OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 8:51 AM PT – Monday, August 17, 2020
According to the
latest data from Johns Hopkins, New Yorkers are more than five times as
likely to die from COVID-19 than Floridians. One America’s John Hines
has more on this report.
Rep. Kristi Noem, R- S.D., left, Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., center, and Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., leave a meeting with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Capitol Hill on Thursday, June 2, 2011, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Here’s something you don’t hear every day: A state government has said, “Thanks, but no thanks” to money.
But that government isn’t headed by just any old politician — it’s Kristi Noem,Republican chief of South Dakota.
As noted by The Daily Wire, Kristi’s declined to accept Donald Trump’s August 8th-ordered $400 in extra weekly unemployment benefits.
She released a statement Friday, observing that, “despite significant [dysfunction] in Congress, President Trump continues to problem solve and provide great leadership during this recovery effort.”
And she appreciates the offer, but her state just doesn’t need it. Because every place ain’t New York:
“My administration is very grateful for the additional flexibility that this effort would have provided, but South Dakota is in the fortunate position of not needing to accept it. South Dakota’s economy, having never been shut down, has recovered nearly 80% of our job losses.”
About not having shut down, Kristi impressed a lot of working people when she refused to mandate a pandemic-propelled lockdown.
As some have observed, every area is different. South Dakota has its challenges, but overcrowding isn’t one of them.
Thus, she stood her ground back in April, despite criticism from “herd mentality” hecklers.
You may recall:
Kristi nailed the “role of government in a crisis situation”:
“My responsibility is to respect the rights of people, and the people who elected me. To manage our state operations in a way that reflects the realities of what we have here on the ground in our state. On the foundation of my principles, commonsense conservative values, and the principles that we hold dear in America, the facts, the science, and the data will guide our decision-making here in South Dakota.”
“The calls to apply a one-size-fits all approach to this problem in South Dakota,” she asserted, “is herd mentality, not leadership.”
Kristi made clear she believes in individual responsibility:
“Our Constitution ensures the citizen’s right is protected. I agree with the role of our government as set forth in our state and in our national constitution. I took an oath to uphold these constitutions. … The people themselves are primarily responsible for their safety. They are the ones that are entrusted with expansive freedoms – they’re free to exercise their rights to work, to worship, and to play – or to even stay at home, or to conduct social distancing.”
Back to her Friday statement, Noem pointed out SD’s been killin’ it where employment’s concerned:
“South Dakota is the only state in the nation that didn’t have extended benefits kick in because our insured unemployment rate has been the lowest in the nation. We have the third best housing construction market in the country. And many, many businesses are looking to relocate to South Dakota because of the decisions we made during the pandemic.”
Bottom line:
“South Dakota is open for business — that applies to our business owners and their employees.”
Nicely done.
“For those still needing help with unemployment benefits,” she added, “please visit dlr.sd.gov.”
As for the $400 beef-up, that’s 200 fewer clams than the previous COVID-related assist.
Last week, RedState’s Mike Ford explained the decrease in dough:
Having pointed out the most obvious and egregious Democrat faults, the President moved on to explaining the Executive Orders which…extend unemployment benefits at a rate of $400.00/week, $200.00 less than previous plan. This gets rid of the “stay home” incentive by making work more attractive.
South Dakota’s lucky to have largely escaped such worry. And residents are blessed to have Kristi Noem, who — evidently — guided the state wisely.
As of this writing, SD’s seen 10,118 total COVID cases, and only 172 deaths per million. By contrast, New York’s had 1,691 per. Even Alabama’s suffered 387per million.
Good job, Governor Kristi. And great job not taking money you don’t think you need.
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 7:09 AM PT – Monday, August 17, 2020
Yale University researchers may have changed the coronavirus testing game with a new method solely based on a person’s saliva.
The FDA recently issued emergency authorization for Yale’s SalivaDirect
method, which was developed in their School of Public Health. The new
method attempts to provide a less expensive, less invasive and simpler
way to test.
“The results that we were seeing
seeing for the saliva examples were even in some cases better than what
we we’re seeing in nasopharyngeal. These were COVID-confirmed patients
that we were initially testing, so they should have been testing
positive for SARS-CoV-2.”
— Anne Wyllie, PhD, Associate Research Associate of Epidemiology – Yale School of Medicine
SalivaDirect
testing became popular with its effectiveness in diagnosing
asymptomatic NBA staffers and players. Researchers found the testing
produced similar results to nasal swab tests, but came in less than
three-hours.
