Some good news. Democrats finally stopped with their obstruction….. for now….
House votes 388-5 to send Trump the $483 billion COVID-19 aid bill that includes funding for forgivable small business loans (Paycheck Protection Program), hospitals and testing. pic.twitter.com/1U27LHYWix
“House Sends Paycheck Protection Funding Bill to President Trump’s Desk After Pelosi Delayed Bill”
“After weeks of legislative hurdles and partisan gridlock, the House of Representatives passed additional funding for the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), following suit of the upper chamber, which passed the bill on Tuesday. The $484 billion dollar package includes $310 billion for small business relief, plus funding for hospitals and testing. ”
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Whip Steve Scalise spared Democrats no criticism after Speaker Pelosi held the funding hostage for weeks, costing many Americans their livelihoods:”
4.4 million. That’s how many Americans lost their jobs in the last week—the exact time span that Democrats let the Paycheck Protection Program run out of money.
It didn’t have to be this way. These are Pelosi Layoffs.
4.4 million Americans lost their jobs last week while Pelosi blocked funds for the Paycheck Protection Program.
This lifeline should have never been cut off. Today we will replenish it—but some small businesses may never recover from the completely avoidable damage done by Dems. pic.twitter.com/sKU9KHS4Fg
Nearly everything we’ve been told about models, rates of infection, deaths, and recoveries was inaccurate.
I’m not here to argue that it was malfeasance or ignorance — both are unacceptable. But the one thing that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s stunning announcement made clear on Thursday is that there are some pretty shocking — and what should be — reassuring truths.
Cuomo announced that antibody testing in New York state, which only began four days previous, was already demonstrating that at minimum 13.9% of New Yorkers, had COVID-19 late stage antibodies.
The implication of this is a shockwave to the system.
With a population of 19,540,500 the findings point out that over 2,500,000 New Yorkers had the virus and have recovered. Keep in mind that as of this writing that only 263,000 New Yorkers have currently confirmed cases. Also as of this writing New York has reported 19,543 fatalities.
We’ve been told that the true death rate is 7.4% in New York. We were told there would be hundreds of thousands dead. We were told that this was worse than the flu, which has still recorded more deaths to date in this past flu season—even though the CDC instructed medical personnel to start counting influenza, heart disease, pulmonary, respiratory, drug overdose, and possibly even car crash deaths as COVID-19 deaths.
We were told that we had to upend an economy, go into solitary confinement, and divorce ourselves from normal life because this would rage beyond any previous pandemic. We were told that this virus with 846,000 current confirmed cases was worse than the H1N1 that broke out on Obama’s watch that infected 60,000,000 people. (We were conveniently not told that Obama had authorized $3.7 million U.S. tax dollars to be used at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to utilize corona viruses in bats in 2015 — but that’s yet another deception of omission.)
But none of these “truths” turned out to be so.
The death rate in New York State isn’t 7.4%, it is actually .75%. The recently ended influenza season numbers from the CDC indicate possibly 56,000,000 cases of flu, 740,000 hospitalizations, and 62,000 deaths. Under the current count from the Johns Hopkins Dashboard in this five month stretch CoVid19 has racked up 845,959 confirmed cases, 122,000 hospitalizations and 46,972 deaths.
A couple of other observations are extremely relevant. To begin with the flu — which has no vaccine but rather a randomized version of a shot designed to help develop antibodies to fight the version of the flu that “smart people” *think* will be the primary version that particular year — has remedies that physicians prescribe in primary care on an as needed basis. So we’re not accustomed to thinking that the flu is this deadly killer that all of life must be shut down to prevent. CoVid19 had no known treatments at the beginning of the breakout, and for political reasons—and possibly financially incentivized ones to boot—the most effective treatment for CoVid19 became a political football. Even the supposed “negative” trials that were reported on this past weekend, had cherry picked subjects that were mostly late stage victims of the virus. As Dr. Vladimir Zelenko pointed out on my show this week, doing so created the negative outcomes “purposefully & by design.” When used under a physician’s care, in the primary care basis, and early on after testing or onset of symptoms, the hydroxycholoroquine, azithromycin, & zinc cocktail reduced the rates of deaths and long term infectious stages. Zelenko’s numbers to date: 1,450 patients treated, two deaths, four ventilator cases (all fully recovered,) and all others recovered. Zelenko and other physicians using the treatment are releasing the world’s largest Meta-study to date within the next few days that will examine more than 2,000 confirmed cases.
The antibody numbers from Cuomo also scream one other harsh reality. The virus was in America long before January.”
“Almost Every Hospitalized Coronavirus Patient Has Another Underlying Health Issue, According to a Study of New York Patients”
“In the new study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers wanted to learn more about people who are hospitalized after contracting the novel coronavirus. They looked at electronic health records data from 5,700 people with COVID-19 who had been admitted to hospitals within the Northwell Health system—which currently has the largest number of COVID-19 cases in the country—in the New York City area in March and early April. The median age of patients was 63 years old, and 94% of them had at least one comorbidity, meaning that they had at least one other disease in addition to COVID-19.”
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Here’s the chart from the Time story. I couldn’t pull it from the story but I found the chart elsewhere.
“What Life Is Like After Being Taken Off a Ventilator
A near-death experience in the ICU could have lasting effects on the brain—from PTSD to cognitive impairment on par with mild dementia.”
“Even after Kyle Mullicane came home from the ICU, he would have nightmares about being back in the hospital, struggling to breathe. He had been on a ventilator, but his body fought so hard against the breathing tube in his throat that his arms and legs had to be restrained. Immobilized, he tried to chew through the plastic. In his post-ICU dreams, he would succeed at doing so, only to suffocate as the broken pieces fell into his lungs.
It has been eight months since Mullicane, 35, survived multiple organ failure from a bad reaction to heart medications. Physically, he feels well enough to have hiked a national park in January. But mentally, he’s still recovering. “My memory is shot,” he says. Loud noises startle him. And while the nightmares have gotten better, he remembers vivid hallucinations from the ICU, when doctors and nurses appeared to him as witches with shimmering faces. Even at home, normal life doesn’t quite feel normal. “I don’t feel safe anymore,” he says, “like there’s a low hum of menace.”
