These are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.

GOING TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET – It’s an old saying that has no firm origin as far as I know.  In my April 22, 2010 Special, I feared our country was going to hell, as I observed an electorate willing to allow the virus cure to surmount the health of our economy.

I was addressing the reopening of the economy then, but this is about the runaway spending.  Republicans have always been known to be principled on constraining spending; always concerned about the debt and the size of government.  No more.

“Congress has found its own neat plausible answer to the Covid-19 pandemic: spend, spend some more,” commented Kimberly A. Strassel in her Wall Street Journal column.   Republicans joined Democrats in waiving another $484 billion through by unanimous consent.  No vote.  How convenient.

A giddy Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stated that it was merely an “interim measure,” declaring that in the week’s ahead Congress must prepare another major bill in similar scope to the $2.2 trillion Cares Act.  Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled an end to unanimous-consent votes, but I suspect the spending will continue.

Thus, the handbasket.  Though symbolic, it will be needed to continue to carry the funds to businesses who are playing loose with the Paycheck Protection Program, as they need to pay the rent and meet other demands of the business.  And there are those greedy unpatriotic employees, whose conscience tells them it’s perfectly okay to refuse to return to work since the government is willing to incentivize them not to.

Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs opposed the latest bill as he did the previous bills.  He was concerned with a provision for contact tracing, essentially a means for spying on taxpayers.  How many of you are familiar with this scheme? I have previously mentioned that Apple and Google are working on contact tracing.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was recently forced to cancel a $200,000 no-bid contract to a firm to help track the spread of the virus, when it was learned that that the firm is headed by a Democrat consultant, to be managed by a firm linked to Democrat campaign organizing.  How convenient it would have been to the Democrat party to have the personal profiles of Michigan citizens.

THE BLAME GAME is the title of a piece in City Journal by James B. Meigs that suggests the futility in placing blame for the delays in early actions involving the identification and spread of the virus.

Meigs cites other events where there were missed warnings – the sinking of the Titanic, the shuttle Challenger malfunction and the Deepwater Horizon oil well blow out.

After reviewing the words and actions of President Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blazio over several weeks, Meigs said, “The point of this exercise isn’t to tally up which party did better or worse in its response to the pandemic. Both largely failed; failure to anticipate the worst is a bipartisan trait.

“For those in the party out of power, it’s tempting to imagine that, if they controlled the White House, the mess could have been avoided.  But little evidence suggests that a Democrat White House would have focused on the crisis any earlier,” he adds.

SPEAKING OF BLAME – In a piece by Michael Barone in Washington Examiner, he touches on personalities in previous administrations who faced crisis conditions.

Interestingly, he mentioned the Trump administration’s leading infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.  Those who have been following the daily virus briefings have been impressed with Fauci, but how many are aware that he filled similar roles in the Reagan, Clinton and Obama administrations, as Barone reminds us?

“No one has superior credentials or greater accomplishments,” writes Barone, “yet in February, relying as he had on Chinese government information, he said Covid-19 wasn’t a pandemic.”  I would add that Fauci is at least partially responsible for the state of the crisis stockpile and testing protocol the Trump administration inherited.

LEAVE IT TO POLITICO, the left-leaning publication to seek and publish information that reflects negatively on President Trump’s chances for reelection in November.

“Mass casualties from the coronavirus could upend the political landscape in battleground states and shift contests away from President Donald Trump, according to a new analysis,” writes Christopher Cadelago in Politico.

Note his reference to “a new analysis.”  The “analysis” comes from a little-noticed public administrative journal – Administrative Theory & Praxis – based on a writing of academic researchers.

AT&P’s website states that it is “a quarterly journal of critical, normative and theoretical dialogue in public administration with the purpose of advancing knowledge and stimulate new thought in publication.”

The researchers, Andrew Johnson, Wendi Pollock and Beth M. Rauhaus, conclude that when considering nothing other than tens of thousands of deaths projected from the virus, demographic shifts alone could be enough to swing crucial states to Joe Biden in the fall.

The pandemic is going to take a greater toll on the conservative electorate leading into the election, and that’s simply just a calculation of age,” Johnson told Cadelago.  The virus is killing more older voters, and in many states that’s key to a GOP victory.”

The researchers project that, even with shelter-in-place orders remaining in effect, about 11,000 more Republicans than Democrats, 65 and older, could die before the election in both Michigan and North Carolina.

In Pennsylvania, should the state return to using only social distancing to fight infections, over 13,000 more Republican than Democrat voters in that age category could be lost, according to Cadelago.

Consulting another left-leaning source – the Brookings Institution – Cadelago learned from William Galston that those numbers would only affect an outcome in states where the parties are narrowly divided.

With Trump’s narrow 2016 victory in Michigan, it explains why the biased Politico was eager to showcase the work of this obscure publication, even as questionable as it is.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.