They also found saliva samples can remain stable in
prolonged periods of time in warmer areas. On top of that, the samples
are flexible enough to produce similar results with different chemical
compounds.
“And overall it’s faster, so it can really be scaled up
so more tests can be done and that is really gonna help to, you know,
ramp up testing,” explained Dr. Chantal Vogels, Postdoctoral Fellow at
the Yale School of Public Health. “It’s gonna be more scalable, it’s
gonna be more accessible and we’re just really exited about that.”
Researchers
don’t intend on commercializing their tests, which are estimated to
cost around $10 per test. They hope their new method can be used to help
struggling communities worldwide.
Portland protest turns violent, brutal assault caught on video
Violence erupted in Portland
late Sunday just blocks from the federal courthouse after the driver of
a pickup truck crashed, was reportedly pulled from the vehicle and
then brutally beaten by a mob after a confrontation with protesters.
Videos
that emerged from the scene were chilling. The man identified as the
driver could be seen getting punched, kicked and ordered not to leave in
the middle of a city street. The man in the video, at one point,
appeared dazed after the initial assault, but suffered the worst blow
when he absorbed a roundhouse kick to the side of the head.
Portland
police told Fox News in an email that officers responded to a report of
an injured person at Southwest Broadway and Southwest Taylor Street at
about 10:30 p.m.
Sgt.
Kevin Allen, a police spokesman, said reports indicate that protesters
"were chasing the truck before it crashed, and they assaulted the driver
after the crash."
He said responding officers "encountered a
hostile crowd and a squad from the Rapid Response Team responded to help
secure the scene while the investigation was underway."
One
of the videos posted to social media begins with the man on his knees
in the city street surrounded by a group of people. The man tries to get
up and someone yells, “You’re not leaving, bro,” and he gets pushed
back to the ground.
At
one point the man on the ground says he was not trying to hurt anyone,
and, while kneeling, absorbs several punches because the group was
unconvinced that he was telling the truth.
The crowd looks like
it's about to disperse, but that's when another individual takes a
running start and kicks the man in the head, which could be heard
slamming into the pavement, according to the video. GRAPHIC VIDEO WARNING
Andy
Ngo, a journalist who has been covering these protests, reported that
the man crashed his car and the “mob pulled him out & beat him
senseless in front of the passenger. He’s bleeding & unconscious. No
police."
Another reporter posted a video that purports
to show the driver earlier harassed by protesters and his female
passenger assaulted. Drew Hernandez reported that the driver sped off to
evade the protesters.
Portland
has seen 81 consecutive nights of unrest in the city after George
Floyd's death in police custody in May. While the protests for racial
justice and against police brutality are generally peaceful during the
day, drawing a wide swath of citizens, they have often turned violent at
night.
Nights of unrest that increasingly targeted the federal
courthouse prompted President Trump to dispatch U.S. agents to guard the
building in July, which reinvigorated Black Lives Matter demonstrations
and often ended in violent clashes.
Overnight
Saturday a riot was declared and police used crowd control munitions,
including smoke, to disperse a gathering outside a law enforcement
building.
Authorities said people had thrown "softball size"
rocks, glass bottles and other objects at officers. Two police officers
were treated at the hospital after being hit by rocks. Eleven people
were arrested.
Police told Fox News early Monday that the driver
was transported to the hospital with serious injuries and the incident
is under investigation.
"The animal who ran up and punched the man after he had already been
brutally beaten to the point of nearly losing consciousness has been
identified by 4Chan users as Keese Love, whose Facebook profile lists
him as a ramp agent at Portland International Airport. He also works as a
DJ in the evenings."
Joe Biden, Taylor Swift, members of Congress, and corporate media are embracing a bizarre conspiracy theory that President Donald Trump is having U.S. Postal Service mailboxes removed in an effort to obstruct mail-in voting in the upcoming presidential election. This hoax spread after pictures of local USPS boxes being removed went viral on social media.
“They’re going around literally with tractor trailers picking up mailboxes,” Biden said at a virtual fundraiser, according to reporter Holly Otterbein. “You oughta go online and check out what they’re doing in Oregon. I mean, it’s bizarre!”
According to an investigation by KATU, the White House has had nothing to do with the removal. The local USPS is simply replacing old boxes with new ones.
Postal Service spokesman Steve Doherty told Boston.com that removing the boxes is standard procedure when they become rusted, require paint, get vandalized, or simply need to be replaced. “These trucks are on the street daily,” Doherty said of the flatbeds seen hauling the mailboxes. “They’re part of our field maintenance fleet.”