In hospitals across America, thousands of the sickest COVID-19 patients are now needing intensive care. The marvels of 21st-century medicine will help keep them alive in the best-case scenarios. But surviving can be just the start of a long recovery, and even after this pandemic fades, some survivors might have to face lingering aftereffects. For reasons still not entirely understood, some patients may develop what’s known as “post-intensive-care syndrome,” which can include a constellation of physical, cognitive, and psychological symptoms. About 1 in 10 of all patients who have been in the ICU have PTSD. About thirty percent experience depression. Thirty percent have symptoms of anxiety. And another 40 percent report cognitive impairment on par with moderate brain injury.
“It isn’t intuitive that being in the ICU for a lung condition would have an obvious consequence for your brain,” says James Jackson, the director of long-term outcomes at Vanderbilt University’s ICU Recovery Center. But the combination of a near-death experience, sedation, and a phenomenon called “ICU delirium”—likely exacerbated by sedative drugs—can have lasting effects.
Sedation is necessary for many patients in the ICU, especially ones with COVID-19, as part of being on a ventilator. This requires threading a plastic breathing tube down the throat and past the vocal cords into the upper chest, which conscious patients will instinctively fight. “Put it this way: If you have a tube down your throat and it doesn’t bother you, there’s something wrong,” says John Kress, a pulmonary and critical-care doctor at the University of Chicago. In addition, many COVID-19 patients have what looks like a form of respiratory failure called ARDS, in which the lungs fare best with short, quick puffs of air from the ventilator. This feels deeply unnatural. “As humans, we like to take big breaths,” says Daniela Lamas, a pulmonary and critical-care doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. All of this is so uncomfortable that doctors use powerful drugs such as propofol and fentanyl to sedate patients on ventilators. Even then, some need to have their arms and legs restrained to prevent them from ripping the breathing tube out.”
The commoners aren’t supposed to notice the obvious double standard. You average Joe’s get laid off, and unemployment… eventually. But laid off govt. workers still get full pay.
“22 million people have been laid off…and those government people are still getting their paycheck,” @Betsy_McCaughey tells @ShaunKraisman
Nice to see the Congressman has decided not to bow down to the Democrat hate machine.
Yesterday, I announced my intentions to resign from my office. But shortly thereafter, the outpour of support I received was too great for me to ignore.
I will not allow the Democrats to bully me into submission. I will not let them win.
The way the Democrat Party has treated me this past week has made one thing clear: they are the bigots they claim to hate and I won’t be silent about it. pic.twitter.com/9kE9kcfWKS
“Next big funding fight – Bailing out blue state pension problems
Pelosi and Democrats repeatedly have tried to extort massive state bailouts necessitated by public sector union pension problems — it hasn’t worked so far, and if it’s up to Mitch McConnell, it never will.”
“Nancy Pelosi, dragging Chuck Schumer along by his collar, caused enormous damage in delaying both the massive $2 trillion relief bill and then the follow up expansion of funding of the Paycheck Protection Program.
Remember when the media lost its mind over closure of some national monuments during various Obama-era government shutdowns (which weren’t really shutdowns, more scalebacks)? Pelosi has caught none of that hell despite causing millions of workers and thousands of businesses real pain.
In each case, Pelosi wasn’t just stalling for her pet pork projects and social justice agenda items like nationalized mail-in voting. She was trying to extort bailouts of blue states by holding virus relief funds hostage.”
In each case, Republicans gave on a few things, but not on any of the social justice issues and not on the blue state bailouts.”
Democrats cave: Nothing for states or cities, nothing for election protection or the post office, no oversight, no limits on fossil fuel bailouts, no food stamps. They got some testing – somehow that’s a GOP concession! – but no contact tracing. https://t.co/PWjOoaWozN
“Former NSC Chief Of Staff: John Brennan Buried Evidence That Putin Actually Favored Hillary In 2016”
“Former CIA officer and National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz said Wednesday that former CIA Director John Brennan ignored intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin actually wanted Hillary Clinton to win the the 2016 presidential election.
Fleitz called Brennan “the most politicized intelligence chief in American history” in a Fox News op ed that addressed a report released Tuesday from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. That document supports the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election to promote the victory of then-candidate Donald Trump.
The committee released the document in a highly edited form that does not include any reference to recently declassified files that point to a possible Russian disinformation campaign that attempted to malign Trump.
Fleitz notes that the Senate report directly contradicts the March 2018 findings of the House Intelligence Committee, which accused the intelligence community assessment of being tainted by anti-Trump forces.
While recognizing that “the political establishment and anti-Trump journalists gloated about the new Senate Intelligence Committee report as bolstering their biases,” Fleitz contends the committee did not follow proper procedures in their investigation and based their conclusions on too few intelligence sources — and too much on the potentially tainted observations of the CIA.
“The Senate Intelligence Committee report falsely claims that ‘all analytical lines are supported with all-source intelligence’ and that analysts who wrote the intelligence community assessment consistently said they ‘were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions.’”
Fleitz says House Intelligence Committee staff members discovered exactly the opposite and told him that there is ample evidence that Russia may have interfered in the 2016 election, but not necessarily on behalf of Trump.”
No one “changed” President Trump’s view. I was with him all throughout the day. His mind was made up. His priority has always been to reopen the country SAFELY.
Next time consider checking with the White House Press Office before “reporting” inaccurate info. https://t.co/RznAaLqb3q
— Kayleigh McEnany 45 Archived (@PressSec45) April 23, 2020
“Let's set the record straight. Once Republicans found out the PPP was going to run dry, there was a clean bill to replenish it. Nancy Pelosi didn't go for it. Period. So to say that the delay was Mitch McConnell's fault is just political jiujitsu for Nancy Pelosi.” @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/YUwqxRTUsT
“Newly Declassified Documents Show John Kerry’s State Department Spread Russia Collusion Narrative”
“Documents released last week by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham give insight into a bombshell revelation about the “role of John Kerry’s State Department in fueling the FBI’s dubious Russia collusion probe, showing it was the State Department that provided ‘information’ leading to the controversial surveillance of Carter Page” reports Breitbart.
