trump’s Easter comment, it was just an expressed hope, not an ironclad policy directive. You’d think Biden would recognize what a “hope” is, since that’s what he and Obama got elected on. Maybe that’s why he assumes all hopes are meaningless.

Incidentally, Biden has also called for another “stimulus” bill that would somehow save us from the coronavirus by including the “Green New Deal,” thereby accomplishing the neat trick of saving the economy by passing a law that most sane economists believe would kill the economy.

Instead of telling Trump to stop talking, Joe should trying to talk. He’s become the living embodiment of Mark Twain’s rule that “it’s better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re a fool than open it and remove all doubt.”

What a pleasant surprise to see one of my favorite medical experts as a guest on THE INGRAHAM ANGLE Tuesday night. Most of all, it was gratifying to see he thinks the same way I do about hydroxychloroquine/zithromycin therapy, even though he is a world-famous physician and entrepreneur and I am not.

Oh, by the way, Gov. Huckabee was on the show, too. More about that below.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone, MD, is widely known for his groundbreaking series of books on nutrition and aging, starting with THE WRINKLE CURE and THE PERRICONE PRESCRIPTION. I think I’ve read every one of them. He also developed a line of skin care that I have used over the years as my budget would allow. But perhaps he is best known for “the Perricone Diet,” a regimen based mostly on wild salmon and vegetables, designed to provide the right nutrients for skin (and brain) and to avoid the damaging blood sugar spikes that high-carb diets cause. I’ve followed it for a long time –- no endless pasta bowl and breadsticks for me –- and even wrote and performed an operatic song parody about it in a one-person comedy show about the pursuit of beauty called MY SHIP HAS SAILED. The song: “O Worship Dr. Perricone.”

VIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/CtSWkUscZ74 

When I performed this in larger venues, he appeared behind me on screen in a stained glass window…

Anyway, I’ve always considered Dr. Perricone to be way ahead of his time, so it doesn’t surprise me that he would be looking into this experimental treatment for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). Apparently, he’s been prescribing hydroxychloroquine for his patients with autoimmune diseases and getting results. And though as a physician he considers himself “risk-averse,” he said he's very surprised at the reluctance of the medical community to move forward with the off-label use of this FDA-approved medication to treat COVID-19.

He advised looking at the “risk-benefit ratio.” This antimalarial drug came out in 1945 (!), he explained, and there are about a million patients every year taking it for autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. “There’s nothing better, as far as I’m concerned, in terms of safety of a drug [than] to have it being used a long time,” he said, “and 70 years is a very long time.”

Ideally, he said, we’d love to have some really compelling studies, lots of data, “but we don’t have time for that.” We have to move fast. And this is a short, five-to-seven-day regimen, for which “the side-effect profile is extremely, extremely low.” So, looking at the risk-benefit ratio, we have a drug that’s been “tried and true” for 70 years (low risk), combined with good data coming in (high benefit).

Given the severity of the disease, “it makes no sense to me whatsoever,” he said, “to hesitate distributing this drug.” Of course, it’s important to be under a doctor’s care, he added, to make sure it won’t interact badly with some other drug the patient is taking or if there are “any underlying problems.”

We need to move very quickly on this, he concluded. Every day counts in terms of saving lives. He went even further, to say that anyone hesitating now is doing this country “a huge disservice.”

I completely agree with Dr. Perricone (dare I say, “worship” him?), and would add that my main concern is that much of the reluctance to go all-in on this drug therapy is because if it worked, it would prove President Trump right and help him win re-election. That decision should be based not on any political considerations whatsoever but on the kind of analysis Dr. Perricone has offered. I don’t know how he votes; perhaps he’s apolitical. Anyway, the discussion should be shaped not by pro- and anti-Trump forces but by what has been shown to help people get well. There are some who hate Trump so irrationally that they would actually deny him this accomplishment.

Personally, as someone who is in the “red zone” on the risk scale (due to previous lung damage as a complication from H1N1 flu in 2009), if I somehow get sick with this in spite of working from home and careful “social distancing,” I have looked at costs and benefits just as Dr. Perricone has and have made up my mind...I am getting that treatment.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6144520387001

As mentioned, Gov. Huckabee was on Laura Ingraham’s show as well, with Byron York, to discuss the chatter surrounding New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a possible bid for the White House.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6144521360001

Obviously, this is happening because the Democrats have to find SOMEBODY more on-the-ball mentally than Joe Biden, who is showing himself to be less than worthless in a crisis. Byron York pointed out --- though he hardly had to --- that Democrats are looking at Biden and see someone who’s really struggling.

The Governor noted that Biden, in doing those bizarre shadow-commentaries following the President’s press briefings, is doing a lot of damage, not only to his own prospects but to the country by trying to pretend that “he’s really gonna be the President.” The more Biden talks, the less confident people are in his ability to handle something like the current situation. In contrast, Huckabee gave Gov. Cuomo credit for the way he’s been handling the role of a governor in managing such a crisis.

"Governors tend to be good presidential candidates most of the time,” Huckabee said, “because, frankly, they’ve managed a microcosm of the federal government. Every single thing you have at the federal level you have at the state level, just with fewer zeroes on the end of your budget.” But, having been in those shoes himself, he really doesn’t think Cuomo is thinking about the presidency. “When you’re dealing with a major crisis,” he told Laura, “you’re trying to stay ahead of it and manage it and deal with it, and the thought that you’re gonna try to figure out how this is gonna advantage you politically, to be honest with you, you just don’t have time for that.

"There WILL be time for that, and I’m sure he’ll, maybe, consider it, because of the way he’s managed [this], but right now, I’d cut him some slack, give him a break and say I think he’s legitimately trying to lead his state through a very difficult crisis, and, frankly, I’d give him a passing grade in the way he’s doing it.”

The Gov. also praised President Trump for trying to strike a balance between the “science” of medicine and the “art” of politics. Decisions have to be made with the understanding of what’s possible in the political environment. Democrats in Congress are interested in scoring “political points,” not in helping their enemy get the American people back to work and earning paychecks. Trump’s also got Wall Street concerns, and –- mostly –- he’s got millions of Americans who are scared.

"I think this President is handling it in exactly the executive way that he was hired to do,” the Governor said. “Thank God he’s in that chair right now and not Hillary Clinton, as could have happened.”

Now THAT would’ve been something to be scared about.

The most difficult decision President Trump is facing now is whether to lift some pandemic restrictions and risk accelerating infections and deaths, or wait longer than necessary and risk killing the economy. We all hope and pray that faster, accurate tests will be developed and manufactured and a cure/vaccine found in record time, and there are surprisingly positive indications of both. But until we’re certain, if Trump tries to sound hopeful about the pandemic being not as devastating or long-lasting as feared, his political opponents accuse him of spreading false hope and wanting to sacrifice American lives for the economy – and never mind the devastation to people’s lives that would be caused by shutting down the economy until the November elections, which is likely the dream dancing in their twisted heads.

The media keep attacking Trump for allegedly spreading false information. KUOW, the Seattle NPR radio affiliate, even announced that it will no longer carry his daily press briefings “due to a pattern of false or misleading information.” Because when you want reliable, unbiased news, you can always rely on a Seattle NPR affiliate. You know, one of those taxpayer-supported NPR stations whose programming is so vital that Democrats demanded $75 million for them in the emergency economic rescue bill.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/seattle-npr-affiliate-to-stop-airing-live-coronavirus-briefings-over-pattern-of-false-information

Seattle conservative radio host Jason Rantz, who is familiar with KUOW’s programming, isn’t surprised. He says he suspects their staff is triggered by Trump’s 60% Gallop approval rating for his handling of the crisis and that they’re hearing from angry listeners who still can’t get over the 2016 election. Rantz told the Washington Examiner:


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"Their staff is full of progressive activists masquerading as honest journalists. It's not so much that I care they're progressive and have an agenda; it's that they pretend not to. And this exposes them for what they are. But, hey, it's Seattle. They'll probably be called brave for keeping important information from the public."

For the record, I’ll offer again this list of the "Top 10 Lies About President Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus," all from media outlets such as the New York Times, Politico and the Washington Post, that routinely accuse Trump of spreading lies and misinformation.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-top-10-lies-about-president-trumps-response-to-the-coronavirus/

In order to make such a difficult choice between acting too soon or waiting too long, government officials on all levels need reliable information. It’s ironic that while liberals attack Trump for allegedly spreading misleading information to further a political agenda, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing since the earliest days of the pandemic, when they accused Trump of being an immigrant-hating xenophobe for shutting down travel from China in January. (Now some liberal news outlets accuse him of not doing it soon enough.)

But it isn’t just the obvious opportunists. One of the most relied-upon sources for predicting the potential spread of the infection and the hospitalization rate is under fire for allegedly being a propaganda tool cooked up by Democratic activists to frighten policymakers into making rash and drastic decisions.

Madeleine Osbourne at The Federalist reports that an online pandemic modeling site called COVID Act Now is being cited by the media and used by officials across America as justification for closing businesses and ordering people to stay home, and even as an argument for shutting down entire states. But so far, its predictions have proven as exaggerated as most radical climate groups’ computer model predictions about the temperature.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/inaccurate-virus-models-are-panicking-officials-into-ill-advised-lockdowns/

For instance, the COVID Act Now model predicted that by March 19, Tennessee would have 190 confirmed, hospitalized coronavirus patients. It actually had 15. By the same date, it predicted 400 hospitalizations in Florida. The real number was 90. Similar dire predictions have also been wildly overestimated, at least thus far.

National security writer Jordan Schachtel reveals that the modeling comes entirely from one team at Imperial College UK that has a track record of bad predictions and criticism from the scientific community, that refuses to release its code that makes the estimates, and that claimed the virus would kill up to 2.2 million Americans.

Osbourne reveals that there are multiple problems with their data, including using early numbers that are likely to be wrong, using outdated demographic numbers, assessing the US as a whole instead of by state, assuming that everyone spreads the disease at the same rate, and not adjusting for “population density, culturally-determined interaction frequency and closeness, humidity, temperature, etc.”

She also reports that the founders of the site include Democratic Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and three Silicon Valley tech workers/Democratic activists; and the caveats on it include an admission that “this model is designed to drive fast action, not predict the future.”

To be clear: none of this is meant to downplay the severity of the disease or the importance of preventing its spread. But it does suggest that if someone questions the apocalyptic predictions of unreliable sources that see an opportunity to exploit a health crisis to advance a leftist agenda, then the media shouldn’t automatically assume that the skeptic is the one spreading misinformation.

For further reading, here are some more scientists pointing out the flaws in the media’s favorite fear-generating website. Some even have a theory that millions of people may have already developed a “herd immunity” to the virus and we just don’t know it yet.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/oxford-epidemiologist-heres-why-that-doomsday-model-is-likely-way-off

Senate reaches deal

March 25, 2020

It took until after midnight, but the Senate finally agreed early this morning on an unprecedented $2 trillion (!) economic rescue plan that’s been dubbed “unemployment insurance on steroids.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-senate-strike-deal-on-historic-2t-coronavirus-relief-bill-but-house-support-remains-uncertain

The bill includes direct payments to most Americans and support for unemployment funds so that no workers will lose their salaries during the shutdown, $367 billion to help keep small businesses afloat while their workers are stuck at home, and a $500 billion guaranteed, subsidized loan program for larger businesses and hospitals. Chuck Schumer said Democrats were ready to give unanimous consent so that if no Republicans objected, it could be sped through without a formal roll call vote. The Senate will meet today for debate and (many hope) will quickly send it to the House for a hoped-for unanimous passage as-is.

Don’t count your chickens yet, though, because there could still be objections in the House. Some Democrats made it obvious that they saw the bill as a big piñata that could be stuffed with leftist “transforming America” wish list items, from national same-day voter registration and voting by mail (i.e., the “Voter Fraud Made Easy” program) to various diversity hiring and CO2 emission mandates on businesses, to money for Planned Parenthood abortion clinics. As Bryan Preston at PJ Media put it in this terrific analysis, the Pelosi Democrats treated the coronavirus bill “like it’s a genie that jumped out of a Christmas tree.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/pelosi-dems-treat-coronavirus-bill-like-its-a-genie-that-jumped-out-of-a-christmas-tree/

Luckily, when faced with a furious backlash from the public (they’re now about as popular as the skunk that ate the picnic lunch) and from even the most liberal Republicans in the Senate, Pelosi and the Dems backed down. The sledgehammer fell when President Trump declared that he would not sign a bill that was filled with “Green New Deal stuff.” I think it’s a sign of admirable growth in his role as a wartime President that he showed enough dignity and restraint not to use the word I’m sure he was thinking of instead of “stuff.”

Now, the Speaker just has to keep her notoriously headstrong members in line and the House could rush it through on unanimous consent, too. However, that might be quashed by the threatened opposition of one non-Democratic member, notoriously headstrong Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, whose Trump Derangement Syndrome led him to quit the GOP and become an Independent. I have a feeling this might be his last shot at playing fly-in-the-Jello-mold before the November election returns him to the private sector and the inevitable commentator deal with MSNBC or CNN.

Personally, I hate seeing this level of federal intervention and added debt, too, but we are facing an unprecedented emergency. The bill is far from ideal, but as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put it, you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had. And if this is the equivalent of war, this the best weapon Trump is able to get out of this bitterly divided Congress. Just be grateful that Trump had the backbone to refuse to be blackmailed and to keep so much of that leftist…”stuff”…out of it.

"Reopening America"

March 25, 2020

President Trump is hoping for a target date of “reopening America” on Easter Sunday, which is April 12th. He hopes that by that time, the emergency measures will have flattened the spread of the virus, that we’ll have enough supplies to deal with it and Americans will have adopted safe practices to avoid contracting it (and will keep them up as the weather warms and the virus abates.) Naturally, the media attacked him for spreading “false hope” (he’s only supposed to spread gloom-and-doom, so they can attack him for that.) But he didn’t say Easter was definite, only that he hoped it would be an achievable target date. And I think Easter Sunday is certainly the best date you could possibly set for renewing everyone’s hope.

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-sets-target-date-re-open-america-love-open-easter/

I appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show last night to talk about the delicate balancing act that Trump has to perform between the hard facts of science and the art of politics, which determines what it’s possible to do with those scientific knowns and unknowns, and all the decisions an executive has to make to insure that the “cure” isn’t worse than the disease. You can see it here:

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6144521360001

(On the topic of getting America back to normal as quickly as possible, Ronald Bailey at Reason.com has an interesting suggestion: immediate, universal testing for the virus, so we can identify those who are carrying it and should self-quarantine, those who are healthy and safe to go back to work, those who have had it and are immune so they can work in hospitals, and those at high risk such as the elderly, so they can be isolated for their safety.)

https://reason.com/2020/03/24/massive-coronavirus-testing-is-the-way-to-help-save-the-economy/

I think Trump is doing an extraordinary job (and for no pay!), and it shows how valuable having high-level, international executive and management experience is for a President. It’s why we used to elect Governors to the White House: because Governors deal with almost every issue Presidents do, only on a smaller scale. Lately, we’ve started electing Senators, who are one of 100 DC insiders who can build decades-long careers without ever running anything other than their mouths (Looking at you, Bernie.)

If you really want to know what an incredible job Trump is doing, imagine if we had (Heaven forbid!) Hillary “Put the phone on hold during the Benghazi raid” Clinton in the White House when millions of Americans need swift, decisive action to save them.

Warning to everyone with a scientific background: We’re going to be talking about “anecdotal” evidence here. I realize that researchers tend not to count that and instead hang their hats on large double-blind peer-reviewed studies, but considering the Wuhan coronavirus has been in the population for only a few months (that we know of), there hasn’t been time to run those studies. We’ll get there; in fact –- thanks to the anecdotal evidence –- the kind of studies they need to generate the data they want are in the works right now. Those will guide us in the future. In the meantime, though, we’ve got to look at what a growing number of cases is telling us. And the picture that’s emerging is very positive.

Another warning: You will not get this view from the anti-Trump media, who are a complete waste of airtime and not worth anyone’s attention. They have thoroughly disgraced themselves and don’t have the sense to know it. From them, you will get stories designed to make you anxious and frustrated with President Trump and to make you think he’s being deceptive. To accomplish this, they go much further than expressing skepticism and mistrust –- they flat-out falsely accuse him of repeatedly lying about everything. These “journalists” must be working overtime to slant their stories, even with the help they get from Chinese propaganda.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/22/no-cnn-humanity-is-not-responsible-for-wuhan-virus-china-is/


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Meanwhile, Trump, day by day, has been “the rock” we’ve needed, absolutely tireless, refreshingly agenda-free (unlike congressional Democrats, who never let a crisis go to waste), and single-mindedly devoted to steering the country through this with as little long-term damage to our way of life as possible. I doubt that anyone has ever seen energy like that in the White House. And much of Trump’s focus has to do with looking into medical treatments that can lessen the risk of being out and about and, especially, going to work.

Sara Carter, on Monday’s HANNITY show, related that she had talked with American intelligence and other Western intelligence officials, who told her they were “scrambling as much as they can to find out what happened in China and in Wuhan,” which was shut down by the Chinese government on January 23, seven weeks after the first known human transmission. By January 23, 5 million people (!) had left Wuhan for parts unknown. Perhaps the media would be looking at this if they weren’t trying so hard to give the President a bad rap and second-guess everything he says and does. They don’t even seem that concerned about the Chinese government’s treatment of journalists who have been trying to report this story. If we ever find out what really happened, it will be no thanks to them.

On Monday, I related Scott Adams’ view that doctors are more optimistic about treatments with existing, FDA-approved drugs than they've let on, and the reasons why they might be keeping that opinion close to the vest for now. Later that day, Sean Hannity (on both radio and TV) featured the story of New York family practitioner Vladimir Zelenko, MD, who's had a success rate of 100 percent (success defined as not needing hospital admission) with an aggressive treatment consisting of 200 mg of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, twice a day for 5 days, combined with azithromycin, 500 mg once a day for 5 days, and zinc sulfate, 220 mg once a day for 5 days. One major symptom, shortness of breath, typically resolves in four to six hours, he said. “Since last Thursday,” he wrote, “my team has treated approximately 350 patients in Kiryas Joel and another 150 patients...we have had ZERO deaths, ZERO hospitalizations, and ZERO intubations.”


RELATED READING“One of the scariest things in the world is called ‘the unknown.’”


We’ve already seen the results of the preliminary French study that showed a combination of hydroxychloroquine and zythromycin relieved symptoms and shortened the course of the virus. As for the critical supply chain, Israel has already stepped up by donating 6 million doses of hydroxychloroquine.

In Trump’s Monday press briefing, the way forward that he endorsed sounded much like Scott Adams’ “prescription” for dealing with the virus and the economic fallout from a prolonged nationwide quarantine. The President is optimistic about this drug regimen. While bigger studies are underway, doctors will be able to prescribe these medications as needed.

"Our country wasn’t built to be shut down,” he said. “We’re not going to let the cure be worse than the problem.” When the 15-day “shutdown” ends next week, he’ll assess how we move forward, but he’s not looking to keep the country stuck in neutral. “America will be again and soon be open for business, very soon,” he stressed. “This is a medical problem. We are not going to let it turn into a long-lasting financial problem.” He called the emerging drug therapy “a gift from God, a real game-changer.” And he talked about gradually getting people back out and in their jobs, just as Adams described.

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/pandemic-economy-doctors-white-house/2020/03/23/id/959605/

As long as we’re talking about anecdotal evidence, here’s a look at one pattern a reader has noticed, and my response.

From Gil:

An item on Fox News revealed that approximately TWO-THIRDS OF DEATHS in China due to the Wuhan virus (covid-19) WERE MALES. And three-fourths or so of the deaths in Italy were males. If true, why would this be? Is it related to something such as smoking? For instance, do male smokers in China represent two-thirds of the smokers population? Three-fourths in Italy? We know that long time smokers have damaged lungs. Is it smoking and not longevity that is the harbinger of being invaded by the China Wuhan Virus? Potential victims want to know.

From the Gov:

It’s hard to know the reliability of the numbers coming out of China regarding this virus. But nearly 30 percent of all Chinese adults smoke, including 53 percent of men. So, yes, presumably many more Chinese men than women have lung damage from smoking. But ALL Chinese people who dwell in large cities have lung damage from the severe air pollution, which is the worst in the world. Perhaps you’ve seen pictures of the soupy, mustard-colored sludge hanging over Shanghai. (Whoever thinks communists and other authoritarian regimes take care of the environment better than capitalist countries do has apparently never seen it.)

In Italy, more men than women smoke, but smoking is popular among both men and women, particularly young adults. The virus has really been killing older people. I don’t have the stats but would imagine older Italians smoke, too. Inconclusive!

To my knowledge, there are no stats about smoking and COVID-19 in America; perhaps a study will be done. But any disease that hits the respiratory system is going to be harder on lungs that are already damaged, from whatever cause. It might be smoking, air particles, or previous damage from pneumonia or another illness. I’m not a doctor, but surely “potential victims” (everybody) should be aware that taking care of your lungs will help you recover no matter what respiratory illness you get. I think you know what I’m very strongly suggesting you do.

“One of the scariest things in the world is called ‘the unknown.’”