The U.S. Postal Service has also been long mismanaged. Government reports during both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations have shown the USPS, which is supposed to be self-funded instead of receiving bailouts from Congress, has been overspending for years, largely on its oversized pensions. It has for years avoided dealing with its well-known financial problems.
This reality didn’t stop celebrities, politicians, and media figures from jumping aboard this latest anti-Trump conspiracy train. Former President Barack Obama took the opportunity to swipe at the current administration, not only for the USPS’s long history of mismanagement that persisted during Obama’s tenure, but also for Trump’s handling of the Wuhan virus.
Everyone depends on the USPS. Seniors for their Social Security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can't be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing a virus.
Taylor Swift, a once-apolitical artist who recently dove hard into partisanship and the culture war, went so far as to call the box removal a “calculated dismantling of USPS.”
“He’s chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power,” Swift tweeted.
Trump’s calculated dismantling of USPS proves one thing clearly: He is WELL AWARE that we do not want him as our president. He’s chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power.
Never Trumper Rick Wilson compared the “White House and Trump campaign connection to the USPS shutdown” to Watergate, saying, “This is too sweeping and organized to just be some random play.”
There is no USPS shutdown. There has been no change in USPS operations and there is nothing preventing the USPS from supporting elections via mail-in ballots. This is a crazy conspiracy that has gone mainstream among the left and media. pic.twitter.com/1cNJJLPT02
Ana Navarro, a so-called Republican strategist, Never Trumper, and commentator for mainstream outlets ABC and CNN, also perpetuated the conspiracy. Despite being paid by supposedly impartial “news” outlets CNN and ABC, Navarro is essentially a Democrat campaign surrogate, hosting a roundtable event for Biden on the importance of “making Donald Trump a one-term president.”
She also spread this conspiracy by posting pictures of USPS moving aging mailboxes with a caption suggesting moving a handful of mailboxes is part of some White House conspiracy to corrupt the 2020 election. It should be needless to say, but Manhattan and Portand are heavily Democrat areas. So even if replacing old mailboxes were an attempt to steal the election, those cities would be among the stupidest locations to try to carry out any such scheme. The amount of votes stolen would be easily backfilled by the legitimate votes cast in these heavily blue areas.
I’ve seen 2 posts today supposedly of @USPS mailboxes being removed. One in Manhattan, one in Portland. Given rhetoric coming out of WH, and Trump lackey Postmaster General who just decommissioned 671 mail-sorting machines, this is alarming. What in the hell is going on? pic.twitter.com/y7t76XuLKE
Other media figures embraced the anti-Trump hoax as well, including New Yorker writer Jane Mayer.
Anyone thinking Trump’s assault on the postal service is a rogue move needs to understand that Mike Duncan,Trump’s Postal Service Chairman is McConnell’s guy. He’s Led Senate GOP’s $100 Million Super PAC https://t.co/UMwgfKuoRx
I’m glad @USPS listened to my call and stopped the removal of mail collection boxes across Montana, which would potentially cut off Montanans’ access to critical postal services. But it’s not over—Postmaster DeJoy still owes us answers on why they were removed in the first place.
There are legitimate concerns about the reliability of conducting elections by mail, as Rep. Dan Crenshaw points out below. These real concerns are being exploited and conflated by Democrats, however, with the longstanding issue of USPS financial mismanagement, which is not Trump’s fault and is separate from concerns over conducting elections remotely.
The real concern is largely not that the USPS can’t handle mail, it’s that routing elections through mail expands the possibilities for election corruption by making ballots more available to people who are not U.S. Postal Service workers.
Joe thinks you can’t tell the difference between absentee voting and universal mail-in voting.
Absentee voting is safe and secure. If you requested an absentee ballot, you should use it.
Universal mail-in voting is vulnerable to abuse and mistakes.
To read more debunking of the multiplying fanatical claims that it’s Trump who wants to use USPS to rig the 2020 election, rather than the Democrats making actual election tampering far more likely by pushing for mail-in voting, check out this article.
Joe Biden’s selection this week of Sen. Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate clarifies the stakes at the ballot box this November. It accentuates the fault lines in the nation’s cold civil war between the Americanists, defenders and preservers of the American regime and way of life, and the civilizational arsonists, those who fan the insurrectionist flames now engulfing America’s urban corridors and hope to abet national decline.