Amongst the redactions released are parts of the Obama administration’s FISA warrant applications used to spy on Page. As Breitbart reports, the disclosures of the text claim Page was “an agent of a foreign power” and that “the status of the target was determined in or about October 2016 from information provided by the U.S. Department of State.”
Newly released information also highlights how much the FBI, run by James Comey at the time, heavily relied on the Christopher Steele dossier as proof of Russian collusion. Of course, the collusion was debunked, and the nonsensical Steele dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.”
Its interesting to observe the back and forth between Pelosi and McConnell and their supporters. Each side tosses blame as they attempt to gain a few concessions for their voting base. But in the end, it doesn’t make a difference, the true winner is corporate America who will back up their trucks and rob the US Treasury. A few days ago I expressed my surprised that private banks were actually responsible for the distribution of PPP funds. And to no surprise large corporations benefit instead of small local businesses. And yesterday I learned the money given to Harvard was for needy students. I’m sure Harvard will skim a few off the top in admin fees. In both cases why is the US gov’t not distributing its own money? Does it not have a functioning state to complete this simplest of tasks? In other developed nations gov’t employees do this work — they readjust/create a web site, use existing data, and quickly get the funds out. So the thought struck me, has the Grover Norquist dream to shrink the gov’t to the size of a bath tub finally come true? And then these two links appeared in my facebook feed confirming I’m not the only one with that thought.
The Atlantic link is fairly comprehensive and worth a look. I’m not a fan of Jeffery Sachs — he’s an opportunist but on the other hand that makes him a pragmatist. But its interesting to note he went from advocating “shock therapy” capitalism for Eastern Europe (a disaster) to endorsing Sanders. A complete ideological swing.
AJ — no mention of bleach? I’m disappointed. The internet has blown up with memes celebrating the wonders of bleach. The guardian notes bleach was promoted by a pseudo religious group who had been trying to get Trump’s attention and now has succeeded.
But aside from the mockery and laughter, there’s a serious concern here. As one meme pointed out, developed countries have universal medicare and the US has a president promoting bleach. For many people in the world, the US response to Covid is an unmasking of its decay and decline. Now some may celebrate especially on the left, but I always think of the right wing historian Niall Ferguson who said, “If not America then whom”? And he has a point — has this admin allowed China to become the superpower of the world, is Russia close behind? Who will provide the leadership of the western world? Germany? – Merkel is retiring.
The US still has strong governance at the state level and some solid federal agencies — the armed forces, CDC, etc but is it enough to cover the gaping hole Washington has created?
“Media and Democrats lying again: No, Trump Did Not Tell People to Inject or Drink Bleach or Disinfectants
After 3 years of Russian-collusion fabrication and lies, you’d think the media would have learned its lesson. But it’s doubling down on fake news to try to elect Biden.”
“This is why when Donald Trump became president I told friends to always listen to his full remarks. Everyone knew the MSM would twist his words to make him sound evil and stupid.
The MSM and liberals on Twitter did just that yesterday. They claim Trump suggested people inject themselves with disinfectants in order to cure the Wuhan coronavirus.
Let me start off with what Trump finished saying: “It wouldn’t be through injections, you’re talking about almost a cleaning and sterilization of an area.”
Instead of reporting this good news and letting people know what they can do to fight the virus, the MSM concentrates on this.
Do they want the coronavirus pandemic to last longer?! (Rhetorical question, of course.)”
———–
“Auto-beclowning: Leftists’ outcry over Trump’s ‘Lysol’ talk makes them look like fools”
“Over on Twitter, the left is having a field day. Tide Pods? What could be more exciting than to claim that President Trump endorses eating Tide Pods as a solution to the coronavirus pandemic? Never mind that he didn’t.
They’ve based their excitement on this:
WASHINGTON — After President Donald Trump wondered Thursday about possibly injecting disinfectants into people infected with the coronavirus, “Tide Pods” and other household cleaners began trending on Twitter.
“And then I saw the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way we could do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning,” the president said during his White House press briefing. “As you see it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
Afterwards, Bill Bryan, an undersecretary of science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, clarified that that wasn’t possible and said, “We don’t do that within that lab, at our labs.”
However, Trump replied: “maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work.””
———
“The press coverage, meanwhile, was positively venomous in its distortions. Even the USA Today piece linked above (once you read down into the fill) was full of false claims about President Trump insisting that hydroxychloroquine be used as treatment, something he never called for. The rest were even worse.
Who’s the clown here? Not Trump. Trump is doing something that hipsterly and hoity-toity business consultants have been exhorting us poor pudknockers out there in our work pods and cubicles to do for decades: thinking outside the box.
That’s what this is: the very specter of thinking outside the box. Oh, the horror.”
———
Trolls gotta troll, and you’re being a troll. Again.
But you have to try harder. Seriously, you guys are just mailing it in. You’re not even trying anymore. If you think this helps defeat Trump, you’re wrong. He’s still head and shoulders better than the dementia patient Dems are running. And you guys don’t even feel bad about treating old Joe like a circus attraction. I don’t know what sadder, this effort at gotcha, old Joe, or the fact that your ilk put up an obviously unfit senile guy for president. Ya’ll are just sad all the way around.
“Let's set the record straight. Once Republicans found out the PPP was going to run dry, there was a clean bill to replenish it. Nancy Pelosi didn't go for it. Period. So to say that the delay was Mitch McConnell's fault is just political jiujitsu for Nancy Pelosi.” @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/YUwqxRTUsT
According to Dictionary.com, a troll (in digital technology) is “a person who posts inflammatory or inappropriate messages or comments online for the purpose of upsetting other users and provoking a response.” You may disagree with his viewpoints, but I do not think his posts fit the definition of a troll.
“In internet slang, a troll is a person who starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract by posting inflammatory and digressive,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into displaying emotional responses[2] and normalizing tangential discussion,[3] whether for the troll’s amusement or a specific gain.”
“American voters see an anti-Trump bias in the media, and half believe the media are trying to “move the blame” for the coronavirus away from China and to the president to help defeat him in November.
