Update On The Election

You know, we’ve had so much crap going on with the Coronavirus over the past three weeks that it’s difficult to realize sometimes that we are in the middle of an election year. That said, there WILL still be an election for President, Congress, and the US Senate this year, as well as a lot of state and local offices around the country!

When it comes down to the presidential election, it’s looking more and more like Joe Biden will be the Democrat nominee (now that Andrew Cuomo has emphatically stated that he has no interest in being drafted to run for president), and Donald Trump will most certainly be the Republican nominee. So, how is the election breaking down at the moment?

Well, if you look at the facts, here’s what’s going on that I find interesting. And again, this is of early April…we’re still seven months away from the election and anything can happen between now and then!

First of all, it appears that Joe Biden’s support is slipping, and not in a gradual way. Biden came out on one of his “Coronavirus updates”, which are basically a chance for him to bash Trump, and said that he’s on the outs with the Democrats…that he’s heard that they want Cuomo, not him, even though Cuomo hasn’t run for anything and doesn’t want it. That has to make Biden feel real good! He’s run a very bad campaign, made a ton of gaffes, has stumbled through the whole process, and looks like he’s come out the other side on top. I mean, have you heard ANYTHING from Bernie Sanders since this whole pandemic started?

Now, add to that the latest CBS/Washington Post poll. It shows Biden up 49-47 over Donald Trump. So, why is that so bad? Because he was up 52-44 over Trump at the beginning of March! Trump closed an 8 point gap to 2 points in less than 30 days. And all Trump has done is address the nation every day. Biden, meanwhile has gaffed his way through his briefings.

What’s interesting, and always is, are the internals of the poll. 52% of Donald Trump’s supporters say they are “very excited” in backing Trump. Only 26% of Biden’s supporters say the same thing. That means very clearly that the Biden camp needs to excite their base much more than Trump. You can be for a candidate, as Hillary Clinton found out four years ago, and still lose because you aren’t exciting them to get off the couch and vote for you! That’s the problem Biden is in. He seems like a doddering old fool right now, and that’s what’s going out on the internet.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has had tens of millions of people over all of the networks watching his daily Coronavirus briefings. They’re seeing the media’s “gotcha” questions, and the way Trump is handling them, and they like it. Remember…the media is ranking dead last in the way THEY are handling the whole pandemic coverage. Joe Biden? He’s getting about 2,800 views on YouTube, and can be seen by tens of thousands of people on either MSNBC or CNN, depending on who is covering him that day.

At this point, all of the pundits are pointing to Trump, which in my mind is worrisome. Don’t forget, four years ago, Hillary had this thing wrapped up, right up until election night! She opened her second bottle of Chardonnay thinking she had won! And Trump felt almost right up until they called Pennsylvania for him at 3:00am, that he had lost! Time will most certainly tell!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed! And stay safe!

Where Is Congress?

You’ll have to forgive me for being a little bit cynical today. That’s because I can’t believe what is going on in Washington, DC. Over the weekend, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) unleashed a very childish and untoward barrage at President Donald Trump. Now, I’m totally aware these two are not besties. But still, in a time when both sides of the aisle are calling for government to work together, I find it terribly odd that Pelosi would be breaching her own advice, and slamming not only Trump, but the official Coronavirus task force. It makes me wonder if she’s all there mentally!

Then I realized she wasn’t.

If you go back to World War I, or World War II, or the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918, you’ll notice that Congress worked overtime. They didn’t take a break. They stayed in session, even though tradition said that they shouldn’t. So, can someone tell me why it is that in this day and age, with the COVID-19 virus still on the rise in the country, that Pelosi decided to close down the House? I guess all of the talk of working together was really just more Pelosi-blather, right?

And while we’re at it, let’s look at the media. Now, I’ve not been shy of lambasting the media for their terrible coverage of the news coming out of Washington during this pandemic. In fact, I’ve wondered aloud why it is the news media insists on covering the daily briefing when they are pretty much boring, go on way too long, and don’t contain much if any new information from the day before. Apparently, I’ve got some agreement with an idiot at CNN! Don Lemon, who really amazes me that he’s been able to actually hold down a full=time job, has asked the question on the air why CNN covers the Coronavirus update. Now, his reasoning is a little different from mine. He says it’s because Donald Trump lies all the time. That’s pretty much nonsense. And it’s one of Lemon’s cohorts, Jim Alcosta, that shows up at these briefings every day with “gotcha” questions for Donald Trump. So, let me ask the question…why doesn’t CNN tell Alcosta to cool it?

