Drew Nickell was back on the Radio, on Thursday, 30 April 2020
I was back on the radio today, sitting in on the Nora Firestone Show, on WKQA-AM Freedom 1110, where I discussed the truth about coronavirus, the stories about corruption in the Obama Administration, Joe Biden’s candidacy, the echoes of history that might figure into this fall’s election and what will happen when we emerge from our sheltered existence.
This show also appeared as a “Facebook live” broadcast, but because I was broadcasting remotely, the picture quality may be someone diminished. Nevertheless, I hope you will enjoy this broadcast, which can be found at:
Despite Coronavirus, the Stories that Just Won’t Go Away
With the month of April waning away, we are reminded of all that happened before the Chinese created and facilitated the spread of coronavirus throughout the world, bringing our nation to a virtual halt. Before we suddenly saw our jobs evaporate into thin air, before we were told we cannot go to the beach, before we were forced to wear masks across our faces, as though we were disguised (take your pick) as surgeons or outlaws in a nationwide costume ball, there was a country awash in the drama of another presidential election.
As we recall, the current President survived almost four years of harassment, not to mention surveillance, by the Obama Administration, including the FBI and the Justice Department, among others. Following Donald Trump’s election, we witnessed a bevy of Obama holdovers during the first year or two of Trump’s presidency, along with globalist saboteurs like former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Chief of Staff John Kelly, plot out Trump’s demise while supposedly serving the new President. Couple all of that with an unceasing effort by the media and Democrats in the House and Senate, along with an inherently corrupt Mueller Commission- one staffed with none but Hillary supporters- to find some reason, any reason, to impeach a duly-elected President of the United States, in what amounted to a concerted and coordinated attempt at coup d’état. That the Trump presidency was able to survive all of that was and is quite remarkable in and of itself- and all of that was before the President was forced to shut down the greatest economy the world had ever seen…
On the Democrat front, we saw a labored and coordinated effort to select a presidential nominee who would guarantee a place at the table for both the Clintons and the Obamas. In order to do this, they had to select a well-known but thoroughly empty “suit,” who could bumble and stumble his way towards a nomination already orchestrated and coordinated well in advance, by the powers to be in the DNC. Joe Biden, the former Vice-President and one-time Senator from Delaware, proved to be exactly who they were all looking for. Never mind the “creepy” Joe, who raised even the most partisan eyebrows with the way he would routinely invade the personal space of girls and young women, sniffing their hair and planting unwelcomed kisses on the sides of their necks and the backs of their heads. To them, the Clintons, the Obamas and the DNC, they found their perfect “dupe” in Joe Biden. All they had to do was get Bernie Sanders out of the way- easy enough, as it had been, four years before- and engineer some campaign withdrawals both before and after Super Tuesday’s primaries and voila, their man is (forgive the term) “in, like Flynn.”
So, all of these stories seemingly faded into the sunset with the onset of coronavirus. Presented with a whole new opportunity to malign and besmirch President Trump for the way he and his administration have managed the pandemic, all of the talk about the past sins of the Obama Administration, the FBI and the intelligence community seemed to subside, just as all of the suspicions surrounding Biden’s nomination seemed like yesterday’s news, destined for the ash heap of history. Efforts to impeach the President have continued in the House, unabated, as the only other thing the House has been able to do is to load their own pet projects into needed funding measures and other forms of relief for the American people- even causing these relief efforts to be needlessly delayed. After all, the Speaker of the House, one Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) must be given an opportunity to show off her ice cream freezer. Along with coronavirus arrived a whole new opportunity to launch investigations, designed to bring down the Trump presidency, if there is anyone who wants to know the true motivations of Democrats in Congress…
Yet, the stories about corruption in the Obama Administration and concerns about Joe Biden regressing from a well-known propensity to gaff, to obvious signs of old age dementia, though seldom mentioned, never really went away. Such stories were merely set aside- just long enough for the media to concentrate its efforts on bringing down the President in the wake of coronavirus. Behind the scenes, however, investigations undertaken by Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham have continued to reveal the great extent to which rogue senior-level officials in the FBI and Justice Department sought to defraud the FISA court with bogus documents, deny civil and constitutional rights to Carter Page, and commit criminal conspiracy to frame Michael Flynn. Flynn, a retired Lieutenant General with thirty-three years of service to the United States Army, was set up by former FBI Director James Comey and his underlings, just as the Trump Administration was getting under way. Denying General Flynn the right to legal counsel, agents from the FBI interviewed him in a coordinated effort to force a bogus confession out of the retired general, so that the President would have no choice but to fire him.