What’s more, a majority of those who watch the daily briefings said the media are disrespectful of the president.
The latest McLaughlin & Associates poll found that 49% of voters believe the media are helping the Democrats take out Trump in the current crisis.
The poll analysis shared with Secrets read, “The plurality of voters, 49%, agreed with the statement, ‘The Democrats and liberal national media are trying to move the blame for the spread of coronavirus away from China to President Trump for partisan political gain just to win the November elections’; only 42% disagreed. Republicans overwhelmingly agreed 80% to 15%. Independents agreed 47% to 43%, and even 22% of Democrats agreed.””
———
“The split was similar on the question of bias and unfair coverage of Trump, who almost daily has complained about the press and the stories written about his fight to contain the virus.
McLaughlin found that 48% of voters said the coverage “has been unfair, biased, and even disrespectful to the president.” Some 42% said the media outlets were fair in its Trump coverage.
Key was the finding that those who regularly watch the briefings said the bias really stands out.”
Old Joe’s handlers from the home will not be happy about this.
BREAKING: Tara Reade tells me video evidence of her mother's voice proves her allegations against Biden are true:
"I just heard audio, my mother died and hearing her voice made me cry. She was such a good mom and always watching out for me even now."https://t.co/p7hTm292nI
“New evidence lends credibility to 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden’s accuser Tara Reade’s claim that she told her deceased mother about the alleged assault.
Reade accused the then-senator of kissing her, touching her and penetrating her with his fingers without her consent in 1993.
A 1993 transcript obtained by The Intercept showed that a caller from Reade’s mother’s California city mentioned on “Larry King Live” that her daughter had problems with a “prominent senator” in Washington.
The Media Research Center also uncovered the video of the August 11, 1993 edition of CNN’s “Larry King Live” program Friday.
Reade told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the voice in the video is her mother’s and that “hearing her voice made me cry.””
“You probably remember this story from last month. A man in Arizona and his wife ingested a powdered chloroquine used for cleaning fish tanks, because they believed it would prevent them from getting the coronavirus. Both were hospitalized but the husband died. Many in the media were quick to blame President Trump and some intially didn’t mention that the drug in question was purchased as fish tank cleaner.
I don’t know what kind of mental impression you formed of this couple after this story broke. For me, I assumed they were probably poorly educated, very scared and possibly not very smart. How else to account for doing something so reckless?
Today the Washington Free Beacon published an investigative piece about the deceased man and he’s nothing like what I imagined. In fact, according to his friends, he was a retired mechanical engineer who was reportedly very well-educated, smart and even-keeled:
These people describe Lenius as intelligent and levelheaded, not prone to the sort of reckless and impulsive behavior he reportedly engaged in on the day he died. This account is based on interviews with three people who knew Lenius well and paints a picture of a troubled marriage characterized by Wanda Lenius’s explosive anger.
“What bothers me about this is that Gary was a very intelligent man, a retired [mechanical] engineer who designed systems for John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa, and I really can’t see the scenario where Gary would say, ‘Yes, please, I would love to drink some of that Koi fish tank cleaner,’” one of his close friends told the Washington Free Beacon. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”…
“I would like people to know that Gary was not the fool that some of the media stories and comments are depicting him to be,” said the same friend. “I really don’t think Gary knew what he was taking.””
I think you misunderstood both my posts today. The first was not to support Pelosi over McConnell. From my vantage point both are allowing corporate America to once again rob the US Treasury and the American people. Part of the robbery is the actual bailouts but the systemic issue exposed here is the use of private institutions to distribute gov’t funds. This indicates a failure of the administrative state. This needs to be addressed as soon as possible if the federal gov’t is to have any credibility domestically and internationally. Both my links in the first post are an evaluation not of the Trump admin but the deterioration of the US federal gov’t since Reagan. The corona virus has exposed this deterioration for the world to see and this is not a good thing not even for a leftist like me. Without a strong US state, we are left with only Germany to lead the western democracies and I just don’t like the sound of that — we need a strong EU and US in order to maintain western ideals against authoritarianism.
My second post isn’t much different. Trump uses a press conference to promote some really weird ideas even within the context of the previous speaker. Most of the world erupts in laughter again eroding US credibility while his supporters desperately try to make sense of it. He then throws his supporters under the bus by saying he was sarcastic. I’m not sure that made it any better — do you want a leader who sarcastic during a public health emergency. Personally I think he’s very self centered so when he heard people were laughing at him, he walk it back.
I’m not a troll. Ironically a high school friend was trying to convince me that Trump was a master troll trying to get the libs all tied up in knots. Trump’s not a troll just a narcissist.
My comments can’t be interpreted in a Dem vs Rep context. I think both Biden and Trump have serious health issues — Biden has always had a foot in his mouth but its gotten worse and in all likelihood the rumor Trump suffered a stroke may be true. He a had relatively easy presidency but the last few months have been hard on him — despite the hair plugs and botox you can see him age in front of our eyes. In the end, I do think Biden is a better choice simply because I think the Democrats will try to restore the administrative state. If the actual machinery of the state continues to fail the western world is in for a rough time.
Fox host: Trump says he was being sarcastic when he talked about injecting disinfectants. Your thoughts?
Bret Baier: "Well, that’s not how it looked in the briefing… it didn’t seem like it was coming off as sarcastic when he was talking and turning to Dr. Birx on the side" pic.twitter.com/XbdJXLg2WT
Wandering Views 
Some good news. Democrats finally stopped with their obstruction….. for now….
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https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2020/04/23/ppp-funding-passes-house-n2567455
“House Sends Paycheck Protection Funding Bill to President Trump’s Desk After Pelosi Delayed Bill”
“After weeks of legislative hurdles and partisan gridlock, the House of Representatives passed additional funding for the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), following suit of the upper chamber, which passed the bill on Tuesday. The $484 billion dollar package includes $310 billion for small business relief, plus funding for hospitals and testing. ”
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP Whip Steve Scalise spared Democrats no criticism after Speaker Pelosi held the funding hostage for weeks, costing many Americans their livelihoods:”
————–
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Some won’t like this at all…..
