Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Kirk: If Delaying Ukraine Aid Is Impeachable, Is Pelosi Delaying American Aid Impeachable Too?
Kirk: If Delaying Ukraine Aid Is Impeachable, Is Pelosi Delaying American Aid Impeachable Too?
Kirk: If Delaying Ukraine Aid Is Impeachable, Is Pelosi Delaying American Aid Impeachable Too?
Thanks to COVID-19, free time for many of us now consists of activities of the homebound sort, including productive ones like catching up with those novels I always swore I would read (I’m focusing on Virginia Woolf and P.G. Wodehouse’s non-Jeeves books at the moment) and less productive ones like watching old NFL games uploaded to YouTube (mostly caught up on the 1998 Vikings season, everyone).
Reading political Twitter counts as one of the few in-between ones. Yes, I see plenty of brainless rants — this is mostly what Twitter is for, after all — but I also see stuff like Charlie Kirk’s thinking-man-emoji tweets.
If you’ve never paid attention to the Turning Point USA founder’s Twitter feed, you’re missing out. In the thinking-man-emoji tweets, he basically lists a few facts inconvenient to American liberaldom and then poses a question about it. He then adds one of those emojis with a guy stroking his chin as if he’s thinking.
It’s family fun for everyone, particularly when fun for this member of a family involves tracking down illegally uploaded 1996 Jacksonville Jaguars games on video streaming sites.
That fun is necessary in a world where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held up a COVID-19 relief bill not once but twice.
TRENDING: Lifelong Democrat Voter Says 'That Streak Will End in Nov.' After Pelosi Stunt on COVID Relief Bill
Could that be impeachable? You laugh, but Kirk has a good argument for why it could be.
“This is your daily reminder that Nancy Pelosi impeached President Trump for allegedly withholding aid from Ukraine,” he tweeted Tuesday.
“Democrats have blocked a Coronavirus relief package twice now … So should she be impeached for withholding aid from American citizens?”
This is your daily reminder that Nancy Pelosi impeached President Trump for allegedly withholding aid from Ukraine
Democrats have blocked a Coronavirus relief package twice now
...So should she be impeached for withholding aid from American citizens?
18.5K people are talking about this
Good point.
And by the way, it’s why she withheld that aid, which he also addressed in another similar tweet on Monday:
Nancy Pelosi's virus bill is filled with an insane grab bag of Democrat priorities:
—$15/hr minimum wage
—Same day voter registration
—ZERO ID requirements for mail-in ballots
—Automatic extensions for immigrant work visas
What does that have to do with fighting this virus?
36.1K people are talking about this
This is only part of what Pelosi’s grab-bag, introduced over the weekend, consisted of, however.
The bill would have eliminated “a minimum of $10,000 of federal and private student loan debt for each indebted borrower.”
It would have mandated all airlines that took bailout money — which, let’s face it, which means all airlines — “offset their carbon emissions and reduce their overall emissions by 50 percent by 2050.”
It would have forced companies that accepted bailout money to disclose the “number and dollar value invested with minority-and-women owned suppliers … including professional services (legal and consulting) and asset managers, and deposits and other accounts with minority depository institutions, as compared to all vendor investments.”
Do you think that Nancy Pelosi's COVID bill delayed relief to the American people?
There was $11 billion for a Postal Service bailout. Another $35 million for the Kennedy Center in D.C.. There were pro-organized-labor positions. All of this was unnecessary — and included.
All of this was why Pelosi held up the most important relief bill in a generation — a relief bill that had nothing to do with a market correction but instead a problem extrinsic to the economy.
And yet, holding up money to Ukraine was apparently an impeachable problem, something that we needed to spend months of our national political life on just so we could brand President Donald Trump with a scarlet “I.”
Keep in mind, we owed Ukraine nothing. In fact, we gave them just that during the Obama administration, at least when it came to military assistance. Congress felt it useful to delay that aid, and Trump felt delaying that aid to help Ukraine was also useful. The only reason he eventually had to release it, in fact, was a law that required him to do so.
Was Donald Trump delaying the aid for political reasons? This is what Nancy Pelosi was doing. Neither succeeded at getting what they wanted.
