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

WOMEN IN THE NEWS – It was a wonderful week in the news for conservative women.

Kayleigh McEnany made her debut as White House press secretary, conducting the first official press briefing in 13 months.  During that period, however, President Trump talked with the media nearly every day either on the lawn prior to boarding the helicopter or, more recently, during this virus briefings.

I was impressed with the way she handled herself in that the White House press corps has been anything but friendly. One of the initial questions included whether she would lie to the news media.  “I will never lie to you,” she said, “you have my word on that.” She was calm, cool and professional throughout the briefing.

Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who is frequently mentioned as a presidential candidate in 2024, reacted to the unsealed documents relating to Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

“There is so much to unpack with the new info on Gen. Flynn,” she tweeted @NikkiHaley.  “The most upsetting is how calculated it was.  Letting Gen. Flynn off is not enough.  People need to pay for this and the FBI needs to answer to how the public can have confidence that it will never happen again.  Shameful.”

Sidney Powell, General Flynn’s new attorney, deserves credit for insistence in delaying his sentencing and the dogged pressure she has put on the DOJ to open documents.  She will not be satisfied with anything short of complete exoneration for the general, who was the victim of an FBI setup that included the former disgraced FBI Director James Comey.

Kristi Noem, South Dakota’s Republican governor, who was one of a handful of governors not to issue an order, shuttering non-essential businesses during the pandemic, was surprised Tuesday when an impromptu parade was held in her honor in the capitol city of Pierre.

A local construction company organized the parade of 250 cars, fire trucks and other vehicles honking their horns and sirens blaring to show appreciation for her handling of the epidemic.  South Dakota has had 2,245 confirmed coronavirus cases and 11 deaths.

Heather MacDonald, Manhattan Institute fellow, appeared on Martha McCallum’s The Story after her New York Post op-ed drew much attention.  After writing about the paranoia – distancing and non-distancing, masked and unmasked – she observed while riding her bicycle in New York’s Central Park  wrote: “Lives are being lost to the overreaction.  The economic bans must be lifted, and any true public-health expert would tell those Central Park joggers and cyclist to tear off those masks and breathe free.”

Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republic National Committee, noted in her tweet @GOPChairwoman: “Yesterday, a massive story broke about FBI malfeasance at the dawn of the Trump administration.  How many times did the mainstream media mention it during their morning shows?  CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, all zero.  Unreal.”

AND FROM THE PAST comes a special reminder of another conservative woman, Britain’s former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, mentioned in Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal column.

She included this epilogue by Charles Moore, who authored a three-volume biography on Thatcher:

“She cannot be understood based only on her public statements.  She must be seen also in light of her character.  Its contradictions were striking.  She was high-minded and highly educated, yet had a common touch.  She was fierce, but kind; rude, and courteous; calculating, yet principled; matter-of-fact, yet romantic; frank, yet secretive; astute, yet innocent; rational, yet capricious; puritanical, yet flirtatious.”

ON THE DEMOCRAT SIDE, Tara Reade, the former aide to then Sen. Joe Biden, who has accused him of sexual assault, was in the news all week.  On Friday, she was the topic of an interview with Biden by Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC, his first questioning on the alleged assault.

Unexpectedly, Brzezinski directly opened with, “She says in 1993, Mr. Vice President, that you pinned her against the wall and reached under her clothing and penetrated her with your fingers … did you sexually assault Tara Reade?

During the 20-minute interview, the exchange became quite contentious as Brzezinski repeatedly referred to Biden’s hypocrisy, referencing the Judge Bret Kavanaugh case.

Other Democrat women in the news:  Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton embarrassingly endorsed Joe Biden.  Meanwhile, Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Janet Mills of Maine, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot were the subjects of protesters for mishandling the pandemic in their states.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP – The Biden campaign announced that former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd would assist in the effort to evaluate potential female running mates.  Unbelievable. “Yes, that Chris Dodd.  As in the other half of the late Ted Kennedy’s infamous “waitress sandwich,” writes Becket Adams in the Washington Examiner.

UBI: IT’S TIME HAS STILL NOT COME – In July 2017, I devoted an entire blog edition to the subject of universal basic income, a ridiculous scheme that provides cash payments to all citizens, regardless of need, whether they’re working or not.

At the time, I quoted billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who thought the idea had merit.  Robert Reich, President Clinton’s labor secretary, believes it’s the answer to technology displacing so many jobs and sees UBI as a notion to be taken seriously.

You may recall Democrat presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s campaign promise to give every U.S. citizen, 18 years and older, $1,000 a month with no strings attached.  He referred to his version of UBI as a “Freedom Dividend.”

Now, seemingly dissatisfied with her inability to provide more handouts as she tries to take advantage of the pandemic, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her big spending Democrat cohorts surfaced the idea of a guaranteed income as we go forward, Susan Ferrechio reports in Washington Examiner.

It’s another disincentive not to work that Republicans will again relegate to the dustbin of bad ideas.

WHERE ARE THOSE CUOMO FOR PRESIDENT articles now that we know that his handling of the virus crisis was the worst of any governor in America?

Surely, you remember New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s morning briefings during which he whined about not having enough beds, ventilators and masks, blaming President Trump.  The media loved it, and they began pushing the story of Cuomo replacing Biden on the Democrat ballot.

He didn’t lock down the state until March 20.  He said he needed 30-40,000 ventilators and Trump provided them, but just weeks later Cuomo was sending them to other states.

Trump ordered FEMA to turn the Javits Center into a 2,500-bed hospital, but only about 1,000 patients were treated there. The Navy ship Comfort with its 1,000 beds was barely used.

Millions was spent on three field hospitals in the Albany area, but rarely used, and are now standing idle. Another $116 million was spent on a facility at the Old Westbury campus with first grade features, including Wi Fi.

While the high-density state had 18,610 deaths as I write this, California’s equally dense state had 2,135 deaths.  Pennsylvania, with two thirds the population of New York, has had 2,218 deaths.

Thirteen percent of New York’s deaths took place in nursing homes. He learned nothing from the Washington State nursing home deaths.

Cuomo is obviously guilty of mismanagement, and the talk of him on the ballot has subsided measurably.

A NEW POLL FROM GALLUP – Take it or leave it, but the approval of the president’s job was up six points in the past two weeks.  Independent approval went up to 47 percent from 39 percent in the previous survey in April.  His Republican base is still at 93 percent approval.  Fifty percent of those polled approve of the president’s handling of the virus outbreak.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.