Here are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.
SLEEPING WITH SOURCES IN THE SWAMP, a feature by Monica Showalter in American Thinker, provided me with information as a follow up to my February 23, 2020 piece on Henry Kyle Frese, the Defense Intelligence Agency bureaucrat who pleaded guilty to leaking classified information about the defense capabilities of North Korea and China to two women in the media.
Court documents show that he had 630 phone calls and at least 57 text messages with his lover Amanda Macias, a CNBC national security correspondent, and 34 phone calls and 151 text messages with her friend Courtney Kube, an NBC national security correspondent. Both are anti-Trumpers, as is Frese.
While Frese may get 10 years in prison, Macias and Kube are so far not facing arrest for knowingly publishing stolen classified information.
Of course, this isn’t new. I’m reminded of the cautionary slogan directed to our military during World War II – “loose lips sink ships.” But last year another bureaucrat, James Wolfe, 57, who spent nearly 30 years on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, was arrested in 2018, charged with lying to the FBI about contacts with reporters who broke stories based on leaks of classified and sensitive information he was privy to.
The indictment on Wolfe revealed a lengthy intimate relationship with Ali Watkins, while she was in college. She later joined the New York Times as a national security reporter. Wolfe was sentenced to just two months in jail and required to pay a fine of $7,000. Showalter muses that Frese may have seen how Wolfe got let off fairly easily.
Isn’t it interesting that the Times, in an editorial, wrote of the “most intrusive tool” in a criminal investigator’s arsenal, obviously critical that a wiretap was used to nab Frese? Yet the use of a wiretap on Carter Page didn’t bother them at all, writes Showalter.
The Times usually falls back on the First Amendment, and the press’s “right to do its job,” especially when it’s Trump that they are out to get.
SANDERS ISN’T SENDING THRILLS UP THE LEG of MSNBC’s Chris Mathews like Obama did. “I’m wondering whether the Democrat moderates want Bernie Sanders to be president,” he said in a report by Mike Brest in the Washington Examiner. “That’s maybe too exciting a question to raise. They don’t like Trump at all.”
“There are people that are concerned … strategists that are concerned that Bernie Sanders being at the top of the ticket will force us to lose the House,” responded Adrienne Elrod, a former senior advisor to Hillary.
MIKE BLOOMBERG, the billionaire buffoon, wasn’t the only one declaring President Trump the winner of the Nevada debate of Democrat presidential hopefuls.
“Democrat pollster John Zogby – not a Trump supporter – noted that Trump is at his high in approval polls and conservative analyst Jeb Babbin suggested that 2020 Democrats are digging their hole deeper,” writes Paul Bedard in the Washington Examiner. “The Democrats had another primary debate in which Trump won. It’s hard to see how the candidates are going to dig their way out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves. And they keep digging.”
HEARD THIS BEFORE, but there’s no comparison. Wretchardthecat, tweeting @wretchardthecat, says “Sanders could win for the same reason Trump won. There’s a real reservoir of anger and disillusionment that needs to go somewhere and nothing but slogans for pathways.”
Yes, Donald Trump won because of President Obama’s failures, but it wasn’t anger as much as it was of utter disillusionment with his inability to turn the economy around and a foreign policy naiveté that made us the laughing stock of Europe. And voters saw Hillary in a sequel.
Trump promised the change that resonated with voters and he had a meaningful slogan that was actually a goal: Making America Great Again. Hillary’s slogan, Stronger Together, didn’t create any enthusiasm.
Should Sanders be the Democrat nominee he will have a heckuva job convincing voters that they didn’t aren’t better off today than they were in 2016, and an even tougher assignment of explaining how he would pay for all the free stuff. And good luck explaining what a Democratic Socialist is, Bernie.
Sanders slogan, Feel the Bern, is clever, but it’s not a call to action like, Keep America Great.
RATIONING HEALTH CARE – I recently noted Mike Bloomberg’s casual views on healthcare for older individuals, and reminded readers of the end-of-life wording in ObamaCare.
Yesterday, in an article, “Age may affect healthcare treatment decisions,” by Amy Norton of HealthDay News, I learned of findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine regarding heart attack patients and found them worth sharing with you.
A study focused on more than 4,400 heart attack patients who were admitted to the hospital during the two weeks before their 80th birthday, and another 5,000 patients who were admitted within two weeks of turning 80.
It revealed that the “older” group was less likely to receive bypass surgery, even though they were no different from the “younger” group in terms of chronic health conditions and disabilities.
“The findings likely point to a bias in doctors’ views,” commented Dr. Patrick Coll, medical director for senior health at UConn Health in Farmington, Connecticut. “Age alone should not keep patients from a particular treatment.”
“Bias can creep into a doctor’s thinking,” said Dr. Anupam Jena, an associate at Harvard Medical School, recognizing that generally, patients in their 80s have more health problems and tend to be frailer than younger patients.
The point I want to again make is that a doctor’s bias may not come into play if Medicare-for-all, single-payer or Universal Healthcare is permitted to be foisted upon Americans.
“I want to end the international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only major country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee healthcare to all people as a right, not a privilege,” is one of the favorite declarations of Bernie Sanders, who has proposed an outrageous $30 trillion benefit plan.
What he doesn’t tell you is that those other countries that guarantee coverage to their citizens have eliminated government coverage for a number of medical goods and services. Those countries are the ones that are embarrassed.
The United Kingdom refuses treatments if they’re too expensive or if they don’t extend longevity and quality of life. Canada’s national government plan excludes coverage for prescription drugs, dental, vision, and long-term care, according to Kimberly Leonard, writing in Washington Examiner magazine.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
