In politics anything is possible: https://townhall.com/columnist
And:
Using the virus crisis as the basis for other actions this is what is happening in America:
Prisoners are being let free, citizens are being arrested for attending church, illegal voter lists are expanding, stores are closed that are taking away our constitutional rights, education, which was already in decline, is collapsing, government debt is rising tax revenue is declining this is your new America.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Do we have Obama and Kerry to thank for this?
Iran's Launch of Military Satellite a Cover for Nuclear Weapons Advancement, According to U.S. Officials
By Adam Kredo
Iran's launch Wednesday of a military satellite that it says will be used to conduct "intelligence warfare" against the United States violates international accords and represents a significant step forward in the Islamic Republic's ballistic missile program, U.S. officials told the Washington Free Beacon.
Iranian military officials claimed they successfully launched a satellite into space that enables the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to track Western forces across the globe.
Major General Hossein Salami, the IRGC's chief commander, announced his forces completed the launch of the nation's first-ever Noor-1 satellite, which he said "creates powerful grounds for us in intelligence warfare."
As the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged Iran, its ruling regime has spent billions on foreign military intervention and its nuclear infrastructure. Wednesday's launch was an attempted show of force by Iran that marks a significant step forward in its military efforts even as U.S. sanctions cripple the country's economy.
"Iran's space program is clearly a cover for its intercontinental ballistic missile aspirations," Brian Hook, the administration's special representative for Iran, told the Free Beacon. "Any claims that Iran's space program is peaceful are pure propaganda."
The Trump administration is closely tracking the launch and says Iran is using its space program as a front to continue its illicit development of a ballistic missile, which could carry a nuclear payload great distances.
"Iran has long pretended its space program is peaceful in nature. Their admission this was a military launch shows they have been lying about their intentions," a State Department official told the Free Beacon. "It's particularly striking that a Foreign Terrorist Organization—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—was responsible for the launch and has now proudly announced itself as a ‘space force.'"
The launch of this satellite "poses a significant proliferation concern" to the United States, which will seek to hold Iran accountable for this major military escalation.
"This vehicle incorporates technologies identical to, and interchangeable with, ballistic missiles, including longer-range systems such as intercontinental ballistic missiles," the State Department official said.
While Iran has long used its space program to perfect ballistic missile technology, this is the first military satellite the country has launched.
"Today, we can observe the world from space and this is a great achievement for IRGC to expand the strategic intelligence of its defense force," Salami was quoted as saying in the country's state-controlled press.
Iran says it will use this technology to monitor Western forces, particularly the United States, which has been ratcheting up pressure through sanctions on Tehran for its support of terrorism.
"The placement of this multi-purpose satellite in orbit, both in the field of I.T. and intelligence battles, can produce strategic added value for us, and it creates powerful grounds for us in intelligence warfare," Salami said.
U.S. officials concluded that the launch of this military craft violates United Nations Security Council resolutions barring Iran from developing ballistic missiles and launch technology that could be used to power a nuclear device.
"We will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to prevent Iran's further advancement of its missile program, particularly efforts to refine or develop such technology through its launches of satellites," the State Department official said.
The Iranian regime has been eager to display its military might as the coronavirus ravages the country and calls into question the hardline regime's ability to lead. The Trump administration described the regime's behavior as reprehensible.
"When the Iranian people are suffering and dying from the coronavirus pandemic, it is jarring to see the Iranian regime focus their resources and efforts on these highly provocative military pursuits, instead of caring for their people," the State Department official said.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader:
The last time I saw America
By Cherie Zaslawsky
On March 16th of this year, I went to bed in America as usual, but woke up in Venezuela. I didn’t know it over breakfast, however. It didn’t dawn on me until a few hours later, after I had reached the paper goods aisle at our local Target store, when I encountered two long rows of empty shelves where the toilet paper used to be stacked.