That’s how Scott Adams, creator of DILBERT and an expert on the science of persuasion, started a recent podcast. He noted that this is especially true if your enemy is something you literally can’t even see. I’ve been thinking about that in light of recent conflicting reports on the Wuhan virus (COVID-19) and promising therapies.

Adams decided to go on record, based on a lifetime of experience, with what he thinks the next several weeks are going to be like. Later we’ll know how close he got.

We’re seeing a huge conflict between two schools of thought. Some think that closing down the economy and all self-quarantining is much too extreme, that people need to get back to work now even if the virus spreads and some lose their lives (as happens with the flu every year). Adams says this is a very “adult” opinion that he respects; at least it shows an understanding of the costs and benefits, though we can only speculate how large or small either of those are. Others say we need a complete shut-down to get the virus under control and only then can we let people go back to work. Again, we can only speculate how long that will be.

It occurs to me that many Americans get their underwear in a bunch at the thought of a GOVERNMENT shut-down, during which “non-essential” government employees stay home for maybe a few weeks. For this, some are talking cavalierly about a TOTAL economic shut-down, for maybe a few months or even longer. That would inevitably lead to a crashed economy, perhaps the very soul of our nation in ruins and, yes, much death (suicide). That “cure” is unacceptable, worse than this disease.


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Anyway, Adams predicts that neither of these extreme scenarios will play out. (It’s not, to use “progressive” terminology, a binary choice.) To anticipate how it will go, he first consults the medical professionals. But he keeps in mind that they’re concerned not just with treating the patient but with availability of supplies and also with “crowd psychology,” what I’d call managing expectations and fears. Normally, Adams says, we can trust doctors and scientists to give us “a straight fact,” but in this situation, we might not.

They have good intentions and the best information, he says, but we may need to look through what is being said to know what’s really going on.

Adams cites the studies we’ve been discussing on the use of hydroxychlorophine and the “Z-pack” to treat COVID-19. Adams finds himself, like me, “more optimistic” than Dr. Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control have been, at least publicly, about the usefulness of these therapies. He thinks doctors are downplaying our hopes as a way to help keep us home, at least for now, and because they don’t yet have a large enough supply to meet the incredible demand there will be.

If there were a panic over getting the drugs, some people would stop at nothing. (Look at what they do to have toilet paper.) They also might be too optimistic about the difference the drugs will make. But Adams’ hunch, based on all he knows, is that doctors think this treatment is better than they’re currently letting on. “All of the evidence so far is that it’s a pretty good kill shot,” he says.

He predicts, based on studies going on now around the world, that we’ll find out in a week or two that with these treatments, we can take the death rate for healthy people under, say, 60, very close to zero. (I would add that this would be comparable to that of the usual seasonal flu.) They might get sick and miserable with the virus, but they’re highly unlikely to end up in the ICU. That will be the time to let many people go back to work, but not older and otherwise high-risk people, of course.

We’ll be able to turn the economy back on, he says, but “not like a light switch.” It’ll be more like a “dimmer.” But first, the health care system can’t be overloaded (as it currently is in New York), and there has to be a good supply of the medications.

Adams also asked some healthcare professionals how practical it would be to give drugs to those who were non-critical or even just presenting early symptoms that might or might not be coronavirus. Would they bother testing first, knowing that doing so would use up the supply of tests, which are probably more time-consuming to make and administer than just giving meds?


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Based on what they told him, he thinks medical professionals will be dispensing the medication fairly soon –- in places such as California, with nice weather, even in “pop-up tents” outside hospitals --- to people who aren’t sick enough that they need to be admitted. “Our ability to deliver it to people who are not critically ill will be very high,” he says. (I disagree on the advisability of “pop-up tents” if it means doctors will just be handing out drugs; hydroxychloroquine occasionally has serious side effects.)

Adams uses the restaurant business as an example of how the “dimmer” might be gradually turned up. Restaurants in a particular city may open for business, it might be determined, but only if nobody under 60 goes inside them. That would still cut out a lot of business, but it might get the restaurant back to covering salaries and rent. (I would assume people OVER 60 would still at least be able to get take-out!) He envisions a fairly rapid phase-in, assessing results as we go.

What we need to know now from our media: 1) What is the survival rate of people who have received these drugs?, and 2) What is the availability pipeline for the drugs? The media are letting us down here. The answers are likely encouraging.

Adams laments how the media ARE talking about this, vilifying Trump for telling “fairy tales.” Here’s what Rachel Maddow said: “But the President loves saying things like, you know, ‘There’s a drug we’ve got and it’s very effective. It’s approved already. Everybody’s gonna get it.’ He loves saying things like that, because that would be a lovely thing to tell people –- unless, of course, THAT’S NOT TRUE!” Maddow accuses the President of lying, when Adams can personally confirm through the experience of a friend of his with the virus –- sorry for the “anecdotal evidence” –- that medical professionals are giving patients this therapy. “Do you think they’re giving it to people because they don’t think it works?” he asks. Doctors are giving these drugs, FDA-approved but used off-label, because they believe them to be effective and not harmful, at least not harmful enough to outweigh the benefits.

In other words, it’s Maddow who is lying. (Talk about deplorable.) The President talks to all the experts and knows what he’s saying is true, and he’s working to get this treatment out as soon as possible.

Check out Scott Adams’ podcast, Episode 863, “PART 1: LET ME TELL YOU HOW WE BEAT THE VIRUS AND GET BACK TO WORK SOON.”

https://www.scottadamssays.com/2020/03/22/episode-866-scott-adams-wrapped-in-a-blanket-and-answering-your-questions/

MONOLOGUE March 21 2020

Tonight, our show won’t be like any we’ve ever done. But across America we are all doing things in ways we’ve never done. I’m doing my part of the show remotely because travel to our Nashville theater has become difficult at best, and with government at all levels urging us to stay where we are, we want to model the best practices to keep the horrific Coronavirus pandemic from getting even worse.

We will be giving some vital information about coping with the impact of being quarantined including some creative and safe ways to cook good meals, and even some entertaining comedy because we need to laugh in the midst of all of the gloom and doom that we hear and find ourselves living.

I take this pandemic seriously and you should as well. But statistically, your risk of getting the virus is still remote and the risk of dying from it is minimal, but there is a virus that we hear almost nothing about these days and it is absolutely going to touch you and in fact the death rate from it is 100%. I speak of the virus of sin; an infection that has been passed on since the beginning of human existence. It’s a virus that we all have and are born with. The Bible says it this way—ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And sadly, every single one of us will actually die from it. Again, the message of the Bible is that “The wages of sin is death…”

That’s pretty dismal and sounds hopeless. But while we can’t stop the earthly consequences of the sin virus, the rest of that verse tells us there is a cure….for the wages of sin may be death, but the GIFT of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The cure is blood-based; the blood of a Savior that cures the sin virus for its eternal effect.

I say this not to be preachy, but to remind you that even in the midst of some of the most frightening days of our nation’s history and while understanding that many will have a hard time of paying bills, holding a job, or finishing school, or visiting elderly relatives, there is hope; there is light in the midst of the darkness, and even if you avoid coronavirus, you need to take steps to protect yourself from an even more deadly virus, but one that already has a cure and a cure that costs you nothing but your willingness to accept it.

But tonight we employ the old adage, “The show must go on!” and so we are taking extraordinary steps to bring you the Huckabee Show in a unique way. My partner in this show and our ever-talented announcer, Keith Bilbrey joins me, but at a safe distance of several hundred miles….

Joe Biden has receded into the background so fast, he’s desperate to get back into the headlines, especially now that Democrats whose eyes are glazed over about him as their candidate are now talking about drafting New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. So Biden announced that he will begin competing with President Trump by holding his own daily press conferences on the COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-coronavirus-briefings

This announcement was accompanied by the usual attacks on how Trump is dealing with the crisis, ending with the tagline, “This moment calls for a President.” Okay, I try to be a nice guy, but I’m about to hit a 77-year-old man with a hard bag of truth:

This moment HAS a President, Joe, and it ain’t you. All you will do by holding daily news conferences to contradict what the President says is confuse and mislead Americans at a time when getting the best-sourced information is literally a matter of life and death, both for people and the US economy. You have already demonstrated that you do not have access to the type of information that Trump does when you blasted him as xenophobic for shutting down travel from China early on, a move that bought us weeks of time and likely saved thousands of American lives. You would have let infected people just come pouring in. This either shows you have terrible judgement, or no access to the kind of information the President has, or (and this is my guess) both.

America has a President. What it needs now are statesmen. Those are people who put petty political squabbles aside during a crisis, rally around America’s elected leader, and do whatever they can to bring Americans together so that we can overcome this danger.

With this latest reprehensibly selfish, divisive and irresponsible move, you have not only embarrassed yourself, you have proved you are no statesman, and you are certainly not worthy of ever being President.

Many media outlets and Twitter twits went on a rage against President Trump, accusing him of pushing false hope by declaring a combination of drugs including hydroxychlorophine to be a miracle cure for the Wuhan flu (see what I did there?) Or as Mediaite put it, “Trump Touts Unproven Coronavirus Drug Cocktail As 'One Of The Biggest Game Changers In The History Of Medicine.'”

https://twitter.com/BuckSexton/status/1241380476222418944

No, he did not say that. They left out his preceding qualifiers, including saying that “if it works,” it could be a game-changer, “and maybe not.”

What does it tell us about the mindset of our current “news” media that they can hear the President say there’s a possibility we might have a cure for a deadly pandemic that’s shut down the US economy, and they think that the most newsworthy part of that statement is that if you edit and twist it enough, you can use it to make the President sound like a liar?

It’s incredible that something so serious and frightening still hasn’t been able to penetrate the media’s terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome and shock or shame them into acting like responsible professionals. They have seemingly learned nothing, certainly not humility or the limits of their expertise, since the earliest days of this crisis, when they attacked Trump as a racist and xenophobe for shutting down travel from China.

https://www.westernjournal.com/list-medias-original-take-travel-bans-abandoned-common-sense-trump-hate/

I assume they would prefer Trump had reacted the way the PC mayor of Florence, Italy, did, by showing defiance of “xenophobia” by encouraging Italians to “hug a stranger.” That worked out well, didn’t it?

https://pjmedia.com/trending/dr-fauci-trumps-travel-bans-may-prevent-u-s-from-becoming-another-italy/

And as recently as February 8th, the chairman of the New York City Council Health Committee was tweeting for everyone to turn out for the Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown, to show “defiance of (the) coronavirus scare.”

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/362309/

So when any of these people attack the way Trump is dealing with this unprecedented crisis, ask them: “Why should we listen to anything you have to say? Have you gotten ANYTHING right so far?”

On that subject, here are “10 Ways the Left Has Politicized the Coronavirus Pandemic.” But this article is a week old, so there are a lot more by now.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/10-ways-the-left-has-politicized-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

And on a similar subject, as tough as it is to choose who should be Miss Universe out of all those contenders, or which movie out of a whole year’s worth of releases is the “Best Picture,” imagine how hard it must be to narrow it down to only the “Top 10 Lies About President Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-top-10-lies-about-president-trumps-response-to-the-coronavirus/

For those who like to keep track of things in handy list form, here are “10 Ways the Left has Poliiticized the Coronavirus Pandemic.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/10-ways-the-left-has-politicized-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

There are a lot of stories encapsulated here, from Biden plagiarizing Trump’s plan (plagiarism seems to be Joe’s virus) to Nancy Pelosi trying to sneak a lot of liberal wish list items like taxpayer-paid abortion into the emergency relief bill.

To expand on that, the phrase “40 Republicans” started trending on Twitter when 40 House Republicans voted against the initial coronavirus emergency relief bill. Naturally, they were vilified as heartless monsters. One commenter even asked what they would do next, vote to kill Santa Claus? Well, in a manner of speaking, that’s sort of what this bill was: liberals trying to use a disease like Santa Claus.

As Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert (who is taking tremendous heat for his opposition) explained it, this bill didn’t just cynically get loaded with leftist pork spending. It also contained the type of measures leftists love who’ve spent their lives in politics and academia but have never run a business or met a payroll. For instance, instead of providing shorterm, immediate relief to workers who can't work, it created an endless mandate for small businesses to provide unaffordable paid medical leave to all employees. They got a tax credit in return, but by the time they collected the refund, many of them would be out of business. I've never understood why liberals think they're helping workers by waging war on the people who create their jobs.

As is her wont, Nancy Pelosi made sure House members got the 89-page bill with only 15 minutes to read it, in a ploy to use a health emergency to demand that Congress pass a massive bill first, and then find out what was in it. Fortunately, this time around, we have a GOP Senate that refused to fall for that scam. At this writing, a replacement bill is still being hammered out. Let’s hope it passes quickly, it deals with the current problem, and it gets help to those who need it fast without causing more problems than it solves.

On a side note, I doubt that it will include Mitt Romney’s proposal just to give everyone $1,000, although that will probably help complete his transition to being an honorary Democrat.

Huck's Hero Kurt Kruczek

March 22, 2020

I wrote recently that I seem to live in a very different America from the dog-eat-dog Zombie Apocalypse described by the media. In the America where I live, people are dealing with the current pandemic scare by trying their best to stay calm, keep on keeping on, and helping each other as much as possible.

One great example of a Huck’s Hero in this situation is Kurt Kruczek, owner of Naples Pizza in West Hartford, Connecticut. His business is down 50%, he had to close one location, and he’s struggling to keep paying all his workers. But when he saw the doctors at the local hospital on TV in their “space suits,” working so hard to deal with the coronavirus, he knew he had to help. So he called and asked if they’d like some free pizzas. The gift was greatly appreciated by the overworked staffers and worried patient family members. So he’s now making a weekly delivery of free pizzas to the hospital, one during the daytime and another at night, for the night shift people who tend to be forgotten.

Kruczek appeared Wednesday on “Fox & Friends,” where he urged people to please support their local restaurants that are struggling to survive by ordering good to go or to be delivered. And here’s a great idea: he said if you can afford it, consider buying gift cards and either using them when the pandemic is over, or else donate them as thank-you gifts to your local hospital, police or firefighters.

There’s even a website now that can help you find a restaurant near you that’s offering gift cards, to help your local businesses survive. To learn more, go to www.RallyForRestaurants.com.

For those who are panicking about the disease without knowing its real effects, this is a good article to check out.

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/1252365/Coronavirus-treatment-How-many-people-have-recovered-from-coronavirus-news-latest

It notes that the risk of death is considerably lower than with SARS or MERS. The greatest danger is to the elderly and those with preexisting conditions that weaken their immune systems, and for most people who get it, it’s like a heavy cold. Also, while you’ve heard about the terrible death toll in Italy, less reported is the fact that Italy has one of the oldest populations in Europe, and the majority of fatalities have been among people in their 80s and 90s. Also, their socialized medical system doesn’t have the equipment to handle it, and other European nations have refused to help, keeping it for themselves. Thanks, EU!

In a related story: it’s said that everyone is conservative about the things he knows best. So it’s been very instructive to see all the other nations closing their borders. When President Trump shut down travel from China in January, he was denounced as a racist, a xenophobe and a liar. Chuck Schumer accused him of a “war on immigrants.” We now know that that move slowed the spread of the virus, bought us time and likely saved many lives. Of course, Trump is still being called a racist, a xenophobe and a liar, just as he was when he tried to stop migrants with Central American diseases from flooding across the border.

But now that reality can no longer be denied, look at all the liberal leaders, from Germany to Canada’s virtual-signaling Prime Minister, Justin “Canada is open to everyone” Trudeau, closing their borders. Even Mexico is considering shutting its US border to Americans to keep the coronavirus out.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/14/us-mexico-border-could-be-shut-down-to-contain-coronavirus-officials/

Have they all suddenly become xenophones? Or is it just that once talk stopped being cheap, they had to clam up about fake “xenophobia” because they now have a real disease to deal with.

President Trump told Americans that there’s nothing wrong with the supply chain and they need to “just relax" and stop hoarding supplies. I might add, “especially toilet paper.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/ap-trump-calls-americans-cease-hoarding-food-supplies/

Judging by the runs (sorry!) on toilet paper, you’d think people believe the #1 symptom of coronavirus is explosive diarrhea. Americans are so terrified of running out of TP while hunkering down (sorry again!) that they’ve denuded store shelves of it. I’ll bet they’re thinking back on all the houses they TP’ed on Halloweens past and kicking themselves. Or recalling how they laughed at Sheryl Crowe for suggesting using only one sheet. Now, they ruefully think that if they’d only done that, imagine how many rolls they’d have left. It would also serve a double function by insuring that no other people would come within six feet of them. Your friends would do the “social distancing” for you!

I wanted to see if it was really that bad, so I put on my hazmat suit and visited a few big stores: a Kroger supermarket, an Aldi, a WalMart supercenter and neighborhood store, and two CVS pharmacies. Sure enough, not a single roll of Charmin to squeeze in any of them. Photo one here is an example: the bare toilet paper aisle at a CVS in a northern Dallas suburb.

But then I noticed something odd that suggests people may be so panicked that they’re not thinking clearly. Right next to the empty TP shelves were shelves with plenty of boxes of Kleenex for sale.

Am I the only one who realizes that Kleenex can be used for…ahem…”multi-tasking”? Speaking of that, I should also note that the magazine rack still had plenty of copies of Time and Rolling Stone.

Finally, as ironclad proof that all this toilet paper hoarding is being fueled not by need but by irrational panic buying, I offer this shot from just two aisles over: shelves of Depends, filled to bursting (the shelves, I mean.) If people really needed toilet paper and all the stores were out, you'd think this would be the obvious solution.

The Gov. felt compelled to answer this letter from Tavane:

Governor, I was with you right up until you said "Goodness knows, that’s a more productive use of funds than just passing out money to everyone." Though it may not make a difference to you, I know many, many families who are in dire straights right now because, like many Americans, they live from paycheck to paycheck and have no reserve funds set aside to buy extras to get them through the shutdown of this country. If they do have a 401k or other savings/retirement accounts you can't just get money out of them when you want to as they have special governing rules to them highly inaccessible and also bear steep penalties if withdrawals are made. These citizens also have children who are not going to school now and they also have jobs that need them there so now have to pay for daycare of some sort so they can keep their jobs. I usually find your comments uplifting but to negate the fact that American's need financial help right now to make it through is very negative and unworthy of a man of your stature.

From the Gov:

Good heavens, Tavane, I never said or even meant to imply that the government shouldn’t offer financial assistance to people who are hurting. I said “JUST passing out money to everyone.” People in many industries are devastated right now and need help. To cite just one example, my staff and I know many in the music business (most of whom struggle to stay afloat during normal conditions) who have lost ALL their work for the foreseeable future and are at a complete loss as to what to do and how to survive. I share all of your concerns. You are right about all of this --- except the part where you say I “negate” the fact that people need help.

What I was saying is that we have to find a medical solution to this because we can’t JUST pass out money forever. That alone is a terrible long-term plan, because if we just print billions and even trillions of dollars while everyone stays home indefinitely, we surely will end up like Venezuela. But, yes, of course, we must help Americans who are hurting right now.

Still, we have to find a cure and/or a vaccine that will allow us to get back to work --- and to stay at work with no threat of a "second wave." The longer that takes, the bigger the pit we'll have to dig out of. In the meantime, though, we certainly have to help each other get through this and come out the other side.

In Friday’s developments around the COVID-19 coronavirus (or more accurately, “Wuhan virus”) pandemic, cases continued to rise, with New York City experiencing an average of one death per hour from it. But efforts to combat it are moving swiftly, such as making ventilators from 3D printers...

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/19/open-source-project-spins-up-3d-printed-ventilator-validation-prototype-in-just-one-week/

...And some treatments are showing early positive results.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/malaria-drugs-touted-by-trump-can-work-against-coronavirus-top-doc-tells-laura-ingraham

Both the federal government and New York State are taking actions to prevent people from having their homes foreclosed due to inability to make mortgage payments during the virus shutdown.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/some-homeowners-and-renters-will-get-a-break-from-the-coronavirus-financial-fallout-2020-03-18

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/coronavirus/banks-waive-mortgage-payments-90-days

President Trump announced that our southern border is being closed to nonessential trade. Also, he dismissed talk of a national lockdown and said that he’s suspended certain federal student loan payments for the next 60 days, and the Department of Education won’t enforce standardized test requirements for the current year. Also, the deadline for filing income taxes is being moved from April 15 to July 15.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/government-response-updates-white-house-briefing-expected-amid/story?id=69706088

I’m linking to that ABC News story because it actually contains info on all these important points and more. It wasn’t easy to find. When I Googled for news on this subject, the stories from other news outlets such as the New York Times, CNN and Vanity Fair were obsessed with calling Trump a “sociopath” who went on a “vicious rant” and dispensed “propaganda” because he lost patience with disrespectful reporters and dressed one down for asking a “question” that was a thinly-disguised accusation of giving people false hope.

To these anti-Trump media outlets, even in the middle of a worldwide deadly pandemic, the story is all about their feelings. Maybe that’s why the latest ABC/Ipsos poll shows that Americans’ approval of how Trump is handling the crisis has jumped 12 points in a week, from 43% to 55%. There was no similar jump in trust in the media.

