The Corona Economy: There is no way we don’t take a big hit economically because of the CoronaVirus. The Fed can “prime the pump” which will help short-term, but leave us with one hell of a hangover. Many businesses will be closed…forever. Some bankruptcies will be healthy, everyone does NOT deserve a bailout.
The stock market will have to take a hit as company’s earnings will be negatively affected.
Unemployment will peak…and folks will either go back to work at their old jobs or have to look for new employers, new opportunities and new ventures. It’s not going to be easy, but it may have some good, long term effects.
Biden v Kavanaugh: Amazing how the Democrats and mainstream media are so very comfortable with their double standard, hypocrisy and partisan politics.
I have to believe it eventually catches up with them…American’s will see through it.
Justin Amash for President: Congressman Amash formed his exploratory committee to run for President as the Libertarian nominee. Great. I’m a big believer in the battle of ideas, any ideas. He will also give the “anti Trumpers” one more place to cast their “protest vote”.
I think he’ll have NO effect on Michigan. I think he’ll be good for the debate nationally. And in the end, no one knows what effect he’ll have, if any, influencing who wins the presidency.
CoronaVirus: Still something to be aware of. Be smart. Pay attention to the advice health care professionals are giving. Be diligent about your habits. Do your part to help. This is serious and should be taken seriously.
It’s a problem. It was not Trump’s fault. The haters just have to get over it and pitch in to help make this better. Let’s learn from this and be a better country for it.
It isn’t and shouldn’t be political.
Use common sense, keep your distance, touch less, clean everything and say a little prayer, it can’t hurt!
-Saul Anuzis
Click Here for Past Commentary from Saul
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Links to the articles discussed in the video:
Seniors Resent the Politics of Death
Coronavirus Reality Check
Data are coming in, and their import is clear. The coronavirus pandemic is not and never was a threat to society. COVID-19 poses a danger to the elderly and the medically compromised. Otherwise, for most who present symptoms, it can be nasty and persistent, but is not life-threatening. A majority of those infected do not notice that they have the disease. Coronavirus presents us with a medical challenge, not a crisis. The crisis has been of our own making.
On March 16, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London predicted a coronavirus death toll of more than two million in the United States alone. He arrived at this number by assuming that infection would be nearly universal and the fatality rate would be high—a terrifying prospect. The next day, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis sifted through the data and predicted less widespread infection and a fatality rate of between 0.05 and 1.0 percent—not that different from the common flu. The coronavirus is not the common flu. It has different characteristics, afflicting the old more than the young, men more than women. Nevertheless, all data trends since mid-March show that Ferguson was fantastically wrong and Ioannidis was largely right about its mortal threat.
But Ferguson’s narrative has triumphed, helped by our incontinent and irresponsible media. A young doctor in Wuhan died—COVID-19 must be dangerous and deadly for everybody. Hospitals in Italy are overwhelmed—we are witnessing a pandemic of epic proportions. China succeeded with draconian methods of mass quarantine—these must be our only hope of protection against the coming disaster.
Amid the Coronavirus Crisis, Heart and Stroke Patients Go Missing
Bishnu Virachan was a bicycle deliveryman for a grocery store in Queens. With New York City locked down, he was busier than ever.
But in early April, as he was watching television, he felt “a pain in my heart.” It frightened him, but he did not go to the emergency room. Virachan, 43, was even more afraid of that.
“What can I do? What can I do?” he asked. “Everywhere, the coronavirus.”
After a few days, pain overrode fear and he went to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. Doctors discovered a nearly complete blockage of his left main coronary artery.
A surgeon opened the artery, but Virachan was left with a weakened heart. Had he waited much longer, doctors said, he would have died.
Fear of the coronavirus is leading people with life-threatening emergencies, like a heart attack or stroke, to stay home when ordinarily they would have rushed to the emergency room, preliminary research suggests. Without prompt treatment, some patients, like Virachan, have suffered permanent damage or have died.
FBI Closed Flynn Case, Dubbed ‘Crossfire Razor,’ In Early 2017
New evidence released Thursday shows that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), closed its criminal counterintelligence investigation of retired Gen. Mike Flynn on January 4, 2017, only to have it reopened by Peter Strzok.
“The goal of the investigation was to determine whether [Flynn], associated with the Trump campaign, was directed and controlled by and/or coordinated activities with the Russian Federation in a manner which is a threat to the national security and/or possibly a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” the FBI memorandum formally closing its investigation of Flynn stated. “Following the initiation of captioned case, the [Crossfire Hurricane] team conducted a check of logical databases for any derogatory information on [Flynn].”
