RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/coronavirus-relief-tom-cotton-slams-democrats-for-delaying-vote-on-coronavirus-relief-package/

Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) on Monday afternoon slammed Democrats for delaying a vote on a massive coronavirus-relief package, accusing them of holding up the bill in an attempt to check of items on their “ideological wish-list.”

“There is a good bill, a bill that was negotiated in good faith over the weekend with many Democrats . . . that they are now blocking, that they will not even start debate on because of ideological wish-list items,” Cotton said on the Senate floor. “It is disgraceful, and it is dangerous to the lives of our people and their economic well-being.”

The competing bill promoted by House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) includes measures to cap carbon emissions for airlines, mandate “diversity” initiatives for corporate boards, and forgive student-loan debt.

“Democrats want to impose quotas for race and sex on corporate boards,” Cotton said. “Is that going to stop anyone from getting sick from coronavirus?”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/dems-drag-out-senate-coronavirus-response-lloyd-billingsley/

“America will soon be open for business,” president Trump said in his Monday press conference. The nation was not going to “let the cure be worse than the problem,” so Congress needed to “stop playing games,” and pass the coronavirus response bill now in the Senate.

On Saturday, the president said it could be a done deal. On Sunday, Senate minority leader Charles Schumer announced that Democrats wanted to move forward with bipartisan agreement, but as it turned out they didn’t.

Schumer called the package “a large corporate bailout provision with no protections for workers and virtually no oversight.” Failed presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, still in the Senate despite decades of fraudulently claiming to be Cherokee, explained, “this is not a bipartisan proposal. This is a Republican proposal.” 

Also on Sunday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that she may not support the stimulus bill, which has grown to approximately $2 trillion. Pelosi said there was no agreement and the House would introduce its own bill.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell noted that Pelosi was “the speaker of the House, not the speaker of the Senate,” and until her intervention the process was moving forward. The vote came in 47-47, 13 short of the 60 votes Republicans needed.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/with_shortages_plaguing_medical_treatment_will_american_ingenuity_save_the_day.html

An American hallmark is that Americans take the initiative, creating for themselves whatever is necessary to get the job done. Indeed, back in the late 19th century, when Thomas Alva Edison was a whirlwind of inventions, Americans began to view themselves as a nation of inventors. The inspiration for Rube Goldberg’s fantastic, crazy cartoon ideas was the fact that invention was in the air.

People from all 50 states and every educational and ethnic background flooded the newspapers and the patent office with their ideas. It was from that intellectual ferment that we got assembly lines, adding machines, shredded wheat, smoke detectors, Ferris wheels, rotary dials, bottle caps, zippers, modern mousetraps, medical gloves, mufflers, ice cream scoops, and no end of other clever and useful things that are still part of our world today.

American ingenuity may once again come to the fore with coronavirus. One of the biggest concerns about the virus is that hospitals are worried that they will not have enough ventilators for all the people who need them.

In Italy, ventilators make the difference between living and dying. An Israeli doctor who has been working in Italy said that the current triage is to deny the available ventilators to any patients over 60:

Israeli M.D. Gai Peleg, who is currently working to save lives in Parma, Italy, told Channel 12 that things are only getting worse as the number of patients keeps growing. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/senate_democrats_block_the_coronavirus_relief_package_that_they_helped_write.html

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” – Rahm Emanuel (actual quotation)

“This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” – Rep. James Clyburn (actual quotation)

“Nice little country you’ve got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.” – Congressional Democrats (fake but accurate quotation)

Over the past week, a bipartisan group of Senators hammered out the details of a phase-three coronavirus stimulus bill. On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he’d had “two good meetings  . . . with Secretary Mnuchin . . . and I’m very optimistic that we can get something done.” He emphasized that it was important to “allow these businesses that are now closed to quickly re-establish themselves.” He boasted about “having good bipartisan agreements.”