Naturally, the media response to that was not introspection or reassessment of their own attitudes, but to attack Trump again, and list all the ways in which they think he’s handled this all wrong. They attack him for downplaying the threat if he tries to reassure Americans, and they attack him for frightening the nation and scaring stock markets if he delivers bad news frankly. They accuse him of racism for accurately calling it a “Chinese virus” while repeating bogus and vile talking points dispensed by the communist government of China. They badgered him to take a virus test, and when it came back negative, they assailed him for wasting a test. And now they’re baffled why the public is starting to trust Trump more than their reporting?

A reminder: Trump limited travel from China over this issue back in January, and the media called him xenophobic and racist, as did the Democrats when they weren't busy trying to impeach him. After he was proven correct, both later accused him of not acting soon enough to restrict travel from China.

Richard Fernandez at PJ Media made a good point: the media are lashing out in tantrums because not only have they been wrong about Trump’s handling of the virus, but the virus is exposing that they have been wrong about virtually everything they’ve been smugly preaching for years, from open borders to globalization to trusting China.

So, their pretense for an investigation was all fake. And now, for the “coup de gras,” we find that the Justice Department can’t even make a case against the Russian “bot farms” they made a great show of charging with crimes. All charges were dropped with prejudice (that means they can’t ever be brought up again) on Monday. Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew Weissmann and the rest can thank the coronavirus for keeping this embarrassment out of the news.

Rosenstein was the one who announced the indictments in February of 2018, with great fanfare. The media, predictably, went crazy: Wow, so there really were RUSSIANS trying to influence our election! And one of them was an acquaintance of Vladimir Putin! And the Russians were trying to help Trump! Wow, the Trump campaign must have been working with Russians! It was quite a show.


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But our Justice Department never dreamed those Russians would show up to fight the charges in our courts. It was assumed they’d just ignore the whole thing and let the DOJ use the charges against them to further the “Russia” narrative. Rosenstein and his colleagues never dreamed that one Russian company would actually fight back.

Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, called their bluff. They also called for...discovery. Lots of discovery. So the Mueller attorneys had to fight motion after motion, argue for delays, and protest giving “classified” information to Russians. Delightful.

Concord attorney Robert Barnes tweeted, “The only case #Mueller brought to prove ‘Russian interference’ w/any defense is now being dismissed by DOJ [because] prosecutors knew they couldn’t win at trial. Repeat: the DOJ could not find a single case they could successfully prosecute to prove any act of ‘Russian interference.’”

At the link is a piece by Victoria Taft that includes the ten-page motion to dismiss the charges against Concord. It took ten pages to say, “Never mind.”

The phony “Russia” investigation into the Trump campaign is really over now, an absolute fiasco, and the one laughing the hardest is probably Vladimir Putin. For three years, Trump’s enemies wrecked the nation’s confidence in its institutions and “meddled” with a presidency more than Putin ever could have. And they hindered us from dealing with more important things. Like China.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/first-no-collusion-now-no-actual-russians-in-muellers-disastrous-russian-collusion-illusion/

President Trump gave another briefing on the handling of the COVID-19 coronavirus (which he very pointedly called the “Chinese virus” to the reporters’ faces, after remarking how nice it was to have fewer of them there, and at a “social distance” from him):

https://youtu.be/7Q2pj_tOJ0k

Here’s a transcript:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-6/

And here are some of the highlights, including his decision to invoke the Defense Production Act of 1950, giving him war President-like powers to direct the fight, just in case it’s needed. Also, he announced that the FDA will make experimental drugs available to COVID-19 patients, as well as the long-established malaria drug chloroquine, which has shown effectiveness in early studies (see my article in more depth elsewhere in the newsletter/MikeHuckabee.com website.)

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-fda-experimental-drugs-coronavirus

One of the good developments we might see longterm from this crisis (aside from bringing our drug manufacturing back from China) is that it’s demonstrated how many federal regulations don’t “protect” the public so much as create extra costs, red tape and pointless delays. For instance, it’s good that the FDA demands stringent testing of drugs. But when it’s a drug that’s needed right away that offers even a chance at life to a terminal patient, you aren’t helping by refusing them, then later on saying, “The good news is that the drug is now proven safe and effective! In fact, it’s so safe and effective that if we’d let you try it a year ago, you might still be alive!”

On a personal note, one of my favorite highlights was watching the liberal reporters squirm when a reporter for the conservative OAN news channel asked Trump why so many media members were so eager to attack him that they would be willing to team up with the communist Chinese government to repeat their phony narrative that he’s a racist for saying the virus came from China. Of course, liberal sites absolutely roasted the reporter for daring to say that. Guess they don't know what we're all already saying about them. I'd file that question that under, “Obviously True Things You Aren’t Allowed To Say, But Nobody Ever Asked Me If You Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Say Them.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/watch-lefty-reporters-squirm-as-journalist-asks-trump-why-media-echo-chinese-communist-propaganda/

On that subject, here’s the latest article from the hilariously blunt Kurt Schichter, and it’s about the media siding with communist China and a virus rather than with Trump and the American people. He usually doesn’t pull any punches, but this time, he pounds his opponent into the canvas and delivers a rhetorical kick in the groin for good measure.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/03/19/the-media-is-even-more-garbage-than-usual-n2565172

Since pharmaceutical attorney Gregory Rigano appeared on FOX NEWS, others (real MDs) have come forward with more information on recent studies of hydrochloroquine, a newer version of the commonly used antimalarial drug chloroquine, and also remdesivir, which was created to fight the ebola virus. The French study referenced by Rigano is real, and there’s one out of Australia and another out of China.

Rigano had called on President Trump to cut as much red tape as possible to hasten the approval process on new therapies. And on Thursday, the President did just that, calling on the FDA to “eliminate outdated rules and bureaucracy so this work can proceed rapidly, quickly, and I mean...fast.”

He means...FAST. And all the other words that mean fast.


RELATED READING: Is it a cure? Pharmaceutical attorney pushes for off-label use of hydroxychloroquine


"We have to remove every barrier,” the President said, “and they’ve done that, to get to the rapid deployment of safe, effective treatments.”

According to Tennessee Republican Rep. Mark Green, a former Army flight surgeon who appeared with Shannon Bream on FOX NEWS Thursday night, the French study touted by Rigano earlier this week showed that when mixed in a “cocktail” with the antibiotic azithromycin (the familiar “Z-pack” often given to patients who have bronchitis and/or bacterial pneumonia), hydroxychloroquine can completely clear COVID-19 --- it happened in all patients who were in the study --- in as little as three days. The sample size in the study he referenced was small, Green said, “so it’s kind of hard to extrapolate...to the whole population, but it’s very promising. One hundred percent of the virus gone in six days.”

He said that in the French study, hydroxychloroquine and azithromax were tested against hydroxychloroquine alone and also against a control group, and the hydroxychloroquine-alone patients did better than the control group, but the patients who did best were the ones who had received both chloroquine and azithromax. The anti-inflammatory effect of the antibiotic helps not only with bacterial infections but also with the symptoms of viral illness.

All of these drugs are already FDA approved for other uses and would just need to be manufactured in large quantities. (Please don’t tell me that all the manufacturing is currently being done in China!) Hydroxychloroquine is a generic [cheap] drug, Green said, “so the question will be, who’s going to stand up and manufacture it?” In this case, surely some American company would take that on. If there’s no financial incentive, our government might have to do some subsidizing to get this going NOW. Goodness knows, that’s a more productive use of funds than just passing out money to everyone. We need to defeat this virus so people can recover economically by getting back to work.

"I think that the FDA has joined forces in eliminating red tape to ensure that that product could be available to physicians to prescribe to their patients,” said White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Debbie Birx on Thursday. “But we want to be able to study at the same time --- not limit use but actually study it at the same time to see if it does have he impact that others have reported.”

In other words, the FDA wants to be able to collect data on all patients receiving treatment with these drugs so they can scientifically answer questions of safety and effectiveness. But, as Rep. Green pointed out, a physician doesn’t have to wait for a study –- the doctor can write prescriptions right now for hydroxychloroquine (off-label use) and azithromax, with no restrictions. As I mentioned yesterday, the FDA doesn’t really have a problem with off-label use once a drug has been approved.

"[Hydroxychloroquine] is a drug that we’ve had around for decades,” Dr. Birx said. “So, it’s a pretty straightforward drug to make; there’s a lot of companies who already make it because it’s very important in our malaria fights around the world. And so, we have [the] drug available, and we really just have to see, does it actually work? We know it’s probably safe --- I think the question really is, does it have a therapeutic effect, and that’s going to be studied. It looks promising. We just want to make sure that at the same time that we’re giving this option to physicians, that we’re actually studying its impact.”

You know, if researchers and bureaucrats think it’s safe but want to see if it works, doctors can really help them with that by PRESCRIBING IT, especially for those who are very sick and going downhill.

Even with the President cutting red tape, the FDA is still a bureaucracy and moves slowly. Remdesivir, another antiviral, hasn’t yet completed the approval process, according to Rep. Green, but it’s already in Phase III studies with the FDA, so if it makes it, perhaps it will be available fairly soon.

My researchers turned up something very interesting: a study that compared two maps: one showing the pattern of COVID-19 infection and the other showing malaria. In countries where malaria flourishes, people often take antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine routinely as a preventative, and that may be why those those countries aren’t reporting COVID-19 cases. “This is amazing...” said Dr. Roy Spencer on Facebook. “In all my years of data analysis I have never seen such a stark and strong relationship: Countries with malaria basically have no COVID-19 cases (at least not yet).”

We’re not sure if there’s anything to this, but it certainly is consistent with the theory that antimalarial drugs also fight this coronavirus. Here are the two maps:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12YDytbAsZaruGlhFO7eTTgxSH_BuxJtwFmbhqpkPPSk/mobilebasic?fbclid=IwAR2wXhG5woobpV5DAuHxnf7YOxalQiCkPMX-rUL2z6SIa0AJGovbJ9ATq7A

Our commentary on Gregory Rigano and his claims about hydroxychloroquine drew letters expressing a variety of points of view. Most fell into the “it’s worth a try!” catgegory. Some readers shared anecdotal evidence that the drug is safe, but a few others noted that it can cause retinal problems and other side effects, particularly serious among those with inflammatory disease such as rheumatoid arthritis. That’s why we can’t just hand out pills. They have to be carefully prescribed by a physician who knows the patient’s condition and medical history and who will be closely monitoring the effects, both intended and unintended. But that should be the case with every prescribed medication.


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Antimalarial drugs are very commonly used in other parts of the world –- if you’ve traveled abroad to India or Africa, you likely have taken them –- and might be completely harmless for most people, but there’s hardly any drug that is safe for everyone. There’s also the matter of how much to take for this particular illness, when to take it, how often and for how long. A medication that might be fine at a low dose or in the short term to treat or head off coronavirus might be harmful if taken at a high dose or for months at a time. And, of course, there might be bad interactions with other medications a patient is already taking. That’s why the FDA wants as much data as it can get. If we start giving these medications to patients, we’re essentially initiating a very large-scale human trial. But that appears to be just what we need to do.

Today's Edition

 

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Gregory Rigano, an attorney who says he is an adviser at Stanford University Medical School, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show Wednesday night to discuss the potential for a widely-used antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, to treat the novel coronavirus. He had already appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show Monday night, where he claimed a study he’d co-authored showed that coronavirus patients who’d taken hydroxychloroquine were testing negative after six days.

On Tucker’s show, he said that President Trump, after having “cut more red tape at the FDA than any other President in history,” has the authority to green-light the use of this drug immediately against coronavirus. He said Trump has expedited drug approval before, in 2017, with a new drug for muscular dystrophy being approved after a very small clinical trial (fewer than 15 patients) that was “generally uncontrolled, in an open setting.”

Being a lawyer himself, I guess Rigano is concerned about liability if doctors prescribe the drug off-label and it causes harm. But doctors do prescribe drugs off-label quite often. The FDA takes a pretty lax attitude about that once it has approved a drug as "safe and effective."

READ MORE AND COMMENT HERE>>>

With gratitude,

Mike Huckabee


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FEATURED COMMENTARY

Landmark day

By Mike Huckabee

Wednesday was a landmark day in Washington, as the Senate passed a second, revamped bill to deal with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 coronavirus and President Trump signed it. Eight Republican Senators voted no because they say the provision requiring businesses to provide paid sick leave will bankrupt many small businesses that are already struggling to stay afloat. They will get a credit at tax time, but by then it will be too late for many of them. That’s a valid point, and one that should be quickly addressed with follow-up legislation.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-passes-houses-coronavirus-response-bill-sends-to-trump

The first bill provided $8.3 billion to beef up the health-care system, while this latest bill provides funds to help workers who lost their jobs, and families stuck at home due to illnesses, quarantines or caring for kids whose schools have closed. Trump is also seeking further funding to help the airline industry, small businesses and other sectors hammered by the pandemic shutdown. He has said that he considers this the equivalent of being a wartime President, and he will bring all the resources at his disposal to defeat this invisible enemy.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-passes-houses-coronavirus-response-bill-sends-to-trump

I’m also pleased to see that some of the unlikeliest people are finally recognizing how hard Trump has been working to deal with this crisis and praising his swift, effective leadership, despite the media’s efforts to question, demean and undermine everything he does. You might want to sit down before reading this one:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-praises-trumps-incredible-response-to-coronavirus-pandemic

If even Ilhan Omar can acknowledge that Trump is doing a good job under near-impossible circumstances, is it too much to expect the press to at least stop pestering him with idiotic gotcha questions, like repeatedly asking whether the term “Wuhan virus” is racist or who was rumored to have referred to it as “Kung-flu”? You see, to the left, wishing the virus on the First Lady is just a joke, but calling it “Kung-flu” is an OUTRAGE!!

I think what’s happened is that they have gone so long without any real problems, having to inflate “micro-aggressions” into big honking deals to create controversy, that now that a really big, serious threat has arisen, they don’t know how to stop. They have so lost perspective that they don’t even realize how small their petty nitpicking now looks in comparison to what the President (and everyone watching) is dealing with.

They’ve shrunken into Lilliputians without realizing it, and can’t understand why we’re all looking down on them.

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I wanted to make sure you also read these comments:

It appears that this is one time when being rated “A+” may not be a good thing.

https://www.westernjournal.com/new-research-coronavirus-vulnerability-partially-determined-blood-type

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Thursday Coronavirus Fake News: No, Joe Biden, President Trump did NOT refuse to accept virus testing kits from the World Health Organization. A spokesman for the WHO told CNN that there were never any discussions about that because the US has the capacity to create its own diagnostics and never relies on the WHO for them. The assistant director for health at HHS also said the test was never offered to us, and besides, it was an unapproved research grade test that we’ve already surpassed.

https://www.westernjournal.com/spokesman-shuts-claims-left-trump-rejected-coronavirus-tests/

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The most reprehensible part of this bit of fake news is that the man pushing it, Joe Biden, has been in Washington for decades and surely knows all that, but made the false charge away. It’s bad enough that the media and lower-level politicians are trying to sow distrust in the President while he’s dealing with a pandemic that threatens millions of Americans, all for cheap political advantage. But if you’re running for President yourself, based entirely on the argument that you’re going to bring character back to the White House, then don’t try to stir up fear, division and distrust by telling unconscionable lies about the incumbent and the public's health.

Asked about Biden’s bogus claim, Trump replied, “I assume he’ll apologize.” I am not giving you advice on how to avoid catching a virus when I say: “Don’t hold your breath.”

In a related story, if you are a “journalist” who is cheering the big drop in the stock market due to the pandemic because you can falsely blame it on Trump to harm his reelection chances, then remember that the Dow has not fallen nearly so low as some of you have.

https://www.westernjournal.com/leftist-journalist-doubles-attacking-trump-stock-market-chaos-shapiro-sets-straight/

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This won’t surprise you, but the same chowderhead who was chuckling it up with Don Lemon recently over what a bunch of “credulous rubes” Trump supporters are is now using social media to wish that the First Lady would contract the coronavirus. All he proved is that not all noxious, nausea-inducing infections come in the form of viruses.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/rick-wilson-melania-trump-be-infected-coronavirus

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Reminder: Many small businesses and entrepreneurs are being hurt by all the coronavirus shutdowns. If you’d like to help your local businesses survive, remember that many of them have online stores where you can purchase products for delivery. Or you can buy gift cards from local businesses and restaurants now and use them once this is over.

Bible Verse of the Day (KJV)

"And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house."

- Acts 16:31

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Gregory Rigano, an attorney who says he is an adviser at Stanford University Medical School, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show Wednesday night to discuss the potential for a widely-used antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, to treat the novel coronavirus. He had already appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show Monday night, where he claimed a study he’d co-authored showed that coronavirus patients who’d taken hydroxychloroquine were testing negative after six days.

On Tucker’s show, he said that President Trump, after having “cut more red tape at the FDA than any other President in history,” has the authority to green-light the use of this drug immediately against coronavirus. He said Trump has expedited drug approval before, in 2017, with a new drug for muscular dystrophy being approved after a very small clinical trial (fewer than 15 patients) that was “generally uncontrolled, in an open setting.”

Being a lawyer himself, I guess Rigano is concerned about liability if doctors prescribe the drug off-label and it causes harm. But doctors do prescribe drugs off-label quite often. The FDA takes a pretty lax attitude about that once it has approved a drug as "safe and effective."


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Understanding Unapproved Use of Approved Drugs "Off Label"

https://www.fda.gov/patients/learn-about-expanded-access-and-other-treatment-options/understanding-unapproved-use-approved-drugs-label

Rigano noted that hydroxychloroquine has been on the market and used safely for over 50 years, and said he was breaking news on the air with his announcement that “a well-controlled peer-reviewed study...showed a 100 percent cure rate against coronavirus." (He claims this makes COVID--19 only the second virus in history to be cured, after Hepatitis C.) "The study was recently accepted to the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents,” he said. We looked that publication up, and here it is:

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-journal-of-antimicrobial-agents/

The journal has published other work on the issue of treating COVID-19 with this drug.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300662

Tucker was understandably skeptical, as we all should be, but expressed gratitude. “I very much want to believe this,” he said, “and I think we need, obviously, to immediately run it down; the federal government needs to find out if this is true, because if it is, that’s the biggest news of this moment.”

It was hard to know what to think about this while watching it, as it just came out of the blue. It didn’t help that Rigano ended the interview oddly, by saying, “Please disseminate it to the scientific community immediately.” It sounded a little like, "People of Earth...take me to your leader."

What could Tucker say? It was the close of his show. “I would hope they’d—they’d be on it,” he stammered.

We looked up Rigano’s bio, and that’s where I saw that he is an attorney, not an M.D. as TV viewers might have assumed. It goes on to say, “Gregory’s experience includes advancing various pharmaceutical assets through laboratory, animal, formulation, manufacturing, clinical trials (Phase I-III), as well as commercialization.” Here’s the whole thing:

https://www.riganollc.com/attorneys/gregory-j-rigano/

There actually is a research paper with his name on it, called “An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus (COVID-19), linked to below. On the other hand, the paper concludes with a grammatically-challenged disclaimer that says in part, “The authors and/or its affiliates does not guarantee the accuracy of or the conclusions reached by this white paper, and this white paper is provided ‘as is.’ It goes on in similar fashion. That doesn’t do much to inspire confidence. It’s impossible to know right now if this is legit, and it appears that they rushed it out.

Whether this study is for real or not, I think perhaps the best attitude to take about trying this drug on the virus is that “it couldn’t hurt.” When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Still, this is a drug that has been used safely for half a century, so why not fast-track the studies and also approve it now for off-label use to treat coronavirus and see how well it works? Given the circumstances, what have we got to lose?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTi-g18ftNZUMRAj2SwRPodtscFio7bJ7GdNgbJAGbdfF67WuRJB3ZsidgpidB2eocFHAVjIL-7deJ7/pub

The video from Tucker’s show can be found here:

https://starpolitical.com/report-french-doctor-reports-100-cure-rate-using-malaria-drug-to-treat-corona-virus/

The "China Virus"

March 18, 2020

I told you Tuesday about the New York Times reporter who lifted President Trump’s words of context (“Try getting it yourselves”) to make it appear that he told state Governors that they were on their own when it came to obtaining medical equipment to deal with the COVID-19 virus. Here is what he actually said:

“We are backing you in terms of equipment and getting what you need. Also, though, respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment, try getting it yourselves. We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point-of-sale is much better, much more direct if you can get it yourselves.”

Trump himself seems to be so fed up with the media’s endless attempts to undermine, attack, second-guess, badmouth and misquote everything he’s says and does to keep Americans safe that he used part of his coronavirus update press conference yesterday to call out the Times for its deliberately misleading story, which he quite accurately described as “false,” “bad journalism” and “totally disgraceful.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/disgrace-trump-uses-news-conference-slam-nyt-wildly-misleading-headline/


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I expect tomorrow’s headline in the Times to read, “Trump Response ‘Totally Disgraceful.’”