It appears to bust several memes, some of which I will highlight.
“Antibody Testing: Proves We’ve Been Had!”
https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2020/04/23/antibody-testing-proves-weve-been-had-n2567516
“There is simply no other way to state this.
Nearly everything we’ve been told about models, rates of infection, deaths, and recoveries was inaccurate.
I’m not here to argue that it was malfeasance or ignorance — both are unacceptable. But the one thing that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s stunning announcement made clear on Thursday is that there are some pretty shocking — and what should be — reassuring truths.
Cuomo announced that antibody testing in New York state, which only began four days previous, was already demonstrating that at minimum 13.9% of New Yorkers, had COVID-19 late stage antibodies.
The implication of this is a shockwave to the system.
With a population of 19,540,500 the findings point out that over 2,500,000 New Yorkers had the virus and have recovered. Keep in mind that as of this writing that only 263,000 New Yorkers have currently confirmed cases. Also as of this writing New York has reported 19,543 fatalities.
We’ve been told that the true death rate is 7.4% in New York. We were told there would be hundreds of thousands dead. We were told that this was worse than the flu, which has still recorded more deaths to date in this past flu season—even though the CDC instructed medical personnel to start counting influenza, heart disease, pulmonary, respiratory, drug overdose, and possibly even car crash deaths as COVID-19 deaths.
We were told that we had to upend an economy, go into solitary confinement, and divorce ourselves from normal life because this would rage beyond any previous pandemic. We were told that this virus with 846,000 current confirmed cases was worse than the H1N1 that broke out on Obama’s watch that infected 60,000,000 people. (We were conveniently not told that Obama had authorized $3.7 million U.S. tax dollars to be used at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to utilize corona viruses in bats in 2015 — but that’s yet another deception of omission.)
But none of these “truths” turned out to be so.
The death rate in New York State isn’t 7.4%, it is actually .75%. The recently ended influenza season numbers from the CDC indicate possibly 56,000,000 cases of flu, 740,000 hospitalizations, and 62,000 deaths. Under the current count from the Johns Hopkins Dashboard in this five month stretch CoVid19 has racked up 845,959 confirmed cases, 122,000 hospitalizations and 46,972 deaths.
A couple of other observations are extremely relevant. To begin with the flu — which has no vaccine but rather a randomized version of a shot designed to help develop antibodies to fight the version of the flu that “smart people” *think* will be the primary version that particular year — has remedies that physicians prescribe in primary care on an as needed basis. So we’re not accustomed to thinking that the flu is this deadly killer that all of life must be shut down to prevent. CoVid19 had no known treatments at the beginning of the breakout, and for political reasons—and possibly financially incentivized ones to boot—the most effective treatment for CoVid19 became a political football. Even the supposed “negative” trials that were reported on this past weekend, had cherry picked subjects that were mostly late stage victims of the virus. As Dr. Vladimir Zelenko pointed out on my show this week, doing so created the negative outcomes “purposefully & by design.” When used under a physician’s care, in the primary care basis, and early on after testing or onset of symptoms, the hydroxycholoroquine, azithromycin, & zinc cocktail reduced the rates of deaths and long term infectious stages. Zelenko’s numbers to date: 1,450 patients treated, two deaths, four ventilator cases (all fully recovered,) and all others recovered. Zelenko and other physicians using the treatment are releasing the world’s largest Meta-study to date within the next few days that will examine more than 2,000 confirmed cases.
The antibody numbers from Cuomo also scream one other harsh reality. The virus was in America long before January.”
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Almost all Covid 19 hospital patients have an underlying condition.
https://time.com/5825485/coronavirus-risk-factors/
“Almost Every Hospitalized Coronavirus Patient Has Another Underlying Health Issue, According to a Study of New York Patients”
“In the new study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers wanted to learn more about people who are hospitalized after contracting the novel coronavirus. They looked at electronic health records data from 5,700 people with COVID-19 who had been admitted to hospitals within the Northwell Health system—which currently has the largest number of COVID-19 cases in the country—in the New York City area in March and early April. The median age of patients was 63 years old, and 94% of them had at least one comorbidity, meaning that they had at least one other disease in addition to COVID-19.”
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Here’s the chart from the Time story. I couldn’t pull it from the story but I found the chart elsewhere.
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A sobering read for what it’s like for some Covid patients, both during and after the illness.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/04/life-after-the-icu/610384/
“What Life Is Like After Being Taken Off a Ventilator
A near-death experience in the ICU could have lasting effects on the brain—from PTSD to cognitive impairment on par with mild dementia.”
“Even after Kyle Mullicane came home from the ICU, he would have nightmares about being back in the hospital, struggling to breathe. He had been on a ventilator, but his body fought so hard against the breathing tube in his throat that his arms and legs had to be restrained. Immobilized, he tried to chew through the plastic. In his post-ICU dreams, he would succeed at doing so, only to suffocate as the broken pieces fell into his lungs.
It has been eight months since Mullicane, 35, survived multiple organ failure from a bad reaction to heart medications. Physically, he feels well enough to have hiked a national park in January. But mentally, he’s still recovering. “My memory is shot,” he says. Loud noises startle him. And while the nightmares have gotten better, he remembers vivid hallucinations from the ICU, when doctors and nurses appeared to him as witches with shimmering faces. Even at home, normal life doesn’t quite feel normal. “I don’t feel safe anymore,” he says, “like there’s a low hum of menace.”
In hospitals across America, thousands of the sickest COVID-19 patients are now needing intensive care. The marvels of 21st-century medicine will help keep them alive in the best-case scenarios. But surviving can be just the start of a long recovery, and even after this pandemic fades, some survivors might have to face lingering aftereffects. For reasons still not entirely understood, some patients may develop what’s known as “post-intensive-care syndrome,” which can include a constellation of physical, cognitive, and psychological symptoms. About 1 in 10 of all patients who have been in the ICU have PTSD. About thirty percent experience depression. Thirty percent have symptoms of anxiety. And another 40 percent report cognitive impairment on par with moderate brain injury.