Well, the reason for that is simple. CNN is doing anything they can to show their dislike of Donald Trump. They haven’t been a fan of his and have covered him with about 98% negative news since he won the election back in 2016. For them, Jim Alcosta is a foot soldier on the front lines.

But Alcosta and Lemon are just two examples of why the media ranks at the very bottom of the approval list of various institutions and people that are involved in the Coronavirus. I fact, well over half of the country (and even about 40% of Democrats!) say that the news media’s coverage of COVID-19 is terrible. Lemon and Alcosta are just two of the many reasons why.

I’m not saying there is a lot Congress should be doing (or could be doing), but it’s the optic of them leaving town during a crisis that is totally wrong. And Pelosi’s ranting and raving about how Donald Trump and his team are doing such a bad job is a joke. She has tied up more funds for longer than anyone in this country. She is the one that should be ashamed of the way she’s acted in a time of national crisis. In fact, Nancy Pelosi is a national buffoon. She fits in perfectly well with the CNN’s and MSNBC’s of the world who forgot what news coverage was all about!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

But Do You Set A Date?

It seems that, like pretty much every other blog in the world these days, the Coronavirus has pretty much taken over the topics. I can understand that because it’s pretty much taken over our lives. Everything we usually would be doing in mid to late March has ground to a halt. We’ve hunkered down at home, haven’t gone out nearly as much as we’d like; a lot of folks have had to either work from home, or not work at all; and others are just happy not to be out in a group setting.

But I was a little surprised and dismayed that President Donald Trump came out and said he was setting a goal of getting back “to normal” by Easter, which is basically two weeks from this coming Sunday. I thought that was a little on the rash side, and a tad optomistic.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I certainly hope we get through this thing by then, and get everyone back to work and get the stock market moving in the right direction by then. It would be wonderful if that happened. However, I’m a realist at heart. I have to tell you, it’s a little disingenuous to think that we could go from being sheltered in place and two weeks later be open for business as if nothing ever happened. Hell, two and a half weeks is a long time! Do you realize this thing has only been going on for a little more than a week and a half?

Since there has been this huge push to get us back “to normal”, what happens, as happens a lot with something like pneumonia, if we come back too strong, too fast? Could there be a relapse? And are we all coming back at the same time? I mean, California and New York are two of the hardest hit states in the country. They are also probably two of the larger economies in the country. So, are we going to let them get settled down a little bit longer before “reopening”? Or, are we going to go ahead and open everything at once, hoping that everything goes smoothly?

Currently, there haven’t been nearly the number of cases or the number of deaths with COVID-19 that we’ve seen with the common flu. A lot of that has to do with the precautions that we’ve taken, but a lot of that seems to be that this virus isn’t as virulent as what was once thought. Having said that, are we to assume that by Easter, everything is going to be just fine, we’re going to be out of the woods, and we’re back to normal? Or are we going to take baby steps to make sure that we get there safely with no chance of back-sliding?

As I’ve said before, Donald Trump has been, in my opinion a little Pollyannaish throughout this whole thing. While we want a leader to be positive, and I just saw that 60% of Americans think he’s done a really good job handling the whole situation, we don’t need to be doing a happy dance just yet.

We will get through this thing. We just don’t need to hurry through it.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Enough Already!

OK…there are a couple of unrelated items that have to be brought up, because as I sat listening to the latest news yesterday, it hit me. There’s way too much showboating and grandstanding going on in Washington, DC.

First and most annoying is the Senate Democrats trying to stop the emergency aid to Americans. Yes, some of the money is going to go to businesses. And yes, some of that money will go to bigger businesses. I get it that Democrats don’t want to watch the aid money go to “stock buybacks” and CEO raises. I don’t think many people want that to happen, and it shouldn’t. That’s why the Democrats, rather than voting “NO” on the bill, should have very easily been amended to deny those large corporations the ability to waste federal money in that standpoint. In fact, I would be very much in favor of a 90 or 120 day moratorium on companies engaging in stock buybacks, or executive raises.

That aside, there is absolutely no reason why Democrats would want to do what they’ve been doing, which is throwing a bunch of crap into the House bill, a much needed emergency spending bill. Included in that was the Green New Deal, an amendment that would give tax breaks to solar energy and renewable energies. Also there were many other items that were golden Easter Eggs that were going to be getting special treatment and money from the federal government. There is absolutely no place in this bill for this. If Nancy Pelosi can’t deliver a clean bill…without all of the additional and extraneous crap, she needs to resign, not only as Speaker of the House, but also from the House. This is not doing the work of the American people. This is playing politics at the highest level, and it’s certainly the top reason why the Republicans need to take back the House this November.