Trump also blasted that PC idiocy about the term “China virus” being racist (as Dan Bongino pointed out during our joint appearance on “Hannity” last night, China isn’t a race, it’s a country.) “China Virus” or “Wuhan virus” (which I’ve heard is actually what they call it in Wuhan) is no more “racist” than the terms Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or Ebola virus, which was first identified in a village near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/trump-china-coronavirus/index.html

Trump very pointedly called it the “China virus,” and explained why. He said for the US media to accept and spread China’s propaganda that it’s racist to associate it with its real place of origin deflects responsibility away from China and makes it easier for them to spread the lie that the US military created it. He said, “It did come from China. So, I think it's a very accurate term.” Asked by a reporter (of course) if that didn’t create a “stigma,” he replied:

"I don't think so. I think saying that our military gave it to them creates a stigma.”

I have never been so proud to be a Trump supporter than at that moment.

Besides, if any nation on Earth deserves to be "stigmatized," it's communist China. The real mystery is why in the world the media are so eager to carry water for the totalitarian Chinese government, which is antithetical to everything they claim to support. China has hidden vital information about COVID-19 that could help other nations know what they’re dealing with (and continues to do so), it allows unconscionable slave labor conditions, it’s the biggest polluter in the world, it’s aggressively militaristic, it's genuinely racist, it has no tolerance for freedom of religion or speech, it uses the Internet to monitor and control its own people, it “disappears” officials who criticize its actions…

https://www.westernjournal.com/chinese-lies-coronavirus-get-exposed-another-government-critic-vanishes/

…And what makes the US media’s shilling for China even more inexplicable is its hostility to the media. Just this week, Western reporters trying to cover the virus at a Chinese hospital had their cameras and cell phones confiscated and wiped, and reporters from three major US newspapers were expelled. One of those papers was even the New York Times!

https://www.westernjournal.com/china-expels-journalists-major-us-publications/

Yet the Times and other Western outlets would trust China and unquestioningly repeat its bogus talking points while attacking and aggressively questioning everything that our own President and his team of America’s top medical experts tell them. Are they THAT dependent on the Chinese market to stay in business? Or is it just more proof that the most virulent disease plaguing America is not some virus from China but Trump Derangement Syndrome?

The latest news on the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is that the worldwide infection rate has reached 200,000 cases with 8,000 deaths, and there are now cases reported in all 50 US states. The nations with the most cases are China, Italy, Iran, Spain and Germany, and the most confirmed deaths have been in China, Italy, Iran, Spain and France.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/coronavirus-200000-cases-death-toll-8000-johns-hopkins

Those most at risk are the elderly and people with underlying medical conditions such as lung and cardiovascular disease. Here’s some good information on how to protect seniors from contracting it.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jennifer-nuzzo-tara-kirk-sell-heres-how-to-help-protect-elderly-from-coronavirus

After seeing a discussion on Laura Ingraham’s Monday show about existing antiviral drugs such as chloroquine, reader “Dru” wrote to ask me what I thought about the promise of these drugs to treat novel coronavirus. Now, I am not a scientist and don’t even play one on TV, but I can offer you some background. In fact, in yesterday’s Evening Edition, I linked to a story out of Australia about the good results obtained with existing antiviral drugs. Calling this treatment a “cure,” as the headline does, seems premature; however, they are ready to move on to a widespread human trial on what they call “this first wave of patients.” Here it that story if you didn’t see it last night.

https://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/cure-found-for-coronavirus-in-australia/3973564/


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Chloroquine is already widely used as an antimalarial drug and an anti-inflammatory agent, and it also has shown anti-viral activity against several other similar viruses, such as Zika. So it would certainly make sense to test it against the novel coronavirus. There’s a lot of misinformation going around online right now –- “Yes, it's a cure!!! No, it’s a scam!!!” –- but here’s a published study that might help put the issue in perspective. It was done in 2009 in response to the SARS epidemic, which showed for the first time that coronaviruses were capable of causing serious respiratory illness.

https://www.livescience.com/possible-treatments-new-coronavirus.html

Sorry, PETA; this multifaceted study involved infecting mice with viruses and looking at symptoms and survival rates of treated vs. untreated. Among other things, researchers were trying to determine when the administering of chloroquine worked better (at least IN MICE). There are other studies on antiviral drugs listed in the sidebar.

What works in mice doesn’t necessarily work in humans. I would think that under the circumstances, research could be super-fast-tracked and an existing drug such as chloroquine that is known to be safe, even FDA-approved, could be used in human trials RIGHT NOW. For all I know, this is happening. In the meantime, past results are encouraging, at least if you’re a pregnant mouse, as in this study from China on chloroquine administered for protection against microcephaly (small heads in newborns) caused by Zika virus.

Wow, for a moment I was distracted by the thought of how small the microcephalic head of a newborn mouse would be. Almost as small as AOC’s brain.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2715625/

Here’s more promising research on the use of chloroquine, this one on Zika virus in an in vitro study involving various human and mouse brain cells.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27916837

And here’s a new Chinese study –- ironically, from the Wuhan Institute of Virology –- on the effects of chloroquine and another promising anti-viral drug, remdesivir. It shows a high level of effectiveness, at least in vitro, for both drugs in the control of novel coronavirus, to the extent that they recommend assessing them in the treatment of human patients.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0

You will not be tested on any of this. I link to these studies just to show that research into these existing antiviral medications is already going on because of previous bouts with other viruses such as ebola, Zika and SARS/MERS. Now, the studies need to be accelerated, as they were a few decades ago in response to HIV/AIDS. It’s going to be dedicated scientists and other innovative people who find better, faster ways to test and treat for this and other viruses, along with strategies to help us head off future pandemics. Of course, along with human ingenuity, I believe in the power of prayer, so pray for those scientists, for President Trump and all those who are involved in combatting and ultimately defeating this foe.

Here’s another approach being studied: giving plasma from recovered coronavirus patients, who presumably would have antibodies against it, to current patients and to those who have been exposed. Dr. Arturo Casadevall, a professor at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, talked with Tucker Carlson about this on Monday night. “It is important to do this right,” he said, “and to do it with a regulatory framework.” Once approvals are in place, he said, recovered patients might be invited to donate just as people donate blood today.

Anyway, researchers are all over this. I’ll leave you with some recent anecdotal evidence on the use of antiviral drugs, including HIV drugs, as reported by the NEW YORK POST.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/12/hiv-drugs-are-being-used-as-part-of-coronavirus-treatment/

Yesterday I noted that the world is still turning while we’re focused on the coronavirus and that important news is breaking now on the ‘deep state,’ particularly in the government’s case against Michael Flynn. I praised President Trump for saying he was “strongly considering” a full pardon for Flynn. When the President tweeted that, he likely had in mind the evidence that investigative reporter John Solomon has just made public.

As you know, Flynn was pressured into pleading guilty to lying to investigators when even his questioners had reported they hadn’t seen any sign of intentional deception. For months, Flynn’s defense attorney Sidney Powell has filed brief after brief, trying to get presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan to accept the withdrawal of his plea. I can’t imagine, with all the evidence he has now, that any judge would refuse to do that, but as you’ll see below, this one might.


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The documents described by Solomon, specifically notes from testimony of DOJ officials before the special counsel that were included in a letter to Flynn’s lawyers in 2018, show that there was internal concern about how the investigation of Flynn was being conducted. Suspicions that it was all a set-up –- apparently led by then-FBI Director James Comey –- are looking more and more on the mark.

This correspondence confirms Solomon’s earlier reports –- labeled “opinion” by his editors, though he has presented well-sourced information and is repeatedly proven right –- that Mueller’s team accepted Flynn’s plea of guilty to lying about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak even though his interrogators had told the DOJ they didn’t think he was lying and simply had a faulty memory. Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates told the Mueller team that the FBI had briefed her on this and said the agents had characterized Flynn as “very accommodating.” (I would add that the man no doubt welcomed them into his office and never called a lawyer because he had no idea he was being set up.) She told them she was briefed that Flynn denied having a conversation about sanctions but that when nudged at one point, he’d said something like, ‘Oh, thanks for reminding me.”

Yates didn’t speak directly to Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka, the interviewing agents, but was told that their assessment was that Flynn showed no “tells” of lying and it was possible he really did not remember the substance of his calls with Ambassador Kislyak.

RELATED READING: What's happening with 'deep state' while virus infects news media

And there it is. MAYBE HE JUST DIDN’T REMEMBER. And for that, the FBI and special counsel pursued him ruthlessly in court, bankrupting him, forcing him to sell his house to pay attorneys and threatening to investigate his family, until he was simply tapped out and pleaded guilty to lying. (He had different representation at the time; perhaps this was their advice to him.) But it seems to have been over essentially NOTHING. Just on this point alone, Flynn deserves a full pardon from President Trump. But wait, there’s more.

Was this an “ambush interview,” as Solomon’s earlier reports have suggested? Well, yes. We already have Comey admitting as much on video; recall his public bragging that he just sent a couple of guys over to the White House to make it look casual. And now we have actual documentation. This correspondence relates former acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord’s concern, as expressed to Mueller’s team, that FBI agents didn’t tell Flynn he was under investigation and didn’t give him the usual notification that he could be charged with a crime if he misled the agents.

McCord told the Mueller team her understanding was that Flynn was being investigated to determine whether he had a clandestine relationship with Russia. But by January 30, 2017, the FBI had concluded that they did not believe he did, and had sent a memo to that effect to senior DOJ officials.

Recall that it was Sally Yates who had first brought up the ludicrous idea that Flynn might have violated the Logan Act (conducting foreign policy as a private citizen, a centuries-old law under which NO ONE had ever been successfully prosecuted). That concern was leaked to the news media, and this put pressure on Flynn to resign his new post as national security adviser, which he did.

Yet these newly-obtained documents show that there was internal dispute over whether or not a charge of violating the Logan Act was appropriate. According to the Mueller summary, “McCord said that upon learning of Flynn’s phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak, a Logan Act prosecution seemed like a stretch to her.” And it was. Not only was the Logan Act rarely even invoked, but Flynn wasn’t just a private citizen --- he was the incoming national security adviser! Of course he would be speaking in that capacity with the ambassador.


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Even former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe affirmed the accounts by McCord and Yates in his own interview with the special counsel. “McCabe and then-acting assistant Attorney General Mary McCord had many subsequent discussions about the Logan Act,” the memo said. “They believed prosecuting a Logan Act violation was a long shot.”

From the Mueller memo: “According to McCabe, after the January 24 interview with Flynn, the interviewing agents returned to the FBI and briefed McCabe. The agents believed Flynn seemed very credible in his interview. Everyone in the room thought it was amazing that the agents believed that Flynn seemed credible since he denied something that everyone else knew to be true.” (Note: they knew it to be true because they had been listening in on his phone calls with foreign officials. And, with his background in intel, he knew they had been listening. So why on earth would he intentionally try to fool them?)

https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/yates-other-obama-doj-officials-sounded-alarm-about-fbis-treatment

One reason Trump tweeted about pardoning Flynn is that the FBI now claims the original 302s (interview notes with Flynn), which evidence shows may have been altered by Lisa Page, have been “LOST.” The DOJ told Judge Sullivan that the 302s were “not in their possession,” which implies that they do exist...somewhere.

I don’t know what’s going on with this judge, but this was his response: “Things happen.”

If anyone ever deserved a pardon, it’s Michael Flynn.

https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/03/15/judge-on-lost-michael-flynn-documents-things-happen/

Oh, and something else regarding "Russia": Remember when the Mueller team filed charges against a couple of Russian companies for financing efforts to use social media to “meddle” in the 2016 election? Perhaps the special counsel assumed Concord Management and Consulting and a related catering firm would just stay quiet, which would have let them avoid a trial while lending credence to the Trump/Russia “collusion” theory, but the companies denied the charges and resolved to fight back in court. And now, after all is said and done and the Mueller team found no evidence of “collusion” with the Trump campaign and the whole investigation is seen to have been a giant, politically-motivated waste of time, the Justice Department has dropped the case against them.

U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich issued a gag order in the case.

https://justthenews.com/government/doj-elects-not-prosecute-russian-companies-indicted-mueller-probe

Believe it or not, there are other things going on in the news besides the “novel coronavirus.”

Turn on your TV, though, and chances are 99.99999 percent that the word “coronavirus” will be mentioned within the next 15 seconds. If you're lucky, it’s reasonable and useful information about what is being done on a variety of fronts to deal with the virus and its possible effects on our lives. This is important and we do need to know about it. But the relentless hysteria has become tiresome, especially considering that a distressing amount of the coverage comes from a blame-Trump-at-all-cost political perspective.

Remember, this virus has no agenda except to spread wherever it can. It is not into identity politics: it doesn’t care if you’re black or white, American or Chinese or Iranian, Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, famous or unknown, male or female or trans-whatever. It doesn’t care whether or not President Trump gets re-elected. And It certainly doesn’t care what else is going on that normally would be getting media attention right now.


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But we should care. The world still turns, and what goes on behind the scenes now will determine the direction our nation takes, long after the novel coronavirus is no longer a threat.

For example (speaking of insidious viruses), Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, worked to make sure the revisions to the FISA law that were up for review last week won’t interfere with the FBI’s ability to continue with business as usual. Here’s the full story.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/15/adam-schiff-fisa-reform-intervention-protects-fbi-/

Also, while most media have been obsessed with coronavirus, investigative reporters such as Margot Cleveland have been tediously dissecting Michael Horowitz’s IG report on FISA abuse footnote-by-footnote and creating timelines to piece together what the FBI and CIA were really doing to target Donald Trump, both as a candidate and as President. (I suppose that’s one way to minimize exposure to any virus; instead of being out and about, just sit alone in front of a computer screen. Periodically wiped down with sanitizer, of course.)

Cleveland’s latest column deals with Stefan Halper, a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI who isn’t identified by name in the IG report but at this point doesn’t have to be. If you’ve read Lee Smith’s THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT, you’re already well-versed on Halper. We know he did quite a lot of spying on the Trump campaign; he secretly recorded Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and even Sam Clovis, who was co-chair of the campaign. Horowitz’s report shows he was involved in this surveillance work before being tapped by the FBI for “Crossfire Hurricane,” which started on July 31, 2016.

So, if Halper was spying on Trump’s people before the FBI started using him as a CHS, who hired him for that? We know he had a previous relationship with the CIA, so perhaps it was John Brennan who got that started. Halper was highly paid (note: with taxpayer funds) by the Defense Department’s Office Of Net Assessment on four government contracts for projects he supposedly completed for them. (There’s much more on this in THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.) But Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has raised questions about the merits of these contracts.

Were the contracts really just a cover, and what was Halper REALLY doing while on the Defense Department payroll? We’ve asked these questions before, but Cleveland now raises the possibility that Halper was working for...drum roll, please...Hillary Clinton. It seems he was talking to the press about Carter Page at about the same time Christopher Steele was being paid by Fusion GPS to peddle the “dossier” and work up suspicion about Trump’s campaign and Russia. Since the Clinton campaign and the DNC (same thing) were paying Fusion GPS to “seed” the media with tales of Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia, the activities of Steele and Halper appear to have been coordinated. I’ll link to her column and let you decide for yourself.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/13/did-spygate-source-stefan-halper-work-for-the-hillary-clinton-campaign/

John Solomon has been busy putting pieces together as well, and it’s now clear that our nation was put through two years of an investigation into President Trump over an issue (working with Russia to undermine the 2016 election) that had been discredited as of January, 2017, by information in the FBI’s own files.


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By then, they’d received multiple warnings about the lack of credibility of Christopher Steele and his “dossier.” They’d determined that key targets of their counterintelligence investigation, such as newly appointed national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, had made exculpatory statements denying any collusion. And they’d concluded that Flynn had NOT colluded with Russians. A motion filed by Flynn attorney Sidney Powell on September 11, 2019, refers to “an internal DOJ document dated January 30, 2017, in which the FBI exonerated Mr. Flynn of being ‘an agent of Russia.’

We know about that motion because Solomon obtained a 2018 letter between Robert Mueller’s office and Flynn’s attorneys that references it. As Solomon reports, it shows that the DOJ exoneration memo was written after Flynn was ambush-interviewed in January 2017 and was based on the fact that Flynn had briefed his agency on the contacts he’d had with Russia. It was all on the up and up, and they knew it.

Yet they pursued Flynn anyway and eventually got him to plead guilty to lying to investigators, who have said they didn’t think he was being deceptive. Presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan is still resisting the idea of letting him withdraw his guilty plea. And Powell still can’t get the original DOJ exoneration memo from prosecutors. “It’s just horrible,” she said during a podcast with Solomon. “They gave us a little three-line summary of it and the letter and told us it existed but have refused to give us the actual document, which I know means there’s a lot of other information in it that would be helpful to us.”

https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/fbis-russia-collusion-case-fell-apart-first-month-trump-presidency

But wait --- there’s even more exculpatory evidence dripping out. Recently released documents about the infamous Trump Tower meeting back accounts of Donald Trump, Jr., and other campaign officials who said there was no talk of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. This was in the testimony of the translator present at the meeting. The agent’s “302” notes read, “There was no smoking gun according to Samochornov [the translator]. There was not a discussion about ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton. Samochornov did not think Hillary Clinton was mentioned by name.”

Oh, and guess what? Two years later, when Mueller’s special counsel report was finally released, these exculpatory notes were not included.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/03/12/buried_from_trump_tower_meeting_translators_avowal_of_no_collusion_122774.html

By the way, even though President Trump has a nasty virus on his plate right now (yechh), he’s still keeping up with all these developments. In fact, he says he’s “strongly considering” a full pardon for Michael Flynn. After what Flynn has been put through by the “Justice” Department, it’s hard to imagine Trump wouldn’t pardon him, and sooner rather than later.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/15/donald-trump-consider-pardon-michael-flynn/

Welcome to the Huckabee newsletter, the only media outlet in America that isn’t leading with a coronavirus story! You’re welcome! (That’ll come later.)

Last night, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders squared off in the Democrats’ first one-on-one “debate,” mano y mano (or “old mano y old mano.”)

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sanders-biden-meet-for-one-on-one-debate-amid-coronavirus-pandemic

There was no studio audience, to prevent the spread of disease and to keep from spooking the participants with any sudden noises. The DNC once again changed the rules to keep their one remaining, interesting, appealing, “diverse” candidate, Tulsi Gabbard out, so the Democrats are down to this Hobson’s Choice. Each candidate had a clear objective: Biden had to prove he could go for two hours without wandering off the stage or lapsing into word salad, while Bernie had to prove he had the “fire in the belly” to go after Biden hard on his vulnerabilities and take him down.


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By those measures, Biden could be judged the winner, since he held up remarkably well with only a few brain lapses (like calling the H1N1 or “swine flu” virus that happened under his and Obama’s watch the “N1H1” virus, and deflecting with a “Come on, man” when Bernie challenged him to list the nine PACs he accused Bernie of taking money from.) However, while Bernie launched some aggressive moves on Biden, he didn’t land any knockout blows (neither he nor the moderators even brought up all the questions about Biden’s health, something unimaginable if he were a Republican.) If Bernie had a “fire in the belly,” then he must’ve taken some Mylanta for it before the debate. Any hopes he might have had of painting Biden as the old and out-of-touch guy (at 77, he’s actually a year younger than Bernie) died when Bernie used the phrase “Go to the YouTube,” and immediately became a trending Internet meme.

The only news to come out of the debate was Biden’s promise to choose a female running mate and to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. So, aside from the fact that identity politics continues to be the #1 concern of Party leaders, that tells us that Biden would not choose Bernie as a “unity” running mate. Biden did pledge to support Bernie if he won the nomination, but that’s the kind of easy, empty promise politicians make when they’re sure it will never happen (like Hillary promising to respect the results of the election if she lost.)

A few more random thoughts: Biden has moved so far to the left to challenge Bernie that calling him a “moderate” is about as believable as calling him an Olympic decathlete. Both of these guys, should they ever (God forbid!) become President, vow to end fracking and oil drilling, and replace it with sun power and windmills (they might as well toss in unicorn burps for all the good it will do.) That would not only destroy the domestic fuel industry and millions of jobs, it would send gas and oil prices skyrocketing and vastly enrich and empower Russia and OPEC at our expense.

They also seem to be in agreement that virtually all immigration laws should be scrapped. They would turn millions of current illegal immigrants into US citizens, give all illegal immigrants free health care, end ICE raids that arrest illegals with criminal records and deportation orders, end all deportations for at least six months and not deport anyone just for having a criminal record in their home nations (only after they commit a felony here), and be a lot nicer at the border, making it easier and faster for people who cross illegally to get processed and released.

But they’re not for open borders! Perish the thought! They’re just for the functional equivalent of open borders. Instead of building a wall on the border, they’d build a giant WELCOME mat. And they'd do much better than Trump at preventing the spread of foreign diseases, apparently by making it illegal to call them "foreign diseases."

They’re also in agreement (in the midst of a pandemic) that Donald Trump is the only “existential threat” America faces, and that everything he’s doing to stop the coronavirus is wrong, so we have to elect them so they can do the exact same things only with no travel restictions. Here’s an example of how much they really know about this issue.

https://www.westernjournal.com/1st-minute-debate-biden-hacking-cough-breaks-cdc-hygiene-rules-tries-recover/

Bottom line: since the debate didn’t seem to change the dynamics of the race, and Bernie shows no intentions of bowing out, it looks as if things will drag on as before. Biden will likely win the most delegates but possibly fall short of enough to clinch the nomination before the convention. If Biden picks a woman VP, that means no Bernie on the ticket, which will infuriate the Bernie Bros. If he does pick Bernie, he will infuriate women and anyone who cares about the future of America. So once again, in an unbroken winning streak, the winner of the Democratic debate was Donald Trump.

