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Post by kcrufnek on Apr 16, 2020 3:04:49 GMT -6
It’s amazing how much the left has revealed itself during this crisis. Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC recently wondered aloud on the air if Joe Biden should set up a shadow government to hold TV pressers like Trump is doing with the real government. How do you think she would have reacted if someone suggested this about a Republican candidate when Obama was president? The Washington Times reports: www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/15/joe-biden-should-consider-shadow-government-to-com/Biden should consider ‘shadow government’ to combat Trump, MSNBC’s Ruhle says
MSNBC‘S Stephanie Ruhle said Wednesday that Joseph R. Biden may want to consider forming a “shadow government” if he wants to defeat President Trump’s reelection bid.
The “MSNBC Live” anchor told former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina that Mr. Biden needs to think “bigger” when it comes to “counter-programming” the Trump administration’s ability to speak directly to the American people via coronavirus press briefings.
Mr. Messina suggested getting former President Obama and high-profile Democrats should paint a stark “contrast” between the two men moments before Ms. Ruhle mulled various “shadow” options — including a “shadow SWAT team.”
“Do they need to do it in a bigger way?” Ms. Ruhle asked Wednesday. “What did you just call it? The president’s daily clown show? That’s his press briefing. Should Joe Biden be counter-programming that? Should he be creating his own shadow government, shadow cabinet, shadow SWAT team and getting up there at a podium every night saying, ‘here’s the crisis we’re in, here’s what we need to do to address this’?”I figured there already was one.
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Post by kcrufnek on Apr 16, 2020 23:31:37 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 17, 2020 7:06:27 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 17, 2020 7:08:57 GMT -6
Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi is at home in her San Francisco mansion during the California lockdown doing appearances on late night television while American workers and business owners go broke.
As of Thursday Speaker Pelosi would not approve more funding for small business.
Last week, Democrats blocked the $250 billion replenishment of the Paycheck Protection Program prompting Pelosi to partake in a parade praising partisan Democrats for blocking the program.
And today the Small Business Association announced they officially ran out of money for their loan program to America’s small businesses.
On Thursday at least 20,000 small business loans went unprocessed because Democrats Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer would not approve more funding.
Rep. Jim Jordan announced on Thursday that Democrats will not pass legislation to save small businesses until they get their legislation that would give money to states that let criminals out of prison.
Democrats are letting small business die.
Remember all of this in November.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 17, 2020 7:19:56 GMT -6
dailycaller.com/2020/04/16/cnn-china-propaganda-problem-experts-coronavirus/Egregious’ And ‘Audacious’: CNN’s Big China Screw Up Is Part Of A Much More Insidious Problem, Experts Say CNN is far from alone when it comes to boosting Chinese propaganda, but it’s home to the most recent example of American media pulling for China in the past few months. The network experienced almost immediate backlash April 13 when it published a story in which the main source was a press release from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Stated clearly: CNN’s article reporting the Chinese Navy “has done a much better job controlling coronavirus than the US Navy” could hardly be told apart from the PLA press release it cited. It was an almost exact replica. “There is a word for anyone who takes the word of an authoritarian regime, with a long record of lying, whether it was President Trump praising China’s clearly flawed response to Coronavirus or U.S. media repeating clearly bogus PLA talking points: Fool,” Peter Singer, a strategist and senior fellow at New America told the Daily Caller. CNN’s propaganda push was “incredibly irresponsible” and “audacious,” Rebeccah Heinrichs at the Hudson Institute, added. (RELATED: Here’s How The Media Is Pushing Chinese Propaganda And Talking Points) “It is not an exaggeration to say that it is Chinese communist party propaganda,” Heinrichs said of the article. “While we’re in the middle of this pandemic, there’s multiple things going on at the same time. One of them is a fight for clarity and accurate information. And we know that the Chinese government is still propagating false information and so for American media to not look at anything that comes out of China very skeptically … is so irresponsible.” I mean the job of the media is to expose what is true and they are very hyperactive on making sure they do that. You can be hypercritical of the U.S. government, but then to turn around and to copy and paste Chinese communist party propaganda when the stakes are so high is just incredibly audacious and it’s shameful.” Lyman Stone, an Adjunct Fellow at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), echoed these concerns. He called CNN’s propaganda push an “egregious mistake” that is “systematic of a wider credulousness towards communist propaganda in a lot of the outlets.” CNN previously dismissed concern the outlet was simply repeating propaganda from China’s PLA, calling the post on the site a “single update from our international site’s 24-7 Live Story.” Absent from this “single update” are the numerous instances of China lying, whether it be their questionable coronavirus numbers or the reports that indicate they tried to hide the virus’s existence. Also ignored is the fact that China “has gone out of its way to pay or censor people to say that they’re a normal country,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, pointed out. Gonzalez accused CNN of having “oikophobia,” which he described as a “hatred or fear of your own country.” He noted that many journalists – not just from CNN – have decided “that Trump is a threat to the republic and it is their job as journalists to get rid of the president.” “It’s not their job,” Gonzalez told the Daily Caller. “We cannot trust anything China says. We have to have a high degree of skepticism.” (RELATED: Media Rhetoric On ‘Wuhan Virus’ Echoes Chinese Propaganda) “The truth of the matter is, we know precisely no information about the effect of coronavirus on the Chinese military. We still don’t know how many people are sick in China. To even run that as though that might be true or its even somebody’s opinion, it’s a total Chinese fairy tale, being characterized as though it might, in fact, be reality,” Heinrichs said. Lyman appeared to agree, saying that if China “means for you to read it, it’s probably not true.” He added that the news reports should have been focused on why the country knows that the American Navy has coronavirus outbreaks. “What the news reports should have been is that the reason we know about a COVID outbreak on a US aircraft carrier is that a heroic U.S. officer [former Capt. Brett Crozier], who is now infected in COVID and is in the hospital, he knowingly scarified his career to defend his men from what would have killed a couple dozen of them probably,” Lyman said. Lyman, who is currently in Hong Kong, said that in China “you would have never heard about what happened.” He said that if a captain there tried “to stick up for his man … he would just vanish.” “And China would say, ‘oh, never had a carrier outbreak.’ You’d just wonder why 50 body bags came off the boat every time.” “We shouldn’t accept the propaganda that they don’t have COVID on their boat,” according to Lyman. “They probably do. They probably have sailors dying. They’re just lying about it.” And yet, CNN is just the tip of the iceberg in news publications that have allowed Chinese reports to flow through un-checked. The Washington Post, for example, has “run these full page op-eds out of one of China’s state news outlets a number of times,” Lyman pointed out. The New York Times is guilty too, often allowing Chinese officials the space through op-eds to push misinformation that has already been debunked. This happened, for example, in an April 5 opinion piece by China’s ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai’s, who claimed that the country “has been providing updates about the disease in a responsible manner.” “Look, we do need for the country to believe that the media has journalistic integrity,” Gonzalez noted. “The media is essential to democracy, but if Americans lose all hope and all trust in the media, this is a really bad place to be at.” The media’s at-times willingness to take China’s word is comparable to the Russian collusion that bombarded publications ever since Trump’s election in 2016. Heinrichs pointed out that the American media is “doing the same thing that many journalists said made Donald Trump’s election not legitimate.” “You have, going into another presidential campaign, American media actually taking, in this instance, literal Chinese propaganda and copying it and pasting it and putting it in American news organizations’ stamp of approval on it. Handing it out,” Heinrichs said, although she noted that there “has been some really great reporting.” This reporting, however, has largely come from questioning China’s claims. CNN did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller, but the propaganda piece has remained live despite backlash. (RELATED: Chinese Government Finally Acknowledges Underreporting Coronavirus Cases) “One has to guard oneself very strongly against becoming a pusher of Chinese propaganda,” Gonzalez warned. “The Chinese, it is their obsession.”
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 17, 2020 7:52:55 GMT -6
Flashback:
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 17, 2020 16:07:43 GMT -6
This is called retaliation.
Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has threatened to extend her extreme stay-at-home order in response to protesters who rallied against it at the state’s capital on Wednesday.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Governor Whitmer said that the protest was “irresponsible” and that “we might have to actually think about extending stay-at-home orders, which is supposedly what they were protesting.”
“When you see a, you know, a political rally — that’s what it was yesterday — a political rally like that, where people aren’t wearing masks, and they’re in close quarters, and they’re touching one another, you know that that’s precisely what makes this kind of a disease drag out and expose more people,” Whitmer said.