Later that afternoon, still optimistic, I headed over to our nearby Trader Joe’s to buy said toilet paper, only to find that they too were sold out. Not only that, but the people in the store were filling their carts to the brim, and many staples were already sold out. I figured these shoppers must know something I didn’t, so I filled my cart too—mostly with things I didn’t really like or want—as that was all that was left. After all, I was unschooled in how to survive in Venezuela. I did figure out though, that the frozen mahi mahi burgers were not a good bet. They were the only untouched item in the entire freezer case.
Venezuela starting to look good
Within a week or so, ironically, Venezuela started looking good. For now we had more or less entered Communist China. No more Constitution. No more liberty. And still no TP.
There’s a heart-wrenching song by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein that debuted in a film during the early years of WWII, called The Last Time I Saw Paris. The lyrics paint a charming picture of pre-war Paris as a beautiful and beloved city, but the song ends with these haunting words: “The last time I saw Paris her heart was warm and gay; no matter how they change her, I’ll remember her that way.”
They say history doesn’t quite repeat, but that it rhymes. It didn’t take long for fascism to subsume the liberty, and later the lives, of millions of erstwhile free people. Paris was one such casualty. I hope we never need to write songs about remembering the America that was. But here we are in the third week of April, and it’s looking like this may be a sad possibility lurking in our own future.
I just read in one of our local papers, in small print at the bottom of page four, that 15,000 retail stores in America are likely to close for good. Fifteen thousand stores! Are we to be left with nothing but Amazon? In whose interest would that be?
And I suspect that figure mainly encompasses big retailers. No one seems to be tallying up the deaths of our local small businesses—the one-of-a-kind stores that do much to give our towns their special character. We form relationships with the people who run our Mom-and-Pop gift shops, candy stores, pet shops, ice cream parlors, stationers, nail salons, book stores, hair salons, camera stores, boutiques, restaurants, and more. We know them, and they know us. We patronize them week after week.
Desolation. Despair. Depression
Now imagine your city’s downtown street with all those stores boarded up. For good! Imagine all those hardworking entrepreneurs having lost their livelihoods, and all their employees having lost their jobs.
We don’t need any sophisticated computer modeling (which never works anyway) to predict what this would look like across America. We can envision it in our mind’s eye. Desolation. Despair. Depression. The life and vitality and vibrancy sucked out of our suburbs and cities all over the country. Empty streets. Ghost towns.
And for what? Because the flu was a little worse than usual this year? Even the Fauci himself postulated that we may be looking at close to the seasonal flu mortality rate of .1%, in his recently published NEJM article.
Let’s clear up a misconception. We are not experiencing a “pandemic” in America. A pandemic is merely the term for an epidemic occurring in multiple countries. While we can call this virus a global pandemic, in America, we’re experiencing a seasonal flu epidemic, as we do most every year. And this one, by the numbers of deaths, is far from the worst we’ve ever had.
Take a look at the rationale being used by county authorities in Silicon Valley—in San Mateo County, to be precise. An April 17th article in the San Mateo Daily Journal featuring the head of the county’s Health Department, Dr. Scott Morrow, states: “All officials, Morrow included, rely on models to determine the potential impact. …the model projected ICU beds would run out in early April, then this week [April 17th], it appears that is no longer the case because of the shelter-in-place order.” (Italics mine.)
The model’s prediction did not pan out. Not even close
Let’s parse this. The model’s prediction did not pan out. Not even close. So was the model, dare we say it, wrong? Not a chance! It must be that “sheltering in place” is working! Isn’t this a bit like the famous coin toss of “heads I win, tales you lose?”
If the model’s dire prediction had come true, the modeling would be vindicated as correct. If, as happened, it was proven way off, that must prove that placing our citizenry under house arrest was a good idea that paid off. You think? Of course what’s left out of this equation is the fact that we can’t possibly know what would have transpired without the lockdown. And it’s entirely possible the results would have been the same! We truly may have wrecked our economy and the lives of our residents for nothing! I, for one, believe this is exactly what we’ve done.
