Allergy season is in full swing in Las Vegas – and its a bad one; things are coated in pollen. This means I’ve got a headache, runny nose and a cough…so, every five minutes or so I’m worrying “am I sure this is allergies?”. Tiresome, to say the least.
But, I did check CDC for symptoms of Coronavirus – and if you haven’t, the primary symptoms are fever, coughing and shortness of breath. If you get real bad shortness of breath, confused or turn a bit blue, that’s when its time to go to a doctor. The word is that the oldsters are in the highest risk – especially over 65. I’m under 65 – and in pretty good health overall.
How are the lockdowns going with you? I’ll be heading to work from home as soon as I get this odd device which allows me to prove remotely that I work for my company…it was shipped out a while back ago, but it hasn’t arrived. I’ve noticed the mail isn’t exactly a thick packet any longer, either. I suspect that transport capacity has been commandeered for medical and food deliveries. Be that as it may, I’ll eventually be work from home and for a good while, too. And there’s nothing to do in Vegas as everything other than necessities are closed. So, we cleared a much larger vegetable garden this year than usual.
I still view this is an overreaction. But, that’s a horse well outside the barn: the reaction is what it is and it will have its effect. The primary effect, outside the virus, is the crushing of the economy. I expect 20% unemployment in a month or two. But I also expect us to roar back once this thing clears. The direct payments of money to people will be a great psychological help…and it will result in a fairly large pool of unused money once we’re allowed to go outside again. In the end, this pricking of the Dow price may be a blessing in disguise…everyone was wondering how long the market could keep surging like that. Well, that’s one less worry…it’ll probably drop a bit more before its over but when its time to go back to work, it’ll have no place to go but up. Do not look at your portfolio…and I’m thinking if you haven’t sold by now, don’t sell at all…wait for the rebound.
The stimulus is gigantic and will be larded up with pork – but it can’t be overestimated how good people will feel that in this time of crisis they’ve got the money for the necessities. This will have a political effect. Also having a political effect is how tin-eared the Democrats are on all this. They are still stuck on Orange Man Bad when Trump is out there leading doggedly in a time of national crisis. They could jump on board and prove to people that they are about something other than hating Trump…but they can’t manage that trick. I’ve heard unprompted praise of Trump from people you wouldn’t remotely think as prospective Trump voters…they are pleased he’s hammering the fear-mongering press and are waiting for their stimulus checks.
China is a lousy nation we should have nothing to do with – their lies (and the lies continue, I bet: I ain’t buying their story they’ve had no new cases) are what allowed a completely manageable problem to become a global crisis. And those EU-weenies begging for Chi-Com help are just morons, plain and simple. The Chinese can’t help – like all tyrannies, they only look splendid on the surface. Underneath it is a nation where most still live in grinding poverty and prisoners fill the camps. They’ve got a couple showplace cities to wow the rubes of the West while the rest of the country is garbage…and that is why this virus came from there: because they don’t know how to actually deal with something as simple as a flu.
The good news here is that, at last, people are coming around to the view I’ve been harping on for more than a decade: we have to make, mine and grow our own stuff. Having our supply chain outside our control is national suicide. Bring our factories back home…at least to the Americas, where we can keep an eye on them.
Hope you all are healthy and getting through this ok!
Blogs For Victory 
Here is a headline on Drudge that we all need to keep an eye on and monitor next week:
NIH: UP TO 70,000 CASES NEXT WEEK
Is this meant for click bait, or is it a serious warning? With all the sensationalism of this virus already out there, who in the hell knows but this is coming from our National Institute of Health so I expect them to be serious. However the numbers thus far don’t lend themselves to this rapid acceleration. There are just under 20,000 cases now, so they expect that number to more than triple in the next few days in light of all the extreme measure in place??
I can tell you this, if we continue with this panic, the crashing of the economy will do a hell of a lot more harm to more people than this cold and flu virus ever did.
When you are talking these sorts of things they always seem to include a ‘Murphy’s law worst case scenario’ as one of the possibilities.
We’re fortunate that there just aren’t many cases around us. Allen County, Indiana, (Fort Wayne) only has 4 confirmed cases out of a population of just under 400,000, and Whitley County immediately to the west where we live has no confirmed cases.
I picked up some things at Walmart and Tractor Supply yesterday. Both had a dispenser of antiseptic wipes right inside the door, which I used to wipe the handle of the cart. Some of the shelves at Walmart were empty, some full – no rhyme or reason to it. I washed my hands good when I got home. Not much else to do but wait this thing out. Fortunately most of our retirement funds are in annuities with guaranteed minimum rates of return, so except for a utility stock we own mostly for the dividend (currently about 4.5%) the market plunge hasn’t affected us.
Like Cluster, my main concern remains the economic damage more than the actual damage from the virus. I have no doubt that major components of the economy will recover pretty quickly. The unknown is how many small businesses will simply go under. The good news is that both government (IRS) and businesses that rely on regular payments from consumers appear to be flexible about extending deadlines and eliminating late payment penalties.
This is not political. I truly hope that all of you and your families get through the next couple of months ok.
This is not a hoax. The virus is spreading at an incredible rate. At the end of this I am linking to a video that explains what we are up against and how to combat it. Personally, I will feel good if we keep the death toll in our country under a half a million. I fear it will be higher.
