These are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.
POOR GRETCHEN Whittmer, the incompetent Governor of Michigan, who complained that Trump wasn’t supporting her, only to find out that she failed to send in the required FEMA request, tweeted @GovWhittmer: “It’s time for everyone to lock arms and fight COVID19 together.” Hasn’t she heard about distancing?
Since then, Margot Cleveland wrote in The Federalist, that Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan Law School professor, Whittmer hired as a special counsel “to aid in the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, published a leaked letter indicating a shortage of ventilators and intensive care beds at the Henry Ford Health System hospital.
The letter stated that “patients who have ventilators or ICU care withdrawn will receive pain control and comfort measures.” It didn’t take long for the media to pick this up, and Kasie Hunt at NBC News, always anxious to spread bad news, tweeted her followers: “It is happening here, in America. Doctors here have to decide, patients who have the best chance of getting better are our first priority.”
Andy Slavitt, a former Obama administration administrator, jumped on it and tweeted: “A major hospital in the Midwest has reached its limit on ventilators minutes ago. They are handing out forms saying that those with the best chance of survival will get care.”
As it turns out, the hospital had prepared for a “worse case scenario” but had not enacted the policy.
Whittmer’s spokesperson tried to spin her response by saying that Bagley had not obtained the letter through his work for the Governor’s office. However, if he thought it was factual, he should have informed his colleagues there. After all, if the Henry Ford Health System, the second largest medical system in the state, had in fact run out of beds and ventilators, the governor should have been advised.
SHE CAN’T JUST FADE AWAY – I’m writing about Hillary Clinton, loser extraordinaire, who thinks we care what she has to say. I don’t, but I was happy that Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist felt obligated to respond to Clinton’s smarmy attack on the president when she tweeted @HillaryClinton: ”He did promise ‘America First.'”
“Fully acknowledge I’m biased here,” Mollie tweeted @MZHemingway, “but my advice would be that if your politics are giving the impression that you’re rooting against your fellow Americans, and for a deadly virus attacking them, you might want to reassess.” Don’t hold your breath.
DILBERT CREATOR Scott Adams has been watching the media make fools of themselves and wrote @ScottAdamsSays: “The best part of watching Donald Trump pivot on policy – based on current data and expert advice – is that CNN can’t figure out how to be on the opposing side.”
GUY BENSON at Townhall, observing Nancy Pelosi’s fly-in to pack the multi-trillion dollar virus relief package with Democrat goodies for friends – like NPR, the Kennedy Center and the National Endowment for the Arts – heard of a statement made by her Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC): “This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”
So much for their interest in the health and safety of Americans. How many more ventilators, respirators and masks could have been purchased with the funds that went to the arts?
(Courtesyof Pat Cross)
I WROTE YESTERDAY about Apology Joe Biden not taking the bait from Chuck Todd to criticize the president on Meet the Press; not so with Nancy Pelosi, who didn’t need much prodding during her Sunday appearance on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper.
“As the president fiddles, people are dying,” she said. Of course, Tapper didn’t ask her how those funds going to the arts were going to help those people she wants us to believe she’s concerned about.
Tapper asked her if she believes the president’s downplaying of the crisis (WHAT?!) has cost American lives, she said, ”Yes, I am, I’m saying that.”
“The Democrats are getting truly desperate,” writes Rick Moran in PJ Media, pointing out the rising approval ratings the president has received since he began his daily virus briefings to keep Americans informed.
They’re still trying to find a way to derail him.
THE PATHETIC NEW YORK TIMES couldn’t see fit to be kind in reporting the death of former Sen. Tom Coburn: “Tom Coburn, an ultraconservative Oklahoma Republican and family physician who in 16 years in Congress used a rule-book technicality to block so many bills that frustrated legislators called him ‘Dr.No,’ died on Saturday in Tulsa. He was 72.”
Greg Price, writing @greg_price said, “I would genuinely like to ask the editors of the New York Times if they regret the outcome of the Cold War.”
He surfaced this Times piece on the death of Fidel Castro: “Fidel Castro has died at 90. The Cuban revolutionary was a nemesis to 11 American presidents.” And this from the Times archives: “Mao Zedong died on this day in 1976. He began as an obscure peasant and died one of history’s great revolutionary figures.”
AS IF IT MATTERS, 15 percent of Bernie Sanders supporters will vote for President Trump if Joe Biden is the Democrat nominee for president, according to USA Today, reporting on an ABC News/Washington Post poll.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