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Post by kcrufnek on Apr 17, 2020 21:47:57 GMT -6
This is called retaliation. Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has threatened to extend her extreme stay-at-home order in response to protesters who rallied against it at the state’s capital on Wednesday. In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Governor Whitmer said that the protest was “irresponsible” and that “we might have to actually think about extending stay-at-home orders, which is supposedly what they were protesting.” “When you see a, you know, a political rally — that’s what it was yesterday — a political rally like that, where people aren’t wearing masks, and they’re in close quarters, and they’re touching one another, you know that that’s precisely what makes this kind of a disease drag out and expose more people,” Whitmer said. Biden can't pick her soon enough.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 18, 2020 16:08:56 GMT -6
www.breitbart.com/news/hundreds-protest-against-us-virus-rules-amid-spreading-resentment/Hundreds Protest Against Coronavirus Lockdown Rules Hundreds of people demonstrated Saturday in cities across America against coronavirus-related stay-at-home rules — with the explicit encouragement of President Donald Trump — as resentment against prolonged confinement grew. An estimated 400 people gathered under a cold rain in Concord, New Hampshire — many on foot while others remained in their cars — to send a message that extended quarantines were not necessary in a state with relatively few confirmed cases of COVID-19, an AFP photographer reported. A similar rally outside Maryland’s colonial-era statehouse in Annapolis drew around 200 protesters. And more than 250 people showed up in the Texas capital of Austin, as such protests continued to spread. They drew encouragement in certain Democratic-led states from tweets by Trump — who has said he favors a quick return to normal practices — though protests have also taken place in Republican-led states like New Hampshire. In Concord, demonstrators carried signs with slogans like “The numbers lie” or “Reopen New Hampshire.” Their common demand was that the stay-at-home order for the state of 1.3 million people be called off before its scheduled May 4 end date. ‘Live Free or Die’ Others, amid a sea of American flags, chanted the state’s Revolutionary War-era slogan, “Live Free or Die.” Among the demonstrators were several armed men wearing face-covering hoods, the AFP journalist noted. “People are very happy on a voluntary basis to do what’s necessary,” one demonstrator, 63-year-old Skip Murphy, told AFP by phone. He added, however, that “the data does not support the egregious lockdown we are having in New Hampshire.” He said only the southeastern part of the state, near the Boston metropolitan area, had an elevated incidence of the disease, and he argued that the rest of the state, with far fewer cases, should be exempted from confinement orders. As of Friday morning, New Hampshire had reported 1,287 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 37 deaths. ‘Free country’ “What about our constitutional rights?” Murphy said. “All over the country, a lot of people are saying, ‘We will do our part, but at the same time this is supposed to be a free country.’ “When that gets transgressed, people start to say, ‘Wait a minute, this is wrong.'” Most Americans — by a two-to-one margin — actually worry about virus restrictions being lifted too soon, not too late, a recent Pew survey found. But demonstrators found encouragement Friday from the president himself, who in a series of tweets called to “LIBERATE” Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia — all states with Democratic governors — from stay-at-home orders. Trump has repeatedly called for the earliest possible return to normality as virus-related closings have had a crushing impact on American workers and businesses. But public health officials warn that too quick an easing of restrictions could allow a disastrous resurgence of the virus. The largest protest against stay-at-home rules so far took place Wednesday in the Michigan capital of Lansing, where some 3,000 people demonstrated against confinement orders from Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Murphy said he had voted for Trump, but insisted his motives were not partisan. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu is a Republican, he noted. “This has nothing to do with Trump or the Democrat and Republican governors,” Murphy said. “It is a case of one size not fitting all — the lockdown should cease where it does not make sense.”
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 18, 2020 16:10:19 GMT -6
thefederalist.com/2020/04/17/pandemic-panic-has-magnified-the-worst-impulses-of-the-power-hungry-elite/Pandemic Panic Has Magnified The Worst Impulses Of The Power-Hungry Elite This pandemic has exposed the motives of our self-appointed betters in D.C. and the media, pushing anti-American policies to give themselves more power. Stella Morabito By Stella Morabito APRIL 17, 2020 For all the American people’s common efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, we keep seeing a lot of reckless responses from politicians and propagandists. They continue to shamelessly exploit a national crisis to pursue their own political and personal agendas. Obama-era health care adviser Zeke Emanuel and others are calling for an 18-month shutdown, which is obviously not survivable for America economically or socially. Media pundits, impervious to the suffering this crisis is causing Americans, persist in trying to use the pandemic to trap President Trump and instill panic. “How many deaths are acceptable, Mr. President?” “Why don’t you shut down the grocery stores, Mr. President?” The list goes on. It’s time to stop pretending such folks have any interest in the public good. Let’s stop enabling them by taking their policy prescriptions at face value. Instead, I daresay we should confront them by questioning their motives and real goals. No matter how this pandemic ends, we owe it to ourselves and our posterity to put that mindset under a microscope and try to diagnose it. What Is the Media’s Megalomania Mindset? First, we are witnessing an attitude that hopes for failure. Trump critics seem to hope for high death counts in America to score political points against the president. This mindset shamelessly manipulates people’s worst fears, such as CBS News using a video from a crowded Italian hospital dealing with coronavirus patients and reporting that it was in New York. CBS pulled that stunt not once, but twice. The media go ballistic when audiences are exposed to any views that do not coincide with their agenda to accrue and maintain their power and status — hence, mainstream media cries to stop airing Trump’s press briefings on the virus, and now their attempts to get him to stop appearing at them. Astonishingly, they also want to ban hydroxychloroquine because it could prove to be an effective treatment for Wuhan virus symptoms as we wait for a vaccine. It’s an outlook that also hopes for a stock market crash, ruining the retirement plans of millions of Americans. Many of these folks also run cover for the totalitarian regime of communist China, which suppressed critical information about the outbreak in Wuhan, unleashing the virus on the world. Second, they seem to be using the crisis to infect American life with anti-American attitudes. For example, officials are empowering petty tyrants to snitch on people who gather “unlawfully,” promising anonymity to the snitches. A rural-area Virginia hospital — not in a hot spot for the virus — is preventing parents from visiting their newborns in neonatal intensive care units. The governor of Indiana purports to tell Christians whether they may take communion and, if so, how they may take it. The mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, forbade people to attend drive-in church services on Easter morning, even asking congregants to inform on pastors who held services by calling 311. The last thing America needs is a shameful profusion of communist China-styled meddlers and snitches. Meanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff are using the crisis to try to devise another destructive impeachment attempt, sowing yet more chaos into a nation where people are reeling from imposed isolation, economic ruin, and fear of a plague for which there is no cure. What kind of people do such things? Megalomaniacs Are Always Looking for ‘Awesome Power’ This scenario does not reflect politics as usual at all. It reflects something much darker: a stark naked megalomania intent on controlling the lives of others. These folks feel entitled to play god. This is no overstatement. Not so long ago, the nation rallied together in times of national crisis. Even members of Congress would set aside partisan interests when many Americans were suffering. We’re beyond that now. Power corrupts. And behind every policy prescription of central planners is a Jabba-sized ego that aims to put itself in charge of others’ lives. Consider, for example, the 1,400-page socialist-saturated wish list that Pelosi tried to substitute for the Senate relief bill in March. She caused unconscionable delays and disruptions to the lives of millions of Americans. Pelosi revealed the reason for her self-centered behavior in a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone in which she discussed the prospect of Democrats regaining the House. She could not contain herself as she cried out that it was all about “awesome power.” She excitedly added, “The speaker has awesome power.” Indeed, that is the raison d’etre of all so-called progressives. This is perfectly in line with the structure of socialism, which is always based upon putting too much power in the hands of too few people. When Majority Whip James Clyburn reportedly told the Democrat caucus that the coronavirus relief bill was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” he was simply echoing Rahm Emanuel’s mindset that a crisis should never “go to waste.” What is at the bottom of this “vision” to which Clyburn refers? “Awesome power.” Personal power. Political power that always ends up with a top-down elite telling everyone what they may say, what they may think, how they may act, and with whom they may associate. Those who perpetuate this vision have never made a secret of the fact that they wish to perpetuate their power in the form of a permanent majority. This is nascent communism in a nutshell — or, in today’s parlance, progressivism. Leftism Is Undeniably Linked to Megalomania Pelosi’s wish list included several aspects of the Green New Deal, such as demands that airlines “fully offset the annual carbon emissions … for domestic flights beginning in 2025.” She also attempted to put abortion funding into the bill. (Some deny this, but abortion funding tends to be a staple of all Democrat bills and amendments.) Pelosi included a heavy dose of identity politics, with requirements for “corporate board diversity.” To top it all off, she included enhancements for vote harvesting, such as grants for conducting election audits, as well as same-day voter registration, obvious ingredients for election fraud. That’s just a short list. It’s no secret that Democrats have worked overtime to destroy policies that promote self-reliance, free speech, choice in education, family cohesion, and religious devotion. But let’s ponder more closely what the sampling of policy prescriptions noted above have in common: They are always about a power elite controlling you. The Green New Deal, with its focus on tracking every industry and person’s “carbon footprint,” is the perfect vehicle for a power elite to