These are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.
LAST MONTH, I reminded you of the end-of-life rationing advocated by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of ObamaCare. Yesterday, I was surprised to read Wesley J. Smith’s National Review piece about him, “Biden’s Coronavirus Advisor Wants to Die at 75.”
“Why is that important?” asks Smith, who referred to Emanuel’s wish in an article he wrote in The Atlantic a few years ago. At age 75, that’s younger than Joe Biden is today.
Here’s an excerpt from Emanuel’s article as he explains the problems of living too long:
“It (age) robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”
(Emanuel quote courtesy quotesfancy.com)
“That’s a terrible attitude about the elderly, a denigrating quality of life judgmentalism that deems the value of the old as having less importance than that of younger people,” admonishes Smith.
Questioning Joe Biden’s choice of Emanuel to be on his public health advisory committee, one wonders if he has thoroughly vetted Emanuel who writes about the cognitive abilities of people his age:
“Even if we aren’t demented, our mental functioning deteriorates as we grow older. Age-associated declines in mental processing speed, working and long-term memory, and problem-solving are well-established. Conversely, distractibility increases. We cannot focus and stay with a project as well as we could when we were young. As we move slower with age, we also think slower.”
BIDEN’S VIRTUAL TOWNHALL reportedly didn’t go any better than his in-person campaign gatherings, according to the blog Legal Insurrection. The words “am I on” occurred a number of times during the experiment that lasted just five minutes due to technical problems.
It got off to bad start when Biden started to present his remarks before the camera began recording. Seemingly forgetting that he was on a live stream, he walked out of the frame. And phone conversations were garbled.
WE’VE HEARD IT BEFORE – Democrats and those talking heads at CNN and MSNBC, no matter what they are reporting on, they try to weave into the narrative that President Trump doesn’t care about the people.
Those of us who don’t watch the leftist networks occasionally get to view clips of their attempts to give you that impression when the Fox News Channel and Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center provide them.
“They’re trying to make people believe that Trump doesn’t care a whit about you, doesn’t care a whit about your family,” I heard Rush Limbaugh say recently. “He’s all about making America great, not making Trump great. In his mind, he’s already great.
“You can see it every day simply from the policies that he tries to implement, the policies that he supports, the agenda that he has implemented.
“(The left) just can’t let go of it. They can’t let go of criticizing Trump. The idea that they are gonna find a way to distance Trump supporters from Trump.”
The president began tackling the Coronavirus while the Democrats were still hoping for their outcome of the Senate impeachment trial, when he posted a travel ban on people coming to the U.S. from China. We’ll never know how many lives were saved with that decision.
He formed a virus task force of more than a dozen medical and cabinet officials in the interest of the public, and has been meeting with them daily. Executives of pharmaceutical firms, insurance carriers and health care organizations were invited to the White House to discuss how the government and the private sector could work together on the issue.
The meeting he called last week with pharmaceutical firm executives was initially intended to discuss the lowering of drug costs, a concern of everyone.
The president asked Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to personally negotiate with Speaker Nancy Pelosi legislation to economically protect individuals and small business owners. With a House 360-40 vote near midnight Friday, the legislation will be ready for Senate consideration next week.
On Sunday, President Trump spoke via conference call with executives of the nation’s leading grocery stores and food suppliers in an effort to alleviate the shortages being experienced by consumers, where panic-buying is taking place in some areas. In a press conference that followed, he said he was assured that the flow of food stuffs would continue and urged consumers to purchase only their immediate needs.
This recent activity around the virus issue certainly spotlights his interest in the well-being of the people, but that interest began early in his administration.
In May 2018, President Trump signed the “Right to Try Act,” a measure aimed at helping terminally ill patients access to drug treatments that are yet to be fully approved by the FDA.
On June 6, 2018, he signed a $55 million bill to expand the Veterans Choice Program, paving the way for veterans to opt for care at private facilities when desired.
WITH ALL OF THAT IN THE INTEREST OF PEOPLE, I want to share with you the transcript of a recent panel discussion on MSNBC:
Basil Smikle (a guest): “You just don’t get the sense that this president understands or even cares about managing the complexity of something.”
Pete Dominick (a comedian): “He does not care about us!”
Katy Tur (the host): “It’s exposing a real lack of leadership on a federal level.”
John Podhoretz (a guest): “We don’t really have confidence that he – even after three years as president – even grasps that element of the job.”
Howard Dean (a guest) “We’re crippled by not having – exactly – no leadership at the top whatsoever.”
How shameful! Collusion with Russia didn’t work. The defamation of Judge Kavanaugh didn’t work. Impeachment didn’t work. Now, with the election on the horizon, attacking the president’s leadership on the virus issue is their last hope to end his presidency.
OF COURSE, those are just the things he has done in the area of health care. The people, who the president obviously cares about, have also benefited from tax reform, the cutting of regulations, the appointment of conservative judges and many other accomplishments over the past three plus years.
LEFTIST COLUMNIST LAURIE ROBERTS of the Arizona Republic is at it again, attacking Sen. Martha McSally, who she has criticized before and after her selection to fill the seat of the late John McCain.
Because Roberts has an extreme dislike of President Trump, McSally is on the receiving end in Roberts’ columns every time she supports him.
In her March 14, 2020 column, she refers to McSally as “delusional,” for praising the president’s “decisiveness” and “leadership” in handling the virus issue.
If Roberts was upset with the president’s handling of the issue, she could have simply devoted her column to that end, as her colleague, E. J. Montini, did in his column the following day. However, the devious Roberts’ just couldn’t pass up another opportunity to attack McSally.
MY EARS PERKED UP when I heard Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez complain of rampant voter suppression during the Super Tuesday election in Michigan. “You think voters didn’t get to vote who wanted to vote in Michigan?” Fox’s Bret Baier asked.
“Absolutely,” she responded, “there’s more that we need to do in terms of turning out youth voters. We need to make sure we are inspiring young people to turn out, but when you do turn out, you should not be waiting three, four, seven hours in order to vote.”
So, those young “heads full of mush” members of the Sanders movement, who like the idea of “free stuff” aren’t willing to do what it takes to vote for their candidate. And these are our future leaders, insists Sanders.
LAUGH-OF-THE-DAY – Elvia Diaz, the lightweight editorial board member and columnist of the Arizona Republic, in a piece designed to boost interest in a Biden campaign, concluded with this statement:
“No doubt, Biden can take Trump out in November and that would be good for the nation.”
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
