Displaying posts published in

April 2020

White House, Congress reach deal to replenish small business loan program By Morgan Chalfant,Brett Samuels and Alexander Bolton

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/493910-white-house-congress-reach-deal-to-replenish-small-business-loan

The White House and Congress have reached a deal on a new funding package that will replenish a lending program meant to aid small businesses impacted by the novel coronavirus outbreak, two administration officials confirmed on Tuesday.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows struck an agreement on the core components of the deal with Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) early Tuesday morning.

Schumer announced the deal during an interview on CNN shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday and White House officials confirmed after 1 p.m.

Final details of the package are forthcoming but it is expected to total more than $450 billion and provide roughly $300 billion for the Small Business Administration’s popular Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and $50 billion for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, $25 billion for testing and $75 billion for hospitals.

Schumer announced that $125 billion of the money for PPP will be set aside for “under-banked” small businesses that don’t have strong relationships with local banks, such as small restaurants and hair salons.

Russian planes probing U.S. airspace for vulnerabilities amid COVID-19 crisis: U.S. general By Mike Glenn

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/21/russian-planes-probing-us-airspace-vulnerabilities/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_campaign=pushnotify&utm_medium=push

The Air Force general charged with protecting the U.S. from an invasion said he expects additional incidents of Russian probing of American airspace as a result of the nation’s focus on the coronavirus pandemic.

Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, who leads both U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the Russian military has always been interested in gauging the U.S. response to their provocations.

“We expect to see continued activity. That’s why we’re always ready to respond,” Gen. O’Shaughnessy told reporters on Tuesday at the Pentagon.

On April 8, F-22 fighter jets assigned to NORAD intercepted a pair of Russian Ilyushin-38 patrol aircraft when they entered an area known as the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. They were first spotted flying over the Bering Sea north of the Aleutian Islands. The U.S. fighters escorted them out of the area.

“We wanted to make it very clear – which we did by the way we intercepted them – that there are no vulnerabilities as a result of COVID-19,” Gen. O’Shaughnessy said. “We are postured and maintain the ability to respond at a moment’s notice.”

FDA authorizes first at-home coronavirus test; James Rogers

https://www.foxnews.com/science/fda-authorizes-first-at-home-coronavirus-test

The FDA has authorized the first diagnostic test with a home collection option for COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus.

In a statement released Tuesday, the FDA said that it had reissued an Emergency Use Authorization for LabCorp to COVID-19 RT-PCR Test to permit testing of samples that were self-collected by patients at home using LabCorp’s Pixel by LabCorp COVID-19 Test home collection kit.

“Throughout this pandemic we have been facilitating test development to ensure patients access to accurate diagnostics, which includes supporting the development of reliable and accurate at-home sample collection options,” said FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn.

Coronavirus testing is in the spotlight as America fights to contain the outbreak. Data compiled by the CDC indicate that, since the start of April, up to 140,000 coronavirus tests a day have been conducted in the U.S.

“This reissued EUA for LabCorp’s molecular test permits testing of a sample collected from the patient’s nose using a designated self-collection kit that contains nasal swabs and saline,” explained the FDA, in its statement. “Once patients self-swab to collect their nasal sample, they mail their sample, in an insulated package, to a LabCorp lab for testing.”

The 2016 election scandal waiting to break: John Crudele

https://nypost.com/2020/04/20/the-2016-election-scandal-waiting-to-break/

The virus isn’t the only thing going on in Washington that Wall Street and investors need to pay attention to.

There is another Black Swan about to take flight that could poop on the markets.

As I’ve been telling you for a long time, there are going to be repercussions from the political scandals of 2016.

The time is coming soon – maybe very soon – when we will find out who will be indicted and what impact these legal actions will have on the 2020 presidential election.

John Durham, the US Attorney in Connecticut, has been investigating whether there was wrongdoing before and after the last presidential election. His focus seems to be on whether warrants were improperly obtained to spy on the Trump campaign.

But over the two-plus years since Durham has been on the case, the probe seems to have expanded. High up intelligence officers in the US seem to be the target.

Durham’s probe could turn very political if his evidence determines that actions were taken by the intelligence community to aid the Democrats.