Three weeks ago President Trump said we had 15 cases and it would all be over in a couple of weeks. Obviously, he was wrong, as were a lot of other people.
Please take this seriously. Distance yourselves from others. Wash your hands. I know that we disagree on a lot of different subjects, but I truly hope you all make it through this.
As for myself, I am self isolating at my home in Hawaii. I am trying to give support to friends and family, on all sides of the political spectrum by staying positive, sending them orchids and postcards from Hawaii, and keeping myself healthy so as to not add anymore stress to the local system.
Please be safe.
Good video. Here’s another one that deals more with facts and fiction.
No one has claimed the virus is a hoax. There are some truly vile people spreading the lie that the President said it was.
Of course the number of REPORTED cases will go up. Why? Because we will be testing so many more people, many if not most of whom don’t even feel or act very sick. Now that we know the virus can be present with no symptoms and start testing we will find it in people who didn’t know they had it. Result: More confirmed cases. That does not mean the mortalities will also go up. On the contrary, it means the ratio of deaths to disease will go down.
And what is never mentioned is that the discovery of many people who have the virus but show no symptoms, who are not sick or who are mildly ill, is a very very GOOD thing, because it means we are on our way to developing the herd immunity it takes to slow down a rampaging disease. From the article I link below:
“Vaccinated people essentially act as barriers to outbreaks, since diseases can’t pass through them and infect others,” my colleague German Lopez explained. “ If a sufficient percentage of the herd is immune, diseases can’t spread to enough people to thrive.” If having this virus conveys immunity (which has not been stated but which can be speculated) then it would act in much the same way as vaccination.
And the fact is, we have faced nearly the same kind of threat several times, with one huge difference—in the past, these threats have not been weaponized to try to bring down a sitting president.
Eighty thousand Americans died of the the flu last season, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is from an article updated Dec 20, 2018, indicating a flu season of 2017-18
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/27/17910318/flu-deaths-2018-epidemic-outbreak-shot
EIGHTY THOUSAND PEOPLE DIED IN ONE FLU SEASON JUST A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO. But it was a common disease, without the attendant details that make COVID19 so much easier to weaponize, not as a disease but as a vehicle tor undermining an administration.
There is some very interesting information in this article. An example:
Another reason for the severity of last year’s flu season is that the H3N2 virus is hard to prevent with the flu vaccine. To understand why, you need to understand how the flu vaccine works — and why it is by no means perfect.
The vaccine is designed to protect people against three or four strains of the A and B viruses that researchers believe will be most common in a given year. So every year, public health agencies essentially make educated guesses as to what strains and mutations will make the rounds.
educated guesses seem acceptable to left-wing Vox when they write about how scientists try to anticipate which strains of flu will be making the rounds so they can then guess about which vaccines to try. Yet when the President makes an educated guess about trying a well known medicine, the Left’s collective hair bursts into flame. Because…Trump
This is a potentially deadly disease, which can kill a lot of people. But it’s the concerted efforts of the Left to make it seem worse than it is that is creating national panic.
For all of Dr. Fauci’s daily appearances and scientific evaluations of the data, questions still abound. For example: Why did Dr. Fauci not sound the alarm in 2009 as urgently as he has done in 2020? Why did he not insist we ‘force’ hospitals to cancel elective tests and surgeries to save room for future infected patients during the H1N1 outbreak? Why did he pointedly target restaurants and bars in his concern for the spread of the coronavirus but not H1N1? As a specialist in infectious diseases, and as a self-described “man of science,” why support the closing of schools, businesses, and home quarantine for one virus and not the other? H1N1’s duration from April 2009 to April 2010 with 60 million infected and almost 13,000 deaths in the U.S. alone was no less serious than the 2020 coronavirus so why was Dr. Fauci taking a more measured approach in 2009?
The answers may come too late. The economy that was setting records has been broken, at least, and hopefully, temporarily. The working and middle classes, who only a month ago were celebrating the purchase of a new car, a house, a raise, moving out of their parents’ home or the promise of a better job are wondering if they can hold on, and some are waking up to the realization their lives have been turned upside down over a virus that is no more deadly than the flu they got last year.
There was NEVER this level of panic in 2009 and the H1N1 virus infected and killed 100x more people.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/what_did_dr_fauci_have_to_say_in_2009_about_the_deadly_h1n1_pandemic.html#ixzz6HQdMm44L
Personally, I am not ready to jump on a bandwagon attacking Dr. Fauci or anyone working with or representing the Administration and what it is trying to do.
What is the purpose of a retroactive attack on the doctor? What is the end game of making him out to be untrustworthy?
Take a step back and think about the fact that this whole freakout is not caused by anything the doctor has said or done. He is merely REACTING to the media incitement of panic, fear and distrust.
And I personally believe the reaction of the administration is based on a few things other than mere containment of the virus. One, it is based on containment of the media. It is effectively negating a lot of what the media, in their role as advocates for the Left, have been trying to do. That is, the media are trying to incite panic and fear, destroy confidence in this president so they have a chance at taking back the White House, and are trying to undo the economic success of the president for that same reason. Two, I believe the administration is trying to use this concocted panic to allow them to use the situation as a kind of war gaming—–they can see how the population reacts to being told they are facing a catastrophic crisis of immense and deadly proportions, they can see which tactics work and which don’t, they can see that the Left will do anything it can to aid and abet any such crisis, and they can apply what they are learning to a template for dealing with an actual crisis. Basically, I think the administration is doing a clinical trial on how best to deal with a deadly outbreak of some toxic agent introduced into the country for some nefarious reason.