Documents released yesterday by the Justice Department, confirm that this was a set-up from the get-go, but not before Flynn expended all of his own personal wealth just to fund his own legal defense, for an indictment so fraudulently sought and an investigation which should have never taken place.
So much for how Comey and his henchmen, not to mention former President Obama, show their respect to a man for more than three decades of service to the Armed Forces of the United States… Regardless, this is just the tip of the iceberg that is slowly, but inexorably rising to the surface and exposing just how deeply and how high up corruption in the Obama Administration reached, during the attempt to bring down Trump and his presidency.
Now, back to Joe Biden…
Back in 1993, the then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) had a staffer, one Tara Reade, who was allegedly and sexually assaulted by the Senator in the halls of the United States Capitol. Reade went so far as to file a police report following the incident, but then failed to pursue prosecution against the Senator and report his behavior to the press, out of some sort of strange loyalty for the man who had assaulted her. Soon afterwards, during a call into the CNN broadcast Larry King Live, Reade’s late mother purportedly referred to the incident, without naming names, when Larry King was interviewing the late Senator Howard Baker (R-TN) on the subject of senatorial misconduct.
Now, there have been no less than four corroborations to Reade’s story. Backed up by the fact that the incident was first reported to the authorities back in 1993, the former Delaware Senator’s response to these charges have conveniently been locked away in a vault at the University of Delaware, along with all of the other papers belonging to the former Vice-President and one-time Senator, until such time as Biden authorizes their release.
Not surprisingly, all of those Democrats who were so quick to convict Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate nomination hearings, on spurious allegations of rape made by Christine Blasey-Ford which supposedly occurred more than three decades before, have now jumped to the defense of the former Vice-President, insisting that he is innocent and that Reade’s allegations are not to be believed. Unlike Blasey-Ford, who had no corroborating witnesses to her own allegations, Reade has four- in addition to the time-stamped recording of her mother’s phone call to Larry King twenty-seven years ago.
So, the moral to that story is simply this…
…if you are a Democrat like Bill Clinton or Joe Biden, or your last name is Kennedy, accusations of sexual assault and/or forcible rape are either excused, ignored or denied outright, in spite of very credible and documented evidence that these sexual crimes occurred…
…but, if you are a Republican like Donald Trump, or are connected with him in any way (or appointed by him to the nation’s highest court), no accusation of wrongdoing- no matter how fantastical or suspicious in its nature- is to be questioned on its merits or validity.
The problem of course for Biden, and his supporters, is that these accusations by Tara Reade are not going away, despite the abject failure of the media to pose the question of Reade’s allegations to the former Vice-President and current candidate, himself. While his campaign has vehemently denied these allegations outright, the candidate himself has remained mum- not that he has been asked directly, since hiding out with the Mrs. in their Delaware home.
Assuming that Biden is still nominated for his party’s top spot when Democrats convene in August (and that it a BIG assumption), he will have to be confronted with the allegation, sooner or later- either by the media who desperately wants him to win in November- or by his Republican opponent on a debate stage. That the Democrats would ever allow the bumbling Biden anywhere near a debate stage with a President Trump is laughable, because doing so would risk a fifty-state sweep in the general election, once the voters see first-hand, just what they would be getting with a Biden presidency.
As to the early polls of this year’s presidential election, the problem with pollsters… you know, the ones that told us back in 2016 that:
a) Donald Trump had no chance to win the Republican nomination;
b) Donald Trump had no “path” to win the electoral college;
c) and that a majority of voters thought Hillary Clinton was more trustworthy than Donald Trump ;
…now would have us believe that Joe Biden beats Donald Trump across the board… and (get this) that voters would have more confidence in Joe Biden to manage the coronavirus pandemic than they do President Trump…
We would sooner believe an invitation to dine with President and Mrs. Trump, privately at the White House, before I would believe that Biden is leading Trump, anywhere… or on anything…
If you believe otherwise, then please stop watching television, place your own head deep down into your own toilet, and pull the handle…
…for maybe, just maybe, doing so will flush such fake news from out of your brains…
When America is at its Crossroads, What is Needed Most, Today… Intercourse
With the evolution of language, it is not surprising that the subject of this tome is misleading… anyone tempted to think that what follows is sexual in nature, will be grossly disappointed, to say the least. Yet, within such a provocative and racy headline, there are lessons to be learned and thoughts to consider…
The first lesson should be to ignore sensationalistic and contrived headlines, such as illustrated in this example, which either purport fake news, or mislead a cursory reader to an ill-informed conclusion. Headlines are to news stories what attractive people are to advertisements, or do all people of a certain age believe that using a product will make them look like those portrayed in the ads?