This Coronavirus is really having an impact on our lives. The stock market has been in free-fall because of the uncertainty of how many people will get sick and what it’s doing to all sectors of the economy, especially the travel industry. Cruise ships are empty, entire nations like Italy, are virtually shutting down, and flights are being canceled all over the world as well as major events being canceled like the South by Southwest Festival in Austin. At public events, I’m now noticing that most people prefer an elbow bump or a wave instead of the customary handshake. Here in our theater, I conduct a meet and greet with our audience after the show, and I’m finding that more of the audience prefers a simple hello rather than shaking hands as well, but I think it’s mostly because there are rumors about me—not that I have coronavirus, but that I have cooties.


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The medical advice hasn’t been consistent in this. Some say not to worry, go on with your business and others say don’t travel at all and stay home. The one thing agreed upon is to wash your hands—a lot.

The one sector of our economy that’s booming is the sale of hand-sanitizers and disinfectant wipes. They’re sold out everywhere. There are even instructions on how to make your own sanitizer by mixing aloe vera gel with rubbing alcohol or with vodka. So, if you see a bunch of your Baptist friends at the liquor store buying up the booze, I’m sure they are there to get the ingredients for hand sanitizer. But boy are they licking their fingers a lot!

I don’t mean to make light of this. It’s a serious issue and one death from it is one too many, but while I’ll take all the precautions I can, I’m not going to stop living my life out of fear of what might happen. I will stop eating directly off buffets with the serving spoon or drinking out of water bottles that people have left opened and half used in airplane seat-back pockets. But I already wash my hands a lot and usually scrub them like a surgeon, especially after shaking a lot of hands. I try to never touch the bottom of my shoes and I do wipe the surfaces around my tray table and seat on airplanes. I only sneeze on planes when the guy in front of me puts his seat right in my face and try to limit my coughing in the direction of people who talk loudly on their cell phones on planes or in restrooms.

We have to take the coronavirus seriously, but we need to use common sense and ultimately trust the Lord to protect us when all our efforts won’t. It’s not practical for me to stop flying, but now that so many in the public are afraid of being on planes because of the virus, I’m flying with fewer people these days so there is a silver lining in those clouds. So if I see you in the airport or on the streets, a nice wave, deep bow from the waist, or tip of the hat will do fine as a greeting to replace the handshake or the kiss on the cheek. And I’m speaking of the cheek on my face of course!

Friday, President Trump held a news conference in which he officially declared the COVID-19 coronavirus to be a national emergency. That quickly freed up about $50 billion worth of federal aid. This comes just two days after the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic. Also, in a move that shows how different this President is from previous Presidents (and how vastly different he is from those who seek to replace him), he announced that he had struck deals with some of America’s largest corporations, such as WalMart, Target, Google and CVS, to use their vast resources to assist in fighting the disease and helping Americans with procedures and testing. Instead of using the emergency as an “opportunity” to grow government, he’s employing the greater efficiency of the private sector in partnership with government.

Trump also announced that he’s waiving interest on federally-held student loans until further notice.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-waives-interest-on-federally-held-student-loans-until-further-notice

Another way Trump is different from any Democrat seeking to replace him is that he also declared Sunday to be a National Day of Prayer.


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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-sunday-national-day-of-prayer

Trump’s actions must have impressed Wall Street, since the Dow roared back by nearly 2,000 points, the biggest one-day gain since the 2008 meltdown, shortly after it took the worst drop since 1987.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/us-stocks-march-13-2020

Also, late last night, the House passed a bill providing emergency funding for dealing with the pandemic, after the Administration demanded a rewrite due to objections that House Democrats were larding up the bill with lefty wish list items, like taxpayer-paid abortions.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-oks-coronavirus-relief-bill-after-urging-from-trump-in-363-40-vote

Here’s the full text of Trump’s letter:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/read-trump-letter-declaring-coronavirus-national-emergency-under-stafford-act

And full video of the press conference:

https://youtu.be/G6HbxcCb-7g

You can safely skip the Q&A from reporters at the end. It was mostly a lot of lame “gotcha” attempts by reporters who don’t seem to get that Trump is dealing with a life-or-death health crisis, and very effectively. This is not the time to try to undermine his efforts with your one-track-mind Trump Derangement Syndrome. As noted previously, even such rabid anti-Trump Governors as California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Andrew Cuomo…

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/361358

…have praised Trump and his team for quickly providing them with everything they promised. I’m glad of this, but not that surprised: Governors may be politicians, but it's much more important to be pragmatic and work with whoever you have to in order to protect your state’s citizens. If actual Democratic politicians can put aside partisanship and acknowledge that Trump is doing a good job, maybe the amateur Democratic politicians in the media could try that as well.

When I see how many ways the media try to attack Trump (when one path fails, they try another, then another), it makes me think that COVID-19 may not be the most aggressive virus plaguing America today. For instance, Trump was called a racist, xenophobic incompetent for acting too quickly to shut down all travel from China. Once it became apparent that bought us precious time, they attacked him for not doing it soon enough. Now, they’re trying to circle back to the nonsense “racist” charge, but in a way that only makes themselves look hypocritical…

https://www.mrctv.org/blog/watch-34-times-media-said-wuhan-or-chinese-coronavirus-they-blame-gop

As for the claim that Trump was ignoring the coronavirus or not doing enough, Deborah Birx, the internationally known HIV/AIDS expert appointed by Trump to help coordinate his coronavirus response, said there has been “intense effort” put into bringing quality testing kits to people “at unprecedented speed,” adding, “I understand that a lot of this behind-the-scenes action in the last couple of weeks was invisible to the press and the American people.”

So she’s saying that Trump and his people were actually exerting intense effort to deal with the crisis, but the public might not have known it because they were putting their efforts into dealing with the crisis rather than trying to make themselves look good to the media.

I think I’ve just found another way that this President is very different from all the people trying to replace him!

For the past three years or so, I’ve heard Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) constantly assail President Trump for not having the proper character or temperament to be President. But I’ve always felt that you could judge those things best by watching what someone does in a crisis.

So far in this pandemic, I have seen Trump move early and amid heavy criticism to try to stop people with infections from coming into the US (you can’t keep a virus out, but you can slow it down and buy precious time.) He’s appointed the best people possible and given them the power, budget and leeway to do what they think needs to be done. He’s taken actions that he knew would kneecap the economy and harm his biggest reelection selling point, but he put the good of America first and did it anyway (I could name some other politicians who would not have done that in an election year - and when faced with the situation, didn’t.) He's trying to walk a tightrope between making the dangers of the disease very clear and reassuring people that it will be all right so don't panic. And he’s reached out to the other Party, urging them to put partisanship aside and work together to deal with the crisis.


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So…how has the other side responded? You know, the people with such high standards of “character” for others? Thus far, they have relentlessly attacked, mocked, criticized, second-guessed and undermined everything Trump has tried to do. They accused him of being racist for shutting down travel from China, then after it became clear that was a very smart move, they criticized him for not doing it sooner. They blamed his speech for the drop in the Dow, even though markets were plummeting worldwide before he ever even spoke, and there was nothing he could have said that would have been interpreted as good news for stocks.

They claimed that Obama would have dealt with a health crisis much better, even though he acted much more slowly in dealing with swine flu. Plus, his Administration spent several years and around $2 billion just to create a health insurance website that didn’t work.

Oh, and let’s not overlook the shameless, self-serving opportunism. Like House Democrats’ attempts to load up the emergency coronavirus funding bill with liberal wish list pork, including Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to sneak in taxpayer funding of abortion. Memo to Speaker Pelosi: the idea of this bill is to PREVENT death, not subsidize it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/report-pelosi-tried-using-bill-aimed-stopping-coronavirus-deaths-fund-baby-deaths-abortion/

Fortunately, the GOP Senate will have time to go through the House bill and disinfect it, since Mitch McConnell canceled next week’s scheduled recess:

https://www.westernjournal.com/mitch-mcconnell-cancels-senate-recess-continue-combating-coronavirus/

Joe Biden (or more likely, his staffers) rushed out a harsh criticism of Trump’s “lack of leadership” and a list of things that Biden would have been done, all of which have already been done by Trump. Well, all except the first thing, which was to insure that no bias against Asian or Pacific American peoples be tolerated. That’s the modern Democrats in a nutshell: so obsessed with identity politics that their #1 priority in dealing with a pandemic is to assume Americans will react to it like violent racists and virtual signal at us. I’d like to see the lab work that shows the virus cannot penetrate a thick layer of self-righteousness.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/joe-biden-blasts-trumps-coronavirus-response-then-plagiarizes-trumps-plan/

It’s also been noted how amazing it is that the solution to every crisis is to implement whatever the left has already been pushing for. For many, this crisis has been the perfect excuse to push for full government control of health care (even as they are attacking the government under Trump for “botching” the handling of health care.) Example: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tried to claim that South Korea got the infection under control because they have “single payer health care.”

https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2020/03/12/who-wants-to-tell-her-aoc-reveals-one-major-reason-south-korea-is-coping-well-with-covid19-and-its-100-crap/

Twitter users quickly reminded her that so does Italy, and they’re so overwhelmed that hospitals are denying care to elderly people and sending them home. Should we call the officials who have to break that news to the elderly Italians “death panels”?

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/elderly-will-be-denied-intensive-care-as-coronavirus-overwhelms-italys-national-health-system-experts-warn/

As for the news media, I’m sure you know how well they reacted to Trump’s call for unity. For instance, CNN’s Don Lemon nearly blew a gasket when he couldn’t get even noted Trump critic John Kasich to attack Trump’s handling of the crisis.

https://www.westernjournal.com/don-lemon-loses-trumps-coronavirus-speech-john-kashich-set-straight/

We’ve also had a rash of media outlets declaring that Trump or anyone else who describes the disease as the “Wuhan virus,” the China virus or even a “foreign virus” is racist and xenophobic. In doing this, they’re carrying water for the communist government in Beijing, which started calling that racist because even though it was 100% accurate, it was bad for their phony image. It's actually no more racist than calling linguini "Italian food."

https://spectator.us/covid-19-terrifying-weapon-political-propaganda/

This prompted conservatives on social media to pull up dozens of clips of the PC talking heads using those exact same terms over the past month. Here’s a sample compilation:

https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2020/03/12/cnn-stars-in-absolutely-brutal-supercut-featuring-media-firefighters-feverishly-lobbing-racist-covid19-bombs-video/

I was genuinely hoping that the media and the Democrats would heed Trump’s call to put America first, set aside partisanship and pull together (some, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, really are.) But I guess that for some of them, that’s like expecting a duck not to quack. It’s disgusting that they can see something that’s causing so much human suffering as an opportunity to score cheap political points. But their attempts are so obvious – and so repulsive – that this coronavirus episode might prove very costly to them in the long run.

https://spectator.org/politicizing-coronavirus-will-cost-dems-the-house/

There is no subject so serious that a limerick can’t be made about it:

There once was a fellow named Biden

Whose capacities seemed to be slidin’

His party said, “Wait!

Old Joe can’t debate!

So we’ll just have to keep him in hidin’!”

His confusion and poor comprehension

Have long been attracting attention

They've got a fresh face

To put in his place

If he just makes it to the convention


RELATED READING: Democrats have to hide Biden till convention, get Bernie out

That’s not meant to ridicule Joe Biden himself --- far from it --- but rather the deceitful Democrat Party leaders who are using him, actually victimizing him. Who truly believes the party’s goal is to put former Vice President Biden, nearing 80 and appearing to struggle with cognitive challenges, in the Oval Office, for real? Early yesterday, I wrote about their need to keep Biden out of the public eye after his victories in Tuesday’s primary elections. I speculated there might not be any debate appearances in his future, even the one scheduled for this Sunday with the other Last Old White Man Standing, Bernie Sanders. Since then, there have been some new developments.

Recall that some prominent Democrats were already calling for Sanders to drop out and Biden to be declared the nominee. (Never mind the unfairness to all the voters in states that haven’t had their primaries yet.) Party leaders say they need to do this to focus on beating President Trump in November, burt we know what this is really about. At this point, they can’t risk letting Biden try to match wits with anyone, let alone Donald Trump. Whatever the reason for his decline (I’m not a doctor), his behavior has become so bizarre that his campaign is limiting his speaking engagements to seven minutes.

But these debates can go on for two hours. And, unlike earlier debates in which the stage (and face time) was shared with a number of candidates, they’ll be one-on-one, with lots of questions and back-and-forth.


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Obviously, the Biden campaign and the DNC do not want him to appear with Bernie at Sunday’s event. Already they’ve renegotiated so that the candidates may remain seated throughout. Because of coronavirus concerns, they’ve even dispensed with the live audience. And you know they would prefer to cancel the debate entirely –- to do what James Carville suggested and just “shut this puppy down.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/pressure-grows-on-bernie-sanders-to-drop-out

In an announcement Wednesday, Sanders showed that he is less than cooperative.

https://news.yahoo.com/sanders-says-hes-staying-2020-174228022.html

But the threat of the coronavirus is being taken very seriously, with Trump in a late-Wednesday Oval Office address announcing that it had been classified by the World Health Organization as a pandemic (meaning epidemic on a global scale). He outlined point-by-point the aggressive actions being taken, saying, “We’re marshaling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people.” While reassuring young and healthy people that their “risk is very, very low,” he cautioned the elderly and those with underlying conditions to be “very, very careful” and “to avoid all nonessential travel and crowded areas.”

The threat is real, but watch how Biden’s campaign now gets to use it to avoid campaign events entirely. Why, it’s not to shield Biden from scrutiny –- it’s to protect the voters! Never mind that it also means Biden won’t have to answer questions, explain his positions or try to connect with people without insulting them. As people now try to avoid crowds, this political contest may take on a dangerous new theme: “Suppose they gave a presidential campaign and nobody came?”

As the Democrats say, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” This situation makes it a lot easier for Biden to limp along to the convention in June, which might be the most convenient time for the DNC to suddenly “realize” that he's having to struggle with significant mental lapses, that Sanders is unelectable in a general election, and that they need to draft a replacement right away “for the good of the country.” Someone strong and electable who can hit the ground running. Someone with the best chance of beating Trump. That person will either replace Biden outright or be put on the ticket with him, as President-in-waiting.

It occurs to me that if the virus is still active by late spring or early summer, they might not have a convention at all.

Campaign events are already being canceled, on both the left and right. President Trump announced Wednesday that he has canceled a couple of events out West. Both Biden and Sanders have already canceled rallies. As Laura Ingraham pointed out on her show Wednesday night, these cancellations benefit one candidate in particular, the one who has the most to lose: Joe Biden. A former staffer for Bernie, Tezlyn Figaro, said on Laura’s show that “Joe Biden will certainly benefit because we don’t have to worry about him threatening to take somebody out back.” Touche.

But she also said this might benefit Sanders as well because he wouldn’t have to explain why people weren’t coming out to his rallies. “I think people are finding out that folks are just not socialists,” she said. “I worked with Sen. Sanders...I joined him in 2016 for very different reasons, but it’s important for folks to understand that this country just, they just don’t want to elect a socialist. So Sen. Sanders has to take some responsibility for that as well.”

If that’s the view of someone who actually worked for him, it should be more obvious than ever that Bernie won’t be the nominee. It follows that if he’s unelectable and Biden is incapable, the Democrat party is going to go with someone else.

Figaro also commented on what I reported yesterday, the call by Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina to cancel the rest of the debates and end the primary process right where it is, calling his suggestion “extremely insulting.” She said it was disrespectful, “even to those who want to vote for Joe Biden” and also “to American democracy.” We’re at a point where half of the delegates are yet to be earned, she said, and this decision shouldn’t be made by “just one or two folks at the top.” Biden’s supporters know he makes “consistent gaffes,” she said, “and they still voted for him anyway.”

She cited #DemExit as trending among people who are upset about this push to shut the process down and give it to Biden. (Of course, I’ve talked-up the fabulous #WalkAway movement, which was already going on.)

https://www.walkawaycampaign.com/about-more

https://www.newsweek.com/michigan-votes-demexit-trends-sanders-supporters-threatening-leave-dem-party-if-biden-wins-149156

Figaro made some excellent, well-reasoned points (she is a FORMER Bernie staffer). I wonder, though, if Biden’s supporters will still feel as eager to vote for him if they see much more of the bizarre behavior he increasingly exhibits. That behavior is why those “one or two folks at the top” will do everything possible to hide him and promote him in absentia, and the media will help them. They would have done this even without the coronavirus, but the growing threat of contagion makes it so much easier now.

The COVID-19 coronavirus has been shaping the news for weeks, but yesterday, it ramped up to a whole new level. First, the World Health Organization officially declared it a pandemic, meaning a new disease that’s spread worldwide. They say it’s not a term they use lightly because they don’t want to spark unnecessary panic. But COVID-19 now qualifies because as of Wednesday, over 124,000 people in 108 countries have been sickened by it. Of those, at least 4,575 have died, but most were in China, and concentrated among the elderly with other health problems and weakened immune systems.

https://www.westernjournal.com/world-health-organization-officially-calls-coronavirus-pandemic/

Next, someone famous and widely liked across the political spectrum, Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, announced that they’d tested positive for it, putting the first well-known face on the disease…

https://www.westernjournal.com/ap-tom-hanks-rita-wilson-test-positive-coronavirus/


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The local closures of large gatherings suddenly went nationwide, with the announcement that the rest of the NBA season is being suspended after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive. March Madness college basketball games are still on, but they’ll be played without spectators.

https://www.westernjournal.com/nba-player-tests-positive-cornonavirus-league-makes-stunning-decision/

And finally came the real game-changer: Wednesday night, President Trump addressed the nation and effectively put the US on the equivalent of wartime footing against the COVID-19 coronavirus.

https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-travel-europe-suspended-order-president-designed-protect-americans-uk-exception/

Here’s the entire speech, if you missed it. It’s less than ten minutes long.

https://youtu.be/dcsZjfs2cB4

In an unusually somber and measured tone, Trump outlined a series of major steps his Administration is taking to contain the spread of the disease and to soften the economic blow caused by it.

The biggest news is that Trump is suspending all travel between the US and Europe for 30 days, starting on Friday. Acting Homeland Security deputy director Ken Cuccinelli later clarified that “This does not apply to American citizens or legal permanent residents or their families.” The Defense Department also announced travel restrictions on military members for the next 60 days.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dod-new-travel-restrictions-service-members-trump-bans-travel-europe

Trump also announced a series of measures designed to help workers and small businesses weather closures and quarantines. He tried to reassure Americans that swift action is being taken on a number of fronts to contain the virus and minimize its impact, and that this is a serious emergency, but the nation and economy are safe and sound, and it will pass. He also called for everyone to put aside partisanship and work together for the good of the nation and all its people.

Unfortunately, his political opponents are already suffering from a disease called Trump Derangement Syndrome that makes them pathologically incapable of putting the good of the nation over politics. No sooner had Trump finished speaking than his enemies rushed to the airwaves and Internet, doing their best to stoke fear, panic and divisiveness. They blamed him for the anticipated big drop in the stock market today, which is an inevitable result of having to shut down travel. They accused him of incompetence, despite the fact that if we’d listened to them when they accused him of racism and overreacting by shutting down travel from China, we might already be overrun with cases of it by now. Hilariously, some even accused him of racism for suspending travel to Europe (he must really hate the Dutch.)

In fact, come to think of it, have any of Trump’s hecklers like Adam Schiff and Chuck Schumer, who do nothing but point fingers of blame at Trump, ever been correct even once about anything related to this disease? One of the luxuries of not having the weighty responsibilities of the President, and not being held to account for your words by the media, is that you can spew dumb ideas that would have killed people if anyone had paid any attention to them, then as soon as your arrogant foolishness becomes apparent, simply cruise right on to spewing your next dumb comment.

At least I can honestly say that there is one thing in the world right now that’s even more sickening than the COVID-19 coronavirus, and that’s watching the Trump haters’ immature, self-serving, reprehensible reaction to it.

If you’re already sick of hearing Trump’s critics trash his efforts to try to stop the coronavirus, here are a few alternate takes. First, a much more positive assessment of Trump’s TV address from Michael Goodwin at the New York Post.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/12/trump-passes-coronavirus-test-with-flying-colors-goodwin/

Nan Hayworth, a physician and former Congress member, lists some of the ways in which Trump’s critics reflexively attacked him over his coronavirus actions or statements and that were later revealed to be flat wrong or based on fake news.

https://www.westernjournal.com/time-put-politics-aside-respect-trumps-leadership-coronavirus/

Finally, here’s a comparison of how the media covered the swine flu pandemic under Obama (or didn’t) and the hysterical coverage they’re giving to this pandemic, which just coincidentally falls during an election year under Trump.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/03/11/college-professor-who-had-swine-flu-notes-key-difference-in-democratmedia-complexs-hysteria-over-wuhan-virus-n2564591

Among the many silly, self-serving things being said about the coronavirus pandemic by the left is that if only we had socialized medicine, this would’ve been prevented/handled so much better. Yes, in places with socialized medicine, everything is so efficient, and care is so abundant and high quality, and there’s no such things as shortages, rationing or waiting lists for care! Also, they have special medicines that they get by milking unicorns.