“It isn’t intuitive that being in the ICU for a lung condition would have an obvious consequence for your brain,” says James Jackson, the director of long-term outcomes at Vanderbilt University’s ICU Recovery Center. But the combination of a near-death experience, sedation, and a phenomenon called “ICU delirium”—likely exacerbated by sedative drugs—can have lasting effects.
Sedation is necessary for many patients in the ICU, especially ones with COVID-19, as part of being on a ventilator. This requires threading a plastic breathing tube down the throat and past the vocal cords into the upper chest, which conscious patients will instinctively fight. “Put it this way: If you have a tube down your throat and it doesn’t bother you, there’s something wrong,” says John Kress, a pulmonary and critical-care doctor at the University of Chicago. In addition, many COVID-19 patients have what looks like a form of respiratory failure called ARDS, in which the lungs fare best with short, quick puffs of air from the ventilator. This feels deeply unnatural. “As humans, we like to take big breaths,” says Daniela Lamas, a pulmonary and critical-care doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. All of this is so uncomfortable that doctors use powerful drugs such as propofol and fentanyl to sedate patients on ventilators. Even then, some need to have their arms and legs restrained to prevent them from ripping the breathing tube out.”
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What is all those photos you’ve seen of nurses (not really, this is the union) protesting protesters are staged photo ops, like this one clearly was?
Who doesn’t love the smell of astroturf in the morning?
https://twitter.com/CeoElefant/status/1253468523935875072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1253468523935875072&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2020%2F04%2Fbusted-media-caught-camera-staging-fake-photos-medical-worker-counter-protest-video%2F
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The commoners aren’t supposed to notice the obvious double standard. You average Joe’s get laid off, and unemployment… eventually. But laid off govt. workers still get full pay.
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Nice to see the Congressman has decided not to bow down to the Democrat hate machine.
——
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Let’s hope this lady remains strong too in the face of their hate.
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Democrats built this. So let them own it.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/04/next-big-funding-fight-bailing-out-blue-state-pension-problems/#more-315913
“Next big funding fight – Bailing out blue state pension problems
Pelosi and Democrats repeatedly have tried to extort massive state bailouts necessitated by public sector union pension problems — it hasn’t worked so far, and if it’s up to Mitch McConnell, it never will.”
“Nancy Pelosi, dragging Chuck Schumer along by his collar, caused enormous damage in delaying both the massive $2 trillion relief bill and then the follow up expansion of funding of the Paycheck Protection Program.
Remember when the media lost its mind over closure of some national monuments during various Obama-era government shutdowns (which weren’t really shutdowns, more scalebacks)? Pelosi has caught none of that hell despite causing millions of workers and thousands of businesses real pain.
In each case, Pelosi wasn’t just stalling for her pet pork projects and social justice agenda items like nationalized mail-in voting. She was trying to extort bailouts of blue states by holding virus relief funds hostage.”
In each case, Republicans gave on a few things, but not on any of the social justice issues and not on the blue state bailouts.”
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The media will spin this, of course, but it’s pretty obvious who won here. US taxpayers.
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The collapse of this farce continues……
Dems need another new meme. This one is busted too. 🙂
https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/23/fred-fleitz-john-brennan-buried-evidence-putin-favored-hillary/
“Former NSC Chief Of Staff: John Brennan Buried Evidence That Putin Actually Favored Hillary In 2016”
“Former CIA officer and National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz said Wednesday that former CIA Director John Brennan ignored intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin actually wanted Hillary Clinton to win the the 2016 presidential election.
Fleitz called Brennan “the most politicized intelligence chief in American history” in a Fox News op ed that addressed a report released Tuesday from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. That document supports the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election to promote the victory of then-candidate Donald Trump.
The committee released the document in a highly edited form that does not include any reference to recently declassified files that point to a possible Russian disinformation campaign that attempted to malign Trump.
Fleitz notes that the Senate report directly contradicts the March 2018 findings of the House Intelligence Committee, which accused the intelligence community assessment of being tainted by anti-Trump forces.
While recognizing that “the political establishment and anti-Trump journalists gloated about the new Senate Intelligence Committee report as bolstering their biases,” Fleitz contends the committee did not follow proper procedures in their investigation and based their conclusions on too few intelligence sources — and too much on the potentially tainted observations of the CIA.
“The Senate Intelligence Committee report falsely claims that ‘all analytical lines are supported with all-source intelligence’ and that analysts who wrote the intelligence community assessment consistently said they ‘were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions.’”
Fleitz says House Intelligence Committee staff members discovered exactly the opposite and told him that there is ample evidence that Russia may have interfered in the 2016 election, but not necessarily on behalf of Trump.”
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Fraud.
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————
Spreading falsehoods again, it’s what they do.
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It’s not jiujitsu, it’s lying.
Period.
It’s what she does.
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Once a traitor, always a traitor.
https://thegreggjarrett.com/newly-declassified-documents-show-john-kerrys-state-department-spread-russia-collusion-narrative/
“Newly Declassified Documents Show John Kerry’s State Department Spread Russia Collusion Narrative”
“Documents released last week by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham give insight into a bombshell revelation about the “role of John Kerry’s State Department in fueling the FBI’s dubious Russia collusion probe, showing it was the State Department that provided ‘information’ leading to the controversial surveillance of Carter Page” reports Breitbart.
Amongst the redactions released are parts of the Obama administration’s FISA warrant applications used to spy on Page. As Breitbart reports, the disclosures of the text claim Page was “an agent of a foreign power” and that “the status of the target was determined in or about October 2016 from information provided by the U.S. Department of State.”
Newly released information also highlights how much the FBI, run by James Comey at the time, heavily relied on the Christopher Steele dossier as proof of Russian collusion. Of course, the collusion was debunked, and the nonsensical Steele dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.”