At one time, one of the many uses of the word “intercourse” included what we would refer today as “intersection” and/or “interchange.” Essentially, where two principal roads cross one another, as in the case of the small village of Intercourse, Pennsylvania (pop 1,296), located in that state’s picturesque Lancaster County (situated where the Old Philadelphia Pike intersects with an old road connecting Erie, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware), an “intercourse” was often used to describe such a place- hence the naming of the village. So, it can be argued that “crossroads,” with regards to where we are as a nation, and the word “intercourse,” with regards to this definition, is redundant.
“Intercourse,” as defined in Webster’s, is a noun describing “communications or dealings between or among people, countries, etc.: i.e. the interchange of products, services, ideas, feelings, etc.” Isn’t it reasonable, if not crucial, that we people- in our neighborhoods, in our localities, in our country and across the world’s nations- begin to communicate with one another, as opposed to past one another?
At the very moment when we are beginning to emerge from our domiciled isolation, and re-emerge out into the world outside, it is crucial that we learn, and perhaps re-learn, those interpersonal communication skills which enable a free and independent society to thrive in its openness, rather than shrivel and die in the darkness of speech codes, shadow banning and prevailing political correctness…
Simply stated, the inability of people and nations to openly communicate with one another, today, can only lead to widespread and armed conflict, tomorrow. History vouchsafes this admonition, but are we wise enough to learn from mistakes we have made, throughout the course of human history, time and time again?
There is an adage from wedding ceremonies which says, “Speak now, or forever hold your peace…”
Failing to do so, in this day and age, may well prove to mean “Speak now, or the future will hold no peace…”
R. I. P. #32 Mike Curtis- Next to Unitas, Our Favorite All-time Baltimore Colt
The news this morning hit me, so much like the subject of this news hit so many unsuspecting players who had the misfortune of being hunted by Mike Curtis, the “Mad Dog” middle-linebacker of the Baltimore Colts. Curtis was, next to Johnny Unitas, my favorite Baltimore Colts’ player of all-time.
Drafted out of Duke as an offensive back in 1965, he was in his rookie training camp, running an out pattern that Unitas knew was incorrectly run, so Unitas passed the ball, striking the rookie in the back of his head. Curtis went after the then two-time MVP and future hall-of-famer, and had to be stopped by the members of Johnny U.’s offensive line. He then screamed at Unitas telling him that if he “ever did that again, all of his lineman wouldn’t be enough to keep him from getting killed…”
At that point, Baltimore head coach Don Shula wisely assessed the situation, and realized that Curtis had the temperament of a linebacker. Curtis then became a perennial fan favorite, first as an outside linebacker to middle linebacker Dennis Gaubatz during the upset loss to the Jets, and then, as a middle linebacker in his own right. It was Curtis who went on a personal rampage during the 1970 season run-up to winning Super Bowl V over Dallas. It was in that Super Bowl that Curtis intercepted a late fourth quarter Craig Morton pass, setting up the winning field goal by rookie Jim O’Brien with five seconds left in the mistake-prone deadlock. It was also Curtis who, in his own words, “enforced a city ordinance,” by decking a drunken fan who ran onto the field trying to steal away the football in a game where the Colts had just gained momentum against the Shula-led Dolphins.
The only player in the entire league who crossed the picket lines during a brief pre-season players’ strike earlier in the 1970 season, Mike Curtis set his own path to individuality and dedication to the game to become an all-time great. Ask any long-time Baltimore fan about the greatest linebacker in that city’s history, you’ll hear two names- Ray Lewis and Mike Curtis.
Our heroes of a bygone era loomed larger than life- larger than the notoriety so many of our professional athletes seem to mire themselves in nowadays. Both the late Unitas, and Mike Curtis, seemed to embody the youthful worship of a young Baltimore Colts fan who writes this eulogy, today.