They didn’t create this pseudo-crisis, but I think they are brilliantly using it to learn from it, while simultaneously using it to educate the American public about the true nature of the Agenda Media and the Democrats. One tactic they are using is the presence and reporting of Dr. Fauci, and the only reason I can see for now attacking the doctor and questioning his competence and/or motives is to serve the goals of the Left. by undermining confidence in the Trump team and its efforts.
I expected more and better from The American Thinker. Shame on them.
I didn’t read this as an attack on Dr. Fauci rather than an astute comparison of the advice given during a similar time and I think that is VERY IMPORTANT to highlight. The sheer numbers for the H1N1 virus was, in my opinion, cause for alarm, yet there was very little of it. Why? Also, why are we not sounding the alarm on the seasonal flu? Which also kills ten fold the number of people annually.
I don’t question Dr. Fauci’s credentials one bit and neither does the author but the advice and level of alarm is definitely worth pointing out and questioning.
We were always told, during flu season, to avoid personal contact with infected people, to wash our hands a lot, to avoid touching our faces, and to try to avoid large crowds. It’s just that we were told quietly, calmly, and not in the context of a massive media circus and swirling Blame Games.
why was Dr. Fauci taking a more measured approach in 2009?
Easy. Because the media were not engaging in a firestorm of hysteria, accusations and invective that HAD to be addressed, and had not created an environment demanding immediate dramatic action and then defenses of that action.
In 2009 it was a medical issue,handled quietly by people in the medical profession and compliantly protected from media attention because Obama was the president. In 2020 it is a political issue piled on top of a medical issue, and the compliant media are using it to help their Dem allies, meaning that once they dragged it all out and put spotlights on it a different approach was called for.
Or another way of putting it is why is EVERYONE taking a much more alarmed approach in 2020? I agree with the political angle you laid out but it still doesn’t explain everything. Why are Fox pundits going 24/7 pandemic alarmists? Why is Fauci speaking in more alarming and dramatic tones now then he did in 2009? Am I missing something? Is there more to this than just a very contagious and severe flu strain with a 2% fatality rate. It sure seems like it.
Cluster, you are right.
And I disagree. That is, I think there is a reason for this. To go back over what I said but possibly in a slightly different way—once this administration was faced with the harsh reality that the media, acting in coordination with the Democrat Party, made it clear that they were not only going to hype this virus as much as it could possibly be hyped, they were also going to use to attack, smear and generally harm the president, the president and his administration had no choice but to respond.
When that became clear, I think the administration made a couple of key decisions. One was to fight back. So when the media screeched that the president was ignoring the crisis, he proved he was not only NOT ignoring it, he was giving it his full attention. When the media howled that he wasn’t taking it seriously, he proved that he was taking it so seriously that he was consulting constantly with top medical professionals. When the media whine that he isn’t DOING ANYTHING he shows them that he is, in fact, doing a whole lot of somethings, and lines them out in his TV reports.
The obvious answer to “why so much fuss” is that without the fuss the media would claim negligence, incompetence, indifference, blah blah blah. Hell, they are claiming it now, in the face of abundant proof they are lying. Without the constant drumbeat of proofs that the administration IS taking it seriously, IS doing a lot to deal with it, etc. there would be nothing to balance it.
And I still think that, number two, the administration is using this to practice, so to speak, how to deal with a real and serious threat, like the release of a potent and lethal biological agent into the population. This kind of practice could not be implemented under normal conditions. It’s not like a fire drill where the alarm goes off, everyone goes to an assigned location and then it’s over in a predetermined time. This is a practice that would have to involve, well, everything that is being involved now: Self-isolation, ramped up production of supplies for detection, protection and sanitation, procedures for testing large numbers of people, testing the capacity of our health system including our hospitals and medical personnel, testing the willingness of the population to follow directions, protected supply chain for necessary commodities like food, water and fuel, secure supply of drugs, etc. All of these things, and more, could be speculated upon, charted in theoretical terms, worked out in computer models and so on. But the determination of the Left to weaponize this virus and try to use it to bring down a president, even when that means bringing down an economy (which, after all, is his biggest appeal) and to throw the nation into panic and chaos in pursuit of a political objective created a scenario which lends itself to that kind of practice needed by the administration to know how the country would or could deal with a massive and truly lethal attack, and what could be done when/if it happens.
I am completely confident that every single reaction to the virus outbreak is being fed into data bases, analyzed and slotted into projections and contingency plans. I also believe that the way the administration is handling this is beneficial on both grounds—taking away a lot of the impact the media blitz would have had, and providing a valuable teaching aid to help us plan for the future.
So, what works and what doesn’t? Clearly the decision to not make a huge deal out of the flu didn’t work so well—in the season before last, 80,000 people died, in spite of all those calm and rational PSAs about hand washing, sneeze and cough control, staying home when sick, etc. So now they are experimenting—what has to be done or said to get a better outcome? Maybe scaring people will work. It’s worth a try.