Many would have us believe that Biden and Harris are both positioned squarely within the ever-shrinking faction of Democratic moderates. Perhaps this is true when one compares their political positions with those of the party’s out-and-out socialist flank, led by the likes of Soviet Union-honeymooning curmudgeon Sen. Bernie Sanders and economically illiterate “it girl” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But within the intellectual confines of reasonable, pro-Western, pro-America politics, the Biden-Harris ticket evinces the radicalization of a major political party.
Suffice it to say this is not the Democratic Party of tax-cutting cold warrior John F. Kennedy—or even Bill “Abortion Ought To Be Safe, Legal and Rare” Clinton. In his opportunism, Biden has abandoned, over the course of his presidential bid, many of his long-held stances. He has forsaken his erstwhile support for the Hyde Amendment, which has long barred the federal use of taxpayer funds to subsidize elective abortions. He has publicly flirted with endorsing the elimination of the Senate filibuster, which he adamantly supported over the entirety of his nearly four-decade senatorial career. He supports reinstituting the expired, feckless national ban on the cosmetically amorphous and technically undefinable subclass of popular semiautomatic weapons that leftists refer to as “assault weapons.” He supports a new capitulatory nuclear accord with the Iranian mullacracy that is the world’s number one state sponsor of jihad, and he supports a mass amnesty for essentially every illegal alien. His proposed climate plan is estimated to cost a jaw-dropping $2 trillion.
Clearly, the Biden-Sanders unity task force, which helped craft the Democratic Party’s official platform this year, is paying dividends.
As for Harris? Harris’ presidential bid fanned out early because even the Democratic electorate was able to see through her deep cynicism, constant shapeshifting and comical desire to perpetually shift her stance and rhetoric to appease the wokest of the woke blue-checkmark Twitterati. In the course of doing so, Harris flirted with a gun-grabbing executive order, directed at least toward so-called assault weapons but possibly encompassing all semiautomatic weapons—so self-aggrandizing and reckless as to make King George III blush from the grave. She briefly espoused support for outright banning private health insurance—something not even Britain or Canada, oftentimes the left’s idyllic models for health reform in America, have ever seriously considered. She has openly stated a belief that illegal aliens are not, or at least should not be considered, criminals—a stance amounting to full-on support for terminating borders and, by extension, the concept of the nation-state as it has existed in the West since at least the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Her nakedly opportunistic flip-flop on the credibility of Biden’s myriad sexual accusers is a proverbial knife in the backs of actual sexual assault survivors, whose cause will be set back by her tunnel-visioned, Machiavellian lust for political power at all costs.
A Biden-Harris administration would operate in thrall to the Black Lives Matter and antifa radicals currently melting down the streets of America’s leading cities. It would sell out America to its archfoes such as China, Russia and Iran, and it would accelerate the Balkanization and cultural malaise now afflicting every level of our beleaguered social fabric.
A vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, in short, is a vote to hasten American decline.
For Americanists who still believe in the moral primacy of the Founding Fathers-era vision, the supremacy of the rule of law and the integrity of the nation-state, there is only one logical vote this November. And Biden-Harris it is not.
Article by Michael Reagan with Michael R. Shannon in Newsmax
Nothing 'Systemic' About Avoiding Responsibility
America doesn’t suffer from "systemic racism."
America suffers from systemic irresponsibility.
A lack of responsibility aided and abetted by therapeutic, leftist government.
The Heritage Foundation's multimaedia news organization, The Daily Signal, recently analyzed a report from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress titled "The Demise of the Happy Two-Parent Home."
The numbers are shocking and prove individual decisions determine
one’s outcome in life. Not "systemic racism" or some other personal
responsibility solvent.
The foundation that individual decisions are based on is cultural
values and that is where the problems begin. As values erode or are
trashed by the prevailing secular culture, the result ripples
dangerously through the population.
"The report exhaustively presents data showing the shocking collapse
of marriage and traditional family in America and then explores possible
explanations for why it has happened.
"In 1962, 71% of women ages 15-44 were married.
"By 2019, this was down to 42%. In 1962, 5% of women ages 30-34 had never been married. By 2019, this was up to 35%.
"And the percentage of births to unmarried women has risen from 5% in 1960 to 40% in 2018."
The demographic breakdown of those ominous figures explains much of what is ailing and attempting to destroy our nation today.
The Center for Equal Opportunity reports, "Late last year, the final
data for 2018 were published . . . For all racial and ethnic groups
combined, 39.6% of births in the United States were out-of-wedlock. For
blacks, the number is 69.4%; for American Indians/Alaska Natives,
68.2% (Native Hawaiians/Other Pacific Islanders were at 50.4%); for
Hispanics, 51.8%; for whites, 28.2%; and for Asian Americans, a paltry
11.7%."