Recently, Attorney General Bill Barr had this to say about Durham’s probe: “His primary focus isn’t to prepare a report. He is looking to bring to justice people who were engaged in abuses,” Barr said.

Ruthie Blum Let us remember what the survivors are unable to forget

https://www.jns.org/opinion/let-us-remember-what-the-survivors-are-unable-to-forget/

Yom Hashoah is a day when aging survivors—many of whom are widowed or have no offspring—have the opportunity to be honored and, above all, heard.

Holocaust survivors do not need annual ceremonies to remind them of the Nazi atrocities that they endured or of the family members that Adolf Hitler’s henchmen slaughtered during World War II. No, those memories are just as inked in their hearts and minds as the numbers tattooed on their forearms.

Indeed, it is not those people who require the admonition “Never Forget,” but rather the rest of the world. It is also a mantra for subsequent generations of Jews to repeat and forge a collective memory of events that we did not experience firsthand, but which require our ongoing attention. If, that is, we are to recognize and combat anti-Semitism in all its ideological—and military—manifestations.

The Knesset thus ruled in 1951 that Holocaust Remembrance Day would be marked on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nissan, which falls between Passover and Israel Independence Day—two celebrations of freedom, victory and a return to the Jewish homeland.

New York Times Quietly Changes Article Blaming Sean Hannity for Coronavirus Death By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/20/new-york-times-quietly-changes-article-blaming-sean-hannity-for-coronavirus-death/

The New York Times was forced to make a quiet change to one of its articles over the weekend blaming Fox News host Sean Hannity for a man’s death by the coronavirus, according to Breitbart.

The article was first published on April 18th, under the title “A Beloved Bar Owner Was Skeptical About the Virus. Then He Took a Cruise.” The article focuses on Brooklyn bar owner Joe Joyce, who embarked on a cruise on March 1st, in defiance of lockdown orders and travel bans, and subsequently died of the coronavirus on April 9th.
00:00

The Times interviewed one of his adult children, daughter Kristen, who said that her father “watched Fox, and believed it was under control.” Subsequently, the Times zeroed in on a monologue given by Fox News host Sean Hannity, who said that the measures taken against the coronavirus were “unnecessary,” and a weapon being used by the mainstream media to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.” Thus, the Times claimed, blame was to placed on Hannity for encouraging men like Joyce to travel anyway.

However, Hannity’s comments were from the March 9th edition of his show, eight days after Joyce embarked on the cruise. Once this was discovered, the Times added in a disclaimer noting that “his comment about the public being scared by the coverage happened after the Joyces had left on their cruise.” The changes were made the day after the article was first published.

It has since been noted that the author of the Times article, Ginia Bellefante, had previously tweeted in February that she “didn’t understand the panic” about the coronavirus, and claimed that “incidence of the disease is declining in China.”

America Is Paying the Price for the NYC SuperSpreader Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/20/america-is-paying-the-price-for-the-nyc-superspreader/

To bring some much-needed context to the nation’s coronavirus crisis, let’s remove the states of New York and New Jersey from the current totals for a moment. Here, for the sake of argument, are what the numbers would show:

Since early March, roughly 18,700 people have died from COVID-19. That’s about 2,700 deaths per week in the United States since testing began. Some of the most populous states—Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California—suffered between 1,000 to 2,500 fatalities over the seven-week period. Florida, which is home to a highly vulnerable population and was a destination for thousands of domestic and international travelers before the pandemic began, reports fewer than 1,000 deaths.

Nineteen states and Washington, D.C. each report fewer than 100 deaths.

Tests show about 434,000 Americans have contracted the disease so far. Only a few states indicate COVID-19 symptomatic activity; most of the country now is quiet.

Would those facts frighten you into government-ordered submission? If the United States had a population of 300 million and 48 states, would the fact that 18,000 people—sadly, mostly elderly and already sick patients—succumbed to the virus over a period of nearly two months warrant an ongoing lockdown that is destroying the economy, overwhelming unemployment rolls and food bank lines, shutting down schools and colleges for five months, and bankrupting small businesses?

While L.A. County reports total of 13,816 coronavirus cases, antibody study shows hundreds of thousands more could have had COVID-19 in the past

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/l-a-county-officials-to-provide-latest-update-on-coronavirus-crisis/

While Los Angeles County has reported a total of 13,816 coronavirus cases, early results from an antibody study conducted with the University of Southern California shows that hundreds of thousands more could have had COVID-19 in the past, officials announced Monday.