Remember, this virus is being spread by exactly the scenario feared as a means of attacking the country with a lethal biological agent—infecting a few martyrs and having them go through major airports, take plane trips and so on, till they have distributed their pathogens to untold numbers of people who, unknowingly, spread them to everyone they come in contact with. The combination of the deaths of millions with the collapse of our economic and political system would be a perfect outcome for our enemies. We need to not only be aware of this danger, we need to have a little experience in how to deal with it if it occurs. And I think that’s what we are doing now—-working on getting that experience. So we are telling the public how to act in the face of a truly lethal disease and we are looking for a way to keep the economy from tanking as well as being set up for a recovery.
Just think of the advantage in being able to say “Look at what we did. Two years ago 80,000 people died of influenza. This year 22,000 people died of a more virulent virus, because of the way we dealt with it. Now we know we don’t have to lose almost 100,000 people in bad flu year, because now we know how to control its spread.” In being able to say “We have learned some valuable lessons. We have learned the need to stockpile large amounts of some medical supplies, and to keep our drug manufacturing at home where we don’t risk having it cut off by people who want to harm us. We have learned that we can self-isolate when necessary, and how well that works. We have learned how important it is to have basic supplies in our homes in case of emergencies. These were harsh lessons but we are better off having learned them.”
Okay, so now we are starting to hear more and more about leaked documents from the “intelligence” agencies, back in January or so, warning the Chinese virus could kill a million or two in the USA.
So now I think I have a pretty good guess about what the unholy alliance of Democrats, Globalists, Deep Staters and MSM were planning. I never bought the idea that this was an engineered virus deliberately leaked to cause a pandemic, either by the Chinese, CIA or Globalists or whatever. (Possibly it was engineered and leaked during testing.) Outcomes were too unpredictable for it to have been released deliberately for any specific agenda.
But what I do think now is that back in January, while the impeachment conspiracy to take down Trump was falling apart, Deep State types got wind of this coming from China and figured it would be at least a SARS type outbreak and (they hoped) maybe a little worse. As an “insurance policy” they started ramping up fear and hysteria in deep state documents warning that the sky was going to fall and millions would die.
The assumption was that Trump wouldn’t believe the exaggerated reports, and even if he did, he couldn’t politically do anything major about it since most of the public wouldn’t believe it was serious enough to take dramatic action (like shutting down the economy). As Trump resisted major action, they would ramp up the panic in front of him, demanding more action and he would forever be playing catch up. Nancy Pelosi would demand bigger actions (as she did by insisting on 8 Billion instead of 2 Billion in the first bill), and if Trump did them he wouldn’t get credit, and if he resisted them he would be responsible for every death. They would then start leaking all the documents from January that said it was going to be terrible to show Trump didn’t listen too the “facts” quickly enough.
In the end, if only a few thousand, or maybe tens of thousands died, instead of millions, Trump would still be blamed for every death and the Democrats could claim their actions where what really stopped the pandemic. And, of course, a little global financial panic would provide plenty of opportunities for financial arbitrage for the richest elites and also give the left an excuse to give pork to poor countries that were hurt by Trump’s “inaction” and demand universal health care and all their other goodies. They would call it Trump’s Katrina and they would pound him for it every day until the election.
The problem is, Trump got ahead of them fast, not too far ahead, but just far enough. He shut down travel from China before they were able to really ramp up the panic, and so they were foolishly arguing that that was racist and it wasn’t necessary. He shut down travel to Europe before anyone was sure that was necessary, and he went to daily briefings with teams of scientists. He started taking the worse case scenario seriously, and started talking about trillion, not billion, dollar bailouts beyond anything Nancy dared say. He gave up trying to stop the stock market from tanking. He co-opted Dr. Fauci, who may or may not be a chicken little in this. He showed leadership and was able to get things done more quickly than any other president conceivably could have done.
This left the Democrats scrambling to try to find minor missteps (not quick enough on the tests or still shaking hands) or just flat out make up lies like he thought was a hoax. They were two steps behind him in ratcheting up fear, and by the time they managed to create a panic, it was the blue state Governors who were demanding to shut down their own states, because, of course, blue states were going to be hit harder because of their globalist policies.
So now what? Any sensible person has to be impressed that Trump moved fast, even if they might question he overreached to save lives. There is a terrible paper/text trail of Democrats being too slow (to accept travel bans, etc.) or bitching about minor details or just pushing clear lies about Trump and acting like idiots demanding we forgive student loans or drop sanctions on Iran or that Trump is daring to give people “false hope.”
So if, as I suspect, this whole thing will blow over with far less deaths than the early hysterical reports suggest, Trump will have to get the credit for it not being worse. And if people look for who to point the finger at for the overreaction, the deep state reports and media hysteria are mostly likely to get the blame. If it does get really bad, frankly, no one but Trump will be able to save the planet by going to an all out WWII style response.
Amazingly, the left didn’t realize how this would also obviously backfire against them on the big picture. Universal healthcare in Italy has been proven to be inadequate, Globalization is exposed as dangerous, the UN is exposed as worthless, financial markets as usury. Meanwhile, controlling boarders, America First, China bad, and everything else Trump has been pushing for three years is now pretty clearly the only possible answer moving into the future. And our biggest enemies, China and Iran, come out of this a lot weaker.