control the masses from the top down. It would cut back severely on people’s mobility and cause greater scarcity of resources, opening the door for nationalizing whole industries. It provides excuses to punish any hint of nonconformity, and it depends on fearmongering — “the burning planet!” — to coerce compliance. Next, consider the constant push for taxpayer-funded abortion, which has now entered the infanticide phase. What’s that about? It’s an open door to eugenics and further top-down control of the population by elites drunk on power. The bait for unrestricted abortion has always been sex without any balance of responsibility. But the switch comes in the abortion culture’s dire effects on society: broken homes, broken families, broken relationships, which all fuel an unprecedented loneliness epidemic. Such brokenness further cultivates people’s vulnerability to government dependency and social control by self-supremacists. Power-hungry elites use identity politics, or the constant push for “diversity,” to divide us by causing tension, discord, and hatred — all of which require government power to address. No more “hate speech,” such as voicing support for traditional marriage or sex distinctions. Under the anti-discrimination coating, identity politics is a poison pill for the First Amendment. Consider the laser-focus on policing speech by forcing pronoun protocols into our laws. A prime example is a 2015 New York City law that calls for a fine of $250,000 for misgendering someone. Should you be accused, you will likely be at the mercy of an activist judge. The virus of identity politics — along with its twin virus, political correctness — is all about shutting people up and separating them, empowering elites to do more social engineering. Same-day voter registration and universal mail-in voting is an obvious invitation to election fraud. Normal people know that voting every couple of years is not a hard thing to do. So the point of this election tampering is to bring about a permanent Democrat majority that doesn’t have to bother with real elections anymore. The Political Left Has a God Complex This pandemic has laid bare the intentions of our self-appointed betters in Washington, the media, and beyond. They have shown no desire for national unity, pushing policies to empower only themselves. They manipulate people’s worst fears, knowing that’s the surest way to get them to lay down their liberties. We should be able to see a God-complex at work in all this control-freak behavior, and we should not fear calling out that behavior for what it is. If this seems over-the-top to American readers, that’s because we aren’t used to living under totalitarian rule. As we just emerged from Holy Week, we would do well to recognize that this is man’s natural, sinful state. After all, the sin of pride, or the conceit of playing god, is the original sin from which all other sins emanate. Consider that the 1.4 billion people of communist China are at the mercy of this mindset every day, an atheistic mentality hostile to religion and intent on destroying churches and any assembly that does not put the state first. People intent on playing god do not want to compete with the one living God as they try to control the lives of others. That mindset brought on the miseries of human history. Our founders recognized it because they saw that failing in human nature, and therefore in themselves. There was a time when Americans were taught that the central purpose of the Constitution was to keep that impulse in check so we could have individual liberties. When we refuse to see the urge in ourselves, we are far less able to keep it in check. We should call out this mindset wherever we see it, and that means questioning the motives of anyone who continuously pushes for policies that undermine individual liberties and build a mass state with a tiny elite controlling us all. No more should Americans simply attribute the totalitarian impulse to good intentions gone astray — certainly not while our economy is on its knees and the nation has undergone the trauma of the media’s fearmongering. The stakes are just too high
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 4:27:57 GMT -6
Los Angeles filled up a Venice Beach skate park with tons of sand to deter people from having any fun because of the Coronavirus.
California is still on lockdown even though less than 1,000 people out of 40 million have died from the Coronavirus.
There are hundreds of homeless people who sleep outside next to this Venice Beach skate park, but the authoritarian government officials are using money and resources to fill up the skate park with sand rather than deal with real problems.
A beach city in Orange County, California decided to teach kids a lesson after 28 confirmed Coronavirus deaths in the entire county of over 3 million people.
San Clemente officials sprung into action and filled the park with 37 tons of sand after they saw teenagers and children ignoring signs to stay out.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 4:32:08 GMT -6
The Kentucky state legislature passed a bill requiring ID to vote. Democrat governor Andy Beshear, who has only been on the job for a few months, vetoed the bill. Well it turns out Kentucky has a relatively low threshold for overriding a governor’s veto, which only requires a simply majority. The Kentucky General Assembly is overwhelmingly Republican, outnumbering the democrats 29-9 in the Senate and 61-37 in the House. So the legislature got back together last week and took up votes to override Beshear’s veto, which passed by huge margins in both chambers. www.wave3.com/2020/04/14/kentucky-lawmakers-strike-down-veto-pass-voter-id-law/?fbclid=IwAR37ZqKRdz2rT1rpieT4r3oVHl20LINE7zZXGdvK1as50RCY40wWtVTmoMcA veto made by Governor Andy Beshear opposing a voter ID law was defeated in the state legislature. Lawmakers in both the Kentucky House and Senate voted to override Beshear’s veto of SB 2. Republican state lawmakers called the proposed voter ID law one of their top priorities at the beginning of the 2020 legislative session. Proponents said it would increase confidence in the state’s elections by preventing fraud, but Democrats are claim that problem doesn’t exist, adding the bill would keep legal voters from heading to the polls. Voters would need a photo ID to cast a ballot in-person or through the mail. Senate Bill 2 also lays out a process to provide free IDs to people in need. The debate Tuesday focused on the impacts of the coronavirus on the new rule. “Our county clerks offices are closed and people cannot go and get a drivers license, even if they wanted one,” Minority Floor Leader Sen. Morgan McGarvey said. “You’re standing here today making it harder for people to vote.” One of the bills sponsors responded by stating it would not impact the primary elections, now being held in June. “This simply will not go into effect until November’s elections,” Republican Senator Robby Mills said. “I’m sure that we will have those clerks offices open and doing business later in the spring or summer and there’s going to be ample opportunity.” NPR affiliate WUKY adds that this wasn’t the only bill that was overridden: www.wuky.org/post/kentucky-legislature-fires-back-beshear-revives-voter-id-billThe GOP-led House and Senate made quick work of several vetoes issued by the governor, most notably reviving Senate Bill 2, a measure adding new photo ID requirements for Kentucky voters. While critics again pointed to a lack of reported cases of in-person voter fraud in the state, House Speaker David Osborne argued there are 41 counties in Kentucky in which “voter registration outnumbers the total population of their county.” Other vetoed bills making a comeback included a measure giving candidates for governor another seven months to choose a running mate during election years, and a bill requiring local government councils to sign off on tax increases proposed by library boards, health districts, and other quasi-governmental entities. The General Assembly rebooted a crime victim’s rights bill, commonly dubbed “Marsy’s Law,” which nearly won final approval from voters in 2019 before being struck down by the courts over the wording of the ballot question. The constitutional amendment will go before voters again, this time in full, in November. Critiques of Gov. Andy Beshear also came in the form of a statement released by Kentucky’s Republican constitutional officers, who put the onus on the executive for keeping lawmakers in Frankfort amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “It didn’t have to be this way,” the statement read. “Legislative leaders asked the Governor weeks ago to commit to calling a special session dated for a time when the pandemic had passed so the General Assembly could complete its business. He refused. He says he is willing to give up his newfound political popularity to do the right thing, without regard to partisanship, but if that was the case and he did not want the legislature to return, he should not have vetoed bills that passed with veto-proof majorities.” Predictably, leftist organizations are all in a tissy over this. The Root frames it as “Are Republicans still even bothering to try to hide the fact that they just don’t want people voting?” while The ACLU released this statement: www.theroot.com/kentucky-republicans-override-gov-andy-beshears-veto-o-1842888653www.aclu-ky.org/en/press-releases/aclu-ky-statement-regarding-veto-override-senate-bill-2-mandatory-voter-photo-id-billThe following statement can be attributed to ACLU-KY Legal Director Corey Shapiro: “Kentucky lawmakers continued to ignore the real problems facing the Commonwealth in the middle of a global pandemic by overriding a veto for a voter suppression measure. We remain concerned about the rushed timeline and lack of resources to implement this new law just months before a highly anticipated general election and in the middle of a national emergency. We are currently evaluating whether to seek court intervention to make sure every eligible voter can still cast a ballot under this oppressive measure. At a time when officials of both parties throughout the country are working together to ensure every eligible voter can safely participate in their elections, the Kentucky General Assembly is making it more difficult to vote. They have pushed this voter suppression measure in the name of election security, yet not a single proponent of this law has ever provided any instance of in-person voter fraud in Kentucky. Even worse, they insist on enacting this cruel measure that thousands of people cannot even comply with because many county clerks remain closed due to the novel coronavirus. This new law is fundamentally incompatible with the ongoing pandemic. Starting in July, the law will require all voters to include a photocopy of a photo ID to obtain an absentee ballot. This will force thousands of Kentuckians to leave home to get new IDs and make photocopies during a pandemic that many experts believe will continue throughout the year. This law will make voting more difficult, and potentially dangerous, for any Kentuckian who does not feel safe leaving their home during this pandemic – even for those who currently have a valid photo ID. Moreover, this measure requires spending at least hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, as even Secretary of State Adams has stated. The same legislators who passed this law also recently passed significant budget cuts to critical programs. It is unconscionable that lawmakers are wasting money in search of a non-existent problem, instead of using Kentucky’s limited resources to ensure every person can safely vote in November. Kentuckians deserve a legislature that solves problems; not one that creates them.”