Whether their passing, or the passing of a golden era of NFL football, is more poignant than painful is a question of relativity, in the end. Yet the sense of loss is very real, regardless.
Rest in peace, “Mad Dog,” and thanks for the memories…
Slow and Steady- a Plan to Re-open the Nation’s Economy
At his daily coronavirus briefing on Thursday, April 16th, President Donald Trump presented to the nation his recommendations on who, how, when and where our shuttered economy can once again reopen its doors and see the light of day. In slow and measured steps, the plan presented mapped a pathway in which our several states can ease their way back into the state of “normalcy” which existed prior to the arrival of the coronavirus. Stressing that the states’ governors would be deciding on the “when,” the president’s plan laid out a three-staged format based upon well-defined thresholds, or gateways, of bi-weekly and consecutive reductions in the numbers of those diagnosed with COVID-19.
Essentially, the first threshold is met when a state has two consecutive weeks of reduced diagnoses and would then make that state eligible to enter the first phase. If, two weeks later, the state has not seen a bounce-back in the numbers of those diagnosed, and has continued to see a consecutive drop in those numbers, then the state could progress to phase two. Similarly, a continued reduction for another two weeks would qualify the state to advance to the third threshold and, from there, they would be essentially back to where they had been prior to China’s most unwelcomed “gift” to the world.
With each advancing threshold and phase, restrictions are gradually lifted with regards to everything from social distancing and self-sequestration to workplace and retail re-opening. The president stressed that the attainment of each threshold is to be “data-driven,” and not “date-driven.” By far, the best news of the evening was when the President indicated that several states were well along the way into the progression and could begin proceeding along its structured guidelines, immediately.
Critics of this plan fall into two basic categories.
Libertarians feel that a “light-switch” approach of suddenly opening everything at once is what is needed most, and that the President is giving far too much control to task force Drs. Brix and Fauci. Yet, the problem with the libertarian argument is that such an immediate and sudden re-opening of the nation’s economy would very much risk the sudden resurgence and rising death toll, which would result from the widespread infection that would ensue. Such a resurgence would fall on the President’s shoulders for enabling such a recurrence to take place.
Conversely, Democrats and other liberals decry the lack of a single, nationwide, and continued quarantine until such time as a vaccine be made available to everyone, across the nation. Democrats think that the President is acting with reckless abandon, with only his own re-election in mind. The problem with the Democrat argument is that waiting for a vaccine- one that is still a year off- would place this country into a depression far worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. With the nation immersed into such an economic calamity, it is hard to see how Donald Trump could win re-election, and so such duplicity on the part of Democrats becomes easily transparent.
Essentially, both positions hold little regard for the overall well-being of a nation which has witnessed over twenty million layoffs in the last three or four weeks- numbers which rival the jobless numbers of the early 1930s, though as a percentile, not as pervasive…not yet. Politically speaking, Trump would be crazy to follow either approach, by risking a widespread resurgence of the virus or condemning this nation into the worst depression in its history.
So, instead of following the cacophony of his critics on both sides, the President has put forth a reasonable, balanced and yet careful plan to re-open this nation’s economy in a way that at once protects the health of the American people and steadily reinvigorates a dead economy. Realizing that there is an undeniable difference between the densely-populated and crowded northeastern states, which have not yet reached the threshold to phases one and two, and the less densely-populated and more spacious western states, which are well along the way to reaching phases two and three of the plan, the President and his administrative task force have devised a scheme which at once recognizes the broad diversity of our states and localities, and yet still protects the public at large. It provides a balanced and steady approach to unleashing the nation’s pent-up economy, over a period of several weeks, instead of several months.
In our youth, we spent a couple of summers managing a swimming pool throughout its summer season, which went from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Closing down the swimming pool, and storing the pool’s furniture, occupied the Tuesday after Labor Day. Preparing the swimming pool, and re-setting and repairing the pool’s furniture invariably took the better part of a week, prior to the Memorial Day weekend re-opening, as anyone familiar with pool operations can readily attest.
So, comparatively speaking, if the nation’s economy is to once again thrive and prosper, safely and steadily, does it not make sense to follow along the same lines?