“No derogatory information was identified in FBI holdings,” the memo stated.
According to the FBI document, the federal law enforcement agency also asked a redacted agency, likely the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to conduct a similar search of its own records for derogatory information against Flynn, who at the the time was the incoming National Security Adviser for then-President-elect Donald Trump.
“No derogatory information was reported back to the FBI,” the memo concluded.
Coronavirus Reveals the Destructive Arrogance of the Ruling Class
Draconian restrictions aren’t helping their case with statements like these.
“You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday. “Do it tomorrow. You can get a job as an essential worker. Now you can go to work.”
In Cuomo’s telling, wanting to work and pay for things is “selfish.” Surely there’s a more subtle—dare I say, empathetic—way of communicating with the underclass?
Cuomo’s outburst was his moment of truth. Take away the oozing media spin, and it’s evident he thinks New Yorkers are idiots. Perhaps the view is different from the governor’s mansion, but he’s not alone. From the patronizing barking of Cuomo to the snide uptalk of social distancing hall monitors like the editors of the New York Times, the tone of the ruling class has become insufferable of late. It’s clear they see Americans as errant schoolchildren, in need of careful tutelage.
But for upwards of 26 million Americans out of work, a lockdown is more than an “inconvenience.” It’s a catastrophe.
The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News
Defenders of coronavirus lockdown mandates keep talking about science. “We are going to do the right thing, not judge by politics, not judge by protests, but by science,” California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer defended an order that, among other things, banned the sale of paint and vegetable seeds but not liquor or lottery tickets. “Each action has been informed by the best science and epidemiology counsel there is,” she wrote in an op-ed.
But scientists are almost never unanimous, and many appeals to “science” are transparently political or ideological. Consider the story of John Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford’s School of Medicine. His expertise is wide-ranging—he juggles appointments in statistics, biomedical data, prevention research and health research and policy. Google Scholar ranks him among the world’s 100 most-cited scientists. He has published more than 1,000 papers, many of them meta-analyses—reviews of other studies. Yet he’s now found himself pilloried because he dissents from the theories behind the lockdowns—because he’s looked at the data and found good news.
In a March article for Stat News, Dr. Ioannidis argued that Covid-19 is far less deadly than modelers were assuming. He considered the experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined Feb. 4 in Japan. Nine of 700 infected passengers and crew died. Based on the demographics of the ship’s population, Dr. Ioannidis estimated that the U.S. fatality rate could be as low as 0.025% to 0.625% and put the upper bound at 0.05% to 1%—comparable to that of seasonal flu.
Coronavirus crisis spells doom for Putin’s dreams of rebuilding the Soviet empire
The tide of history ebbs and flows, with decades of relative stability interspersed by periods of rapid and dramatic change. We may now be entering one such period, with the disruptive role of the coronavirus crisis creating new realities across the planet. This is particularly true of the former Soviet world, where the crash in energy prices caused by the pandemic poses existential challenges to both the Russian economy and the Kremlin’s great power pretensions. For Ukraine and other post-Soviet nations seeking to escape from Moscow’s unwelcome imperial influence, the unfolding crisis represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to resume the historic transition begun in 1991.
The collapse of the Soviet Union is typically depicted as a specific event, or a closely connected series of events, that took place over a relatively short period of time from the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 to the formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. In fact, it is a ongoing process that is still underway today. Then as now, plummeting oil prices played a crucial role in weakening the Kremlin. In another echo of today’s situation, Ukraine was also the decisive theater when the Soviet empire first began to unravel at the dawn of the 1990s.
If talk of historic transitions seems somewhat far-fetched, it is worth noting that virtually nobody foretold the fall of the USSR. In the early 1980s the Cold War seemed at its peak as the superpowers exchanged Olympic boycotts and the Red Army marched into Afghanistan.
However, the 1986 Chornobyl tragedy helped to expose the moral bankruptcy of the Communist regime, while Gorbachev’s attempts at reform merely served to lift the lid on the horrors of the gulag and the crimes of the Stalin era. All this was taking place against a backdrop of sharp economic decline driven by low oil prices and an escalating arms race.
Trudeau Bans ‘Military-Grade Assault Weapons’ In Canada, Considers Confiscation
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a total ban Friday on “military-grade assault weapons.”