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 4:34:11 GMT -6
townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2020/04/18/not-in-favor-of-lockdowns-msnbc-thinks-youre-a-racist-confederate-n2567170MSNBC Spends an Entire Segment Talking About How Lockdown Protestors Are Racist Confederates Americans across the nation have had enough of the stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders that have been handed down by state governors as a means of mitigating the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. They’re antsy. They’re restless. People want to get back to work and back to “normal,” or at least as normal as possible… According to MSNBC’s Joy Reid and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), if you’re someone who wants to see the economy reopen and get back to work, you must be some sort of Confederate racist. “Black people are being left in a situation where they’re more vulnerable by default: less health care, jobs that are hourly, jobs where you’re closer to people, stuck working near to each other,” Reid said. “When you hear Donald Trump talking in this sort of faux-Confederate language about these lockdown orders – which are meant to save lives – and you see people with these instaprotests, paid for by activists for the super-rich, egging on this kind of activity that could get violent, what does that say to you?” ....... Ellison suggests the protesters are pawns that Trump is willing to ‘sacrifice’ for reelection.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 5:50:17 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 5:53:49 GMT -6
Interesting how the ACLU is MIA on these real life issues.... Attorneys for ReOpen NC, the organization that is holding protests in defiance of the lockdown orders in North Carolina, sent a fiery letter to Governor Roy Cooper, demanding that he ease up on the orders and ensure that no one will be thrown in jail for exercising their 1st Amendment right to free speech and protest. Specifically, attorney Michael Best, along with co-counsel James Lawerence and Anthony Biller, have been retained by Kristen Elizabeth and Monica Ussery. They are planning second round of protests this Tuesday. ReOpen NC has 53,000 people in their facebook group as of this writing. This was the scene a few days ago, when Ussery was arrested by police for illegally 1st Amendmenting. www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/one-arrested-raleigh-nc-police-suspend-first-amendment-declare-coronavirus-lockdown-protest-non-essential-activity/The letter was sent to Governor Cooper, Wake County commission chair Greg Ford, state attorney general Josh Stein, and Lee Lilly, director of legislative affairs for the governor’s office. Parts of the letter include: However laudable the goal, the economic and social consequences of the governmental response to the COVID-19 crisis have been and are real, concrete, and harmful. Yesterday The Washington Post reported that 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment since President Trump declared a national emergency in March. Here at home, the impact on North Carolinians has been similarly catastrophic. The News and Observer reported that during a news conference on April 8, Governor Cooper himself acknowledged the “overwhelming crush” of new unemployment claims as the number of newly unemployed North Carolinians soared to near 500,000. Many of these unemployed members of our community are some of our State and Wake County’s most economically vulnerable citizens. Many include members of working families and single mothers. Many of these people do not have the luxury of working from home. At the same time, the employers of these workers are watching businesses some spent a lifetime to build slipping away. Working from home is not an option for them either. The social consequences of the COVID-19 response have been and continue to be substantial. The preamble of the North Carolina Constitution acknowledges God and “our dependence upon Him for the continuance of” our liberty for “us and our posterity.” With our fellow citizens reeling, processing the grief and trying to pick up the pieces, your orders have caused houses of worship to shutter their physical doors. Again, the burden falls disproportionately upon the poorest and most vulnerable among us who lack the modern staples of high-speed internet and smart phones. ReOpenNc’s desire to raise its collective voice on behalf of those deprived of their right to participate in the corporate worship of God, the dignity that comes from work, and the businesses many spent a lifetime building is entirely understandable, reasonable, and laudable. ReOpenNC self-organized around the idea that, in light of the above, your quarantines should be lifted in whole or in part to allow North Carolinians to return to work and life activities, while taking individual precautions. To that end, ReOpenNC organized a peaceful political protest at the Raleigh capitol on April 14, 2020. At the resulting protest, the Raleigh police department issued orders that all individuals in attendance were required to maintain six feet separation from each other, irrespective of whether they were members of the same household and irrespective of whether they were minor children. Reportedly, several mothers refused to force their young children in attendance to separate and departed the protest to avoid further confrontation with law enforcement. Thereafter, law enforcement personnel arrested Ms. Ussery for attending an illegal mass gathering. Ms. Ussery is charged with violating Governor Cooper’s executive order 121 pursuant to N.C.G.S. §14-288.20A, with a hearing in Wake County Criminal District Court scheduled for June 25, 2020. In response to local and national outcry regarding Ms. Ussery’s arrest and flagrant violation of her civil rights, various agencies and local authorities issued inconsistent views on the meaning and implementation of Governor Cooper’s Executive Order 121. The Raleigh Police Department (“RPD”), having consulted with acting Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freemen, prior to the protest, responded to inquiries regarding the perceived infringement on protestors’ First Amendment rights on the social media platform Twitter stating, “ rotesting is not an essential activity.” Raleigh Police Department later updated this statement on its Twitter account by stating, “oth the Governor and County have declared a state of emergency. Under these current and temporary declarations, protesting is not listed as an essential function.” These sentiments were later affirmed by Ms. Freeman, when she stated to WRAL that RPD’s reading of Executive Order 121 was “technically correct.” She went on to explain that arrest would be used as a last resort and that officers would continue “giving a wide legal berth to peaceful protest.” Further muddying the legal standard applied to “mass gatherings” for public protest, Governor Roy Cooper issued a statement through spokesman Ford Porter stating, “While protests can be subject to restrictions on time, place and manner, they are held as a fundamental right under the Constitution and are not listed in the order.” Governor Cooper, when questioned directly, created further ambiguity by explicating that his orders “do not interfere with people’s constitutional rights to express themselves” but instead addressed “unlawful mass gatherings.”
The plaint text of the aforementioned orders, the manner in which the Order was enforced against Ms. Ussery and the subsequent statements from public officials constitute broad restraints on public speech and present a ban on all public gatherings of any size in Wake County. Restrictions on content-neutral speech must be narrowly tailored for a specific government interest. McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U.S. 464, 486 (2014). “For a content-neutral time, place, or manner regulation to be narrowly tailored, it must not burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further the government’s legitimate interests.” Id. (internal quotations omitted). To meet this requirement, “the government must demonstrate that alternative measures that burden substantially less speech would fail to achieve the government’s interests, not simply that the chosen route is easier.” Id. at 495. For example, McCullen compared a law requiring a “buffer zone” outside abortion providers that prohibited contact between people with that zone to an earlier law that required people to stay six feet apart outside providers unless consent was given to further approach. The former was found not to be narrowly tailored, as the latter in conjunction with existing laws accomplished the same goals. Id. at 496-497.
Attorney Anthony Biller then goes on to cite numerous 1st Amendment cases where the higher courts have reversed convictions of people who were charged with similar illegal 1st Amendmenting or upheld 1st Amendment protections, such as Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, McCullen v. Coakley, Cox v. New Hampshire, Edwards v. South Carolina, and, perhaps the most applicable one because it was a North Carolina case that was ruled on just 2 years ago, Packingham v. North Carolina.
Biller elaborates:
As recently as 2017, this State was rebuffed by a 8-0 margin at the United States Supreme Court over attempts to enforce a law less broad and far-reaching than the orders at issue here. In Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730 (2017), the Supreme Court invalidated North Carolina’s social media law. Id. at 1738. In the process of articulating its holding, the Supreme Court noted that the broad law at issue in Packingham, a statute which expressly prevented registered sex offenders form using commercial social networking programs, “applies to about 20,000 people.” Id. at 1734. The orders at issue here apply to all of the more than ten million people who live in this state and criminalize a broad swath of innocuous activity. The overbroad nature of the orders themselves are irreconcilable with Packingham.
Biller stresses that his “clients would prefer to resolve these issues amicably” and they “request written statements from Governor Cooper’s office and the Wake County Commissioners that protestors will not be detained, arrested or prosecuted under their quarantine orders so long as at such protests, individuals who are not members of the same household maintain at least six feet of separation from individuals of other households. We also request that all criminal charges against Ms. Ussury be immediately dismissed.”
They ask that the governor’s office respond by Monday at 2:00 PM. Toward the end, the letter includes “If your offices do not provide reasonable assurance and objective standards that preserve my clients’ constitutional rights, we will have no choice but to seek emergency legal relief in advance of Tuesday’s planned protest.”