And the bill was indeed a good enough bill, with straightforward help for people negatively affected by coronavirus:

Then, Nancy Pelosoi blew into D.C., cracked her whip, and everything changed. The narrative was no longer about saving American businesses to ensure that, after this panic is over, Americans will still have jobs. Nor was it about immediate financial relief for individuals who have already lost their livelihoods, cannot meet bills, or have rising medical costs.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/what-the-hell-do-we-have-to-lose-trump-to-send-malaria-meds-to-ny-to-begin-trials-on-covid-19-patients/

President Trump says that New York State will begin testing the anti-malaria medicine, chloroquine, on patients who are “very sick” with COVID-19 beginning on Tuesday.

Though he was chided by the media for giving “false hope” about the drug’s usefulness, Trump’s FDA has allowed special use of the medication by those suffering from COVID-19. As Trump put it last week, “what the hell do we have to lose?”

An NBC reporter last week challenged the president that he was giving “false hope” and “misrepresenting” the impact of the drug.  Trump wheeled back and let him have it, saying, “The American people are looking for answers and they’re looking for hope and you’re doing sensationalism … And you ought to get back to reporting instead of sensationalism. Let’s see if it works. It might and it might not. I happen to feel good about it, but who knows. I’ve been right a lot. Let’s see what happens.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/23/population-testing-is-critical-to-managing-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

Is the United States ramps up rapid testing for the coronavirus, the results will surely show a sharp uptick in the number of cases of coronavirus-caused COVID-19. Those tested will learn whether they are infected, but, paradoxically, the public – and public health officials – will not know whether the overall results are encouraging or discouraging, because the rates of the coronavirus infectivity and mortality will remain poorly understood. The existing tests will not identify the potentially large numbers of people who were infected but didn’t seek medical attention, were never tested, and then recovered.

We also need to know how the coronavirus statistics are changing as governments take various actions to mitigate the spread of infections. Washington Post reporter Harry Stevens has created graphics that show clearly how assumptions about the disease and various public health interventions can “flatten the curve” to slow the spread of the disease.

But we need a deeper dive for more comprehensive information, such as what the curves look like for the asymptomatic, mildly ill, critically ill, and the fatalities. The differences among the rates for these groups would offer public health officials important guidance on the benefits of specific mitigation efforts.  

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/23/feinsteins-real-insider-trading-scandal-is-selling

The far more consequential story is Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s participation in richly profiting from the U.S.-China policy for which she has lobbied for 40 years.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) rightly faces a potential scandal for dumping several million dollars’ worth of stock while privy to sensitive information as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee before a major drop in financial markets due to coronavirus. But the far more consequential story is Feinstein’s participation in the biggest insider trade of all in her family richly profiting from the U.S.-China policy for which she has lobbied for 40 years.

This policy of dramatically expanded economic and political ties between America and China while turning a blind eye to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) tyranny—enabling China to become a world power heavily integrated into global supply chains and international institutions—has contributed to this China-driven pandemic.

A Long History of Friendship with Communists

As detailed in an earlier Federalist exposéspurred by revelations that Feinstein had employed a staffer for nearly two decades who was spying for the Chinese government, arguably no politician in American history has maintained a deeper, more longstanding, and friendlier relationship at the highest levels of the CCP than Feinstein. This dates back to at least the normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, when shortly thereafter, as mayor of San Francisco, Feinstein established a “sister city” relationship with Shanghai and Mayor Jiang Zemin.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-washington-liquidity-infusion-11584919023?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Federal and state governments have shut down much of the American economy, and now Washington is moving to lend its balance sheet to compensate for some of the losses it is causing. The foremost goal should be to provide liquidity to prevent defaults and business failures that will cascade into mass layoffs and another depression.

By our deadline, the Senate had not reached a final deal. But the bipartisan draft bill and summaries we’d seen on Sunday afternoon were a major improvement on the state of play on Friday. The overall cost is murky, though it will be in the multi-trillions of dollars, and that includes hundreds of billions in subsidy payments to individuals to buy broad political support.

The version we examined is nonetheless worthy of Senate passage—not least to avoid House Speaker Nancy Pelosi making it worse. She and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were blocking a deal late Sunday with more demands from their non-virus-related policy wish list.