Critics of the President are as “thick as thieves” in the night, but we have yet to see any semblance of a better approach than the one the President has proffered. So, what it comes down to is this- do his critics hate Trump more than they love their country?
With Coronavirus and the 2020 Election, Will History be Repeated?
God willing, this day after Easter and week after Passover will witness the beginning of the denouement’ of coronavirus COVID-19. Thanks to the president’s urgent and prompt response to its late January arrival, and the draconian, albeit wise and considered recommendations for its containment from his task force, the early fears of “modeled” estimates, in terms of contagion and mortality, have drastically fallen to a fraction of what were originally forecast, which had been based on the sketchy and unreliable numbers coming from the place of its creation- China. Had President Trump not so acted on these recommendations, millions would have been infected and hundreds of thousands would have perished, so for all those who think he over-reacted, based on the advice he was getting from his task force, better the cautious to lead down such an uncertain path, than to willfully ignore the threat of a new and dangerous pandemic.
Now, by his own admission, the president is indeed beset with the most difficult and crucial decision he has ever faced- one that has the potential of far-reaching consequence in the months and years ahead. On Tuesday, he will be formally announcing the creation of a second task force- one tasked with making recommendations on who, when, where and how this national shutdown will be unwound. Theirs will be the easy part… the hard part is on President Donald Trump, and on him alone. Too early, and the president risks a dangerous and more widespread resurgence of the pandemic virus. Too late, and the economy will be wrecked far beyond repair, and far beyond the election, this fall. Either way, he will face second-guessing and “Monday morning quarterbacking” from the media and his political adversaries, alike, but that’s largely beside the point. Indeed, it is the safety and the overall welfare of the American people, which is at stake- political considerations be damned.
A brief look back into history portends a lesson from the not-so-distant past, about leadership in times of crisis, as it relates to an electorate. It is recalled that Winston Churchill was swept into becoming Great Britain’s Prime Minister, following the failure of Neville Chamberlain in dealing with the emerging threat of Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain, who had been placed into the position of negotiating “peace for our time,” was ultimately played by the Nazi “Fuhrer,” who had no such intentions in the first place. When war came, Chamberlain was tossed from office, and it was “Winnie” on whom it befell to shepherd that nation through a horrific bombing campaign known as the “London Blitz,” (which killed many thousand civilians), then during the Battle of Britain taking place over the skies of that country, and ultimately to victory in World War II. The ink on the German surrender, in the spring of 1945, wasn’t hardly dry when his countrymen turned on him two months later and voted his party out from holding a majority of the House of Commons. Churchill would return to lead his country six years later, but not before Clement Atlee and his Labour Party almost wrecked the postwar economy of Great Britain.
Consider Trump coming into the presidency, following thirty years of failed globalist/ internationalist presidencies- including the single term of the elder Bush, and three consecutive, two-termed presidencies (Clinton, the younger Bush and Obama). Taken together, their failed and disastrous policies cost this nation trillions of dollars, and thousands of American lives, wasted in overseas wars without any tangible accomplishment. Worse, these failed presidents watched, facilitated and enabled the emergence of the People’s Republic of China, as a threat to America’s preeminence in its own military and financial hegemony on the world stage. Still worse, is the fact that we “offshored” to China the vast majority of critical pharmaceuticals, as well as steel, making our nation vulnerable to hostilities from that country. Trump brought back the steel, rebuilt the military and led the nation’s economy to heights never before imagined (prior to the coronavirus pandemic), but bringing back the pharmaceuticals was a far more complex problem, which could not have been done prior to the arrival of coronavirus.
Just as Churchill was early in detecting and warning his country about the growing threat of Nazi Germany, so Trump was very early in detecting and warning our country about the growing threat from China. Both men would end up being put into office when the very things they had long warned about came to full fruition, though no one saw what was coming from China, in the form of this pandemic, until after Trump had been in office for three years.
So, with God’s good grace, let’s assume that the worst is mostly behind us with regards to this pandemic, and that we are able to unlock and reopen the critical gates and doors to our economy, before it’s too late to repair the damage that’s been done.
If this re-opening begins in May, the economy should have bounced back, come Election Day in November. In such a scenario, it would be hard to imagine anything but a landslide victory for Donald Trump, not to mention the fact that his opponent will be the bumbling Joe Biden, whose biggest burden is stringing together a cogent and coherent thought in the form of a single sentence. Thanks to the behavior we have seen from Democrats in the House and Senate, since his election in 2016, the sitting president would just as surely cruise to re-election victory while retaining his Senate majority and winning back the House.