Then you have the crazed leftist activists, such as BlueNC.com, who, after spending four years calling a Trump a fascist dictator, are now cheering on suspension of Constitutional rights by mocking and berating anyone who has the audacity to want to exercise some freedom by leaving their homes, doing the 1st Amendment, and wanting to reopen the economy.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 5:54:52 GMT -6
dailycaller.com/2020/04/18/martha-maccallum-tara-reade-joe-biden-metoo/‘Preposterous On Its Face’: Martha MacCallum Analyzes #MeToo Movement In Light Of Tara Reade ox News anchor Martha MacCallum criticized the idea of automatically believing accusers without due process as “preposterous on its face.” Appearing on Saturday night’s edition of “Watters World” with Fox News anchor Jesse Watters, MacCallum was asked about the liberal media’s virtual silence regarding former Senate staffer Tara Reade’s sexual assault accusations against her former boss, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. WATCH: Despite the fact that other former Democratic presidential candidates have been asked about the allegations, Biden “has not been asked once about it,” MacCallum noted. “That in and of itself Jesse just raises so many questions,” she said. “But what really strikes me in this whole story more than anything is something that we’ve been talking about for a really long time, and that is with these accusations, which are always troublesome, the idea that you can believe all women or believe all men for that matter is just preposterous on its face.” The Fox News anchor stressed the importance of analyzing “the evidence in a situation” regarding each claim’s “credibility” and “evaluate it regardless of the sex of who the accuser is.” (RELATED: Howard Kurtz Rips Media Outlets By Name For Not Covering Biden Accuser) Referring to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, MacCallum said, “We’ve seen people get raked over the coals in them, sometimes unjustly, and that’s devastating.” Media and silence from the left when their own is accused “just really smacks of something that is so disingenuous in the way that people have approached these, and I really hope that it breaks that wide open for the future as well,” she said.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 5:58:34 GMT -6
thefederalist.com/2020/04/18/de-blasio-wants-new-yorkers-to-rat-on-neighbors-dont-do-it/De Blasio Wants New Yorkers To Rat On Neighbors. Don’t Do It. New Yorkers have done a great job flattening the curve of coronavirus. Now is not the time to start informing on each other. APRIL 18, 2020 By David Marcus New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took to Twitter Saturday to urge his constituents to monitor, photograph and report each other if they aren’t strictly obeying his social distancing guidelines. Just fire off a photo to 3-1-1 of a few guys having a chat in a bodega and Hizzoner will send police officers, with guns and everything, to break it up. What could go wrong? Throughout the video de Blasio holds a creepy smile as he imagines millions of New Yorkers ratting each other out to help perfect his vision of government-constructed existence. We will be soldiers in his dream socialist army, pointing fingers and getting a nice pat on the back from the powers that be. It is a disturbing dystopia future to imagine. When I was growing up in Northeast Philly, there was an old lady named Mrs. Ferry who lived in the row house next to my big Aunt Mary. Mrs. Ferry would sit on her porch all day listening to the police scanner and holding a little notebook. If she saw you smoking, or fighting, or if you broke a streetlight playing lightball, she’d write it down. And when you got home that night your parents knew all about it. We do not want to live in a society of Mrs. Ferrys. We have recent evidence as to how horrifying it is to live in a country where everyone is potentially the police. Read a play by Vaclav Havel; listen to any story from communist dissidents about the fear of friends and neighbors. There is no terror any government can cause greater than turning citizens into each other’s jail keepers. Listen, if the guy downstairs is running an illegal speakeasy and 50 people a night are pouring in, sure, yeah. Say to him, “Listen, this can’t happen we have to stop this.” If he won’t, call the landlord or the authorities. But if you see some kids playing basketball, or more than one person in the ATM kiosk, cool down your trigger finger. Let it be. The irony of de Blasio’s sudden call for us to all start spying on each other is that New York has flattened the curve by more or less obeying the guidelines that have been laid out. The people understand the situation; they have reacted reasonably and will continue to do so. Introducing this radically anti-American idea that we should be informing on each other left and right when the fight against the virus is going well makes no sense. In fact, the only way it really does make sense is if the goal is to use this emergency to further empower the government by making all of us its agents. But we have shown this is needless and have frankly done a remarkable job. Now is the time when Americans have to trust each other and each other’s good judgment– judgment that has thus far more than passed the test. Now is not the time to turn on each other regardless of what Mayor de Blasio says. The American people are going through a lot of tests at once right now. The saving lives test. The trying to avoid total economic collapse test. And importantly the civil liberties test. In regard to this last one we have some choice. Under how harsh a watch from big brother do we want to spend our days? Do we want to become big brother ourselves? Isn’t that always the way? When we read “1984” we all imagine we are Winston, and in so doing entirely miss the point. This thing, that de Blasio wants us to do is a thing we cannot do. We cannot live in fear of each other, we cannot live thinking of ourselves as the eyes and ears of the state, we cannot live in panic driven paranoia. The bottom line is don’t listen to de Blasio. Use your best judgment, but don’t become a Storm Trooper in his clampdown brigade. We have enough to worry about without deputizing ourselves to be an annoyance to our neighbors. Let the mayor flex whatever muscle he thinks he has left after his shambolic handling of coronavirus. The people of New York will not become his secret police.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 6:01:20 GMT -6
thefederalist.com/2020/04/17/dear-nancy-pelosi-you-dont-need-to-pay-13-a-pint-for-good-ice-cream/Dear Nancy Pelosi, You Don’t Need To Pay $13 A Pint For Good Ice Cream Bad optics and lacking leadership during this time of crisis aside, someone needs to tell the House speaker there are better, cheaper options to stock her freezer with. Madeline OsburnBy Madeline Osburn APRIL 17, 2020 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was slammed by lawmakers and media alike this week after she simultaneously blocked funds for America’s suffering small businesses, and showed off her gourmet ice cream stockpile.
House Republicans have attempted for over a week to pass a clean funding bill to replenish funds for the Paycheck Protection Program, of which all $349 billion available was officially depleted on Thursday. Democrats blocked the assistance, offering a counter-proposal with a wish-list of progressive propositions. As Republicans and even some Democrats begged for Congress to bail out more small businesses, Pelosi called it a “stunt” and claimed there’s “no data as to why we need it.”Meanwhile, in an undeniably tone deaf move, the millionaire congresswoman from California appeared on CBS’ “Late Late Show” Monday, standing in front of a refrigerator that costs more than many Americans earn in a year, and opened her freezer to reveal it was full to the brim with ice cream and gelato. Clearly, the staffer that thought this was a cute idea has yet to lose their own paycheck like 22 million other Americans, or at least they hadn’t until this video aired. Not to mention, any experienced communications staffer would also know the last time a politician indulged in ice cream gluttony, it made blaring headlines. “PRESIDENT GETS 2 SCOOPS OF ICE CREAM, EVERYONE ELSE 1,” as CNN’s chyron once read. Of course, Pelosi should be shamed for her bad politics and lacking leadership during this time of crisis, but I’m here to talk about ice cream. Any ice cream connoisseur took one look at Pelosi’s freezer and saw stacks of cash. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, the colorful pints you see on the right, cost $13 per pint in the grocery store, or $68 for 6 pints if you mail order like the Speaker suggests in the interview. Talenti gelato, which she points out as her two chocolate favorites on the left, are $5 a pint, but still on the higher end of grocery story options. I will concede, Jeni’s is very good ice cream. It’s a premium, Philadelphia-style ice cream, which means it doesn’t contain any eggs or yolks. It has a creamy and smooth texture — some even complain too creamy. Jeni herself describes it as a “buttercream body.” Their flavors are top-notch and are often perfect balances of salty and sweet, like the popular Brown Butter Almond Brittle. So I do not blame Pelosi for her obsession one bit, but there are other amazing, less expensive options. Blue Bell As a resident Texan, my first recommendation has to be Blue Bell. The little creamery in small town Brenham, Texas, only delivers to 13 southern states to which it can drive within a day, and California is not included, but Pelosi has already established she’s happy to mail order. A pint of Blue Bell will cost you $2.57, a half-gallon $6, and you will not be sacrificing an ounce of flavor or texture. When Blue Bell had to halt production in 2015 after a deadly listeria outbreak, some Texans hoarded their dwindling supplies, while others auctioned off their half-eaten cartons on eBay to the deprived. It was devastating, and Texans collectively fought for the company to make a comeback. When freezer aisles were finally restocked, one Kroger public relations rep said customers had vocal reactions, exclaiming “God is Good!” or “Amen!” So yes, it’s that good for costing $2.57 a pint. Tillamook Despite churning out cheese and other dairy products for over 100 years, Tillamook recently relaunched and rebranded itself into the ice cream competition, and quite successfully. It has a soft, fluffy texture, almost as if it’s been whipped, but doesn’t lose it’s creaminess. And a whole quart costs $4.99. Häagen-Dazs Häagen-Dazs will do in a pinch, and let’s be honest, it just sounds like something Nancy Pelosi would like. It’s also Ina Garten-approved. Being so creamy and thick, it just tastes expensive, and it’s usually $4 to $5 a pint. Pricey, but not Jeni’s pricey. Snicker Ice Cream Bar This winner may be surprising, but the Snickers ice cream bar, specifically the Snickers Dark ice cream bar, takes first place in the novelty frozen treat category. They’re only $4.19 for six at Walmart, and you can often find them for an even better price at Sam’s Club or Costco. This dark-chocolate bar, filled with peanut butter-chocolate ice cream, peanuts, and caramel, is everything you want in flavor and texture. Plus, you can eat it right out of the wrapper. No need to even get a scoop involved, Nancy. Make Your Own Ice Cream I would hope that if Pelosi has a $24,000 refrigerator, she also has an ice cream maker somewhere in that chef’s kitchen. Homemade ice cream is undoubtedly the most delicious and cheapest ice cream. At a time when we are all baking our own bread and cutting our own hair, making our own ice cream is on the horizon with warming months of social distancing approaching. There are countless easy recipes, and you can make as much as you want for pennies on the dollar. If all else fails and you’re still missing the $13/pint confection, try making Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream at home. Support Small Ice Cream Businesses Obviously Pelosi is in no real need of ice cream recommendations as we’ve just seen some of her most extravagant assets. But perhaps she can finally get around to doing what she’s stalled on for over a week and support American small businesses like her local ice cream shop. If she won’t give them a loan so they can make payroll, she could at least buy a scoop. Maybe even leave a tip. I’m sure they will even sell it to her by the pint to put in her safe of sorbet.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 7:30:32 GMT -6
Walter Ricciardi is a member of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) European Advisory Committee for Health Research. He also somehow is a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners for the United States of America, despite the fact that he is an Italian: www.euro.who.int/en/data-and-evidence/evidence-informed-policy-making/european-advisory-committee-on-health-research-eachr/committee-members/professor-walter-ricciardi-italyProfessor Walter Ricciardi graduated with a degree in medicine in 1986 and a doctorate in public health medicine in 1990from the University of Naples. He currently holds the title of Professor of Hygiene and Public Health at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome where he is also Director of the Department of Public Health and Deputy Head of the Faculty of Medicine. In addition to contributing to over 300 academic papers, primarily in the fields of Epidemiology, Health Services Research and Public Health Genomics, he is also Editor of the European Journal of Public Health, of the Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice and Founding Editor of the Italian Journal of Public Health.