Trudeau began his daily Ottawa coronavirus news conference with the news. The prime minister has often promised to ban assault weapons, including during the last federal election that returned Trudeau to power with a minority government.
“Effective immediately, it is no longer permitted to buy, sell, transport, import or use military-grade assault weapons in this country,” Trudeau said.
The prime minister described the sweeping regulations as “closing the market” on these weapons in Canada. He has also discussed banning all handguns, but he avoided discussing that option Friday.
Biden publicly denies sexual assault allegation, says ‘This never happened … period’
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Friday for the first time publicly addressed the sexual assault allegation against him by a former Senate staffer, saying they “aren’t true.”
The allegation is being made by former Senate aide Tara Reade, who in March publicly said the incident occurred in 1993 in the Senate office complex on Capitol Hill.
“I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago,” Biden said in part in a written statement released by campaign. “They aren’t true. This never happened.”
Biden later Friday addressed the issue on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“No, it’s not true,” Biden said. “I’m saying unequivocally, it didn’t happen. It never happened. I don’t remember any type of complaint she might have made. It’s been 27 years.”
The Biden campaign issued a statement in early April denying the allegation, and several former Biden staffers have publicly defended the former senator and vice president.
Stacey Abrams throws #MeToo under the bus in campaign to be Joe Biden’s running mate
Stacey Abrams is an obvious try-hard, but her willingness to dump a ton of bricks onto the #MeToo movement all so she can advance her prospects of being Joe Biden’s running mate is truly remarkable.
The failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate said Tuesday on CNN that she wanted to be Biden’s pick for vice president despite the serious allegation of sexual assault he faces because, well, she’s decided she believes him and not Tara Reade, the woman who’s accusing him.
“The New York Times did a deep investigation, and they found that the accusation was not credible,” she said. “I believe Joe Biden.”
That’s all, folks!
Pelosi says universal basic income could be ‘worthy of attention now’ as coronavirus stifles economy
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that Congress may need to consider a guaranteed minimum income for Americans as one way to meet people’s basic needs while the country remains paralyzed by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Let’s see what works, what is operational and what needs attention,” the California Democrat said in an interview with MSNBC.
“Others have suggested a minimum income, a guaranteed income for people. Is that worthy of attention now? Perhaps so. Because there are many more people than just in small business and hired by small business … that may need some assistance as well.”
The idea of a government-guaranteed minimum income has gained attention in the past year thanks largely to Andrew Yang, who ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary on a platform built around universal basic income. Yang failed to win any delegates, but he built a devoted following and raised the issue of UBI onto the national debate stage.
If Half the Country’s Deaths Were in Montana, Would New York Shut Down?
According to The New York Times coronavirus report, as of Sunday, April 19, 2:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, there were 35,676 COVID-19 deaths in the United States. Of those deaths, 18,690 were in the New York metropolitan area.
(The New York metropolitan area is generally regarded as consisting of the five boroughs of New York City, the five New York State counties surrounding New York City — Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland and Orange — and the populous parts of New Jersey and Connecticut.)
That means that more than half (52%) of all deaths in America have occurred in the New York metropolitan area.
What makes this statistic particularly noteworthy is that the entire death toll for 41 of the other 47 states is 7,661. In other words, while New York has 52% of all COVID-19 deaths in America, 41 states put together have only 21% of the COVID-19 deaths. And all the 47 states other than New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have less than half (48%).
‘Devastating Flashback’ Shows Comey Bragging About Getting ‘Away With’ Flynn Set Up
A 2018 video of former FBI Director James Comey is circulating again after the Department of Justice released bombshell documents that appear to show the FBI was planning a perjury trap for President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
In the clip, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace asks Comey who went around protocol to send FBI agents directly into the White House to interview the retired general in January 2017.
“I sent them,” Comey reveals.
“[S]omething I probably wouldn’t have done and maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation,” he added.
Much of the FBI’s Treatment of Mike Flynn Was Business as Usual, and That’s the Scandal
Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general and the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, is back in the news after his attorneys released documents purporting to show that FBI officials considered trying to get Flynn to lie in order to prosecute him or get him fired. Flynn resigned in February 2017. In December 2017, he pled guilty to charges that he intentionally lied to the FBI about his connections and communications with a Russian ambassador.
The documents, released by Flynn’s attorneys on Wednesday, show handwritten notes that discuss strategies for interviewing Flynn. One note asks “What is our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” Fox News reports that the notes were written by Bill Priestap, the former head of FBI counterintelligence.