Those figures alone explain the different economic outcomes among
demographic groups in the USA. Not "systemic racism" or "white
privilege."
Two–parent privilege is the most important factor in a young child’s life.
Yet big government encourages irresponsible lifestyles by subsidizing
dysfunction. The Daily Signal again, "The report examines several
possible factors, a major one being the dramatic growth in the welfare
state supporting female heads of household. According to the report,
'The value of the safety net for single-mother families is 133% higher
today than in 1940, and 56% higher than in 1960.'"
That is the government undermining personal values at the expense of those children’s and the nation’s future.
The three keys to success are simple and the formula was offered by a
scholar with the leftist Brookings Institution named Ron Haskins:
"American adults who follow three rules— finish high school; get a
full-time job; and wait until at least age 21 to get married and have
children — have a 2% chance of being poor and a 75% chance of being a
middle-class wage earner."
Proving it’s not the system blocking progress for minorities in the United States.
The corporate media is minimizing FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith’s guilty plea to doctoring evidence that underlies the Russian collusion hoax, and Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway knows why.
“The media are kind of downplaying it and acting like it’s not a big deal. And that’s understandable because they were implicated in this as well,” Hemingway said on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “In fact, they were some of the worst offenders in perpetrating this collusion hoax on the American people. The last thing they want is for anyone to be held accountable. They’re trying to make sure this story goes away as quickly as possible.”
"Now that we actually have our first example here of criminal wrongdoing, the media are kind of downplaying it and acting like it's not a big deal. And that's understandable because...they were some of the worst offenders in perpetrating this collusion hoax" -@MZHemingwaypic.twitter.com/laT9n82Hca
In an interview on Fox News’s “Special Report With Bret Baier” on Friday, Hemingway explained that Clinesmith’s guilty plea is significant because it is “the first indication of some measure of accountability” for the Russian collusion hoax in 2016.
“At the end of the day, not a single American was found to have colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, but now we have the first indication of some measure of accountability for the people who perpetrated this false theory they did so much damage to the Republican president and his voters,” Hemingway said.
"Not a single American was found to have colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, but now we have the first indication of a measure of accountability for the people who perpetrated this false theory that did damage to the Republican president and his voters" @MZHemingwaypic.twitter.com/GbTe0BSeGg
Hemingway elaborated in her interview with Carlson, saying that this criminal act was a “conspiracy” specifically directed at President Trump and Carter Page, one of the advisers for the Trump campaign.
“This is the beginning of the possibility that people will be held accountable for the conspiracy to target the Trump campaign through an illegal campaign to spy on Trump, on the Trump campaign and the Trump administration, to criminally leak about them, to doctor evidence,” Hemingway said.
“This should never happen to anyone. And, you know, everyone’s pointing out that … today we’re talking about this one guy who actually doctored evidence. But in that court document today, it also showed that the FBI actually knew the entire time that Carter Page was an operational contact of the CIA. They withheld that in all of their spy warrants. And that is a really big problem,” Hemingway added.
The Contested Election Narrative Solidifies: Part 1
Over the course of any election season, there are surprises and
moments of outrage that test our expectations of what acceptable
behavior is. We shock each other’s consciences and blame the other side
for their lack of decorum. Even knowing that, what the mainstream media
have done in the past few days is drastically, almost absurdly,
irresponsible. There is a solemnity to their duty, and they refuse it
here in these potentially revolutionary times. When you witness the
degree to which widespread misinformation was propagated by journalists
as it relates to the United States Postal Service, it serves as a marker
to you that things might not be OK after all.
An
ongoing and decade-plus long battle between right-wing voter integrity
and left-wing ballot expansion activists, detailed pre-COVID by
mainstream publications covering the expanded number in state election
law challenges, has resulted in widespread on-the-ground and narrative
wins for the Left. How do I know this? America, again before COVID, had
essentially conceded that it would no longer have an Election Day. That
narrative matured with assistance from each power center of the Left:
bare-knuckle partisan politicos like Barack Obama, celebrity activists
like Tom Hanks, and one-sided “news” articles preparing us to be unable
to know election results within typically expected timeframes.
A
second narrative then comes into view from there, one my few readers
(did I mention they were noble?) may remember from a few columns ago.
