Back after a brief hiatus, here are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.

DEMOCRATS AND THE MEDIA have latched onto the Coronavirus as their new opportunity to prevent the reelection of President Trump.  It’s the latest in their three-year effort to bring down his presidency after having no success tying him to Russian collusion and the impeachment trial.

While the president has called for unity on this issue, the usual cast of characters – Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and those “ambulance chasers” at CNN and MSNBC, were quick to criticize the president’s actions on the handling of the virus situation.  And those Democrat presidential wannabe’s have also jumped on the issue.  Bottom dweller Tom Steyer called the president “incompetent” and said “the Coronavirus would be Trump’s Katrina.”

When Goldman Sachs warned the Coronavirus could cost the president the election, an excited Ben Snider at CNN reported, “If the Coronavirus epidemic materially affects US economic growth, it may increase the likelihood of Democrat victory in the 2020 election.”

Just as the leftist media’s effort to predict a recession was fading with a booming economy that was likely to give the president a clear shot at reelection, they’re now seemingly hoping for the virus to hit the U.S. hard, and are casting doubt on his handling of the situation.

“They think this is going to be what brings down the president,” said acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, during a Friday appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

BIDEN STILL BIDIN’ HIS TIME, gaffes and all. People have been wondering just how long Apology Joe Biden can hang in there when he continues to make a fool of himself.  A poor showing in South Carolina on Saturday may be the end.

Have you noticed in much of the coverage of his meetings with potential voters, he is speaking, microphone in hand, with his back to the camera?  Do you suppose he thinks that if he does that, we won’t hear is gaffes?

While touting his efforts on gun control during his appearance at the debate in South Carolina Tuesday, he said that 150 million people have been killed by guns since 2007.  That’s about half the U.S. population.

Speaking at the College of Charleston the day before, while discussing climate, he said “One of the things I’m proudest of is getting passed, getting moved, getting in control of the Paris Climate Accord (sic), he said.  “I’m the guy who came back after meeting with Deng Xiaoping and make the case that I believe China will join if we put pressure on them.  We got almost 200 nations to join.”

Unfortunately, Deng Ziaoping died in 1997.  The current Chinese President, Xi Jinping, signed the accord in 2016, three years after taking power.

Later that day, speaking at the South Carolina Democrat Party First in the South Dinner, he declared, “My name is Joe Biden.  I’m a Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate.”

On Wednesday, Democrat Majority Leader James Clyburn, was able to put these and previous gaffes aside, and fully endorsed Biden in the South Carolina primary scheduled for February 29, 2020.  Oh my.

But Joe wasn’t done.  On Friday, during an appearance on CNN’s New Day program, he admitted he was never arrested in South Africa while on a Congressional delegation trip to meet anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in the 1970s, as he had boasted of earlier in the month.

“I had the great honor of meeting him.  I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on (Robben) Island,” Biden said.

Andrew Young, the former ambassador told the media that he had never been arrested there … “and I don’t think he (Biden) was either.”

“When I said arrested,” Biden tried to explain, “I meant I was not able to, I was not able to move.  Cops, Afrikaners, were not letting me go with them (the blacks in the group), made me stay where I was.  I guess I wasn’t arrested, I was stopped.  I was not able to move where I wanted to go.”

SPEAKING OF THE DEBATE in South Carolina, in which all of the candidates gave an embarrassing performance, acting like a bunch of grade schoolers with their “ME, ME” hands waving in the air, however, the CBS moderators should be the ones sent to the corner of the room.

Norah O’Donnell, Gayle King, Major Garrett, Bill Whitaker and Margaret Brennan, all experienced anchors with key network positions, were unable to control the candidates.  It was a disaster.

HOW’S HE GOING TO PAY FOR IT?  That’s the question everyone is asking of socialist independent Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders when the promises of “free stuff” roll off his tongue.  Well, he’s given us a peek at his plan, and as expected, his taxes will seriously kill our economy.  It’s too detailed to cover here, but if you’re interested, you can find it online.

To begin with, his proposal includes he terms a “modest tax” on Wall Street speculation that will raise an estimated $2.4 trillion over ten years to make all “public colleges, universities and trade schools tuition free, and cancel all student debt over the next decade. There’s more.  Income equality, universal childcare and pre-school, his Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all, punishing the fossil fuel industry and a reduction in defense spending … all at a cost of $60 trillion.

THAT GREEN NEW DEAL, a proposal to overhaul the entire economy in the name of fighting climate disaster has been presented in various ways by the wacko Democrat presidential candidates without telling you what it will cost the average American family.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute and Power the Future have published a study that concludes that among the 11 states analyzed, the Green New Deal would cost to a typical household a minimum of $74,287 in the first year, and $47,755 in the subsequent four years, according to Tyler O’Neil of PJ Media.

That covers only increased energy costs, and does not consider the loss of millions of jobs in the fossil fuel industry.

A chilling paragraph in the study notes, “most provisions of the program are so broad and open-ended that the list of potential programs necessary to implement the program is only limited by the capacity of legislators to imagine new government programs.”

AND IF THAT’S TOO DIFFICULT to stomach, here’s Democrat Tom Steyer’s vision of America: “I will declare a state of emergency on climate on the first day of my presidency.  I will use the executive emergency powers of the presidency to tell companies how they can generate electricity, what kind of cars they can build – on what schedule – what kind of buildings we’re gonna have, how we are going to use our public lands.

“To get climate right, let’s start with listening to communities of color. Climate is a racial issue. Where people can’t breathe, can’t drink the water, are black and brown communities.”   Unbelievable.

ATTENTION TOM STEYER – The U.S. Energy Information Administration just issued a report stating that we again reduced greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, and they predict that emissions will be going down further this year.

We did this with good old American ingenuity and technology, without pouring more money into a membership in the Paris Accord.

Meanwhile, France, Germany and the United Kingdom all missed their emissions reduction goals last year.  Germany is foolishly gutting its nuclear power programs, and have had to restart coal-fired plants, according to Jazz Shaw at PJ Media.

WHEN THEY CAN’T BEAT YOU at the polls, they beat you at public gatherings, with fists, baseball bats, and even iron pipes … or they drive a car into a table where you are registering voters.  Writing at the blog Steadfast Loyalty, Daniel Fleming writes of a list of 389 liberal attacks on conservatives since 2015, assembled by John Nolte at Breitbart News. CLICK HERE to see the entire list.

BLOOMBERG THE STORY TELLER – You would think that Michael Bloomberg would think before pulling a Joe Biden with his false tales, but he said, “I led a complex, diverse city through 9/11 and I have common-sense plans to move America away from the chaos to progress.”  “The problem,” writes Ebony Bowden, of the New York Post, “he didn’t become mayor until four months later.”

All of the news coverage of the attack featured Mayor Rudy Giuliani and President George W. Bush.  Giuliani didn’t hand Bloomberg the keys to Gracie Mansion until January 1, 2002.

WHILE WE CELEBRATED BLACK HISTORY MONTH, we learn that a black man between the ages of 25 and 30, was caught on video vandalizing the Cecil B. Moore mural in Philadelphia.  The mural, a symbol of the civil rights movement, honors Moore, a “husband, father, lawyer, activist, soldier, and man of the people.”

               May God continue to bless the United States of America.