I’d add in that the main stream media has also exposed itself as being unpatriotic and hoping for doomsday just to get Trump, but I think that was already proven many times before.
Frank—brilliant analysis
Good post Frank and if you are right, which I tend to think you are, this means the “Left” is a much larger and much more malicious threat than I thought. If this is the “Globalists Left” most recent attempt to take out Trump (and his ideology) than this is their spectacular finale because they will either succeed “spectacularly” or fail “spectacularly” and I again agree with you …. they are in the process of failing so from a conservative standpoint, let’s make sure this is their end.
… this means the “Left” is a much larger and much more malicious threat than I thought…
BINGO !!
I have made many references to the International Left and my belief that the American Left has been mentored by them, nudged along, and finally gotten to the point of realizing its potential as a full-fledged hard Left movement, in the vein of the USSR, China, Cuba. Cambodia, etc.
The U.S. Democrat Party has never had the brains, the focus, the passion to develop as much as it has without being guided, goaded, nurtured and led by a larger, smarter and more single-minded brain. That is why I harp on the need to understand global Leftism, the history of Leftism. That is why I have harped on my experiences in Berlin, being exposed to the Cold War Left in Western Europe.
These movements have all been tentacles of the same octopus, inspired by and led by the same brain. Much more George Soros than Chuck Schumer.
The Left is a massive entity, which has intertwined itself into the heart of nearly every nation. To mix metaphors, think of those brain tumors that are threads of cancer so intertwined with brain tissue that cutting them out would kill the patient. We aren’t so far along that excising the Left will kill us, but the degree to which it has infiltrated our national brain is truly frightening. Until recently it didn’t have a deep foothold in the United States, but it has been burrowing in patiently and following a plan. We who think we know about the Left have still thought of the Democrat Party, as if this is the embodiment of Leftism. No, it is just the younger sibling finally getting big enough and strong enough to demand attention and control, but it is and always has been the child of the International Left.
We now have a leader who does understand this, who has been digging out fragments of embedded and subversive Leftism for three years now, a little here and a little there. That is the only reason he has become the focus of an obsessive and desperate need to get rid of him before he yanks out too many more threads of Leftist influence and control.
We keep hearing pundits go on and on about how much the Left “hates” Trump. Yes, they hate him—but they hate him because they FEAR him. What finally won me over to the belief that he really does get it, and is willing to dedicate his life to eradicating it as much as possible in this country, is the fact that he understood the role of deeply embedded bureaucrats in our federal agencies and started, quietly and with no fanfare, working to unearth and get rid of those elements, a little at a time. The entire organism of the American Left is feeling the pain as one tendril after another is identified and yanked out, or made impotent by some clever machination of Trump’s.
We actually owe a debt of gratitude to the American Democrat Party, because it has been so clueless about its true leadership and its role not as a dynamic controlling force but really just as a puppet with its strings being pulled by the International Left that it overreached. It got cocky. It started to overestimate its power while underestimating both the American public and Donald Trump. So they jumped the gun, and in their reckless zeal have exposed the ugly underbelly of the party.
Now we just have to be smart enough to follow up on their mistake and use it to root out the poison as deeply and thoroughly as we can. And the only way to do that is to expose, expose, expose their true agendas and their sliminess and corruption and dishonesty.
And here I see the Hand of God. A few more years of sly intertwining of hard Left philosophy by people more charismatic and appealing than those representing the party now, a few more years of more subtle subversion as the fruits of the Left’s takeover of our educational system have developed, and they would have been far more powerful But the American Left is like a cocky kid who thinks his high school fast ball means he is ready for the big leagues, and they have blown it. Or at least gotten close enough to the cliff to be vulnerable to some nudging.
They overstepped themselves with the impeachment thing, and the timing of the COVID19 thing coming so hard on the heels of the impeachment charade, in which the Dems ignored the danger and tied up the Senate during the time they should have been paying attention to national security is going to rebound against them—if we are smart enough to use it. The demand that Leftist pork, especially abortion funding, be attached to a bill to help Americans get through the economic downturn due to the virus is a big mistake—if we are smart enough to use it.
But the first rule is, KNOW YOUR ENEMY. And the American Democrat Party is just the domestic face of a far larger and more dangerous enemy.
And here I see the Hand of God.
I see this come into focus far more than I previously recognized, on a daily basis. The prerequisites, the sequences, the timing, are masterful. I marvel at His handiwork. Though I try to guess at what comes next, what matters most is the He is in full control and His plan becomes evident over time.
A few years ago I had to spend most of July 4th in my truck, so got to listen to most of a three hour Hugh Hewitt show featuring a historian who went into great detail about the many examples of divine intervention in our Revolution. I wrote to Hugh asking him to make this lecture available on tape and he said he had many requests to do that but it was more demanding than people realize and he was in the middle of recording a different lecture series, and nothing ever came of it. But it was the most inspiring thing I ever heard.
And at the end the lecturer said something I had never known—that old opponents Jefferson and Adams had become good friends and prolific correspondents when they left public life, and both lived to see the 50th anniversary of the nation they helped found and lead, dying within hours of each other on July 4, 1826.