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Its interesting to observe the back and forth between Pelosi and McConnell and their supporters. Each side tosses blame as they attempt to gain a few concessions for their voting base. But in the end, it doesn’t make a difference, the true winner is corporate America who will back up their trucks and rob the US Treasury. A few days ago I expressed my surprised that private banks were actually responsible for the distribution of PPP funds. And to no surprise large corporations benefit instead of small local businesses. And yesterday I learned the money given to Harvard was for needy students. I’m sure Harvard will skim a few off the top in admin fees. In both cases why is the US gov’t not distributing its own money? Does it not have a functioning state to complete this simplest of tasks? In other developed nations gov’t employees do this work — they readjust/create a web site, use existing data, and quickly get the funds out. So the thought struck me, has the Grover Norquist dream to shrink the gov’t to the size of a bath tub finally come true? And then these two links appeared in my facebook feed confirming I’m not the only one with that thought.
The Atlantic link is fairly comprehensive and worth a look. I’m not a fan of Jeffery Sachs — he’s an opportunist but on the other hand that makes him a pragmatist. But its interesting to note he went from advocating “shock therapy” capitalism for Eastern Europe (a disaster) to endorsing Sanders. A complete ideological swing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share&fbclid=IwAR0DszDThMMkiqVh_UbhfoR1tgAUKAw7Ft6aDxHxhBkup9D1ILuK5AiVUFs
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/jeffrey-sachs-on-the-catastrophic-american-response-to-the-coronavirus?fbclid=IwAR3KbmMnHVIK-sItcEj79mds0ifAoqlNWJ4aF0SdY94DemdeUubtFFfxD94
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AJ — no mention of bleach? I’m disappointed. The internet has blown up with memes celebrating the wonders of bleach. The guardian notes bleach was promoted by a pseudo religious group who had been trying to get Trump’s attention and now has succeeded.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/revealed-leader-group-peddling-bleach-cure-lobbied-trump-coronavirus
But aside from the mockery and laughter, there’s a serious concern here. As one meme pointed out, developed countries have universal medicare and the US has a president promoting bleach. For many people in the world, the US response to Covid is an unmasking of its decay and decline. Now some may celebrate especially on the left, but I always think of the right wing historian Niall Ferguson who said, “If not America then whom”? And he has a point — has this admin allowed China to become the superpower of the world, is Russia close behind? Who will provide the leadership of the western world? Germany? – Merkel is retiring.
The US still has strong governance at the state level and some solid federal agencies — the armed forces, CDC, etc but is it enough to cover the gaping hole Washington has created?
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Why would I mention the latest fake news, taken outta context gottcha move from the clowns in the media?
That’s your job, your the leftist.
Context and stuff matters, except to you sound bite addicts.
Yawn.
I knew you’d be along with it though, because your trolling has become that predictable.
Do you guys ever stop lying about and dishonestly mis-representing what your opponents say?
Apparently not.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/04/media-and-democrats-lying-again-no-trump-did-not-tell-people-to-inject-or-drink-bleach-or-disinfectants/
“Media and Democrats lying again: No, Trump Did Not Tell People to Inject or Drink Bleach or Disinfectants
After 3 years of Russian-collusion fabrication and lies, you’d think the media would have learned its lesson. But it’s doubling down on fake news to try to elect Biden.”
“This is why when Donald Trump became president I told friends to always listen to his full remarks. Everyone knew the MSM would twist his words to make him sound evil and stupid.
The MSM and liberals on Twitter did just that yesterday. They claim Trump suggested people inject themselves with disinfectants in order to cure the Wuhan coronavirus.
Let me start off with what Trump finished saying: “It wouldn’t be through injections, you’re talking about almost a cleaning and sterilization of an area.”
Instead of reporting this good news and letting people know what they can do to fight the virus, the MSM concentrates on this.
Do they want the coronavirus pandemic to last longer?! (Rhetorical question, of course.)”
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“Auto-beclowning: Leftists’ outcry over Trump’s ‘Lysol’ talk makes them look like fools”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/autobeclowning_leftist_outcry_over_trumps_lysol_talk_makes_them_look_like_fools.html
“Over on Twitter, the left is having a field day. Tide Pods? What could be more exciting than to claim that President Trump endorses eating Tide Pods as a solution to the coronavirus pandemic? Never mind that he didn’t.
They’ve based their excitement on this:
WASHINGTON — After President Donald Trump wondered Thursday about possibly injecting disinfectants into people infected with the coronavirus, “Tide Pods” and other household cleaners began trending on Twitter.
“And then I saw the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way we could do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning,” the president said during his White House press briefing. “As you see it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
Afterwards, Bill Bryan, an undersecretary of science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, clarified that that wasn’t possible and said, “We don’t do that within that lab, at our labs.”
However, Trump replied: “maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work.””
———
“The press coverage, meanwhile, was positively venomous in its distortions. Even the USA Today piece linked above (once you read down into the fill) was full of false claims about President Trump insisting that hydroxychloroquine be used as treatment, something he never called for. The rest were even worse.
Who’s the clown here? Not Trump. Trump is doing something that hipsterly and hoity-toity business consultants have been exhorting us poor pudknockers out there in our work pods and cubicles to do for decades: thinking outside the box.
That’s what this is: the very specter of thinking outside the box. Oh, the horror.”
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Trolls gotta troll, and you’re being a troll. Again.
But you have to try harder. Seriously, you guys are just mailing it in. You’re not even trying anymore. If you think this helps defeat Trump, you’re wrong. He’s still head and shoulders better than the dementia patient Dems are running. And you guys don’t even feel bad about treating old Joe like a circus attraction. I don’t know what sadder, this effort at gotcha, old Joe, or the fact that your ilk put up an obviously unfit senile guy for president. Ya’ll are just sad all the way around.
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The R’s weren’t seeking points. They sought to help businesses, employees, and medical workers and hospitals.
This bill accomplishes that and only that. No leftist wish list items at all.
Face it, Pelosi and Dems lost on this one. That tends to happen when the American people win. Yet another sad effort on Dems part.
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“A complete ideological swing.”
‘Cuz drugs are bad, m’kay?
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Like I said…..
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Here’s Nancy bragging how they held it up. They got nothing, except bad press. 🙂
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AJ – I really do not think that HRW is a troll.
According to Dictionary.com, a troll (in digital technology) is “a person who posts inflammatory or inappropriate messages or comments online for the purpose of upsetting other users and provoking a response.” You may disagree with his viewpoints, but I do not think his posts fit the definition of a troll.