This, may I remind you, was something that barely resolved itself a few months ago. That feels like forever ago, I know, but there you go.
There’s a Charlie Kirk tweet for that, too:
A Timeline:
12/18—Trump impeached
01/10—Pelosi agrees to send Impeachment Articles to the Senate, 24 days later
01/11—First China Virus death occurs
Imagine if the Senate spent January dealing with the virus instead of impeachment
How many lives could have been saved?
3,257 people are talking about this
Thinking-man-emoji indeed.
For now, it appears Congress is going to go into recess, which means a bit more of my entertainment will slip away. That, in fact, is the only reason Pelosi’s delay tactics didn’t get me completely apoplectic. That said, I would have preferred the 1996 Jaguars season.
Was it impeachable? No.
Horrible, yes.
That said, they believe in impeachment for delaying money, so why shouldn’t they face it? Of geese and ganders, right?
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Trump Signs Coronavirus Aid Package with Paid Sick Leave, Free Testing
“President Trump on Wednesday signed into law a multibillion-dollar emergency aid package aimed at helping Americans impacted by the coronavirus,” Morgan Chalfant reports in The Hill.
The bipartisan measure, resulting from negotiations last week between the Trump Administration and Congress, “includes provisions offering paid leave benefits for Americans, bolstered unemployment benefits and free diagnostic testing for the virus.”
Click here to read more.
“Americans know how to rally against an enemy. Our nation was established on the principle that nothing can break us; no force is strong enough to withstand our undying fervor to preserve freedom and enjoy the lives that we choose to lead. Once again, Americans are coming together to defend the nation against a common threat,” Charlotte Pence Bond writes in The Washington Times.
“In what can only be described as a moment of unconscious self-parody, the media pretended not to understand why Trump would refer to the virus in geographic terms—as if they’d never heard of the Spanish Flu, West Nile Virus, Ebola, Zika, Lyme Disease, or the many other diseases named for their places of origin. As if they haven’t been doing the same thing for months,” John Daniel Davidson writes in The Federalist.
“Through a series of lies, blunders and cover-ups, the communist government of China has intensified the spread of the novel coronavirus . . . After decades of unethical trade practices and human rights violations, the coronavirus crisis should be the final straw against China’s case for global leadership,” Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) writes in Fox News.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Monday, March 16, 2020
Coronavirus By The Numbers; It’s Not Nearly As Bad As The Press Wants You To Believe
Coronavirus By The Numbers; It’s Not Nearly As Bad As The Press Wants You To Believe
Coronavirus By The Numbers; It’s Not Nearly As Bad As The Press Wants You To Believe
As I wrote in a previous piece, sometimes what might appear to be a
huge medical challenge such as the Coronavirus when analyzed more
closely, is really a logistical fight. This will be especially true in
the development, manufacture and distribution of test materials and
equipment. This is a fight more suited to the private sector than the
Center For Disease Control, as has already been most ably demonstrated
by our allies, the Republic of (South) Korea.
Read: Opinion: Beating the Corona Virus Will Be More of a Logistical Fight Than a Medical One
These
United States will ultimately and most assuredly win this fight. Once
fully ramped up, our ability to put large amounts of just about
anything, where it is most needed is second to none. Which brings us to a
point made by my good friend and colleague Nick Arama who notes that
once we flood the zone with test kits, the number of confirmed cases of
Coronavirus will take a significant jump. However, that might not
portend bad news.
After
reading Arama’s piece, I did a little number crunching of my own. I
went to the Worldometers web site which keeps a running total of
Coronavirus cases, fatalities and other useful tools to analyze this
crisis. Here is the link for those of you who would like to delve into
the numbers on your own.
Worldometer—U.S. Coronavirus Stats
First of all, some definitions. For the purposes of this article:
Total Cases-The total persons in the United States who have been infected by Coronavirus (including repatriated citizens/residents).
Total Fatalities—The total persons in the United States who have died from Coronavirus.
Mortality Rate (M/R)—The percentage of persons in the United States who died after contracting Coronavirus.