The other thing that grinds me is on the other side of the aisle. when Donald Trump took the podium yesterday to open the “daily Coronavirus briefing”, he rambled on and on about how we were going to be getting back to normalicy very very soon. We were going to be open for business and he wanted to thank everyone that was going above and beyond their duty to make sure everyone was protected. And yada, yada, yada. I get it at this time, it’s important to be positive, but for crying out loud, we don’t need a national cheerleader, and that’s what Trump has been sounding like lately. If there has been any real solid argument against what the administration has been doing, it’s aimed at
Trump’s inability to stick to the script, stick to the facts, and stop telling us that everything is going to be ok. We get it Donald. In the future, it would be much better if you turned it over to Mike Pence to run the daily briefing and stay in the Oval. We don’t need a fifteen minute pep talk every afternoon.

I’m sure everyone is getting to the point where we are tired of this thing, and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better because we have several weeks to go. America has lost it’s patience, and I know I’ve never been blessed with a lot of patience. But to realize that we need to buckle down and just take care of it on a day to day basis.

Hopefully, Pelosi, Schumer, and the idiot Democrats in DC can put their politics aside and do one thing for the American people. There’ll be a lot of time up the road to act like the horses’ asses that they are. And hopefully, the President can pass on the opening comments on the daily briefing and can turn it over to Pence. These briefings shouldn’t take any more than 15 minutes. They don’t need to talk for 45 minutes to an hour saying very little.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Coronavirus Causes Us To Postpone The ELECTION?

Want to see the video? Simply click the link: https://youtu.be/oWe-NV9Pc3I

Well…not so fast. Yes, it’s true that the COVID-19 has caused the state of Louisiana to postpone their primary from today to later on in the cycle. But remember that there is a drop dead date as to when all states have to have their primaries and caucuses done, and another date for all of the delegates to be selected. That is set by the DNC.

Of course, the states themselves set the primary date or the caucus date. And the states are the ones that can hold or cancel the primary. In Louisiana, the Republican Attorney General asked the Democrat Governor to postpone the primary, and the Governor agreed. But it’s not that easy when it comes to the actual election in November.

First of all, it would take an act of Congress to get it done. That means that both Republicans and Democrats would have to agree that the election be postponed. So, let me ask you the question: What do you think the odds are that the Democrats would want to drag out the Trump presidency past election day? And, truth be told, it wouldn’t (and couldn’t) be dragged out past January 20, 2021. And Congress would have to swear in a new Congressional Term on January 3, 2021. Those dates are set in the Constitution.

Congress COULD decide to postpone the election a couple of weeks, or even a month, but the dates that Congress and the President that wins the election are sworn in are set in stone. It would take a constitutional amendment to change that…and while that was done back in 1937, moving the swearing in date from March to January, I doubt they are going to be able to move it (or the Dems are going to want to move it).

The thing we have to remember about the Coronavirus, as much as I hate to say it, is that we are going to have to realize that life is going to slow down for a while, and things are going to change. My wife and I went to Costco this past weekend. We didn’t actually NEED to go…we were running low on a couple of things, but yes, Virginia, we had enough toilet paper. There was a line to get into the building that wrapped around the parking lot! It took 20 minutes to actually get into the warehouse! Then it was a slow slog through the store. And the line for paper products (there was no TP, but they had limited paper towels and tons of bottled water) went from the cash registers in the front all the way to the back wall. And the funny thing is, Coronavirus is a respiratory disease. You aren’t going to get diarrhea from it. So why the run on toilet paper?

Dr. David Fauci can explain where we are better than I can. He says that most places see a spike and then it dies down…we’re not quite at the spike stage yet, though the deaths in this country did double from Sunday night to Monday morning. But he’s trying to mitigate the spike by lessening the severity of it to make it more of a mole hill rather than a mountain.

As far as the election goes, it’s still on. And according to the Sunday night debate, Bernie Sanders is well aware, he’s not going to be the nominee. It’s going to be Biden against Trump.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

White Nationalist or Black Racist?

Frankly, I’ve never been one to see much in color of people. I don’t care what color you are. I care what’s in your brain and what’s in your heart. If you’re a smart person, if you truly care about humanity, then fine. We can certainly differ on opinions, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have decent conversations about other things (yes…there ARE other things rather than politics).