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What he just did above at 5:04 is the very definition of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
“In internet slang, a troll is a person who starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract by posting inflammatory and digressive,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into displaying emotional responses[2] and normalizing tangential discussion,[3] whether for the troll’s amusement or a specific gain.”
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And just like when the press does it, it’s not working.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/voters-virus-briefings-show-bias-and-disrespect-of-trump-by-media
“American voters see an anti-Trump bias in the media, and half believe the media are trying to “move the blame” for the coronavirus away from China and to the president to help defeat him in November.
What’s more, a majority of those who watch the daily briefings said the media are disrespectful of the president.
The latest McLaughlin & Associates poll found that 49% of voters believe the media are helping the Democrats take out Trump in the current crisis.
The poll analysis shared with Secrets read, “The plurality of voters, 49%, agreed with the statement, ‘The Democrats and liberal national media are trying to move the blame for the spread of coronavirus away from China to President Trump for partisan political gain just to win the November elections’; only 42% disagreed. Republicans overwhelmingly agreed 80% to 15%. Independents agreed 47% to 43%, and even 22% of Democrats agreed.””
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“The split was similar on the question of bias and unfair coverage of Trump, who almost daily has complained about the press and the stories written about his fight to contain the virus.
McLaughlin found that 48% of voters said the coverage “has been unfair, biased, and even disrespectful to the president.” Some 42% said the media outlets were fair in its Trump coverage.
Key was the finding that those who regularly watch the briefings said the bias really stands out.”
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But please, by all means, continue……
It’s working so well.
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Old Joe’s handlers from the home will not be happy about this.
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https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/24/joe-biden-accuser-tara-reade-cnn-call-mother-larry-king/
“New evidence lends credibility to 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden’s accuser Tara Reade’s claim that she told her deceased mother about the alleged assault.
Reade accused the then-senator of kissing her, touching her and penetrating her with his fingers without her consent in 1993.
A 1993 transcript obtained by The Intercept showed that a caller from Reade’s mother’s California city mentioned on “Larry King Live” that her daughter had problems with a “prominent senator” in Washington.
The Media Research Center also uncovered the video of the August 11, 1993 edition of CNN’s “Larry King Live” program Friday.
Reade told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the voice in the video is her mother’s and that “hearing her voice made me cry.””
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And HRW, try some originality. This isn’t even the first time they’ve tried this farce.
Did you think I’d forget this couple of nut jobs already?
Same MO. Trump said it!
Yeah, except he didn’t.
“The Backstory On The Man Who Died After Ingesting Fish-Tank Cleaner Is Chilling”
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/04/24/backstory-man-died-ingesting-fish-tank-cleaner-chilling/
“You probably remember this story from last month. A man in Arizona and his wife ingested a powdered chloroquine used for cleaning fish tanks, because they believed it would prevent them from getting the coronavirus. Both were hospitalized but the husband died. Many in the media were quick to blame President Trump and some intially didn’t mention that the drug in question was purchased as fish tank cleaner.
I don’t know what kind of mental impression you formed of this couple after this story broke. For me, I assumed they were probably poorly educated, very scared and possibly not very smart. How else to account for doing something so reckless?
Today the Washington Free Beacon published an investigative piece about the deceased man and he’s nothing like what I imagined. In fact, according to his friends, he was a retired mechanical engineer who was reportedly very well-educated, smart and even-keeled:
These people describe Lenius as intelligent and levelheaded, not prone to the sort of reckless and impulsive behavior he reportedly engaged in on the day he died. This account is based on interviews with three people who knew Lenius well and paints a picture of a troubled marriage characterized by Wanda Lenius’s explosive anger.
“What bothers me about this is that Gary was a very intelligent man, a retired [mechanical] engineer who designed systems for John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa, and I really can’t see the scenario where Gary would say, ‘Yes, please, I would love to drink some of that Koi fish tank cleaner,’” one of his close friends told the Washington Free Beacon. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”…
“I would like people to know that Gary was not the fool that some of the media stories and comments are depicting him to be,” said the same friend. “I really don’t think Gary knew what he was taking.””
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AJ
I think you misunderstood both my posts today. The first was not to support Pelosi over McConnell. From my vantage point both are allowing corporate America to once again rob the US Treasury and the American people. Part of the robbery is the actual bailouts but the systemic issue exposed here is the use of private institutions to distribute gov’t funds. This indicates a failure of the administrative state. This needs to be addressed as soon as possible if the federal gov’t is to have any credibility domestically and internationally. Both my links in the first post are an evaluation not of the Trump admin but the deterioration of the US federal gov’t since Reagan. The corona virus has exposed this deterioration for the world to see and this is not a good thing not even for a leftist like me. Without a strong US state, we are left with only Germany to lead the western democracies and I just don’t like the sound of that — we need a strong EU and US in order to maintain western ideals against authoritarianism.
My second post isn’t much different. Trump uses a press conference to promote some really weird ideas even within the context of the previous speaker. Most of the world erupts in laughter again eroding US credibility while his supporters desperately try to make sense of it. He then throws his supporters under the bus by saying he was sarcastic. I’m not sure that made it any better — do you want a leader who sarcastic during a public health emergency. Personally I think he’s very self centered so when he heard people were laughing at him, he walk it back.
I’m not a troll. Ironically a high school friend was trying to convince me that Trump was a master troll trying to get the libs all tied up in knots. Trump’s not a troll just a narcissist.
My comments can’t be interpreted in a Dem vs Rep context. I think both Biden and Trump have serious health issues — Biden has always had a foot in his mouth but its gotten worse and in all likelihood the rumor Trump suffered a stroke may be true. He a had relatively easy presidency but the last few months have been hard on him — despite the hair plugs and botox you can see him age in front of our eyes. In the end, I do think Biden is a better choice simply because I think the Democrats will try to restore the administrative state. If the actual machinery of the state continues to fail the western world is in for a rough time.
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The Economist, probably the most respected right of centre magazine, has a good video on the US response to the pandemic
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