The left side of the first chart shows a simple table with Date, Infections, Fatality and Mortality Rate. The chart starts with February 29th, as it is the date the first American died on U.S. soil. Note that the Mortality Rate went from 1% to over 7% before declining steadily until it reached just under 2 percent (1.83 as of 2359 GMT, 15- March.
The right side of the chart graphically shows the Mortality Rate and the number of Fatalities. although we will need more data, it appears that the Mortality Rate appears to be leveling off after a rapid decent. However, as my colleague Nick Arama has indicated, this may change as more test kits become available.
This next chart shows how this could work. The table on the left shows the same date range as above. The next column is the Mortality Rate using the number of known infections. Columns 3, 4 and 5 show what the Mortality Rate would be if for each known person infected, there were 1, 2 or 3 others infected but not yet counted.
As my colleague has indicated, as tests become more available, we are very likely to see greatly increased numbers of infected Americans. However, if these trends continue, we could very well see as Arama has said, Mortality rates below 1 percent. I’m not making any scotch wagers just yet, but I am “cautiously optimistic,” and you should be too.
Read: Opinion: Beating the Corona Virus Will Be More of a Logistical Fight Than a Medical One
Death is the one relatively firm data point we have for the virus since those in bad condition would likely have made it to the hospital. Yet we still have a very low number there, being in the 40s. [now 68 as of this article].Read: Opinion: Be Ready, Diagnosed Cases of Wuhan Virus Likely to Skyrocket Next Week, but That’s Not All Bad
What does that mean? That means that while the number of people who have been diagnosed with it will jump, the deaths haven’t jumped yet. That means that the actual morbidity rate which people have estimated as somewhere between 1-2% based on what we know now, may likely drop below 1%.
Worldometer—U.S. Coronavirus Stats
First of all, some definitions. For the purposes of this article:
Total Cases-The total persons in the United States who have been infected by Coronavirus (including repatriated citizens/residents).
Total Fatalities—The total persons in the United States who have died from Coronavirus.
Mortality Rate (M/R)—The percentage of persons in the United States who died after contracting Coronavirus.
The left side of the first chart shows a simple table with Date, Infections, Fatality and Mortality Rate. The chart starts with February 29th, as it is the date the first American died on U.S. soil. Note that the Mortality Rate went from 1% to over 7% before declining steadily until it reached just under 2 percent (1.83 as of 2359 GMT, 15- March.
The right side of the chart graphically shows the Mortality Rate and the number of Fatalities. although we will need more data, it appears that the Mortality Rate appears to be leveling off after a rapid decent. However, as my colleague Nick Arama has indicated, this may change as more test kits become available.
This next chart shows how this could work. The table on the left shows the same date range as above. The next column is the Mortality Rate using the number of known infections. Columns 3, 4 and 5 show what the Mortality Rate would be if for each known person infected, there were 1, 2 or 3 others infected but not yet counted.
As my colleague has indicated, as tests become more available, we are very likely to see greatly increased numbers of infected Americans. However, if these trends continue, we could very well see as Arama has said, Mortality rates below 1 percent. I’m not making any scotch wagers just yet, but I am “cautiously optimistic,” and you should be too.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
The names of things cannot affect what they actually are
Foreign Chinese Wuhan Virus Shows a Lot of Reporters Don’t Have a Clue About How Their Own Country Works
LHC Group̢۪s Bruce Greenstein elbow bumps with President Donald Trump during a news conference about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden at the White House, Friday, March 13, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
One of the unsurprising facts that has been shown time an again through the course of the Wuhan virus* is that is again reveals that a large number of reporters and Coastal elites do not have the vaguest idea about how their own government is organized and are equally clueless about how even out their country operates outside the Deep Blue bubbles of a handful of major metropolitan areas.
Here are a couple of prime examples of this pig-ignorance. They are by no means alone, because they are not, but they are exemplars of a whole body of elite opinion that seems to hold that no one is allowed to act unless and until someone tells them to do something.
I’m not the first person to make this observation but it truly is remarkable the degree to which local and state officials as well as private entities and businesses are making these massive public health policy decisions while the feds seem to be moving much more slowly.