I hate to say, but the “Globalist Left” has done even worse things than this (assuming I’m right). I think they were just hoping for a Katrina level event to take down Trump, but had no idea it would completely destroy Italy (because of its China connection) and hit open boarder Europe worse. I mean, these are the people that have started wars around the world that have killed hundreds of thousands for little other than war profiteering. These are the people that have impoverished the American worker while trying to build Communist China up into a superpower that could possibly defeat us in a world war. And who, rather casually, risked nuclear war with Russia to peel the Ukraine off the old Soviet Union to get control of the gas lines and steal money from that country. Not to mention the 2008 financial meltdown and give all the money to the billionaires solution.
I frankly wouldn’t put it past them to release a virus if they were sure it would do what they wanted, but the way this has gone down makes that seem unlikely (because it started in China and was successfully defeated in South Korea and Japan and barely touched closed boarder Singapore).
But it really seems suspicious that the media so quickly attacked Trump for pointing out that a common Malaria treatment seems to work really well. (A drug I took just as a precaution before visiting Central Asia with no ill effects.) The way they went ballistic (“you’re giving false hope”) about that out of nowhere makes me wonder if the deep state knows it works really well and don’t want it out there. Either to hurt Trump, or simply to try to make sure a more expensive drug by big pharma gets chosen first. They are that evil, but hopefully they aren’t that stupid. (Though it’s suspicious it isn’t being tested in NY until Tuesday, the day after the big two trillion dollar pork bill gets signed on Monday.)
Of course, having the CIA and FBI spy on and try to frame an American President as a Russian spy is one of the most damaging things I can imagine. Ignoring how amazingly illegal and dangerous it is for the government as a precedent, they successfully pathologized the country into two camps, one of which, the crazy left, aren’t even willing to think clearly anymore out of hate and fear. They wiped out civil conversation for a generation.
But hopefully this will be the bridge too far. 40% of the American public (the crazy left) are pretty much lost for good. But the ten or twenty percent in the middle are probably going to see this for what is was, and side with Trump in 2020. With four more years I think Trump will be able to at least get us moving in the right direction for the first time since Reagan.
But let’s also not be too naive about Trump. I think he’s a real patriot, but he’s also a deal maker who knows how corrupt the world is. It’s possible he’s willing to make a deal for a trillion dollars in pork payoffs to the Congress in order to get closed boarders and bring factories back to America, and work with some of the criminals that tried to take him down if that means he will get reelected to do the job he wants to do.
…makes me wonder if the deep state knows it works really well and don’t want it out there…. Exactly. Just as they openly hoped for a recession, to harm his chances for accomplishment and reelection. Just as they cheer the advancement of the virus, because of what it is doing to the economy.
What is good for the country is bad for the Left. What is bad for the country is good for the Left.
It’s possible he’s willing to make a deal for a trillion dollars in pork payoffs to the Congress in order to get closed boarders and bring factories back to America, And I would be fine with that, as a new Republican Congress can unwind a lot of that pork. Because in the long run, what people will remember is that he went to bat for them, and if we are smart enough to play it up they will remember that the Left held them—held THEM—hostage to their POLITICAL agenda. That is powerful stuff. I used to be a big baseball fan, and I loved Mickey Mantle because he was willing to pass up a home run statistic when the team needed a sacrifice bunt. He taught me the benefit of the sacrifice fly or the bunt.
As for the 40% hard left, what we need to remember is that most of that 40% doesn’t even HAVE a POLITICAL agenda. I know. I have tried for two decades to get a hard-core Lefty to explain why he or she IS a Leftist, and gotten only one coherent answer, out of a true committed Marxist. Ask any of them why they vote for a Democrat and you will get a variation on two stock replies: That it was out of hate for the opposition, or because the Dem supported an ISSUE they love (“because I believe in gay marriage”, for example.) Tell a Lib that what he really voted for is a specific political system and you get a blank look. Huh? No clue. So no, most of these people are committed to the Left but not because they truly believe in the superiority of a massively powerful and controlling Central Authority over a system of more power left to the states or to the people. Tell them that is what they are supporting and you get that blank look again. The Left has been absolutely brilliant at hiding its true nature behind a smoke screen of feel-good issues and its supporters are blind to them.
As a former Lib I can assure you that the primary reward for being a Lib is the smug conviction that it carries with it a sense of moral superiority. It is based on a binary calculation—if I am a Democrat and I believe that children should never go hungry, then you, as a Republican and therefore the opposition, must think it is OK to starve children. Therefore my political affiliation is a shortcut to the Higher Moral Ground, whether I do anything to feed hungry children or not., because I am on the side of wanting good things for people. Tell one of these smug preeners in their own virtue that the conflict is not in what we want on either side but in how to achieve it, and you will get denial, because how dare you try to take away that conviction of moral superiority. So if we can puncture that bubble enough to let reason in—that the conflict IS in how best to achieve something and not in whether it should be achieved, we can sway some of them. But some are too addicted to the hate aspect to be reached. The thing is, it is not political.
This will tell you about the influx of Chinese workers in the parts of Italy most hurt by the virus, as well as the Chinese strategy to infiltrate, weaken and then take over national economies.