So far, 863 L.A. County residents have been tested between April 10 and 14 as part of the study.

The study estimates a prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies in the county to be 4.1%, with a range that could be as low as 2.8% and as high as 5.6%, when you factor in the reliability of the tests.

An estimated 221,000 adults to 442,000 adults at the high end may have been infected at some point before April 9 with COVID-19, suggesting that the number of total people in the county with a past or current infection is 28 to 55 times higher than the number of reported positive cases, Dr. Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County’s public health director said Monday.

“Although I report every day that we have thousands of thousands of people that have tested positive, the serology testing lets us know that we have hundreds of thousands of people that have already developed antibodies to the virus because at some point in time over the last couple of months, they have in fact been infected with COVID-19,” Ferrer said.

But having up to that many people who may have already had the illness means that the fatality rate from the virus is much lower than originally believed, Neeraj Sood, the USC scientist leading the study said Monday.

The Disintegration Of America, Its Economy And Its Constitution Ernest S. Christian

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/21/the-disintegration-of-america-its-economy-and-its-constitution/

“Is it Donald Trump that the media, the Socialist Democrats and the Woke progressives hate? Or do they hate America itself and the millions of “deplorables” who voted for Trump and who are the last stalwart vestiges of American Exceptionalism?”

We – the people in geographic America – are now so diverse in character, culture and competence, so riven by racial, regional, religious, ethnic, gender, economic and social jealousies and dislikes and so afraid of one another that we may no longer be “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  

A 2011 book by journalist Colin Woodard asserts that geographic America never has been one nation, but rather has always been several separate ones. Compare, for example, the characteristics of a native of Woodard’s “Greater Appalachia” nation with those of a typical inhabitant of his “Yankeedom” nation or his “Left Coast” nation.  

F. H. Buckley, Professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law, powerfully asserts in his 2020 book, “American Secession,” that both geographic America and constitutional America are “divisible” and ripe for a breakup.

The old ties that held together the disparate parts and peoples of America are now frayed or broken.  Some have been viciously cut.  

Patriotism and rallying around the flag no longer unify.  The population of geographic America is now so diverse in its origins and cultural DNA that the person standing next to you may hate the American flag you are saluting.   

Christianity has been banned from schools and the public square, undermined in the popular culture by Hollywood and the media – and is no longer the unifying force that it once was.  Far from it.

Even the secular form of the Judeo-Christian tradition that Samuel Huntington called the American Creed is being “canceled” and replaced by Woke prescriptions that substitute hate for Christianity’s agape love and divide Americans into many warring identity-group tribes.  

The Economy Doesn’t Need Government ‘Help’ To Reopen

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/21/the-economy-doesnt-need-government-help-to-reopen/

After weeks of lockdown, several states have begun to outline plans for returning to business as usual. The economies in these states don’t need political schemes. They simply need to be released from government chains.

Governments don’t create economies. It’s not only beyond their legitimate functions, it’s beyond their abilities. They need to stay out of the way and let the wisdom of markets steer us back to normal. But some officials see an opening through which they can drive their big government dreams.

For instance elected officials in California, which is likely to be the last state to fully open though it hasn’t seen the most suffering from the COVID-19 outbreak, view the crisis as a means to push the state harder and faster down the Blue State path. When asked by a reporter earlier this month if he saw “the potential, as many others in the party do, for a new progressive era and opportunity for additional progressive steps,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said yes, of course “there is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism.” 

“Absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern,” Newsom added.

A little more than two weeks later, Newsom announced the formation of his Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery. Behind the official sounding name, and a few non-Democrat token members, hides a plan to use the pandemic as a means for advancing Blue State economic interventions that include: greater redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, bankrupting the oil and gas industry, an “unhinged” green energy program, minimum wage that breaks the backs of small businesses, and more of California’s hostility toward business in general.

Expect Newsom’s task force to draw the blueprint for other progressive states to follow.

The task forces, committees, and other councils across the country that will be charged with reopening economies “didn’t build that,” if we might borrow a particularly repugnant phrase. In fact, there is a certainty the most active of these will take what others built and wring the life out of it.