That having established that advantage, Stacey Abrams and other
activists were now pushing to brand any resistance to
longstanding left-wing ballot expansion efforts as illegitimate election
tampering. Where we’re now headed is not only widespread acceptance of
those two narratives, but a third: that absent cash infusions for the
Postal Service and a pause or abandonment of the ongoing reform efforts
underway, Donald Trump is inappropriately interfering with America’s
election and any victory will be immediately suspect.
This is important to remember because that third narrative has,
like any good conspiracy theory, spread like wildfire and become gospel
around the country. As the DNC kicks off, we are about to be subject to
four days of conspiracy over the Postal Service that will magnify and
solidify the misinformation and outrage into a cardinal understanding in
the popular imagination. It’s what the press would call red meat if it
were capable of embarrassment. The outcome will be half of the country
primed in advance of the election to refuse the results.
What you will not hear during the DNC is that the removal of
mail-sorting machines was part of a plan previously approved by USPS’
outgoing leadership. Nor that the letters sent to states warning them of
delays were drafted before the appointment of the new supposedly
partisan Postmaster General, or that they were an attempt to make it more likely
that the elections went smoothly, not less. In fact, the Postal Service
typically coordinates with election officials in each state, and the
detailed and widespread warnings this time around were in response to
the challenges the service faced in managing through COVID and the
primaries.
We are likely now converging around the issue over
which our contested election will be so. A Russia 2.0 even. That’s the
more serious point here, where we’ve now arrived. We can debunk the
histrionics you’ll see this week from the DNC around this issue, but it
won’t matter. Remember now that these are dangerous hours.
President Donald Trump recently took a monumental step toward
permanently plugging gaps in the medical supply chain that became
evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. The “Buy American”
executive order that he signed will ensure that other nations cannot
have the opportunity to deny us life-saving products in a time of need.
Medicines and medical supplies such as masks, gloves, goggles and
ventilators are essential for the life and well-being of Americans, and
we must have a domestic supply of them for the sake of national
security.
However, 90 percent
of U.S. prescriptions are filled with generic medicines, and the
majority of generic ingredients are sourced overseas, especially China
and India. According to the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research,
72 percent of manufacturers that supply pharmaceutical ingredients to
the USA are located overseas — with 13 percent of them based in China.
In April, China confiscated over 89 million
poor-quality face masks and 418,000 pieces of protective gear that were
exported across the globe. In North America, alone, Illinois spent $17 million on masks from China that were recalled in other states, Missouri recalled 48,000 masks, and Health Canada issued a recall
of KN95 respirators because they “pose a health and safety risk to end
users.” It’s like having a bullet-proof vest made of nylon — utterly
worthless.
As a physician anesthesiologist, I have placed breathing tubes
in too many patients with COVID-19 and attached them to breathing
machines, a life-line for them, in hopes that their body can fight off
the infection that has ravaged them. I need to know that while trying to
save their lives, I will have the right mask that will protect me when I
am within inches of their nose and mouth, exposed to billions of
invisible viral particles. As a single mother, raising an 8-year old
daughter, I cannot jeopardize my safety with shoddy personal protective
equipment. Nor can the million-plus frontline workers and
first-responders who have been called to care for sick Americans in
their time of need.
Complicating matters further, a New York Times investigation
found that some Chinese companies are using a controversial
government-sponsored program to satisfy demand for personal protective
equipment (PPE) that experts say often puts people to work against their will.
The program sends Uighurs and other ethnic minorities into factory and
service jobs. Their labor is part of the supply chain, and some of the
PPE they produce has ended up in the United States and other countries. I
shouldn’t have to worry about the risk of wearing a shoddy mask made
with slave labor. Why not create jobs for Americans and reduce
unemployment while at the same time protecting the frontline workers?
That’s exactly what our president is doing. The “Buy
American” rules direct the Department of Health and Human Services to
use the Defense Protection Act to procure essential medicines and other
equipment from suppliers here in the USA. It also removes some of the
regulatory barriers to domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing, giving
American producers priority during the regulatory review process.
We need this type of leadership. We need to invest in American
companies, like the deal the Trump administration recently announced
with Eastman Kodak to manufacture pharmaceuticals. The company will
receive a $765 million loan
to launch a pharmaceuticals division. The loan is the first of its kind
under the Defense Production Act that allows the government to direct
private industry to produce weapons, vehicles, and other material for
war and emergencies.
As President Trump stated, we must bolster
the security of the U.S. health system and bring supplies of drugs
“home, where they belong.”
Move over, Russia. The latest conspiracy theory about election stealing is that President Trump is “dismantling” the US Postal Service as a way to keep people from mailing in their ballots and suppressing the vote. This is a stupid theory for so many reasons, but here are two: One, nothing stops people from dropping their ballots at an official collection box at a Board of Elections or other government building, which is preferable anyway, and, two in-person voting will be available in every state, including California.