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/03/19/its-no-coincidence-that-italy-and-iran-have-been-so-hard-hit-by-the-wuhan-virus
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/03/22/democrats-filibuster-wuhan-virus-relief-bill-more-worried-about-hurting-trump
One thing that is amusing about the trillion dollar bail out is that $3,000 per family isn’t going to do much to help Blue State residents. For out of work liberal arts majors it will barely pay rents in California and Seattle, and won’t even come close in New York. It will do nothing for out of work illegal aliens. But it sure will make a big difference to deplorables in middle America. Of course, Pelosi can’t suggest that New Yorkers and San Francisco residents get more money. So Trump will be disproportionately helping his voting base.
From the article:
This is a brazen, disgusting act by Democrats and they need to pay a price for it. The media will do their best to run cover, but people aren’t stupid. They know what’s going on here. If there’s any justice left in Washington (and there very well may not be), this partisan garbage will backfire massively.
They are dishonorable people and I have said this many times before. We need to stop pretending that we all have the same goals for this country. The media and the Democrats are not our friends. They are hostile combatants.
I could not agree more. And that takes me back to the same complaint I have been voicing for years–=-the Left is giving us what we need to defeat them but we are too inept to make it work.
We have some good voices now—-just in Congress, we have Nunes and Jordan and Gaetz and several others. But their only platform is Fox. If the RNC wants to function then it needs to step up and build a national platform.
I keep coming back to the need for an hour long (though even half an hour would be better than nothing) prime time NETWORK show. It would have to be fully funded by conservatives because in today’s Cancel Culture no company would be bold enough to advertise on it. It would have to be slick, well produced, entertaining and easy to watch. People seem to tune in the murder shows —Dateline, for example—-so there is an audience for something that is not a sitcom or “reality TV”.
Who would watch? Most conservatives, most Independents if they are truly Independent because they just can’t pick a side, and a lot of Libs looking for something else to be outraged about.
I can report some good news … my ultra liberal daughter is starting to realize how dishonorable the media and Democrats are. Her eyes are starting to open ….
Good news, Cluster. Some questions that might pop up in conversation: Why do people lie? Because the truth will not get them what they want. This is a progression most Libs never consider.
So in an argument/discussion when a Lib snarls that “Trump lies” the question is—why? That is, what does he get from lying? The answer is always “not much”. Yes, Trump does exaggerate sometimes, but when you look at what the Left calls “lies” they are always ego-based. To look more important or powerful. A little petty, perhaps, but not a big deal.
Sometimes it is necessary to concede a point, and arguing that Trump never lies just won’t go anywhere because the Left has a whole list of things he has said that they call “lies”. It’s easier to admit that yes, sometimes he does say things like that, and then move to what he gets out of it. And that is just a little ego reinforcement. Snicker at it if you must, but it is not sinister, nor does it have much of an impact if any on anything important.
So what lies are told by the Left? Going through them, and going back to the point that the truth will not get them what they want, the question is what do they think they will get if people believe their lies? And here is where the seriousness of the Left’s dishonesty is evident. They don’t lie to prop up an ego, they lie to overturn the votes of half of the country, they lie to promote a sinister and deadly political system (and in Latin, “sinister” means “left”, just an FYI) they lie to achieve huge goals and promote huge agendas, they lie to destroy people and lives and careers, but all of their lies end up with the same goals. And the truth will not achieve those goals. Only lies will.
And this should, eventually, lead to the question: Doesn’t it bother you that people lie to you? Why should you ever trust anything they tell you?
I have always loved the story of Jefferson and Adams dying on the same day and within hours of each other. I read one time that in his last moments Adams said “Thomas lives” as he was unaware that Jefferson had already passed a few hours before.
Something is not right about this virus. As we discussed yesterday, I am firmly convinced now that there is something nefarious behind this “pandemic”. Morning Joe is in full communist control mode this morning calling on Trump to enact “every lever of government to control the population and anything short of that is a dereliction of duty”.
THERE NEEDS TO BE A RECKONING. We can not let them get away with this. I don’t know about any of you but I am sick and f***king tired of our media sensationalizing issues for ratings and other nefarious reasons and never being held accountable. The same goddamn people pushing this virus bullshit are the same people that pushed the Russia collusion bullshit for 3 years and none of them are ever held to account. When his virus bullshit is over, there needs to be a purge in the media and conservatives need to lead that charge. These people absolutely can not be allowed to move on to the next “bombshell”. Then in November, let’s make sure that “career politicians” are shown the door. People like Romney, Warren, Schumer, Pelosi, Barr, etc. are a hell of a lot more dangerous to this country than a cold virus.
We need to clean house, literally and figuratively
In light of this “crisis”, I am going to just leave this here:
Approximately 3,000 unborn babies are aborted every day in America and close to 1 million every year.
And the American Left wants to use its hyped-up crisis to pay to kill even more, while also getting Trump out of office.
The Party of Death, whether the butchery of tiny babies or the unnecessary deaths of people due to this virus, they build their power on the deaths of others.
I did hear that the Democrats are trying to put abortion goodies in the stimulus bill, is that right? They are pure scum
I will say this. I am glad that a guy like Trump came around in my lifetime. I was a big of Reagan’s but I was in my 20’s didn’t appreciate it as much as I do now and Trump has exceeded what Reagan accomplished. I was losing hope after an ineffective string of Bush”s, McCain’s, even Romney who never had any fight in him. I didn’t know if any true conservatives who were willing to fight even existed any more.