Still hasn’t occurred to them that they’re accusing the government of moving too slowly and being unprepared and putting politics over health concerns, while simultaneously claiming it would have been so much better if the government were entirely in charge of all health care.

Sure, China has socialized medicine, and something like the coronavirus could never happen there!

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/if_only_america_had_this_one_thing_say_democrats_wed_be_safe_from_coronavirus.html

At the link is a MUST-READ article by Andrea Widburg at American Thinker, detailing the truth about government-run health care and its shoddy record. There’s a quote from a post by blogger Reggie Hamm that ironically went viral, but click through and read all of that, too. It describes what happened to him and his family when they were visiting China and their adopted baby daughter needed hospital care. Brace yourself. After reading it, you will understand why the coronavirus started in China, why the mortality rate was so much higher there than in capitalist countries, and why you do NOT want either that type of government or that type of health care system here.

Although when you read about the disgusting and dangerous hygiene situation they encountered, it may give you the chills to think how much it reminds you of the conditions that already prevail in far-left US cities like San Francisco and L.A.

If I were a wagering man, I might wager that there will be no more Democrat presidential “debates” before the Democratic National Convention. None at all.

With establishment Democrats all-in to win and realizing Vermont senator and Castro-admiring socialist Bernie Sanders just can’t get them there, they quickly coalesced around former Vice President Joe Biden, who reaped the rewards and was the big winner on Super Tuesday. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar exited the race with oddly incredible speed. Tuesday, Biden followed up that win with another string of states.


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So, NOW what to do? Whatever is going on with Biden (we don’t know but can speculate) is at this point preventing him from getting through virtually any event without making some kind of gaffe. His speaking appearances have reportedly been cut to seven-minute slots. His campaign asked for and received a change in the “debate” rules –- I use quotation marks because these aren’t actual debates –- to allow the two candidates to sit at a desk as they take questions from their audience. (The DNC claimed this wasn’t to benefit either candidate, but Sanders had said that standing would be fine with him.) And now, because of coronavirus concerns, they won’t use a live audience.

The next step might be simply to cancel the March 15 event, and that could very well happen. Once again, they can blame the coronavirus, or they can just say there’s no point in continuing because Biden’s got it wrapped up. In fact, that movement was already underway before the polls closed on Tuesday, with House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina suggesting on National Public Radio that the DNC should “step in” and cancel all remaining debates --- even stop holding state primaries --- if Biden had a really good showing and beat Bernie in Michigan (which he has done). “I think when the night is over,” he said, “Joe Biden will be the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination. If the night ends the way it has begun, I think it is time for us to shut this primary down. It is time for us to cancel the rest of the debates.” In an apparent reference to Bernie, he said, “You don’t do anything but get yourself in trouble if you continue in this contest when it’s obvious that the numbers will not shake out for you.”

It’s obvious who has the most to lose and who would really get himself “in trouble” with additional debates: Joe Biden. So party insiders simply want to declare him the winner by acclamation, before he has a chance to mess things up. We’ve been wondering how Biden could possibly make it to the convention if he had to continue debating. Now we know: they can fix it so he doesn’t have to.

https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/03/10/rigged-clyburn-floats-dnc-canceling-debates-primaires-and-anointing-biden/

Even a Republican strategist writing for the WASHINGTON EXAMINER agrees that Sanders should just drop out…

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bernie-sanderss-time-to-drop-out-has-come

Democrat strategist James Carville said essentially the same thing on Tuesday. “Our mission is to defeat Donald Trump,” he said on MSNBC. “There’s a 99 [percent] chance that Vice President Biden is going [to be] the nominee. Let’s shut this puppy down, and let’s move on and worry about November. This thing is decided. There’s no reason to keep it going, not even a day longer.”

Indeed. With each passing day, they risk having Biden say or do something that might tend to erode support for the Democrat ticket as a whole.

Of course, it’s not Biden who’s trying to impose this, Carville said. “It’s the Democratic voters that made this decision,” he insisted. “Vice President Biden is not trying to force him [Sanders] out. You’ve got to respect voters.” Well, that is unless they’re voting for Bernie Sanders; the DNC is respecting “Bernie” voters about as much as they respected them in the race against Hillary four years ago, which is to say not at all.

Carville pushed hard for proclaiming Biden the winner RIGHT NOW: “Respect the people in South Carolina and Virginia and Michigan...Yes, they have to have respect for democracy. This is very clear, what Democrats around the country are saying. Just everywhere you go, ‘We’ve got to get rid of this guy [President Trump]. What are we doing?’ And these are not ordinary times, and we’ve got to GO. Of course, the Vice President, he’s the guy in the lead...We’ve got to bring this party together. We’ve got to stop this...We can have respect and we can have admiration for what Sen. Sanders and his supporters have accomplished, but you’ve got to respect the Democratic voters...The Democratic voters have spoken...unambiguously and clearly, and they need to be listened to.”

He kept on pushing, saying that Biden should call Sanders and say, “Let’s have a conversation here, Senator. What do we do to get this thing moving in the right direction?” I’d speculate that it would probably be Biden’s campaign people calling Sanders, as Biden himself might just challenge Bernie to a pushup contest, or get belligerent and threaten to punch him, or think they’re at a campaign rally and tell him he’s full of sh**. Or maybe call him “Pete.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/03/10/carville-shut-this-puppy-down-biden-won-sanders-has-to-respect-the-voters/

They want to declare Biden the winner and then hide him as much as possible until the convention. Recall that when Hillary was running in 2016, concerns about her physical health were met with an incredibly light campaign schedule –- a virtual disappearing act for weeks at a time. Biden will have handlers whose goal is to similarly conceal him. (Again, the coronavirus will make a great excuse.) The difference this time, I believe, is that those running Biden’s campaign have no illusions that he will ever be on that debate stage with Donald Trump. By the convention, someone else will be in place to fill that bill.

If I’m right, and this is the way Democrat higher-ups are engineering their “democratic” process, it’s hard to understand why a lot of rank-and-file Democrats wouldn’t be extremely upset about that. Of course, there’s a movement within the Democrat party, #WalkAway, that calls for, well, walking away. The party has moved so crazy-far left and is so unconcerned with preserving individual rights and the democratic process that many are simply leaving.

A lot of Bernie supporters were not hard-core socialists –- didn’t even know what socialism is –- and they didn’t get it until he started praising Fidel Castro in recent days. They like a populist approach to governing but don’t share the socialist belief that the government should own the means of production, with all the control that would entail. When they “walk away” from the Democrat Party, they might want to look around at the “Trump economy,” talk to a few Trump supporters and realize their party has been lying to them about who Trump is and what he’s trying to accomplish. They might even see he’s in their corner and wants them to do well. And instead of going over to Biden (or, more accurately, whomever the DNC puts in his place), they just might want to go over to Trump.

https://www.walkawaycampaign.com/about-more

I mentioned yesterday in a piece about concern over Joe Biden’s ever-more-frequent “gaffes” that I did not include the clip of him saying, “We can only reelect Donald Trump,” because that was taken out of context. Unfortunately, some other conservative sources were fooled by it and retweeted it, including Trump communications director Dan Scavino, who was reposted by Trump.

While Scavino argued that nobody would seriously believe Biden was endorsing Trump, the Biden campaign complained to Twitter, which branded it as “manipulated media.” This is the first time that a major party candidate has been officially cited for spreading “fake news,” which I’m sure the left feels very smug about. But they might have tripped themselves up by making that complaint.

Have you ever heard of the “Streisand Effect”? Years ago, Barbra Streisand made a big deal about a photographer invading her privacy by taking an aerial photo of her estate. If she hadn’t said anything, most people never would have seen the photo. But her complaint drew so much publicity that everyone saw the picture and learned exactly where she lived. This may be what the Biden people are feeling now, since their complaint to Twitter about Trump posting a misleading video of Biden is bringing sudden attention to all the false and misleading videos and quotes that their side has thrown at Trump and that the media have let them slide by on.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-campaign-fires-back-twitter-biden-manipulated

The Trump campaign is now demanding that Twitter enforce its new rigid standards for political posts equally on the Biden campaign, citing at least three videos they've posted that are deceptively edited to make it appear that Trump said things he never said, such as the coronavirus is a hoax, or there were “very fine people” on the side of the white supremacists in Charlottesville. That last one is so slanderously false that even factcheck.org admitted it was baseless.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/trump-has-condemned-white-supremacists/

The Biden campaign may rue the day that it demanded Twitter bar any false or misleading videos about politicians because I’ve been listening to the Democrats’ policy ideas for nearly a year now, and it seems to me that slandering their opponents is about all they’ve got. In fact, Joe Biden actually claimed that Trump’s “very fine people” quote was the reason he decided to run for President: he just had to save America from that divisive racist who thinks that neo-Nazis are very fine people.

So now that this is all out in the open, and Twitter suddenly cares about the truth, Trump’s people should remove that misleading video, and Biden’s people should remove ALL their misleading anti-Trump videos...and Joe Biden should say, “Well, that’s very different! Never mind…” and quit the race and go home.

No, the FBI didn’t just make “errors and omissions” (51 of them) in their FISA applications targeting the Trump campaign. The FISA Court says it was deception.

As reported by John Solomon in JUST THE NEWS, U.S. District Judge James A. Boasberg, the new chief of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, issued an order last week suspending all FBI and DOJ lawyers involved in the Russia “collusion” case from appearing before his court until it’s determined whether or not they engaged in misconduct. (I would note that at this point, many are no longer there.) Boasberg blamed senior officials in a scathing rebuke, saying, “The frequency and seriousness of these errors in a case that, given its sensitive nature, had an unusually high level of review at both DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have called into question the reliability of the information proffered in other FBI applications.”

In other words, we can’t believe the FBI. To cut to the chase, Judge Boasberg said there’s “little doubt that the government breached its duty of candor to the Court with respect to those applications.” The judge here is accusing the FBI of lying to the FISA court.

He went on: “The errors the OIG [Office of Inspector General] pointed out cannot be solved through procedures alone. DOJ and the FBI, including all personnel involved in the FISA process, must fully understand and embrace the heightened duties of probity and transparency that apply in ex parte proceedings.”

Translation: It’s not enough to do what FBI Director Chris Wray wants to do and reform the process. This needs to go further. All personnel involved with FISA have to understand and be committed to the heightened importance of transparency and proof in proceedings such as this, in which a judge rules without all parties being present.

Top FBI and DOJ officials have spent three years trying to weasel out of being held accountable. James Comey recently said it was “nonsense” that the FBI opened the “Trump/Russia” probe without good cause. Rod Rosenstein said that the DOJ took its responsibility to submit “admissible evidence, credible witnesses” very seriously. (I guess he means the phony “dossier”?) How refreshing that this ruling by Judge Boasberg has placed the blame right where it should be.

We still don’t have indictments, but this certainly is a move in the right direction. As Solomon put it, “A judge has formally concluded that his court was misled by the work product they oversaw and signed.” By “they,” he means people at the top: James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Rod Rosenstein and others.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/21-words-uttered-fisa-court-change-russia-collusion-case

Ranking House Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes of California still calls this action “too little, too late.” He appeared on Monday’s HANNITY along with Gregg Jarrett and Sara Carter shortly after meeting for about an hour and a half with Attorney General Bill Barr, who has “some great ideas,” he said. But Democrats control the House right now, and it’s doubtful they’re going to pursue needed reforms. Nunes said what needs to happen is for Congress to “open up” FISA and really take a look at it, but as Congress is currently led by Democrats, that isn’t happening.

"At the end of the day,” he said, “we need FISA to protect this country, but not if it comes at the sake of our liberties that we would have to give up.”

FOX legal analyst Gregg Jarrett said he believes the only way to bring about real reform is to either get rid of FISA entirely or adopt the rule Sen. Rand Paul has called for: No more FISA spying on Americans. The ‘Foreign’ Intelligence Surveillance Act needs to be applied only to FOREIGN, not domestic, spying.

Sara Carter pointed out that to spy on Americans on U.S. soil is a violation of Fourth Amendment. (I would add that the FBI apparently went around the Fourth Amendment by luring Americans to foreign soil to spy on them there!) Carter was right in saying we can’t trust the intel bureaucracy to do their job within the system as it exists right now.

British ex-spy Christopher Steele, whose name is on the anti-Trump “dossier” that was used to mislead the FISA court, also came up in the conversation with Hannity, so here’s the latest on him, as reported by Chuck Ross at THE DAILY CALLER: Steele defended his own work recently at a private event sponsored by the Oxford University Student Union. “I stand by the integrity of our work, our sources and what we did,” he said.

Oh, brother.

The FISA Court certainly would not agree with Steele’s self-assessment. They found that the FBI could not corroborate Steele’s allegations regarding Carter Page and other Trump associates and that Steele’s only direct source disputed much of what was in the “dossier.” That source’s FBI interview in early 2017 “raised doubts about the reliability of Steele’s description of information in his election reports,” they said. Before the 2016 election, Steele himself told his FBI contacts that one subsource of his was a “boaster” and egotist” who was unreliable. Then there are the known factual errors, such as the claim that Michael Cohen visited Prague in August of 2016 to meet with Kremlin officials to discuss paying off computer hackers. (!) Say what you will about Michael Cohen, but he never made such a trip to Prague; in fact, as far as anyone knows, he has never been to Prague.

Over the past three years, Steele has gone back and forth on the reliability of his work as his own convenience warranted. What he’s saying now is certainly at odds with what he reportedly said under oath in a British deposition. Aside from that, the FBI got plenty of warning that it was really just political garbage paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign (with money laundered through the law firm Perkins Coie), but they used it, anyway. We know that most of the “dossier” wasn’t even written by Steele, but by Fusion GPS (read Lee Smith’s THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT). Also, the Mueller report found no evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, though Steele had alleged this in his “dossier.”

We know Steele had hoped to keep Trump from being elected, so perhaps his renewed defense of the “dossier” is intended to help keep him from being re-elected. He has said he won’t cooperate with the Durham investigation. And not surprisingly, he disparaged Trump at the Oxford event. “Trump himself doesn’t like intelligence because its ground truth is inconvenient for him,” Steele lied. “The reality check is that Russia is a hostile state as it is run at the moment, it is out to destabilize the West, and it is nefarious in the way it goes about its business.”

Well, yes, we all know Russia wants to destabilize the West. But “ground truth” means “facts or firsthand information,” and Steele relied on fiction when the facts were on the President’s side. Steele himself --- not to mention the FBI --- must've pleased Russia to no end by encouraging that very destabilization.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/06/christopher-steele-oxford-dossier/

Coronavirus news

March 10, 2020

Fox News has created a handy page with “everything you need to know” about the COVID-19 coronavirus, including where it came from, what are the risks, and the best ways to avoid catching it.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-everything-you-need-to-know

In “Of Course We’re Not Politicizing the Coronavirus!” News: Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier demanded that President Trump stop holding campaign rallies because the virus can spread in large gatherings. I assume she thinks it’s okay for Democratic Presidential candidates to keep holding campaign rallies because those aren’t large gatherings.


VOTE NOW:  How worried are you about the coronavirus (COVID-19)?

https://www.westernjournal.com/dem-rep-gets-political-coronavirus-calls-trump-cancel-rallies/

Worth noting: considering that her district includes parts of San Francisco, is she really in a position to lecture anyone else about not creating unhygienic conditions that spread disease?

Obviously, Congress members didn’t get the memo about not politicizing the coronavirus, but here’s a refreshing narrative-buster: some of the most anti-Trump Democratic Governors, like Jay Inslee in Washington and Gavin Newsom in California, are praising the Trump Administration for its swift and efficient actions in dealing with the disease.

https://www.westernjournal.com/narrative-busted-anti-trump-dem-governors-praise-president-coronavirus-response/

Newsom was goaded by a reporter to comment on Trump reportedly not wanting passengers from exposed cruise ships allowed onto US soil. While Chuck Schumer would probably say that means Trump hates cruise ship passengers, Newsom, surprisingly, said this:

“We had a private conversation, but he said, ‘We’re gonna do the right thing’ and ‘You have my support, all of our support, logistically and otherwise.’ He said everything that I could have hoped for. And we had a very long conversation, and every single thing he said, they followed through on."

If CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, et al, can find a way to twist that into a negative, then they should be making pretzels instead of practicing journalism. Actually, that’s great career advice for some of them regardless. And if you’re actually hoping a virus kills enough people to damage the President politically, then you are so sick, I don't even want you touching my pretzels...

https://twitter.com/RedState/status/1237102193947414529

Here’s this morning’s round-up of more coronavirus headlines from Instapundit…

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/360919/

This story prompted “Huckabee” writer Pat Reeder to post on his Facebook page, “The ultimate irony: Boston canceled its St. Patrick’s Day Parade out of fear of a disease named after beer.”

https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/03/09/south-boston-st-patricks-day-parade-canceled-over-coronavirus-concerns/

For a more positive outlook, John Hinderaker at the Powerline blog suggests that the stock market freak-out over the coronavirus will be short-lived, and that ultimately, this will be a positive for the US economy. He says it’s proof that Trump was right all along about how we need to disconnect from China and stop relying on them for necessities, like pharmaceuticals. The left and many on the right savaged Trump for his trade war with China, but it encouraged US businesses to seek suppliers outside China two years ago, which looks like a really good decision now.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/is-the-stock-market-crazy.php

And one more piece of positive news, a 100-year-old Chinese man contracted the coronavirus… and now, he’s over it.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/08/100-year-old-chinese-man-recovers-from-coronavirus-the-oldest-patient-to-beat-illness/

Democrat Race Update

March 10, 2020

Today, six more states hold primary elections: Missouri, Mississippi, Washington state, Idaho, North Dakota and the biggest prize for the Democrats, Michigan, with 125 pledged delegates. You can tell how important Michigan voters are to the Democrats because, unlike during the 2016 election, their eventual nominee will have actually visited there.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/march-10-primaries-here-are-the-states-voting-and-the-delegates-at-stake

Michigan is being called a “make-or-break” state for Bernie Sanders by pundits who like to use political clichés. He scored an upset victory over Hillary there in 2016 that revitalized his campaign (still didn’t get the nomination, though), and is hoping for another one, as if that would convince the Democrats to let him have the nomination this time. Biden is well ahead in polls, but polls can be unreliable, and with so many people voting weeks early these days, last minute twists like “Joe-mentum” or Bernie’s mancrush on Castro or Joe’s alarming word salad incidents might not have as much effect on the vote as you’d suspect.

Both candidates have been focusing hard on Michigan to win it back from Trump by using populist appeals to convince blue collar workers that their policies will destroy blue collar jobs slower than the other Democrat’s policies would.

I will just remind the voters in all these states that if neither of these ranting old fabulists excite them, Tulsi Gabbard is still in the race. To those who say, “But she can’t win,” I’d reply, “She could if everyone put a check mark next to her name on the ballot.” But, hey: it’s your primary, even it does occasionally more resemble a rerun of “The Walking Dead.”

Meanwhile, Cory Booker is the latest failed Democratic Presidential hopeful to join the effort to shore up Joe Biden and keep the nomination away from Bernie Sanders.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democracy-2020-digest-dems-circle-wagons-around-biden-in-michigan

So far, Booker, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Bloomberg, O’Rouke, Deval Patrick, John Delaney, Tim Ryan and Kamala Harris have endorsed Biden. There are suspicions that Harris is really not so keen on Biden (she nearly sank his campaign by branding him as a racist), but she’s angling to be his Attorney General.)

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/now-we-know-why-kamala-harris-endorsed-joe-biden

Only Bill DeBlasio and Marianne Williamson have endorsed Sanders, with Elizabeth Warren still on the fence.

Say, do you know who Warren should endorse? Tulsi Gabbard. If she doesn’t, it proves she’s just a sexist like all the Democrats who didn't vote for Warren.

We begin tonight with sad news from our own neighborhood. This past week, the Nashville area was hit by a brutal tornado that killed at least 24 people, destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, and left thousands of people homeless. One of the hardest hit communities was Cookeville, TN, hometown of our own Keith Bilbrey. Our theater and studios are located just north of downtown in Hendersonville and our facilities and our staff and team were largely outside the path and wrath of the storm. But the families of those who perished in the storm need our prayers and all of the victims need our help. Our friends at Samaritan’s Purse have been on the scene and will continue to help. They and other relief organizations provide a reliable way to give, knowing the funds will actually help victims.


RELATED READING: Bloomberg Out


We’ve also all been affected by the Coronavirus, not because most of have it or will get it, but because there is a world-wide panic about it. I’m in no way minimizing the serious nature of any type of flu and this one is frightening because it appears to spread rapidly and no vaccine is developed yet to stop its spread, although Israeli scientists say they are but days away from finding one. In the US, there are less than 250 cases so far confirmed, and less than 30 have died, but keep in mind that there are 330 million people in our country and that the regular flu has already this year affected about a million people and over 12, 000 have died from it. We’ve all heard the common sense advice about preventing it—wash hands vigorously and often, keep hands away from one’s face, and probably best to avoid shaking hands and maybe wave or do an elbow bump or foot bump. Or if you’re Joe Biden, just sniff the hair of other people without actually touching it.

