Here are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.
WRONG AGAIN! – The media thinks they can read President Trump, but they were duped again. You will recall, they didn’t expect him to extend the mitigation to the end of April.
Then, most of them have been listening to the president speaking enthusiastically about reopening our economy, saying we have to get back to work. You just know that they were expecting him to ignore the advice of scientists and medical experts and pave the way for opening the economy.
Instead, the proposal presented for reopening our economy is heavily contingent on safety and health conditions from state to state and even county to county, the product of our best science and common sense.
Dr. Gretchen Birx of the virus task force reiterated the need for Americans to continue to practice social distancing and taking proper hygiene precautions before outlining in granular detail a gating process leading to three phases of movement toward what is being called a new normal.
Businesses are expected to open in several areas of the country sooner than others, but the president was reluctant to name them.
(Courtesy of Gary Varvel)
TWO WORDS USED TO DESCRIBE the presumptive Democrat presidential, Apology Joe Biden, are repeatedly used in endorsements of his candidacy – integrity and character.
Neither apply to Biden. I won’t devote the space here to present the long list of events in his decades as a public servant that dash those descriptors. However, during his virtual townhall Wednesday night, he said of President Trump, “it’s always about him … he only thinks of himself.”
This from the man who played second banana to Barack Obama, who blatantly used the words “I” and “me” so often that pundits routinely counted the times he used them in each speech.
In Obama’s first 41 speeches he mentioned himself 1,198 times. In a 25-minute speech on July 5, 2012 in Sandusky, Ohio, his use of the two words combined to 117 times.
President Trump referred to himself just 26 times in his first State of the Union address, which was the third longest in history, while Obama referred to himself 98 times during his first State of the Union in 2010. He used “I” four times in a single sentence.
In Donald Trump’s Republican nomination speech, he opened with “Who would have believed that when we started this journey on June 16th of last year – and I say ‘we’ because we are a team – would have received almost 14 million votes … together, we will lead our party back to the White House, and we will lead our country back to safety, prosperity and peace.”
Then, during his inaugural address, he opened with: “We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise fall all of our people.
“Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come. We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done,” he said.
He made a point to remind those in attendance that the day wasn’t merely marking a transfer of power from one administration to another, or one party to another – but “we are transferring power from Washington DC and giving it back to you, the American people.
Breaking from his address filled with the use of the word “we,” he did say, “I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, never let you down.”
In the near four years that have followed, there were numerous occasions when he has given credit to groups and individuals for work on behalf of America. His motto, America First, in itself, is a reflection of something bigger than himself, but Biden doesn’t have the intellect to understand that.
This week alone, he showed empathy with a group of men and women who survived the virus, and credited a group of truck drivers representing the thousands who have been moving food and goods during the virus epidemic.
Someone needs to remind Jill to be sure Joe is wearing his hearing aids. Or, to stop watching CNN and MSNBC.
WHAT WAS IT RAHM EMANUEL SAID? “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Well, his Obama administration colleague, Attorney General Eric Holder, remembered it.
“Coronavirus gives us an opportunity to revamp our electoral system so that it permanently becomes more inclusive and becomes easier for the American people to access,” Holder said in an interview with TIME magazine.
In three separate editions of this blog this month, I have written about schemes devised by the Democrat Party to fraudulently obtain votes, with same-day voting and voting by mail and ballot-harvesting.
Holder calls for a “sea change” in voting systems, according to Charlie Spiering at Breitbart. It would allow Americans to vote from home, using prepaid mail-in ballots and unlimited absentee voting.
“It would be foolhardy to take these pro-democracy (view by the left) measures off the table after we get on the other side of the virus. These are changes that we should make permanent because it will enhance our democracy,” so said the left-leaning Holder.
Former President and Mrs. Barack Obama have been promoting mail-in voting since he left office, and both Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have called for mail-in voting in 2020.
REMINDERS FROM HOLDER’S PAST – When members of the Black Panthers, dressed in black leather, brandishing night sticks, stood in front of a polling place near downtown Philadelphia on election day 2008, they were accused of intimidating voters. Despite the efforts of outraged civil rights lawyers and Congressional Republicans, a year later, Holder’s Justice Department dropped the case with no penalties for the those involved.
THERE’S MORE – Holder also blocked voter-ID law in Texas, claiming it interfered with the right to vote, calling it a “moral failing” that transcends political partisanship. He also used his position to block voter proposals in North and South Carolina, Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio, frequently accusing states of voter disenfranchising voters and voter suppression.
When Obama’s IRS blocked conservative organizations, like those of the Tea Party, filed for tax exemptions, preventing them from having the means to promote Republican issues in 2010, it was Holder who stonewalled their appeals and lawsuits.
SOMETHING TO PONDER – Apology Joe Biden, during his virtual townhall online Wednesday, criticized President Trump for not accepting responsibility. For what? The virus? I waited to hear what he should accept responsibility for – Jill Biden at his side, looked at him as if she, too, was expecting something. I guess when you have had to apologize so much during decades of public service, you kind of expect it.
Speaking of accepting responsibility, I’m still waiting for him to walk back his claim that the thing he was most proud of about the Obama administration was that there was “not a single whisper of scandal.”
Come November, I will be waiting to hear Biden accept responsibility first, for making the mistake of entering the race, and then for his embarrassing debates with Trump.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