Professor Ricciardi is also active in national health policy and is Chair of the Public Health Section of the Higher Health Council. In 2011 the Minister of Health of Italy appointed him as his representative in the State-Region Committee for the evaluation of the Italian National Health Service. Internationally he is a member of the European Commission expert panel on “Investing in Health” (EXPH), a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners of the United States of America, and has was elected President of the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) from 2010–2014.
Professor Ricciardi joined the EACHR in 2012.Professor Ricciardi is also an apparent fan of far left, overrated and overweight Michael Moore. Today he retweeted a Moore tweet that showed numerous individuals violently attacking an life-size model of Donald Trump. (The tweet has since been taken down but fortunately we took a screengrab before he did –
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 7:36:57 GMT -6
This did not go well...............
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 7:44:51 GMT -6
freebeacon.com/coronavirus/the-pelosi-recession/The Pelosi Recession Democratic obstruction will cause untold economic damage As another five million people flood the unemployment system, the country faces a classic whodunit: Who killed the U.S. economy? The novel coronavirus must bear some of the blame. Social distancing has pushed millions of consumers and producers into their homes. A temporary societal shutdown means a temporary economic contraction. But the length of the recession—whether the economy bounces back post-shutdown, or whether we lose another decade of growth—is as much about government as the conditions on the ground. Unlike the 2008 crisis, the current contraction is not a correction for malinvestment but the product of a nationwide decision to combat a deadly disease. That effort is led, and in many cases imposed, by government; it makes sense for the feds to pick up the tab. With a few exceptions, congressional Republicans have agreed with this analysis, working swiftly and aggressively to staunch the bleeding. Not an economic conservative to begin with, President Donald Trump has been particularly gung-ho, calling for another $2 trillion in stimulus spending before the ink on the first $2 trillion bill had dried. If you want to know how congressional Democrats are thinking about the crisis, though, just ask House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (S.C.). Brainstorming with over 200 members of the Democratic caucus, Clyburn admonished his colleagues with a line we suspect will become infamous: "This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision." His fellow Democrats were obviously listening. Few have been more unwilling to not let the crisis go to waste than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). She delayed passage of the last bailout bill by more than a week, floating a 1,400-page counter-proposal jam-packed with special handouts and diversity mandates. She has pushed tax cuts for blue-state billionaires and commended her colleagues for delaying Republican efforts to shore up the economy. Following her lead, Pelosi’s colleagues demanded bailouts be tied to a $15 minimum wage, a universal post-crisis paid family leave program implemented, and poured millions into patronage favorites like the Kennedy Center—which laid off its employees anyway, only to reverse course when it received backlash from the news media. Now, it’s deja vu all over again. Last week, Republicans tried to pour another $250 billion into the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program, a keystone of the coronavirus stimulus that gives small businesses forgivable loans to cover their payrolls. The program has been among the crisis's most successful and most heavily in demand—and was then in danger of running out. ADVERTISING Democrats demanded another $250 billion for hospitals and state and local government. When Republicans argued the details would take too long to sort out, Democrats blocked the clean bill. Pelosi even claimed there was "no data as to why we need" the added money. A week later, the PPP fund has officially run dry. Hundreds of thousands of small business owners now can't pay their employees, the first domino in a chain of economic disaster. This sort of brinksmanship has costs, as small business owners across the country are learning. In a crisis, time is money—and lives—lost. There is still time to avert the impending mass closures. But even if Democrats finally concede on the PPP, this is unlikely to be their last stunt. Pelosi has made clear that she has no problem gambling with the livelihoods of the American people. Over the next seven months, Joe Biden and congressional Democrats will work to pin the all-but-ensured economic downturn on President Trump. It might work—a recession can sink even a popular president's chances at reelection. But maybe voters will remember that for Democrats, their failing businesses and lost jobs represented not a tragedy, but an opportunity. Maybe it won't be remembered as Donald Trump's recession, but Nancy Pelosi's.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 8:47:06 GMT -6
Walter Ricciardi is a member of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) European Advisory Committee for Health Research. He also somehow is a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners for the United States of America, despite the fact that he is an Italian: www.euro.who.int/en/data-and-evidence/evidence-informed-policy-making/european-advisory-committee-on-health-research-eachr/committee-members/professor-walter-ricciardi-italyProfessor Walter Ricciardi graduated with a degree in medicine in 1986 and a doctorate in public health medicine in 1990from the University of Naples. He currently holds the title of Professor of Hygiene and Public Health at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome where he is also Director of the Department of Public Health and Deputy Head of the Faculty of Medicine. In addition to contributing to over 300 academic papers, primarily in the fields of Epidemiology, Health Services Research and Public Health Genomics, he is also Editor of the European Journal of Public Health, of the Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice and Founding Editor of the Italian Journal of Public Health.
Professor Ricciardi is also active in national health policy and is Chair of the Public Health Section of the Higher Health Council. In 2011 the Minister of Health of Italy appointed him as his representative in the State-Region Committee for the evaluation of the Italian National Health Service. Internationally he is a member of the European Commission expert panel on “Investing in Health” (EXPH), a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners of the United States of America, and has was elected President of the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) from 2010–2014.
Professor Ricciardi joined the EACHR in 2012.Professor Ricciardi is also an apparent fan of far left, overrated and overweight Michael Moore. Today he retweeted a Moore tweet that showed numerous individuals violently attacking an life-size model of Donald Trump. (The tweet has since been taken down but fortunately we took a screengrab before he did – Update: A few hours ago, former Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini called for Ricciardi’s resignation. Salvini said (translated): “He (Ricciardi) is insulting President Trump. Italian Government must dismiss him and apologize to the USA, which is helping Italy with millions of euros”. Dr. Ricciardi should never be on any Committee of the WHO and certainly should not be a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners of the United States of America. He should resign or be removed immediately for his retweet of the bigoted violent tweet from Michael Moore.