Let’s also mention that the field of Democrats in the 2020 Presidential race has dramatically dropped with only Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Tulsi Gabbard still in. You probably haven’t even heard that Tulsi is still in because for reasons that I’ve never understood, the Democrat Party seems to be intent on keeping her off the stage and out of sight. They have manipulated the rules to keep her off the debate stage, and many of the commentators even lament that there are no women left in the race, which must come as a surprise to Tulsi, who at last report has not transgendered. Suddenly the party that prides itself on diversity is left with 2 elderly white guys, the youngest of whom is 77 years old and one female that they insist on keeping out of sight and out of mind. It’s easier to find the body of Jimmy Hoffa than Tulsi Gabbard at a Democrat Party function!

One of the comforting take-aways from the recent reduction of the Democrats in the race is that despite big money still being more important in politics than good policies and ideas, not even Mike Bloomberg could buy the White House. And he sure did try! The guy spent almost $600 million dollars and only won in American Samoa. As a consolation prize, the Girl Scouts gave him a case of their Samoa cookies. He burned so much money that environmentalists blame him for global warming. And TV & radio stations and online advertisers are crying because he pretty much individually funded them. But it’s good news for those who now can watch cat videos on You Tube without first having to suffer through a “Mike will get it done” ad. Mike got it done all right. He’s down and done. And all he keeps is a t-shirt that says, “I spent $600 million dollars and all I got was this t-shirt in extra small.” Yep, Bloomberg came up short…

Crime is up in New York

March 7, 2020

People feign outrage whenever anyone suggests that the left is actively trying to destroy America, but even if you grant that they aren’t, if they WERE, what could they possibly be doing that’s any different from what they’re doing already?

Here are a couple of inexplicable cases in point: New Yorkers have watched in anger and astonishment over the past few months as a new state law (written by the Democrats they elected to absolute power) allows criminals to be released without bail to commit the same crimes over and over. To no thinking person’s surprise, this has vastly emboldened criminals and sparked a big jump in crime.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/06/174-democrats-tsa-transportation-security-officers-act-house-amendment/

In New York City, major crimes were up 22.5% in February from one year ago, and shootings were up 7.1%. Since the strict gun laws have only gotten tighter since then, while only restrictions on criminals were loosened, someone with rudimentary deductive skills might think that proves controlling criminals is a more effective way to reduce shootings than passing more gun laws.

New York City has seen increases in robberies, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, grand larceny of a vehicle and hate crimes. Of course, attacks on police officers are up. Even “squeegee guys” are back! Rape is down slightly from 2018, but that could just be due to failing to report it to police.

Retired NYPD Bronx detective Malcolm Reiman was there in the hellish pre-Giuliani days under liberal Mayor David Dinkins. He told Fox News, “Crime was out of control. People forget how bad it was…Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

https://www.foxnews.com/us/anxiety-grips-new-york-amid-concerns-of-rising-crime

Reiman said, "You would walk down the subway steps every day, and all you could smell was urine; it was littered with muggers and mentally-ill people everywhere. Subways were truly terrifying places. Those protesting today don't know what it was like for everyone back then."

Well, they’re getting a taste (or smell) of it now, and without even having to fly to San Francisco or L.A. But what did they expect when they elected (and reelected!) Dinkins’ far-left protégé, Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who seems more concerned with protecting criminal illegal aliens than his own cops and constituents?

Maybe the power of video will shake some sense into New York voters’ heads if they see this latest horrific outrage on TV or social media. A 15-year-old girl in Brooklyn was surrounded on the street by five male teens (reportedly “friends” of hers with whom she’d had an earlier altercation.) They savagely beat her and left her lying on the sidewalk with head trauma and other injuries before stealing the Air Jordan shoes off her feet and running away. Luckily, the entire sickening assault was caught on video, and the alleged attackers turned themselves in to police. Although, under the current regime, who knows if anything will happen to them, or if they’ll be out beating up another girl by this time tomorrow?

This is what happens when young people have no respect for the law or the police. And why should that be a surprise when the political leaders in charge of enforcing the laws obviously have no respect for the law or the police either?

From Jan:

Good article. One thing I have actually thought about is that Joe is such a liability to the party because of his son, Hunter, and their actions in the Ukraine. Honestly, what I think is a possibility is that the DNC will actually work toward bringing Joe down themselves, once he gets the nomination. Using this scenario as an excuse to get him out and get someone who they really would like to get in there; i.e., Michelle Obama or someone with that kind of star power.

From Laura:

Thanks for writing, Jan. I chose not to venture into the Ukraine/Hunter Biden issue because the wheels of justice turn sooooo slowly, it’s hard to know how much of a factor this will become to Democrat voters (who, lest we forget, always forgive their own) before the convention and/or the election. But it certainly could create more scenarios, and you're right: it’s one more way to get him replaced at some point. The Dems surely have even more contingency plans in case Durham delivers his report.


RELATED READINGAinsworth: With Biden winning, watch what Michelle O does now


Their move will depend on the timing of that report. Here’s just one of several possibilities: Biden picks Michelle as running mate; with her popularity, they win; before inauguration (it can't be after, because Barr would have been fired on Day 1 and the investigation stopped), Durham report finally comes out and shows criminality and cover-up; Biden relinquishes office in lieu of impeachment (a la Nixon) “for the good of the country”; Michelle assumes Presidency. The Obama machine gets back in.

Or, the report comes out sooner, before November, with Biden possibly having to step away from his nomination before the election. But in that case, too, Michelle steps in and if she wins, the result is the same: the Obama machine gets back in.

By the way, the Senate has just started its own investigation into Burisma and Hunter Biden, with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson vowing to force a vote on the first subpoena as soon as next week. From their end, Ukraine is also investigating.

https://news.yahoo.com/ron-johnson-claims-burisma-linked-143831493.html

Right now, the Democrats –- with help from Mitt Romney, who might as well be one –- are trying to taint the Senate investigation as purely political. They will do everything possible to stall the process and keep old Joe viable at least until the convention and the naming of Michelle as his running mate. The media will help them by continuing to downplay Biden’s mental deterioration and ignoring any damaging developments in the Ukraine scandal.

 

From Lorna:

Comment/question: Would she qualify? I have read where she doesn't have the 14-year citizenship requirement because of her tax status. Her parents filed her out of country for education benefits and she filed out of country while she was in college. I wish I could recall where I read this but I remember looking and if true, she wouldn't be eligible until 2021.

 

From Laura:

Very interesting question! This may have been what you read…

https://newinformation.today/2017/03/michelle-obama-just-tried-to-register-to-run-for-president-but-was-denied/

First, on counting the number of years: the Constitution is vague on whether the 14 years need to be consecutive or cumulative. But there is precedent for the “cumulative” argument: the presidency of Herbert Hoover. Hoover was elected in 1928 and inaugurated in 1929. As USConstitution explains, if the “consecutive” argument were correct, Hoover would’ve had to live in the U.S. since March of 1915. But he’d lived in London for a time during that period. In fact, the Court Directory of London lists a London address for him from 1910 to 1917. So that precedent dispenses with the “consecutive” interpretation and leaves us with the “cumulative.”

https://usconstitution.net/constfaq_q19.html

And what exactly does “residence” entail? The early Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said this: “by ‘residence,’ in the Constitution, [it] is to be understood, not an absolute inhabitancy within the United States during the whole period; but such an inhabitancy, as includes a permanent domicile within the United States.”

I’m not a lawyer, but it would seem that this requirement is flexible enough for Michelle to get around it. Obviously, she was living here, regardless of what her sneaky tax returns say, and she would be able to prove she was. The founders included the residency requirement to give the candidate a tangible tie to this country, and she would argue that she absolutely has that, fulfilling the founders’ intent.

It should be noted for the purposes of our discussion that the 12th Amendment made the same qualifications for President apply to the Vice President.

https://www.thoughtco.com/requirements-to-serve-as-president-3322199

You’ll recall there were challenges to Barack Obama’s candidacy as well, his having to do with whether or not he was born in the United States and also –- the one I still puzzle over –- whether his American citizenship was renounced when he was signed up to attend a Muslim school in Indonesia as a boy.

https://observer.com/2007/01/actually-obama-did-go-to-a-madrasah/

As far as I know, we have NEVER been provided the paperwork on this, nor that of much of Obama’s official life, not even his college transcripts or writings while in school –- which is pretty curious for an editor of the Harvard Law Review. But you’ll notice he got to run, and serve, as President for two terms despite the murkiness concerning his citizenship and background. I doubt that any “residence” challenge to Michelle’s candidacy would stop her.

While researching the answer to this question, I came upon a piece in AMERICAN THINKER from April of last year that mentions what the great Rush Limbaugh was saying then about the Obamas trying to get back into the White House. Seems I’m in good company.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/is_michelle_obama_trying_to_run_for_president_with_her_knock_on_divorced_dads_us_cities.html

Rush speculated then that Michelle wouldn’t throw her hat into the ring unless it was a virtual certainty that she would win. I agree, but this sort of “backdoor” way into the White House via Biden’s candidacy is different. She wouldn’t be getting in as a traditional candidate.

https://www.wnd.com/2019/04/limbaugh-michelle-obama-wont-run-for-president-if/

In July of last year, Rush explained what her motivation for running would be; namely, preserving as much of the “Obama legacy” as possible. Oh, goody.

https://thehornnews.com/report-michelle-obama-preparing-2020-presidential-run/

But here’s a different viewpoint posted August 26 of last year at AMERICAN SPECTATOR. David Catron believes that although Michelle is the Most Admired Woman in the world and all that, even she would have a tough slog running against President Trump, who would give her a hard time about some atrocious things she’s said over the years. (Note: Trump had better be careful how he treats her, though, or that could backfire.) I still say much has happened since last August --- the implosion of the Democrat lineup and, especially, the further deterioration of Biden --- to make a Michelle run likely, either as a last-minute substitute for him or as #2 on the ticket with him, as he quietly fades away.

https://spectator.org/why-michelle-obama-wont-run-in-2020/

Elizabeth Warren is now officially out of the Presidential race, after flopping on Super Tuesday. If you’ve been following her campaign, which has largely consisted of angry, hectoring lectures about how bad things are and how unfair, racist, sexist, etc., America is, you won’t be surprised to hear that she and her staunchest followers are blaming her failure to win the nomination on sexism.

https://www.westernjournal.com/warren-voters-accuse-party-sexism-devastating-super-tuesday-defeat/

But wait: didn’t the Democrats already nominate a woman in the last election? Or maybe Warren was done in by racism, due to her 1/1024th Cherokee blood. (Which, incidentally, she was never asked about in all 10 debates. Can you imagine a white male Republican candidate taking career advantages intended for a minority under false pretenses, and not even being asked about it? I call that “Democrat privilege.”)

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/05/warren-native-american-ancestry-debates/

If Warren supporters are correct, then ultra-liberal Democratic primary voters are sexists and racists, even in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, Warren’s home state where she came in a distant third.


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By the way, there is still a female candidate in the race, one who’s a genuine racial minority: Tulsi Gabbard. She even won a delegate on Tuesday, which was the previous criteria for being in the debate (even though they previously let in Bloomberg, who had no delegates, while snubbing Gabbard.) So naturally, the DNC changed the rules to keep her out of the next one. They claim it’s because she has no chance of winning, but I think it’s because they’re afraid she’d absolutely demolish their two geriatric white male “frontrunners” (neither of whom looks like he can still jog, much less run.)

https://www.westernjournal.com/dnc-debate-rule-change-finished-off-tulsi-shows-can-never-trusted/

But if she did demolish them, wouldn’t that leave her as the strongest candidate standing, which would give her a real chance at winning the nomination? Since the DNC refuses even to let her have a shot, then I guess we know where the real sexists are.

Back to Warren: I think one big reason she didn’t do better is that her entire campaign was based on nothing but leftist negativity. She painted a dark, angry picture of a suffering, dystopian America that only leftists see, one that she was going to transform with fiscally untenable, big government giveaway programs and leftwing wish list craziness that she would cram down our throats on day one with executive orders. She used identity politics to divide Americans and pit us against each other. And she almost always came across as being blow-her-top furious, like Lewis Black without a sense of humor.

I don’t want to be accused of being one of those sexist guys who tells a woman she should “smile more,” but does Liz Warren EVER smile? This has nothing to do with gender: Americans like leaders of either sex who are optimistic and make them feel good about the future. A big part of the presidency is being America’s head cheerleader. It’s also essential to have a sense of humor. Today’s leftists are too humorless to see it, but many people watch Trump rallies because he’s hilarious. So was Reagan. I disagreed with Obama’s policies, but I admit he had great comic delivery. Joe Biden has skated on a number of controversies and gaffes because of his blinding smile and avuncular “Uncle Joe” persona. And when I ran for President, I would tell people that “I’m a conservative, but I’m not mad at anyone about it.”

Let’s try a thought experiment: Close your eyes and picture Elizabeth Warren...

Okay, did you imagine her snarling into the camera with one arm raised, poking an accusing finger in your face? Join the club. It doesn’t matter if the candidate is male or female, can you blame anyone for not wanting to see that every day for the next four years?

And now, another prominent Democrat who made violent threats against people she disagreed with, then tried to weasel out of taking responsibility or even apologizing...

Denver City Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca retweeted a tweet in which someone said, "For the record, if I do get the coronavirus, I'm attending every MAGA rally I can." CdeBaca added some laughing and “OK” emojis and “#solidarity Yaaaas!!”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/no_apologies_from_denver_council_member_who_endorsed_spreading_coronavirus_at_trump_rallies.html

I’m pleased to report that she was hit with a wave of complaints about her endorsement not only of spreading the coronavirus, but of using it to try to sicken and even kill people just because she disagrees with their politics (but don’t worry: today’s leftists only admire socialist nations’ literacy programs and free health care, not the authoritarianism!)

Following the Schumer playbook to the letter, CdeBaca refused to apologize and instead sent out a spokesperson to try to gaslight the public and deflect the justifiable outrage over her own actions onto the people who criticized her. Here’s her statement:

"Councilwoman CdeBaca made a sarcastic tweet on Twitter to call attention to the Trump administration's downplaying of the Coronavirus outbreak as a 'hoax' no more dangerous than the common flu. Rather than conservative outlets making a four-day-old Tweet their focus on Super Tuesday, they should focus their energy on demanding a competent Federal response to this public health crisis instead."

Okay, you want a response from a conservative? Here’s my response:

1. President Trump is being praised by actual medical authorities for taking swift action that’s helped to delay and contain the coronavirus in the US, actions that met initial resistance from liberals such as (ta-da!) Chuck Schumer, who accused him of a “war on immigrants” for blocking people from entering the US from China.

2. Trump didn’t say the coronavirus was a “hoax,” he said the claim that he wasn’t taking action on it was a hoax. The councilwoman claimed she was calling attention to a hoax when she was actually perpetuating a hoax to dodge responsibility for her own actions.

3. That tweet wasn’t “sarcasm,” it was a clear endorsement of biological warfare against political opponents, in utter disregard of the general health of the US population and human decency in general.

4. If Denver voters reelect this person, it will be convincing evidence that the city has way too many marijuana dispensaries.

Schumer goes too far

March 5, 2020

This would be an excellent day for an update on my never-ending series of replies to that online commenter who claimed that most politically-motivated threats and violence come from the right against those on the left. If you read the news for a living, surely you must recognize that that’s like claiming that rain falls upward.

Today, I have two examples of threats from the left, and not just from anonymous radical nuts working as Bernie Sanders campaign organizers. These are prominent people in allegedly responsible elected positions, one of them a top national figure, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments over a Louisiana abortion law that could lead to a revisit of the abortion limits under Roe v. Wade. Here are some details on this possible landmark case:

https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/03/04/793499/


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Meanwhile, outside the SCOTUS, Schumer (whom I thought had a job to be at during weekday business hours) was addressing a pro-abortion rally crowd and said this:

“I want to tell you, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch, you have unleashed a whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chief-justice-roberts-rare-rebuke-schumer-calling-comments-kavanaugh-gorsuch-dangerous

That not-so-veiled threat against two sitting Justices (particularly dangerous in a climate in which deranged leftists have already been fired up by irresponsible and incendiary rhetoric to shoot up the Family Research Council’s office and nearly kill Republican Rep. Steve Scalise) led to a rare public rebuke by Chief Justice John Roberts. He wrote, in part:

“Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/chief-justice-roberts-blasts-schumers-threatening-statements-gorsuch-kavanaugh/

President Trump called for Schumer to pay a stiff price for that outrageous conduct, and a number of other Senators and commentators echoed that, with Sen. Josh Hawley moving to censure Schumer over it. Hawley said he would call on Schumer to apologize, “but we all know he has no shame.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/486050-gop-senator-to-try-to-censure-schumer-over-scotus-remark

As if to prove Hawley’s point, Schumer sent out his spokesman not with an apology but with a load of transparent bull droppings. He said that Justice Roberts was echoing the “right wing’s deliberate misinterpretation of what Sen. Schumer said. Sen. Schumer’s comments were a reference to the political price Senate Republicans will pay for putting these Justices on the court, and a warning that the Justices will unleash a major grassroots movement on the issue of reproductive rights against the decision."

Okay, let’s go to the Instant Replay!

Chuck Schumer: “I want to tell you, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch, you have unleashed a whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

So he stood outside the Court and specifically addressed Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch with his threats, but he was really talking to the Senate Republicans who weren't even there? I think we’ve found another Washington Democrat whose ability to think clearly is almost as eroded as Joe Biden’s.

PS - Almost as bad were the attempts by Twitter trolls to defend Schumer by claiming that Trump had threatened Justices Sotomayor and Ginsberg. No, he never "threatened" them. He said they should recuse themselves from any cases involving his Administration because they'd publicly revealed their bias against him. Anyone in any court would be justified in asking for a recusal under those circumstances.

Super Thursday

March 5, 2020

Happy “Super Thursday,” America! Despite what Joe Biden apparently thinks, there are no primaries on “Super Thursday,” but you can celebrate Mike Bloomberg dropping out of the race by drinking a Super Big Gulp.

Better enjoy that large drink while you can, though. Just moments after the electoral defibrillator paddles resuscitated Biden’s campaign, pundits began floating the idea that Biden would not be a caretaker President so much as a President who needs a caretaker. The theory is floating around that powerful members of the Democratic Party establishment want Joe in the White House because he would be a befuddled figurehead while they actually ran everything behind the scenes (you know, like that phony image of Reagan they created, only this time for real.) Here’s Tucker Carlson outlining that scenario…

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6138506766001?playlist_id=5198073478001#sp=show-clips

Biden didn’t help by declaring that he would put table-vaulting anti-gun fanatic “Beto” O’Rourke in charge of his gun policy. President Trump relished using the term “quid pro quo” to advance his theory that all the other candidates who’ve quit and endorsed Biden were promised something big in return, like a high-level Biden Administration appointment. Funny, I thought when the voters rejected them, they made it clear that they didn’t want those people anywhere near the levers of power. But if you looked at that crowded debate stage and thought that all of those people put together wouldn’t add up to one good President, well, elect Biden and you might find out.


RELATED READING: Bloomberg Out


Or better yet, don’t elect Biden, and we won’t have to worry about “Beto” riding roughshod over the Second Amendment, or Pete Buttigieg deciding what religious beliefs we’re allowed to express, or Mike Bloomberg being named as Czar In Charge of Telling You How Big Your Beverage Can Be. (“Your soda cup must be shorter than Mike Bloomberg to be allowed to drink it!”)

On a serious note, does anyone else find it odd that Democrats want to ban all sorts of things that people do to their own bodies, from vaping and smoking (aside from pot), to drinking large sodas, from using too much salt to eating meat…yet their go-to response to any limits on abortion is that the government can’t tell a woman what to do with her own body? Reality check: drinking a large soda is something you do to your own body. Abortion is something you do to your unborn child’s body. Guess which one is more lethal.

First, I should admit that if you’d like to see a demonstration of “confirmation bias” in action, you need look no further than my periodic observations about Michelle Obama. You see, I concluded well over a year ago that, based on political realities and what I’d already seen, Michelle O would be the Democrat nominee for President. So now I actively look for developments that tend to support this view. And I find a lot.

It’s not that I want this to happen --- just the opposite. One of the many reasons I don’t is the main reason many Democrats do: she’s absolutely the only person on the Democrat side with the star power to generate excitement and draw crowds in a way approaching Trump. (It DOESN’T MATTER that she has no accomplishments other than a failed lunch program.) Bernie was drawing good-sized crowds of “progressives,” but enthusiasm has waned since he went full-out commie and praised Fidel Castro for his “literacy programs,” and he failed to wow on Super Tuesday. (Hey, Breadline Bernie, what good is literacy when you’re permitted to read only Party-approved propaganda?) Dems crave rock-star quality and “cred,” and Michelle has all that. They like her for what she represents to them.