I have to give Laura Ingraham credit for this and it’s spot on. Democrats wanted to impeach Trump for withholding aid to the Ukrainian people to advance him politically but at this very moment they are withholding aid to the American people to advance themselves politically. I know I know .. what’s good for the country … but this irony is transparently repugnant.
I’ll say this about the Left: just when we think we have seen how low they can go, they surprise us with yet another, deeper, dive into disgusting.
AOC said “…you still have ICE that’s trafficking children across the country,”
TRAFFICKING. What a vile, despicable POS she is, using a word like that to describe the efforts of ICE to protect children from being trafficked when they are used as pawns by adults not related to them to try to get into the country. The ugly truth is, the Left is completely indifferent to the sexual slavery of children, girls and women who are lured into vulnerable situations by the combination of predatory coyotes and Liberal efforts and promises of easy entry into the country.
Have you seen the things Rashda Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have said they are equally despicable POS’s. Wokeness and political correctness rule their world, common sense and decency have no place in the current Democrat Party.
Here’s an NIH update. As you all may remember the National Institute of Health sent panic shocks across the country last week declaring that there will be 70,000+ new cases next week with a huge red headline across Drudge. At the time of the prediction there were about 38,000 cases meaning we should hit 108,000 cases by the end of this week. With 2,400 new cases over night we currently stand at 46,000. We need to average 15,000 new cases a day over the next 4 days. Surely with the 24/7 news coverage and the daily if not hourly government updates, they know what they’re talking about right?
Just heard on MSNBC – “if Trump does not sign off on everything the Democrats want, there will be trouble”. In addition Joey just said “the worst is yet to come”. Of course it is, with Democrats around, the worst is always right around the corner.Also, the chryon on MSNBC says “WHO says the acceleration of the virus is increasing”, well according to their own numbers, it’s not
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Is it just me, or does the heightened panic pushed by the media and federal bureaucrats play right along with the Democrats desire to load the bill up with progressive policies? I understand there is quite a bit of green new deal bullshit in the bill.
No, it’s not just you. The lurking presence of sinister motives on the part of the Hysteria Press has always been there. At first, before Trump started talking about approaching Congress to get a rescue bill passed, I thought it was just another ploy to unseat him,but once the game playing started regarding what would go into the rescue bill it became even more clear.
I would love to have Trump say “If this had passed on Friday the checks would already be in the mail. But thanks to the Democrats, who are holding the entire nation hostage to their radical political agenda, we don’t even have a bill yet. So, to all of you waiting for a check to help you through this time, call your Democrat Senators and Representatives and tell them to stop playing games with your money.”
And he needs to keep calling out the lies as lies. One example: The headlineMan dies and his wife is in critical condition after ingesting drug touted by Trump as a coronavirus treatment is blatantly false. The lead paragraph says President Donald Trump has been touting the anti-malaria drug chloroquine phosphate as a possible solution for the treatment of the coronavirus. It isn’t a cure nor is it a prophylactic for the coronavirus. It also hasn’t been tested and because people are buying it up, scientists are having trouble finding it so they can test it. Everything in this paragraph, as well as the headline, is demonstrably and blatantly a lie.
The man who died self-dosed himself with a different drug than the one discussed by the president. The story goes on with an even bigger lie: That he died because he took a drug that had not been tested. In fact, chloroquine phosphate. WAS tested, and was used in spite of its high toxicity. But, as the author’s own link clearly states, Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) sulfate, a derivative of CQ, was first synthesized in 1946 by introducing a hydroxyl group into CQ and was demonstrated to be much less (~40%) toxic than CQ in animals. More importantly, HCQ is still widely available to treat autoimmune diseases,
His own link also states …due to infrequent utilization of CQ in clinical practice, its production and market supply was greatly reduced, at least in China….
So, several of the statements proved to be lies: (1) President Trump never recommended chloroquine phosphate to treat corona virus; (2) chloroquine phosphate had been tested; (3) chloroquine phosphate is in short supply because it is seldom used any more due to its toxicity; (4) Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) sulfate, a derivative of CQ, has also been tested and approved as a drug since 1946; (5) Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) sulfate, is much less toxic than chloroquine phosphate; (6) Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) sulfate has been in wide use for decades; (7) Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) sulfate is widely available all over the world, though admittedly not yet in amounts large enough to treat the entire population of the United States at this time; (8) The man who died was in his 60s and his wife is in critical condition after both of them ingested chloroquine phosphate. The chemical is an additive frequently used to clean fish tanks and (9) the author, and by extension his publisher, are lying sacks of s**t representing the worst of what is now laughably called “journalism” and should be held accountable.
This is the kind of media that Trump accurately calls the enemy of the people.
Here’s how NBC covered the swine flu in 2010. Can you see the difference? And I will remind you, not one business shut down
CDC says H1N1 infected 61 million Americans during the pandemic and killed around 12,000. H1N1 is now part of the annual seasonal flu mix.
Studies suggest that people over 50 or 60 may have been protected from H1N1, perhaps because they were infected with something similar in their childhoods.
https://www.nbcnews.com/healthmain/americas-especially-hard-hit-2009-swine-flu-study-finds-2D11657478
And here’s another MSNBC story from 2009. Not one mention of what “The White House” was doing:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34365895/ns/health-cold_and_flu/t/nearly-us-deaths-caused-swine-flu/#.XnoEgtNKhTY