But what I can’t understand is the leftist snowflake argument that Donald Trump is a “white nationalist” or a “racist”. The dictionary defines “racist” as: “a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.” Geez…I always hated speeches that started out with dictionary definitions, and her I am doing it. Sorry!

Anyway, what I’m seeing in our country today isn’t necessarily “white nationalism”. It’s black racism. And it’s being foisted on us by leftists that are using any word they can to damage Donald Trump. Let’s get one thing straight. Words mean things, and so do actions. The mere fact that Donald Trump has overhauled the prison system to a degree…certainly more than his predecessor did…and has improved the wage condition, employment condition, and living condition of folks of color in this country…again certainly more than his predecessor did…shows me that he’s not a racist. Now, I don’t know the guy, never met the guy, but actions do speak louder than words.

Meanwhile, you’ve got a bunch of people out there screaming “racist” and “white nationalist” that are themselves baiting the whole race angle. People like Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the like have for years made their living by calling whites racists, while they have lined their pockets by extorting money from companies that were afraid to attack them for their racist policies.

Now, having said that, I will say that the folks that fall into that category are few and far between. I don’t believe most people of color want to think that whites are racist, or that they are put upon. The people of color I know are upstanding citizens, hard working, out there trying to get through the day like everyone else. They have the same problems, hopes, dreams, and ambitions as everyone else. And at the end of the day, I don’t believe most of them follow the racist antics of the above mentioned “leaders” of that particular community.

Yeah, it could be called, “Why can’t we just get along”, except I don’t have a pony tail and I’m not ever attending a town hall presidential debate. But in terms of this topic, the guy had a good point. Until the left stops throwing the race card every time they think they’re losing an argument we’re going to have a race problem in this country. That’s not saying there aren’t racists or white nationalists, there are…and there are probably more than a few. But you don’t legislate morality, and you don’t legislate the heart. These folks are idiots and they need to die off before we get rid of that problem. The same with the black racists out there. And the more we kow-tow to their way of thinking and validate their opinions, the worse off the country will be!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Sanctuary Cities To Fall?

The Trump administration won an important court battle this past week. The left, seeking to maintain it’s ability to forego federal law and have “sanctuary cities” took the administration to court over Donald Trump’s refusal to provide federal funds to cities (and states?) that didn’t follow federal law. At the heart of the debate was cities, all run by liberals, that wouldn’t help or allow ICE officials capture illegal aliens.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, located in New York City, said, “The principal legal question presented in this appeal is whether the federal government may deny grants of money to State and local governments that would be eligible for such awards but for their refusal to comply with three immigration‐related conditions imposed by the Attorney General of the United States.”

At the heart of the matter was whether or not the Attorney General could withhold grants and funds from states because New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington, Massachusetts, and Virginia had not followed federal immigration law when allocating grant money from the federal government.

The Second Circuit is not a conservative court, as you can imagine. They’re not quite as left-wing wacko as the Ninth Circuit used to be in California (that’s changing because of Trump appointed judges to the 9th Circuit bench). But the Second Circuit is no friend of conservatives. And the fact that the administration got the go ahead to nix paying grant money to cities that don’t follow federal law is something that will save the country billions of dollars.

I’ve never been able to figure this one out. Now, I’m not a lawyer, and I have never played one on TV. And no…I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. I can’t for the life of me figure out how a city can trump (no pun intended) federal law. I always thought that federal law came above state law, and certainly a city ordinance. For a city to not help ICE in capturing criminals, including illegal aliens (yes…they did break the law by entering the country illegally!), would say that they have abetted the criminal act and would be subject to prosecution. I mean, if I drove a getaway car in a bank robbery, I’d be complicit right? Why wouldn’t the mayor and city council be complicit in this situation?

Cities like San Francisco, and Chicago, Denver, and New York, which tout themselves to be safe havens for illegals to come and live are all about to be slapped around a bit. And maybe this will knock some sense into the liberals. I doubt it…but I can always be hopeful.

Until this country learns that you need borders, and there has to be a systematic way to get into this country and live here as a citizen, and if that system is broken, it needs to be fixed, we are going to have this problem. It’s not a Donald Trump problem, by the way. It’s a problem that Congress has not taken it upon itself to fix. It’s their responsibility to write the laws in this country, and by not tackling this issue, along with several others, Congress has made the problem worse. It’s high time that body starts doing it’s job, or they should all resign and we can put people in there that WILL do the job!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!