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 8:52:40 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 8:57:07 GMT -6
www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/19/exclusive-kevin-mccarthy-chinas-lies-democrats-gamesmanship-combine-to-harm-american-health-economy-in-coronavirus-crisis/Exclusive — Kevin McCarthy: China’s Lies, Democrats’ Gamesmanship Combine to Harm American Health, Economy in Coronavirus Crisis House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy told Breitbart News on Saturday a brutal combination of Chinese Communist Party lies and Democrat political gamesmanship led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have combined to inflict serious health and economic pain on the American people. In an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel, McCarthy lit into China for lying to the world about the virus thereby unleashing it upon the planet—and into Democrats particularly Pelosi for holding up economic aid for American workers and families. Pelosi continues to refuse to replenish the funds in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Small Business Administration (SBA) loan system that Congress already authorized on a near-unanimous basis last month after the funds have run out. President Donald Trump’s administration has already given out the original $350 billion in loans to small businesses allocated in the program, but Democrats at Pelosi’s direction are refusing to help more small businesses in need. “Understand what it is—we went into this economic crisis and remember why we are here. We are here because a virus came from China and China lied to the rest of the world,” McCarthy said. “Because of that, government asked small businesses to shut down. So we’re laying people off. How do we keep people working? How do we keep small businesses, those mom-and-pops that you know and love in your community? We created a program and what they would do is they would apply to their local banks, their credit unions, through fin-tech and others—they’d get two and a half times their expenses. They’d use 75 percent of that paying their employees, even if they’re home just pay them. Pay your rent. Pay your utilities. That becomes a grant. It’s very successful.” McCarthy noted the program has been a smashing success since it started since more than a million and half businesses have signed up and received funds. But Pelosi and her counterpart in the U.S. Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are refusing to add more money to the program as of now. Instead of helping struggling Americans, McCarthy noted, Pelosi is pushing for more big picture policy changes along the lines of what House Minority Whip Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) pledged when he said Democrats see the crisis as an opportunity to remake government in their vision. And, McCarthy added, she is doing it while appearing on late-night television comedy shows to showcase her extensive gourmet ice cream collection in her expensive freezer. “More than 1.6 million small businesses signed up and got money. We put out 14 years, the equivalency of 14 years worth—the SBA did—in 14 days,” McCarthy said. “Because it ran out of money, everybody voted for these bills, we said don’t change anything just add more money to it because small businesses need it. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said no. This is exactly what she did when we were doing the CARES Act bill, she came in and delayed it. Why? I was sitting in the room—because she wants to change election law. She wants Planned Parenthood funding. She wants the Green New Deal. She wants funding for sanctuary cities. This is why she tries to hold things up. Remember what the number three in her conference said, the Majority Whip Jim Clyburn. He said the coronavirus is an opportunity for them to restructure government in their view and that’s what she’s trying to do. She’s now holding small businesses across America—there are thousands of applications from small businesses in from across America, that are laying people off—she’s letting those businesses down while Nancy Pelosi is on late-night TV with a high-end refrigerator taking out gourmet ice cream I’ve never seen before with a sweater over shoulders not understanding what the average American is going through right now.” Pelosi continues to withhold the money for struggling Americans even though at least 15 members of her own conference have called on Congress to replenish the PPP funds. As such, McCarthy said, Pelosi is losing the confidence of the House Democrat conference—of which rank-and-file members clearly want to replenish the funds, even though Pelosi is resisting. “She is because she’s doing nothing but playing politics,” McCarthy said, when asked if Pelosi is losing the backing of her conference’s members. “We knew this fund was going to run out of money when it was first opened, so the administration smartly requested money more than a week. Mitch McConnell went to the floor with a one page bill, just putting more money in. Democrats came back to Washington just to object and they continue to object when I was in Washington last week to pass it along with Mitch McConnell. They said no. That’s outrageous that they continue to harm small businesses because that’s not where the American public is. They want to help these people keep their jobs. It’s the people you see every day. There are 22 million reasons why the Democrats should have said yes. Why are they hurting small businesses? They claim they’re the party of fairness. This isn’t fair. This isn’t about America. They’re playing pure politics as she always does, as Nancy Pelosi only wants to do.” Because of all of this, McCarthy argued, the American people have an opportunity at the ballot box in November to take the power away from Pelosi and the Democrats by electing a new House GOP majority to work with President Trump to help rebuild the American economy. To retake the House majority and retire Pelosi, Americans need to flip just 18 net seats from Democrat to Republican. There are 30 districts right now represented by Democrats that Trump won in 2016, and with him at the top of the ballot again in November—he was not on the ballot himself in the 2018 midterm elections when the Democrats took the majority making Pelosi the Speaker again—Republicans feel confident they can flip many of these seats. McCarthy said rejuvenating the United States is going to need a bold Republican majority since Democrats are proving they will obstruct the American economy in the middle of a crisis to push their leftist agenda. “Just think about what this country is going to need when we get through this virus and we open back up and the president has a very good plan for that,” McCarthy said. “For us to open this country back up and build this economy again, we know what the Democrats would do—they have never been able to build an economy like we were. The strongest economy in the world, they think it takes a magic wand. We need people who are willing to put people before politics, not politics every single time as Nancy Pelosi does. We need somebody who’s going to work with this president, who knows economics, who warned us about China when he was candidate Trump not President Trump.” McCarthy also noted that China’s “deception” about the virus has directly cost American lives, and combining that with the Democrats’ obstruction of American aid it is particularly damaging cocktail for struggling workers and families nationwide. “Think for one moment what China has done,” McCarthy said. “China’s deception has directly led to Americans’ death. Now we’re having the Democrats’ delay is directly leading to people losing their jobs and businesses being shut down. That’s outrageous that that could ever go forward. Every Democrat should stand up to Nancy Pelosi. They cannot stay silent on this. She has done it for two weeks straight. She did in the CARES Act. How many millions of more Americans were laid off because she kept playing politics?” Pelosi has used the crisis to try to further the Democrats’ agenda of fundamental changes to how elections are conducted, including a permanent shift to voting by mail and ballot harvesting which Democrats use in tandem to solidify control. She has also used it to push the left’s environmentalist agenda, the left’s open borders agenda, the left’s economic agenda, and other things on the Democrat Party’s political wish list. McCarthy said that her behavior—and the backup all House Democrats are giving her by going along with it—is not surprising since Clyburn let it slip what the Democrats really are after. What she should be focused on, he added, is confronting the virus and the economic distress the pandemic has caused. “These are the things they’re trying to do because it’s exactly what verbally her number three said, Clyburn,” McCarthy said. “They view this as an opportunity to restructure government in their view, instead of viewing this as an opportunity to help the safety and well-being of those who have the virus and those who are afflicted by this economy. That should be their focus. Why would you in the middle of a virus start holding up a bill that brings aid to you—to the American public—because you’re more concerned about an election in November? There are times to talk about that. Right now the only thing we should be focused on is the virus, defeating it, defeating it together, and building the economy.” McCarthy also said that the virus would have been contained in China had the Chinese Communist Party not lied to the world about it, citing a Southampton study. But when President Trump stepped up to bar flights from China, recognizing the threat as far back as January, McCarthy noted that Democrats like former Vice President Joe Biden as well as globalist institutions like the World Health Organization (WHO) criticized him for doing it. “Think about the ingenuity of what we’ve been able to do. Had China not lied to us, there’s a study out there by Southampton, 95 percent of this would have never happened—meaning it wouldn’t be in America,” McCarthy said. “Had Xi allowed, when President Trump asked to bring in our scientists and researchers, they could have contained this in China. But because they were lying about where it came from and everything else, they didn’t. Now thousands of people around the world have died because of it. Economies around the world have been crushed because of it. Remember when the president, when he shut down the flights from China, what did the World Health Organization do? They criticized him. What did Joe Biden do? He criticized him. Thankfully our president, President Trump, took action.” Just like when the president took action to protect Americans from the virus in its early days, McCarthy said Trump is now preparing the country to reopen in a responsible, safe, and scientific manner. Trump on Thursday at the White House alongside public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx rolled out a phased reopening plan for states—one that several states are already beginning—to get the country back to work now that the worst of the virus has passed. McCarthy also praised Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief Dr. Stephen Hahn and other officials in the Trump administration for speeding various potential treatments to market. “Now what we’re finding is this president is also taking very smart action, he’s providing the guidelines of what states need to open up instead of sitting back—he’s showing them what they need,” McCarthy said. “We now have an Abbott test that can give you an answer in 10 minutes. This president, long before the virus ever came, championed and brought through the House Right to Try. So now we’ve got new medicines coming on. You’ve got an FDA that is instead of putting up more bureaucracy has just knocked it down with Dr. Hahn. We’ve watched new testing coming through, saliva testing and others. There are new antibodies that have promising possibility. We’re further ahead on a vaccine than we have ever been in the process. It took us two years to get to a clinical trial after SARS. We are already in a clinical trial. Everything is being able to move. Then you watch [New York Democrat Gov. Andrew] Cuomo arguing about ventilators when he had 2,000 sitting there. New York is now sending them somewhere else because his numbers were not right. This president, and what I want to see in a time of crisis is that leadership. He’s been able to move through in the hotspots, when you look at testing and you look at per capita meaning by the individual in hotspots we are testing more than anywhere in the world including Italy and South Korea which everybody wants to talk