Of course, the Democrats are promoting this theory as a way to both defend a bloated bureaucracy and to convince voters that they can’t trust the results of the election should Trump win. Of course, if Biden were to win they would claim that Trump’s nefarious plot was foiled and obviously the results are valid.
As part of the rush to mania, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to Twitter Sunday to urge her caucus to come back to Washington and save the USPS – and retirees’ Social Security checks – from this relentless assault.
Of course, she’s not calling on the House to return to vote on anything having to do with pandemic unemployment.
She then tweeted a link to what she called a letter to her colleagues, but which is actually a press release. In it, she makes an absolutely false claim designed only to scare people:
The Postal Service is a pillar of our democracy, enshrined in the Constitution and essential for providing critical services: delivering prescriptions, Social Security benefits, paychecks, tax returns and absentee ballots to millions of Americans, including in our most remote communities.
Alarmingly, across the nation, we see the devastating effects of the President’s campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters….
Like mind-numbed sheep, some of her colleagues blindly retweeted Madame Speaker’s assertion:
There’s just one problem. The Social Security Administration hasn’t mailed benefit checks for nearly 10 years, as Matt Whitlock of the NRSC pointed out:
A June 11, 2010 ABC News article announced the shift, which also impacted veterans’ benefits, railroad retirement, and other benefits. I’ve quoted a great deal of the piece here because… well, just read on. You’ll understand why.
On Monday the Obama administration will announce that all payments from the government will now be made to consumers electronically….
Americans receiving payments for Social Security, unemployment insurance, veterans benefits, railroad retirement, and government benefits will now find the money automatically deposited into their personal bank accounts. Americans without bank accounts can get paid using the Treasury Department’s Direct Express Debit MasterCard program.
Why the shift to direct deposits? Two reasons: one, it will be easier and faster for consumers to get paid and, two, it will save taxpayers money – an estimated $303 million over the first five years and about $120 million each year after that.
For instance, despite repeated attempts to get recipients to convert to electronic payments, the Treasury Department still mails out more than 136 million benefit checks each year. Now, as part of President Obama’s effort to eliminate waste and modernize government for taxpayers, that will change with Monday’s announcement of a complete shift to direct deposits.
“[The] announcement is a win-win for the American public because it makes government more convenient and cost-effective while generating significant savings for the country,” said Office of Management & Budget director Peter Orszag. “This is precisely the type of smart, streamlined improvement that this administration is committed to making across government to boost efficiency and modernize how we do business.”
While savings of a few hundred million dollars a year might sound impressive, though, remember that just last month the government ran up $135 billion in red ink.
Perhaps it’s just me, but it was really difficult to determine where the “reporting” ended and where OMB Director Orszag’s quote began.
In any event, Pelosi was definitely around when that major change took place. She couldn’t have been confusing it with benefit checks in her home state of California, since those are paid electronically – loaded onto a debit card – as well. Being such a feather in the Obama administration’s cap, Pelosi should have remembered that.
Don’t count on any mainstream news organizations calling Pelosi, et al., out on their disinformation.
And, heads up – Pelosi is calling on her colleagues to host a “Day of Action” at their local post offices Tuesday, presumably before returning to Washington:
To save the Postal Service, I am also calling upon Members to participate in a Day of Action on Tuesday by appearing at a Post Office in their districts for a press event. In a time of a pandemic, the Postal Service is Election Central. Americans should not have to choose between their health and their vote.
The Postal Service is Election Central? Frightening in the extreme.
All across America, little girls of alternatively Tamil and
Afro-Caribbean descent, depending on which is most politically useful at
the moment, who have been endlessly told by unspecified haters that
they can never be nominated to be vice president, were inspired at
Kamala Harris' selection by whoever selected her on behalf of Grandpa
Badfinger. Yes, if they hook up with a powerful married Democrat man,
that initial connection can fuel their rise to power too.
Take
that, all you modern-day Bull Connors (Connor was a Democrat, but
shhhhhhh)! "I won't cotton to them little girls of alternatively Tamil
and Afro-Caribbean descent, depending on which is most politically
useful at the moment, thinkin' they can be vice president someday," they
drawl as they twirl their mustaches. Well, Kamala showed all the
haters. Girls of that oddly specific demographic can be nominated to be
vice president, and let's take it one step further – they don't even
have to hook up with a powerful married Democrat man and fuel their rise
to power via that initial connection to do it! Well, sure Kamala did,
and so did the ethnically uninteresting Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit,
but those little girls can do it themselves. Well, maybe if they are
Republicans.