Conversely, Biden’s unlikely election would accompany a swing in the power of the Senate, and retention of the Democrat majority in the House. Just as assuredly, Biden’s vice-presidential running mate would soon take over his presidency- assuming that his administration will not have turned over the reins of all its power to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer- all nightmare scenarios we all must consider before we decide to change horses, at this juncture.
Will the American people, three decades following the beginning of those failed globalist/ internationalist presidencies, repeat the mistakes of their British counterparts, almost three decades into the beginning of their own naïve and isolationist governments (which enabled Hitler’s rise to power), and turn out the very man who led them out of the abyss?
That would only be possible if President Trump re-opens the economy too late to prevent a severe recession (recession defined as two consecutive quarters of slowing activity), or if the re-emergence of the viral threat is enabled as the result of doing so too early. Yes, it’s indeed a lonely place where Donald Trump finds himself but, after all, that is why we have elections, isn’t it?
We elect presidents to make decisions in times of national crisis, based largely on the advice coming from those surrounding him, just as we elect our legislators to enact laws which we don’t have the time or interest in studying up on, and enacting, ourselves. When our leaders make good decisions, and follow the dictates of their electorate, we reward them by returning them to office. When our leaders do not follow the dictates of the electorate (Paul Ryan, anyone?) we turn them out of office- it’s really just that simple.
While there is no shortage of advice, coming from within and from without any presidential cabinet, the final decisions presidents make, rest alone with the president we elect. In this particular crisis, only those who truly loathe this country, would hope that President Donald Trump fails in leading us through this particular crisis…
All that said, once the corona crisis finally leaves us, and once the Election of 2020 is behind us, we will ultimately know the verdict of our nation on the presidency of one Donald John Trump.
Given the fact that 2021, and beyond, will determine whether or not the Chinese government is held to account, financially and otherwise, for the biological war crimes against humanity it has perpetrated on the entire world, this fall’s presidential election has now taken on a whole new meaning. Assuming the president is successful in his management of the pandemic and its economic aftereffects- and, God help us, we hope that he is- crazier things with regards to national elections have happened in the past… just ask the Brits…
Here’s hoping that, in such regards, history doesn’t repeat itself.
It has oft been said that somewhere between the two extremes of an argument, therein lies the truth. It has also oft been said that, eventually, all truth comes out in the end, given enough time.
Largely, both of these statements hold up under scrutiny- at least, more often than not.
Thanks in large part to the fact that overtly-biased news reporting, during a span of forty years, and growing worse every year, and thanks to an overall distrust of government going back to the Johnson Administration (Gulf of Tonkin/Warren Commission, anyone?), we Americans have grown to be quite a skeptical lot and yet, all the more gullible, too.
Given all of the misinformation with which we are beset, both from our mainstream media as well as our social media, one might be tempted to believe that we would become ever more discerning about what we read and what we hear but, sadly, just the opposite seems to be occurring.
Though this writer is far from qualified to be the absolute arbiter of truth- on any topic- there is much myth that must be set asunder, if we are ever able to see the very light of day, once the pandemic has subsided and our lives return to some state of normalcy, if not sanity.
Coronavirus COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan Province of the People’s Republic of China. While the very first cases began towards the end of October 2019, it was not acknowledged until the very end of last year. Since that time, the Chinese government has repeatedly lied- lied about its origin, lied about its number of cases and deaths, and lied about its nature and its spread- albeit with criminal aiding and abetting on the part of the World Health Organization. Those lies, on the part of the Chinese communists, continue to this day and, whether or not the release of this virus was intentional or accidental, their culpability in the worldwide spread of this disease is unmistakable. The fact that, only recently, officials in their government have threatened to withhold antibiotic formularies such as penicillin and other such antibiotics from the United States (97% of which come from the People’s Republic of China), reveals that nation’s criminal mindset. The fact that they sold back to Italy, the very same protective masks Italy had previously donated to help them, also reveals a complete lack of ethical behavior, not to mention any semblance of international cooperation and respect. Intentionally or not, the government of the People’s Republic of China has committed biological war crimes against the rest of humanity, and they should well be held to account for this assault, one way or another.