about. This is the kind of leadership we’re seeing. The country is different in different areas. So other areas can open up.” The only state in the union that does not have a lockdown as of now is South Dakota—all other 49 states do. Gov. Kristi Noem, the GOP governor of North Dakota, has resisted calls to close her state. The virus has not hit South Dakota hard, but a meat processing plant in the state did have several cases. McCarthy noted that plant would have been open anyway even with a shutdown because it is an essential service, and praised Noem’s “leadership” in providing a different way of handling the crisis than all the other states that locked down. “When I saw those other leaders criticize Kristi Noem, if they sat for one moment and realized that if Kristi Noem shut that state down—and remember that state is not that large so there’s a lot of social distancing to start with, that plant would have still been open because it’s essential,” McCarthy said. “The leadership she’s taken—and so I’m looking forward to you talking her, she is a very smart governor in her leadership of how to deal with things.” Regarding reopening of the country, McCarthy said the president’s guidelines to states for a phased reopening are promising. White House “President Trump has laid out the guidelines so you can do it in a partial basis, maybe as more data comes there may be certain demographics about age that maybe you should stay home if you’re over 65 years old but there’s testing coming online so you can know if you already had it,” McCarthy said. “From a workforce you’re back in. The idea we could quarantine off somebody where there’s early warnings. There’s some wearables that are out there. Whoop has one, I was just talking to their CEO. It’s very interesting, you wear it to get all of your data about your health and sleep and everything else. They have one that could indicate you have symptoms before you show any symptoms so if you get a little warning stay home. There is a way we can open up this country and get the economy moving again and keep the health. What we want to do is open it up safely, and that’s exactly the leadership that President Trump has displayed.” With regard to China again, McCarthy said that the United States needs to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its actions. “We’d have to change the law to allow individuals to sue,” McCarthy said when asked if they should face justice in American courts for this. He also ripped China’s “medical monopoly” on the production of American medicines and medical supplies, saying America should bring those supply chains home. “But what we really ought to do to start out with is bring that supply chain back,” McCarthy added. “Why did we ever allow ourselves to get in a place where China has a medical monopoly on our ingredients or our pharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment like the masks, gloves and others. Watch what they did. They went and bought millions of them because they controlled 50 percent of the market because they knew it was coming while they were lying to the rest of the world. We should bring all the other countries and allies—move their supply chains out of China.” McCarthy said the historical ramifications and the impact of China’s lies will “in modern history” be “one of the worst situations killing the most people” with misinformation. “This will go down in history as one of the worst situations killing the most people by simply lying about what was going on,” McCarthy said. “In modern history, this will be one of the worst actions someone was able to take. The Chinese government, knowingly, when they were sitting there for those number of days lying to the WHO, controlling the WHO, where you have a person leading for the first time ever today who’s a non-physician and is just mouth piecing what China has said and saying it wasn’t contagious from person to person and we shouldn’t shut down. He released China and allowed all those people to go out from China all around the world, populating this virus while not allowing our people to come in. If they truly believed it came from the wet markets, would they ever allow them to open those back up? I believe the answer would be no but they have them open up again. If they truly believe it did not come from that lab, why wouldn’t they let others in to show it? Their sheer numbers of deaths in China we know are not true. I saw a report, article I read, where it said it could have been up to 43,000 people died in Wuhan itself. When you think about people criticizing the president because he’s bringing light to the World Health Organization that gave bad information to the entire world and now thousands of people are dying because he just wanted to listen to what China said. China has about a billion more people than we do. We supply them about $500 billion in there. What does China provide? About 10 percent of what we do, even though they have a much larger population.”
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 9:00:38 GMT -6
www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/19/eu-commission-president-issues-another-coronavirus-apology-bloc-crack/EU Commission Boss Issues Another Coronavirus Apology as Bloc Cracks European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has issued another apology to Italy over the European Union’s lack of solidarity during the Chinese coronavirus outbreak. Mrs von der Leyen stated in the European Parliament this week that she wanted to extend a “heartfelt apology” and said: “Too many were not there on time when Italy needed a helping hand at the very beginning.” The apology comes just weeks after she had another apology published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica entitled “I apologise, we are with you.” The EU leader then claimed that “Europe has now become the world’s beating heart of solidarity”, noting that EU countries had offered each other hospital beds and medical supplies. Von der Leyen also pushed the idea of a coronavirus “Marshall Plan” to deal with the economic fallout of the Chinese virus, saying: “We need massive investments to restart the economy, a European Marshall Plan. And it must be activated immediately.” One of the measures proposed to help Italy has been the use of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a bailout fund that gives loans to member-states. The ESM has seen massive resistance within Italy from Senator Matteo Salvini, however, who has criticised the measure as eroding the sovereignty of Italy and having adverse effects if it results in the country being forced to restructure debt. Members of the Five Star Movement (M5S), who form the current governing coalition with the leftist Democrats (PD), have gone as far as saying they will vote to bring down Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government if the ESM is used. This week, Senator Salvini argued that the Italian parliament should vote on whether or not to approve the use of the ESM before Prime Minister Conte meets with EU leaders, saying that any politician who meets with the EU without parliamentary approval was acting as an outlaw. The Italian public’s view and confidence in the European Union have sharply declined since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, with a recent poll showing that nearly half of Italians now believe their country would be better off out of the political bloc. Mrs von der Leyen has also come under fire from one of the EU’s most ardent supporters over her coronavirus response. Belgian MEP and noted europhile Guy Verhofstadt slammed President von der Leyen in the European Parliament on Thursday, saying: “It’s been weeks that we have been discussing this European Marshall Plan. My question is: what is the European Commission waiting for?” “Is she waiting for the European Council? Well, she might have to wait eight years then,” he said went on to add: “My message to the European Commission is: this has to stop. You have the right of initiative. Take your responsibility and come forward!”
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 9:52:33 GMT -6
Looks like the people are speaking here:
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 9:55:05 GMT -6
This was fun to watch:
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 9:57:58 GMT -6
Unfortunately for her, the polls disagree with her assessment: www.dailywire.com/news/pelosi-trashes-president-trump-calls-him-weak-leader-says-coronavirus-reponse-a-failurePelosi Trashes President Trump, Calls Him ‘Weak Leader,’ Says Coronavirus Reponse A ‘Failure’ Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blasted President Donald Trump as a “weak leader” on Fox News Sunday, claiming the Trump Administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been a “failure” — though she was unable to concoct an adequate on-the-fly response as to why she was still encouraging Californians to take part in holiday festivities in San Francisco even as travel and social distancing restrictions were in place. Pelosi has been desperate to reclaim the high ground this week after meeting with a landslide of criticism for blocking an additional $250 billion in funding for small businesses, designed to replenish the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program, a forgivable loan program that ran out of money in just two weeks. She’s also had difficult recovering from a series of television appearances defending the Democrats’ decision to block the funding, two of which took place in front of Pelosi’s pair of $10,000 SubZero refrigerators in her San Francisco mansion. Sunday marked her first appearance on Fox News’ signature weekly news program since 2017, and she used it to trash the president and smear protesters who are demanding the country reopen in order to save a stagnant economy that has 22 million Americans out of work. “Leaders — leaders take responsibility. So I said he’s a weak leader. He doesn’t take responsibility. He places blame — blame on others,” Pelosi told host Chris Wallace. “And that might have been OK before, but we cannot continue down a path that is, again I’ll come back to science, science, science, evidence, data on how we should go forward.” President Trump announced a tentative plan to reopen the economy last week, with assurances that his top medical advisors, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, were both on board, provided there is sufficient availability of coronavirus tests. Pelosi seized on the testing remark, however, to call Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic a “failure” — sort of. “But we’re way late on it and that is a failure. The president gets an F, a failure on the testing,” Pelosi added. “But Fauci — Dr. Fauci’s right. If it is done properly, it hasn’t been and I — I think when he puts in the ‘if it’s done’ is an admission that it hasn’t been done.” Governors, not the president, have been largely responsible for setting up testing sites and ensuring the availability of testing mechanisms, but there have been problems. Tests have been unreliable, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost weeks in handling tests because of contamination, and the World Health Organization’s master test was a failure at identifying cases of coronavirus. Now, however, states like Illinois do say they have the capacity to test any residents who request it (though most states are still requiring a doctor’s note). It’s also not clear how testing would necessarily improve coronavirus response. Without mandatory, continual testing and tracking of test subjects using an information dragnet — neither of which the U.S. government could Constitutionally require — “availability” and not “completed tests” may become the benchmark. Unfortunately for Pelosi, Chris Wallace was quick to point out that, even as the Trump administration moved to block travel to the United States from China, she was encouraging Californians to visit Chinatown in San Francisco and take part in Chinese New Year festivities — a party that defied social distancing suggestions in place at the time and could have put a number of California residents in danger.
That was different, Pelosi insisted. She was, she said, trying “to end the discrimination, the stigma, that was going out against the Asian-American community.”
.................................................. If Pelosi is so proud of her fighting "racism" against the Chinese in San Fran - why did she erase the video clip from her Twitter account?
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 11:25:31 GMT -6
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Post by soonernvolved on Apr 19, 2020 11:27:28 GMT -6
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