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Biden did surprisingly well on Super Tuesday, but with his mind teetering on the brink and his impression that of a diminished person, the individual selected to be his running mate is all-important. If Biden’s faculties fade even more noticeably on the campaign trail, that person will need to step in “for the good of America” before the election. If Biden manages to make it through to the election and wins, he won’t be able to keep up with the immense responsibilities and non-stop schedule of a President, and the 25th Amendment will almost certainly be used at some point in his term of office to “retire” him and install the Vice President as the new POTUS. We’ve all envisioned this scenario. I do believe that Uncle Joe is being used as a vehicle for others to obtain power.

Laura Ingraham said as much on Wednesday night: “...Everyone knows, including all those big names who just endorsed Biden, that he’s just going to be a figurehead President. Americans won’t be voting for a man who can articulate a serious policy agenda, let alone defend it. They’ll be voting for the party machine’s geriatric puppet...The man barely knows where he is or who he’s with at any hour of the day...Biden is basically being shuffled around by his wife and his staff from event to event, campaign stop to campaign stop. He’s not in charge, and everyone knows it.”

Already gaffe-prone, Biden is, sadly, deteriorating before our eyes. What used to be mildly amusing is no longer anything to laugh at. On Wednesday, Guy Benson on Shannon Bream’s FOX NEWS show tried to be kind: “The larger concern [with Biden] is the [brain] synapses, and I say this with all respect to the former Vice President...it is a little bit difficult and painful to watch. And I think a lot of other candidates have danced around that issue. Donald Trump will not; Donald Trump will have a sledgehammer on this issue.”

Brit Hume, who has spoken of this before, was more blunt: “How many of the people who voted for him tonight would agree that he’s senile?”

https://therightscoop.com/watch-biden-mixes-up-his-wife-and-sister-during-his-victory-speech-brit-hume-wonders-how-many-voters-think-biden-is-approaching-senility/

Tucker Carlson understands the danger this situation poses, and he didn’t hold back Wednesday in talking about what we all can see:

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6138506766001?playlist_id=5198073478001#sp=show-clips

Hillary must desperately want to be on that ticket with Biden. She’s increased her visibility –- in safe situations –- and surely has done God-knows-what behind the scenes to wangle this for herself. But she has more baggage than the Lost-and-Found at LaGuardia. Too many voters on both sides of the aisle can’t stand her and have had enough of her scandals. And after what her DNC did to Bernie in 2016, his supporters won't come out to support HER. They’ll either spend Election Day holed up in their rooms in their parents’ basements, tweeting and smoking pot, or they’ll scream at the sky and riot.

Plus, we’re talking about Democrats here, with their laser-beam focus on identity politics (which is a racist scourge on society), and she’s so...white, and so...old. Biden, challenged in the general election by his own whiteness and oldness, has said specifically that he’d consider a black female as his running mate. Pundits automatically thought of Kamala Harris, but her stunning lack of success on the campaign trail suggests that'll be a NO.

Democrats are desperate this time, not just to dump Trump and retake the White House, but to hold Congress and perhaps even take the Senate. A Democrat White House could do serious damage even with a Republican Senate, as it would release a flurry of big-time executive orders in place of legislation that would have had to pass there. With a Democrat Senate, though, they could pass these as laws AND oversee all judicial appointments, perhaps even moving the Supreme Court farther left if a conservative judge such as Clarence Thomas needs to step down. In other words, stick a fork in the Constitution; it’s done.

So, what’s Michelle Obama up to these days? Apparently, she’s readying to hit the campaign trail in the battleground state of Michigan, to “boost voter turnout” as co-chair of a “non-partisan” (sure) group called “Why We All Vote.” The tickets to her appearance in Detroit on March 27 are free, but not available to the general public (so much for the “all”), only to “the organization’s volunteers and partners, as well as educators, college students and high school students who are eligible to vote.”

https://www.theamericanmirror.com/2020/03/michelle-o-hits-campaign-trail-in-battleground-state/

And what is the Democrat Party up to? I’d guess they’ve been working up some plans…

Plan A: Biden gets nomination, names Michelle as running mate; he crashes and burns before election; Michelle becomes the candidate. If she wins, Obama machine gets back in.

Plan B: Biden gets nomination, names Michelle as running mate; if they win, he is “retired” and Michelle assumes power. Obama machine gets back in.

Plan C: Biden gets nomination, names Michelle as running mate; if they win, Biden remains as figurehead for a time and Obama machine gets back in.

Plan D: No one has enough delegates; it’s a brokered convention; Michelle ends up on ticket in either the #1 or #2 spot; if they win, Obama machine gets back in.

Plan E: Biden crashes and burns BEFORE convention; Michelle is drafted at convention; if she wins, Obama machine gets back in.

There may be other scenarios I haven’t thought of, but they all lead to the Obama machine getting back in. That’s Valerie Jarrett, the old DOJ and intel bureaucracy, and maybe the whole works. I hope I'm wrong. The only thing to stop it is a tsunami of Trump support, and MY plan is to be a part of that.

Joe Biden's gaffes

March 4, 2020

Joe Biden’s legendary “gaffes” seem to be getting more frequent. Not only did he head into Super Tuesday by forgetting the most famous line of the Declaration of Independence and telling supporters to press on to “Super Thursday” (Democrats: please note that this year’s election has been moved to the secondThursday in November, per Joe Biden), during his victory speech, he mixed up his wife and his sister.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-makes-alzheimers-cure-campaign-centerpiece-confusing-wife-sister/

It was especially unfortunate that this happened right after he promised to launch a war on Alzheimer’s disease. Maybe this particular “gaffe” was just a function of lights in his eyes, campaign stress or being distracted by the crowd, but it happens a lot, even in dim light and one-on-one interviews. Some pundits are suggesting that if Biden were elected, most of his duties might be delegated to others, and as we’ve seen from him promising to put “Beto” O’Rourke in charge of gun control, that’s a scary thought, indeed.

As sad as this is, some commentators couldn’t help joking about Biden confusing his wife with his sister. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit remarked, “This puts Hunter’s behavior in a whole new light.” And comic Steven Crowder tweeted: “BREAKING! Ilhan Omar endorses Joe Biden for President.”

(NOTE to all the liberal “fact-checking” sites: that last tweet was a JOKE. Ilhan Omar didn’t really endorse Biden. It’s premised on the claims that she married her brother to get him a green card. Confusing a sibling with a spouse. See? Sigh… Jokes were so much funnier when you didn’t have to explain them to humorless leftists.)

Super Tuesday notes

March 4, 2020

A few notes on the Super Tuesday Republican primaries: President Trump seems like a pretty safe bet for the GOP nomination. In Texas, Sen. John Cornyn easily fought off a challenger from the right. And Jeff Sessions will face a run-off against former football coach Tommy Tuberville after failing to win a majority in his attempt to reclaim his Alabama Senate seat. Naturally, President Trump had some comments on his former AG who recused himself from the “Russia collusion” investigation on day one. Can we assume this means he’ll be endorsing Tuberville?

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/485879-trump-criticizes-sessions-after-alabama-senate-primary-heads-to-a


RELATED READING:  Super Tuesday results


Despite barely registering in the GOP primaries against Donald Trump, diehard NeverTrumper Bill Weld says he plans to continue his loooooogshot challenge. Don’t be surprised if he even tries a third party run, which he makes clear in this article would be purely to pull three or four percent of the vote and cost Trump his reelection

https://reason.com/2020/03/03/bill-weld-im-not-dropping-out-after-super-tuesday/

I think Trump’s winning margin will be more than enough for that not to matter. I also doubt Weld would even pull 3%. But I just wanted you to know that the guy who claims that Trump doesn’t stand for real conservative principles is openly trying to get a far-left Democrat elected President. Frankly, that's not one of my conservative principles.

The Dow leaped over 500 points this morning on the news that it’s even less likely that Bernie Sanders will ever be President of the United States.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/us-stocks-march-4-2020

Super Tuesday results

March 4, 2020

Super Tuesday has passed into the history books…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/super-tuesday-results

https://www.westernjournal.com/super-tuesday-live-updates/

…So before Super Thursday arrives, let’s take stock of what we’ve learned:

1. Media talking heads obviously haven’t learned anything. The same people who were confidently predicting Bernie’s revolution, Joe Biden’s political demise and Bloomberg’s rise, or endorsing both Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, were caught totally flat-footed by Biden’s resurgence, Bernie’s wilt, Bloomberg’s humiliation and Warren’s inability even to place higher than third in her home state. Yet within minutes of the results arriving, they were already back to making more confident, totally baseless predictions. (Remember when they assured us the candidate most likely to be our next President was Kamala Harris?)


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As I said on my TV show two weeks ago, I might not agree with these candidates on anything, but I respect them all for having the courage to get in the game. None of the people commenting on them (present company excluded) have ever done that, yet they opine on it at length as if they were experts. If you just need something to fill your time, better to buy a DVD box of Looney Tunes cartoons than listen to them. Because, as I’ve been hammering away since I started my media career in 2009, you can’t trust polls, and the people inside the media bubble are largely out of touch with most of America. They have less understanding of people outside the Beltway than Mike Bloomberg does of farming. That’s why the only polls that matter are the ones where people actually vote.

2. Bernie may have done himself in by ignoring the advice, “Never go full commie.” Much of his popularity for years has depended on him being like an M&M: a lovable “Crazy Uncle” candy shell hiding the radical socialist within. A lot of people bought into that facade, particularly young people who have no actual memories of what real socialism/communism are like. They were miseducated to believe in “Democratic socialism,” which isn’t the icky kind with the goon squads and starvation but the shiny, happy kind, where the government gives you free stuff and pays your college tuition and sends the bill to greedy rich people. The only nation where that’s ever existed is Fantasyland.

But over the past couple of weeks, Bernie has given some interviews in which he allowed some cracks to open in his candy coating and reveal the reality inside. Like his defense of Fidel Castro: sure, he turned a paradise into a prison island and put dissenters in dungeons and in front of firing squads – but he also had that great literacy program! And free health care! I think the blinders may have come off some of his young followers, who failed to show up in the expected numbers, and especially older voters who hadn’t been paying that much attention. They suddenly realized that Bernie is an honest-to-Pete SOCIALIST, and he may claim he just admires Denmark, but he also thinks he sees Denmark when he's looking at Cuba.

When the reality finally started to dawn, Bernie’s revolution started crumbling faster than the Berlin Wall (for you youngsters: that was a concrete and barbed wire border wall designed to keep people in a socialist utopia from fleeing it, even though they still risked their lives to do so, just as Cubans took their chances with the sharks rather than stay there to enjoy Castro's free health care and literacy program.)

It’s extremely telling that Bernie did much better in early voting, with those who decided this week making a big surge away from him and toward Biden. Speaking of whom…

3. It’s true that Bernie didn’t do as well as expected and Biden far outperformed his…well, performance (largely thanks to black voters.) Biden even won Massachusetts! It's a big PR boost for his campaign, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Biden will win the nomination before the convention.

I mentioned last week that Democrats are always changing the rules based on the last election with no thought to how it might negatively affect them in future elections (for instance, wanting to eliminate the Electoral College because they lost there in 2016.) On Super Tuesday, they reaped more of the unintended consequences of their own fiddling with the process.

They now have no winner-take-all state primaries (that wasn’t “democratic” enough.) So even though Biden seems to be surging ahead of Bernie to the DNC’s great relief, they still could face a brutal contested convention because they have to divvy up the delegates proportionally between all candidates getting 15% or more of the vote (“Fairness!”) That makes it almost impossible for one candidate to top the 1,991-delegate threshold to clinch the nomination without a string of landslide wins -- unless either Bernie or Biden drops out (fat chance!) For instance, Biden scored a big morale victory by winning Texas, but by only a few points over Bernie. And with Bloomberg topping 15%, Biden may be hailed as the frontrunner, but he won’t collect many more delegates than Bernie.

Under their arcane rules, if a candidate scores a lopsided win, he/she/xe gets a much larger cut; but if it’s a close shave, the delegates are carved up more equally. Here’s some more on that, if you’d like your eyes to cross:

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21142609/super-tuesday-2020-polls-delegates-contested-convention

Democrats also agitated for years for early voting, thinking an extended voting period would benefit them. They didn’t consider how many Democrats would be furious because they cast early votes for Buttigieg, Steyer or Klobuchar only to have them drop out at the last minute, rendering their votes meaningless and keeping the delegate count fractured when they desperately want as many as possible to go to Biden.

The lesson I take from this is that despite their rebranding of themselves as “progressives,” these are the last people in the world you should trust to anticipate and plan wisely for the future.

4. Finally, the good news for Tom Steyer is that it’s likely he will have to hold the embarrassing record for the most expensive failed vanity Presidential campaign of all time for only a couple of days. The $250 million he spent pales next to the estimated $500 million Mike Bloomberg spent on a blitzkrieg of advertising to win a handful of delegates and exactly one primary, in American Samoa (5 delegates.)

At this writing, Bloomberg reportedly plans to stay in for the duration (but then, Warren says that, too.) He has another 123 half-billion dollars he could burn. But as it stands now, the one thing he’s accomplished for all that spending is to forever debunk the Democrats’ whining about how billionaires can use their money to buy elections.

Bloomberg out

March 4, 2020

Just hours after Mike Bloomberg’s campaign claimed he would press on past his Super Tuesday wipeout, Bloomberg suspended his campaign and endorsed Joe Biden. Although you’d think he’d be a Bernie man by the way he just redistributed so much of a billionaire’s wealth.


RELATED READING: Super Tuesday results


The announcement was greeted with great sadness by thousands of TV stations and websites that were making a killing off his wasted $500 million ad budget, but with great relief by everyone outside of American Samoa, who will finally be able to watch cat videos on YouTube without having to see Mike Bloomberg first. It just proves once again that all the advertising in the world can’t sell a faulty product once the public gets a good look at it.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mike-bloomberg-suspends-presidential-campaign-after-super-tuesday-show

From the Interesting-But-Not-Surprising Department: The Democrat establishment, including Obama-era “deep state” bureaucrats such as former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and former CIA Director John Brennan have something in common besides support of Hillary and hatred of President Trump. They've come out solidly in support of Joe Biden.

It didn’t require Obama’s official endorsement of Biden for them to know he was the one to back, the one who would best serve their interests.

Comey was proud to tweet that he had voted in his first Democrat primary because that was the party dedicated to “restoring values” in the White House. (I’ll pause while you fall to the floor, helpless with laughter.) He went on: “We need [a] candidate who cares about all Americans and will restore decency, dignity to the office. There’s a reason Trump fears Joe Biden and roots for Bernie.”


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So, Comey wants to restore decency and dignity to the office of President? Who did he think was going to restore decency and dignity to the office of FBI director after he screwed it up so badly?

Andrew Bates, director or rapid response for the Biden campaign, reportedly tweeted this (according to THE HILL): “Yes, customer service? I just received a package that I very much did not order. How can I return it free of charge?”

After getting some pushback on that tweet, he clarified: “I forgot the #1 rule of politics, which is if you talk about anyone or anything related to 2016, common sense goes out the window. It was meant to be a lighthearted joke – not a rejection. We appreciate the vote of anyone repelled by Donald Trump.”

Bates was in a quandary, as a Comey endorsement during the primaries doesn’t necessarily help Biden. That’s because of Comey’s announcement, shortly before the 2016 election, of the FBI’s re-opening of Hillary’s email investigation, widely seen by Democrats as damaging to her prospects. (I believe he was actually trying his best under the circumstances to minimize the damage Hillary had caused to herself with the use of a private server and the appearance of her emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, but what can you do when someone has flouted the law so egregiously?)

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-campaign-comey-endorsement

https://www.newser.com/story/287717/biden-campaign-gets-an-endorsement-it-doesnt-want.html

Susan Rice tweeted a picture of herself embracing Biden, with a message from the heart: “I’m proud to endorse Joe Biden for President. Here he is comforting me on 1/4/17 just after my mother passed away. There is no one kinder, more empathetic and caring than Joe Biden. He will lead America with the same deep compassion and decency.”

Biden would naturally support a friend after the loss of her mother, and he surely has moments of extreme kindness. On the other hand, I know we can all think of many things Biden has said that did NOT show a glimmer of compassion or decency or even comprehension of reality. One that quickly comes to mind for me is something horrible he said about Republicans: “They’re gonna put y’all back in chains.” He plays the race card. He calls people names. He picks fights at town halls with those who disagree with him. Plus, on many occasions he doesn’t seem to know what state he’s in, what the Declaration of Independence says, or what media personality he’s talking to.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/01/fncs_chris_wallace_challenges_biden_on_campaign_gaffes_biden_calls_chris_chuck.html

John Brennan tweeted that “Joe Biden is one of the most honest, decent, practical & experienced individuals with whom I have ever worked. If nominated and elected, he is capable of unifying our country & restoring America’s standing around the world.”

Not to imply something truly nefarious about Biden personally, but with that line coming from Brennan, I can’t help but be reminded of a similar line from THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE: “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

The article from which I took these pro-Biden tweets makes a good point: that this group is part of a vast network of powerful figures with assets in the media, Hollywood, and political party offices who will do everything they can to get Biden the nomination. I would add that if he gets it, they’ll be pushing for him to win in November like we’ve never seen before. Even if he’s gradually losing his mental faculties --- I can’t say for a fact that this is happening but it increasingly seems to be --- they’ll push for him anyway. A feeble-minded 80-year-old figurehead is fine with them if he has the right “figures” behind him, running things.

https://noqreport.com/2020/03/03/deep-state-endorses-joe-biden/

With the party and the bureaucracy pushing Biden as the nominee, it strikes a nerve whenever someone suggests their convention will be rigged to keep Bernie off the ballot in November. In case you haven’t seen it, former DNC chairwoman and current FOX NEWS contributor Donna Brazile totally lost her mind when this was brought up by RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. She actually told McDaniel, repeatedly, to go to hell.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/03/donna_brazile_tells_rnc_chairwoman_ronna_mcdaniel_to_go_to_hell_when_she_says_election_is_rigged_against_sanders.html

She said Republicans “don’t have the kind of democracy we see on the Democratic side.” (Pause for laughter.) She also said Republicans were using “Russian talking points” in order to “sow division among Americans.” That was when she sowed division by telling Ronna to go to hell on live TV.

"We are not trying to prevent anyone from becoming the nominee,” Brazile insisted. “If you have the delegates and win, you will win. This notion that somehow or another Democrats are out there trying to put hurdles or roadblocks before one candidate, that’s stupid.”

And then she goes full-on with the phony “Russia” narrative: “[Republicans] need to be [focusing on] preventing foreign interference in our elections. Stop using Russian talking points, Madame Chairwoman. Period. Stop using it.”

McDaniel tweeted later: “It’s ok...I’d be having a bad day too if my party was still hopelessly divided. Talk of a brokered convention and the DNC trying to stop Bernie Sanders obviously hit a little close to home.”

Indeed. Recall that it was Brazile herself who slipped Hillary three questions in advance of one of the 2016 presidential debates. No wonder this struck a nerve.

But be ready to hear about “Russia” whenever Biden is challenged by Republicans. The same people who originated the false “Russia” narrative against Trump will use it to help Biden now. Conveniently, the real hard-core Russia aficionado, Bernie Sanders, is assisting in that effort by going pedal-to-the-metal Castro-loving commie.

Oh, and just to end with something really hilarious, here’s Hillary Clinton in a Super Tuesday appearance on ABC’s GOOD MORNING, AMERICA, in which she slams the Sanders campaign and stresses the importance of following the rules. You have to admit that any time Hillary lectures other people about following the rules, that’s pretty funny.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/03/hillary_clinton_bernie_sanders_has_to_follow_the_rules_on_delegates_at_dnc_convention.html

The relentless promotion of transgenderism and “gender fluidity” to innocent children may be starting to face a backlash. There have been several recent articles about young people who underwent painful, disfiguring “gender confirmation” surgery, only to later realize that it was a horrible mistake and they actually just had emotional issues that should’ve been treated with counseling – an obvious truth that you can now be banished from society for voicing. But now, one of those victims is seeking legal redress.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/03/woman-rushed-into-gender-reassignment-teen-suing-nhs/

British teen Keira Bell is suing the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, parent of the National Health Service’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS.) GIDS has become infamous for over over-diagnosing “gender dysphoria,” with cases leaping from a few dozen to over 2,000 in ten years. At least 35 psychologists have resigned from it in the past three years in protest that young people are being “over-diagnosed and over-medicalized,” such as being given dangerous hormone treatments, but they’re afraid to resist for fear of being branded “transphobic.”

(May I just add: “Government health care, ladies and gentlemen!”)

Ms. Bell claims that she was rushed into gender reassignment treatments after just three short sessions that did nothing to uncover the fact that her “gender identity crisis” was really a coping mechanism for deeper issues. She suffered serious health effects that left her feeling drained, depressed and suicidal. She said her body went into a menopause-like state and “shut down,” and “There’s no going back from it.”

I wish her the best with her lawsuit, and I hope it turns into a class action suit that forces an end to this madness perpetrated on our children. Today’s true epidemic of “dysphoria” is not children who look in a mirror and see the opposite sex, it’s politicized health officials who look at a child and see a guinea pig.