The fact that our mainstream media has taken to cloak this culpability, whether out of corporate or political considerations, makes them accountable as well, for aiding and abetting a foreign adversary. The fact that this same mainstream media seeks to sow division within the President’s Task Force on Coronavirus, and lack of faith in that task force’s recommendations to contain the spread of this virus, shows just how far off they have drifted in their responsibility to keep the public informed and reinforces the oft-held view that the press is largely anti-American. Consider how they constantly suggest a division between the President and the medical professionals on his task force, when in reality, there is none.
For example, they point to Dr. Tony Fauci’s scientific skepticism of the efficacy of a regimen of hydroxychloroquine combined with Zithromax Z-Pak, which is based on achieving an exhaustive study of this efficacy in a controlled, double-blind study- usually required for FDA approval. They also point to the President’s full-throated endorsement of its widespread use now, while we are in the midst of peak infection, in the knowledge that this may be the only treatment at present to both contain the virulent spread of this virus and curtail its fatality. These two positions are not mutually exclusive of one another, for both speak the truth- albeit from opposite approaches. Trump no more seeks to disdain further research, than Fauci seeks to prevent saving countless lives, but no one would know this, based on the reckless reporting of these two facts, which begs the question as to the political motives behind sowing such seeds of misinformation and malcontent.
Others will tell us that the numbers of both confirmed cases of, and deaths from, coronavirus COVID-19 are inflated, which defies all logic…
Why?
Well, confirmed cases of coronavirus infection are based upon positive results of COVID-19 testing, while confirmed deaths are based upon the mortality rates of confirmed cases. Given the fact that tens of thousands go untested entirely can only suggest that these numbers are vastly deflated, not inflated. Many throughout the world are dying of a myriad of causes- but whether or not coronavirus is present or, for that matter, causational in these deaths can only be absolutely known in post-mortem testing. Yet, the high demands for testing of suspected infections amongst the living, prevent this post-mortem testing, ex post facto. The fact that the United States has conducted more such tests than the rest of the world, also demands the realization of the fact that worldwide numbers being reported are also understated- perhaps vastly so. Only the naïve can possibly believe the Chinese assertion that there have been no more cases of the coronavirus in China during the last two or three weeks- once a liar, ever the liar… person, state or country.
Another erroneous assumption is because the H1N1 virus of 2009-2010 resulted in far more American deaths than the coronavirus has thus far, the seriousness of this pandemic is being overstated. Well, the ugly and undeniable truth is that the Obama administration failed to recognize the seriousness of that epidemic for more than six months, before finally taking action on it. Had they acted with anywhere near the urgency of the Trump administration, the death toll from H1N1 would have been far lower.
There will be plenty of time to evaluate the actions taken by this government once this pandemic has run its course, and we have returned to that seemingly far-off, but sooner-than-we-think concept of normalcy. Though hindsight is usually 20/20, it is our personal opinion that the President’s actions and his administration’s management of this crisis will stand well the tests of scrutiny and time but, again, such judgements are for a later time and date. That said, the heavy ounce of prevention in which most of us are presently engaged is far better than the potential ton of cure that would result from paying attention to those who would risk far worse, by insisting we return to this normalcy right now. Economies recover, but lost livesneverdo, and all of us would do quite well to remember this. There is no doubt that our lives will see much drastic change- some good and some not so good- when the pandemic has passed but, again, ours is the task of living and surviving today, and letting tomorrow take care of itself, and in its own time.
Nibblin’ on fritos Ran out of cheetos Stuck in the house with nothin’ to do Watchin’ a movie, but not feelin’ groovy But I got me a blender ‘cause I’m just outta brew
Wastin’ away again in Coronavirusville While the country has ground to a halt Some people claim that it’s the White House to blame But I know it’s all China’s fault
Don’t know the reason I’m stuck here all season Nothing to do but sit on my ass… But it is my duty, Tho’ not “Constituty” So I stay at home and fill up my glass
Wastin’ away again in Coronavirusville While the country has ground to a halt Some people claim that it’s the White House to blame But I know it’s all China’s fault
The boss had a meeting I learned from his tweeting That we’re put on furlough until May or June But a check is a comin’ While my fingers are drummin’ So I sit on my ass and bang out this tune…
Wastin’ away again in Coronavirusville While the country has ground to a halt Some people claim that it’s the White House to blame But I know it’s all China’s fault
There has never been a time in human history where millions of people have been veritably grounded- forced with rare exception to remain within their confines, and only allowed to venture out for state-sanctioned purposes- purchasing food, prescriptions and supplies, getting medical attention or exercise. The schools at every level have closed, as have the non-essential stores, and wherever work still continues it is largely done remotely, for only those places of economic exchange or financial transactions- those again being the ones that are state-sanctioned– are permitted to continue, status quo ante. Across the fruited plains and majestic purple mountains and from sea to shining sea, we are being told essentially to stay at home and avoid interpersonal contact at all costs- even if such costs border on the absurd, if not insane. That any of us ever thought we would be so sequestered and restricted, even in our wildest sci-fi fantasies, and yet here we are and there it is…
…and then, there are the very severe economic impacts of grinding the economy to a halt.