And speaking of Sarah Palin, it's great to see that it's once again bad to criticize a woman running for vice president.
Now, criticizing Kamala (pronounced "i wil pr?' nouns h?r nam ene wa i dam wel plez")
Harris has been officially declared racist and cisgender and sexist, as
well as sexist, cisgender, and racist, by The New York Times, all of
pinko Twitter, and the Fredocons,
so we better not criticize her. Got that? No criticism. You must just
sit back and let the tsunami of excitement created by the nomination of
this avaricious grasper wash over you.
Can't you feel the excitement? It's exciting! We know, because
the media told us that people are thrilled that Gropey J's fickle finger
of failure fell upon Kamala. And that she's a "pragmatic moderate."
And, again, that no one can criticize her, because if you do, then you
are all the horrible -ist and -phobe things that they have already been
calling you for years. I'm not sure what they think we have to lose; if
you cry wolf long enough, don't be shocked if we shrug when a hirsute
Lon Chaney, Jr. shows up doing the mambo to the dulcet tones of Warren Zevon.
Except
we cons will say whatever we want about her, including but not limited
to providing commentary on her cheesy debut into the world of politics.
And pointing out her history is not just mean. Her history is indicative
of her pattern of behavior, and when the purported president is one
broken hip away from 25th Amendmentville, everything about her matters.
The fact is that she has hiked her way along the cursus honorumbybeing as figuratively accommodating toCalifornia
tech zillionaires and 'Frisco limo libs as she apparently was literally
to Willie Brown. We're told that's not supposed to matter, but it does
matter. And we're going to talk about it, whether or not the lib blue
checks start literally shaking.
Now, making this obvious point gets labeled "misogyny."
It's unclear how you demonstrate hatred for women by observing that a
woman got a career kickstart by making a play for another woman's man.
Of course, no woman has ever talked bad about another woman for getting
ahead thanks to her, um, versatility. Women love ambitious home wreckers
and never, ever speak ill of them, according to important and smart
elite people who have apparently never met a woman.
Others point
out that no one would say this stuff about a man, but no one can
identify a man it would apply to. We conservatives do regularly make
reference to the satyriasis of Democrat icon John F. Kennedy, if that's
any help. Apparently, that's not sexist. And at least we aren't hitting
Kamala for having a confirmed kill like Democrat icon Teddy Kennedy, and
we won't be as long as Oldfinger's newly hired food taster does his
job.
It's odd that we are supposed to ignore bad behavior unique
to women in the name of abolishing sexism, yet we are also supposed to
celebrate the unique uniqueness of people with cervixes. Grrrrls are
powerful and wonderful because they are grrrrls, but if you observe that
they can also be bad in ways men generally aren't, well, that's sexism
because reasons and shut up.
No wonder this SJW stuff is a punchline. Like all leftism, it
clashes with lived experience and requires a conscious capitulation to
an agenda over what you see with your own eyes. Some women are hussies.
They just are, and all the Helen Reddy anthems
in the world are not going to make normal people unknow that. Yet
liberals are happy to submit to the giddy joy of denying reality.
Rejecting the truth is their offer of solidarity to their pagan deity, a
symbol of their commitment to wokeness. As a result, we're now getting
people explaining at us with all seriousness that sometimes 2 + 2 = 5, and also that Kamala Harris is a "pragmatic moderate."
That's why conservatives prefer to take people as individuals. But
individuals have individual hopes and dreams and priorities, and that
does not work for the Left. The Left wants people in boxes, in useful
roles, trapped playing a part designated for them by their confluence of
genes instead of the content of their character. Kamala Harris was
picked because she checked boxes, and the same people who think it was
important that her relatives came from Africa, or India, or wherever,
think her cervix status is important too. None of it is. Not at all. But
what is important is she has a track record of naked ambition and that
she is using leftist tyranny as her hobby horse to ride to power. She is
a terrible risk to all of us who love freedom, and we're going to say
so no matter how many memos the Left circulates announcing that we're
not allowed to.
By the way, the first female vice president and president will
be Republican. And if you want an exceptional GOP candidate to support
for Congress, but live in some Democrat cesspool, try Lauren Boebert in Colorado.
Her pro-America, pro-God, and pro-gun agenda has exempted her from the
be nice to girls rule that got re-imposed the other day, so she needs
you.