5,519 people are talking about this
While he presents himself as the nation’s commanding figure, Trump has become a bystander as school superintendents, sports commissioners and business owners shut down much of American life without clear guidance from the president. @maggieNYT nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/…
1,303 people are talking about this
Here are some basic principles.
The federal government is extremely slow moving. While you might think that something such as the Wuhan virus would cause it to move with a common purpose, nothing could be further from the truth. Ever decision is going to carry with it negotiations over turf and money and credit and avoidance of blame. The delays in the US developing a Wuhan virus test (personally, I think this is a red herring, until Thursday the lag between taking a sample and getting results was from 5 to 9 days; this is not a test, this is a historical record) can be traced largely to a bureaucracy that was unwilling to take extraordinary measures without a lot of pressure.
When the federal government is spurred into action, it actually has very limited facilities and personnel to do things. Tests and vaccines will be developed by Pharma. Existing private labs have to expand capacity to process tests. As my friend Mike Ford has said over and over, this is a logistics issue, not a medical one.
Conditions and resources and politics vary wildly from area to area in the US. It is ludicrous to think that a central focal point would be competent to set policies for Seattle, Washington, and Charleston, West Virginia.
Bureaucrats are not accountable to anyone, as far as I can tell, and in this situation the very last people we need calling the shots are people who don’t give a fat rat’s ass about what the citizenry thinks. They can provide information and recommendations but they don’t have executive authority. Trust me, this is a feature, not a bug.
There are thousands of jurisdictions in the country headed by elected officials. It is those people who have the responsibility and the authority to make policy. There is nothing wrong with Mike DeWine possibly shutting down Ohio schools for the rest of the year, Fredo’s older brother Mario calling out the National Guard to help control the spread of disease in New Rochelle, and other places doing nothing more than issuing public health warnings and advice. This is as it should be.
The genius of the American system is that our overall system of government is flexible, responsive, and resilient. Decisions are made at the lowest level consistent with the need (we Catholics, we call this principle ‘subsidiarity’). This in not a new observation on my part. A Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville noted the ability of Americans to organize themselves spontaneously to accomplish tasks (think barn raisings, harvesting, frontier communities protecting themselves from marauding Indians) without any directive from anyone. In some areas, people will lock the doors and avoid all contact with people. In other areas, we’ll get along with our lives. That is as it should be. Decisions being made at the lowest possible level without the need for a political or scientific priesthood to tell you what to do and when to do it.
I realize that these comments are not only ill-informed but made in bad faith. The media has made no secret out of trying to turn the Wuhan virus into a political disaster for President Trump and their coverage and fear-mongering demonstrates it. The clear purpose of these tweets is to forward the narrative of a president flailing about and a government made incompetent by the blindly political decision to ‘hollow out’ public health agencies and a reliance on Mike Pence’s prayer meetings rather than science.
The best summary of the state of affairs is this clip form Last of the Mohicans. It is the way Americans react to most anything.
Not only are we not subject to directives from on high, we are free to ignore those directives when they don’t work or seem counterproductive or if we deem the cost-benefit ratio off kilter.
We are going to make it through this fine. Once the panic recedes and the overwhelming desire to “do something” fades away, things will get back to normal. This is not the Black Plague, it isn’t even the 1918 Flu, and we are not Italy and we are not China. Americans and the family and community level will deal with this according to the immediate facts on the ground. We fought a war to keep our betters from controlling our every move and there is no good reason to go back to that over this scare.
The sad part of this entire story, is that even when you put aside the political hit jobs being carried out by our media, it is obvious that a large number of them have no idea at all about what the country they live in is actually like. They don’t know the people, they don’t know our history, they don’t even know how the different levels of government function. And the are supposed to explain to us what is happening.
*The post title refers to this
It is racist to refer to #coronavirus/#Covid19 as “Wuhan virus,” “foreign virus” or “Chinese virus.” Period.
Elected leaders have a responsibility to refer to this virus by its clinical name and not incite fear and xenophobia. nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/…
I think, starting next week @RedState contributors will be required to call it foreign Wuhan Chinese virus because #ChinaIsAsshoe
See streiff's other Tweets
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)