Even during the very depths of the Great Depression (1929-1940), there was never a fortnight where more than 10 million people lost their jobs in this country, and there was nary a day where the entire economy ground to a halt. Both then and now, Americans saw relatively low gasoline prices but, unlike back then where for a few quarters, one could at least go for a drive and take in a picture show for another quarter, there’s nowhere for us to really go today, save for running, again, state-sanctioned errands. The beaches are closed, save for locals wanting to jog, the national parks may soon be closed and playgrounds in major cities are being closed to discourage close-contact sports like basketball. Moreover, churches and synagogues, during the most holy week in the respective Judeo-Christian calendars, are having to resort to parking lot congregating, drive-by confessionals and on-line services. For others, eating out means curbside pickup and bringing home, while spectator sports are over and done with for the foreseeable future. Even my favorite karaoke provider has had to resort to “sidewalk karaoke” for a fraction of what he made before and is now figuring out a virtual karaoke platform. But where’s the money in that for a guy who makes his living as a karaoke jockey, and had heretofore expanded his business to two locations per night with hired help? For the record, he and his staff have been careful about wiping down microphones with anti-septic wipes, but there’s only so much one can do in those regards.
And yet…
We all know why we are being asked to sacrifice our freedoms, our employment and, yes, even our sanity all to prevent millions of potential deaths. The President and the experts on his Coronavirus Task Force are telling us that if we take the guidelines that have now been extended through month’s end seriously and if we practice an almost-alien protocol of social distancing, we could possibly hold the number of deaths down to somewherebelow a quarter million.
Well, if the country was needing a bucket of ice water to be thrown in our collective faces, regarding the seriousness of this pandemic, that certainly filled the bill.
Aside from the garden variety sociopaths and psychopaths, who relish the arrival of this horrible and hidden enemy- including most of the White House press corps, and not to mention the ridiculously partisan partnership of pathetic personages in the form of Pelosi, Schumer and Schiff (who smell yet another whiff of impeachment before we get too close to the November election), the rest of our sorry lot who has to deal with the loss of personal freedom and economic security, wish like hell they’d all just shut up and, for once, pull together for the country’s sake. Even a President Donald Trump, loathed as he is by those on the left and their collusive friends in the media, should be allotted some semblance of national unity in such times as these, or are there prurient and ulterior motives at play in all this?
That these times will come to an end is a certainty and, for the sake of our nation, the sooner the better. As mightily strong as our economy was prior to the pandemic, this forced stop can only go so long without irreversibly damaging the economy beyond repair, and only the most extreme socialist/communist would wish this upon our country. Sure, we can always print more and more cash, and dole it out to folks how we will, but that cannot continue without causing catastrophic disruptions in our supply chains, a severe devaluation in the dollar and the hyper-inflation that would attend to this devaluation along with widespread reduction in crucial supplies.
Setting all that aside, there is potentially a greater danger that may follow the “pandemic’s period of pause”, as it were. Once the restrictions are finally lifted, and once the engines of economic activity are restarted, and the people they employ return to work, will we as a freedom-loving people have unwittingly set a dangerous and pernicious precedence- one that enables the state to shut down the economy and confine us to our homes?
In the hopes of our eventual deliverance, we pray that all of our personal freedoms to life and liberty and pursuit of all happiness will not have been abridged in the pursuit of containing a COVID-19 coronavirus, created in the People’s Republic of China, and allowed to spread across the globe. Such a lost legacy would be the single most tragic, and most far-reaching consequence, that could possibly result.