Now let’s look at the terrifying large numbers of deaths from COVID-19 in our county that would lend credence to such drastic measures as the ongoing shelter-in-place mandate, which has just been expanded to include mandatory wearing of face masks, on pain of arrest and/or fines, beginning on April 22nd, while much of the country begins to open up. Beginning tomorrow morning at 8pm, anyone entering a grocery store or other public place without wearing a mask can be charged with breaking a law, and will be fined up to $1,000 and/or thrown in jail for 90 days. Perhaps this is why the Governor has released so many convicted felons from prison—to free up space for our citizens who want to breathe freely, sans mask. It seems in California, we’ve now moved to Communist China.
Back to our data on which all this totalitarianism is supposedly based. To date, how many people have died of the Wuhan flu in San Mateo County? Let’s wend our way to that number. We don’t have hard data on mortality rates, due to so few people having been tested, etc., so I’m going to plug in some numbers that may give us a reasonable idea of the all-important mortality rate. Out of our county of 766,573 people, let’s assume that over the course of the past 3 months, at least 15% have been exposed and would test positive for the virus, if everyone had been tested. So that would be approximately 115,000 people whom we’ll assume caught the virus. Of these, WHO predicted a death rate of 3.4. That would equate to a death toll of 3900. Alarming. But then we were told, oops, the mortality rate is more like 1%. That would mean 1150 deaths. Ah, but Fauci himself later postulated that we may be looking at close to the seasonal flu mortality rate of .1%. Plugging that in, we get 115 deaths. So with all these predictions of doom and gloom, what would you expect the actual number turned out to be? 2500? 1100? 450? 250? OK, how about 107? Give up? Here’s the total: 21. That’s right, 21 people! And 19 of them were 70 years old or more, which makes it likely that some of these folks died of co-morbidities, rather than of the virus itself. By the way, what is the mortality percentage from COVID-19 out of the entire population in our county? .0027%.
Pathetic misfire: sheltering in place didn’t destroy the economy, it was the pandemic
Let’s look at another important metric. How many residents of our county are in ICU beds currently with COVID-19? Twenty-two. Turns out we have more patients in the ICU without COVID-19 than with it! Twenty-nine vs. twenty-two. And how many ICU beds does our county have? Seventy-seven. So we have 26 ICU beds still available. And we were supposedly on track to having all of them full of desperately ill people by the beginning of April. Didn’t happen. And how many of our 302 surge beds are being used? A grand total of 17. Doesn’t look much like Italy, does it?
From the same article, note Dr. Morrow’s critical thinking on the issues the county is facing: But it’s important to note, he said, that the order [sheltering in place] didn’t destroy the economy, it was the pandemic.
Ah! So that’s whom we need to blame! The microscopic virus! Nice try, doc. Actually, a pathetic misfire.
Perhaps someone should inform the good doctor that the Chinese virus can hardly have gotten ahold of the levers of economic and state power. All it can do is to make some people sick. Yes, the frail elderly are at increased risk of dying of it, but the virus didn’t close down our retail businesses. It didn’t mandate that people stay out of churches and synagogues and movie theaters and concert halls and baseball stadiums. It didn’t shut down our restaurants and other vital small businesses that simply cannot survive the draconian and utterly uncalled for policies from state officials exactly like Dr. Morrow himself.
No, Dr. Morrow, it is you and your ilk that are destroying our communities. You and our Governor and the entire entourage of self-aggrandizing, power-drunk bureaucrats are scuttling our businesses, deflating our economy, and causing untold suffering to millions of our citizens. It’s not the virus. It’s the bureaucrats. It’s our officials. You are to blame 100%.
When describing the 1940’s song at the beginning of this article, I left out the poignant ending of the opening verse about Paris. It goes like this: “Lonely men with lonely eyes are seeking her in vain; Her streets are where they were, but there’s no sign of her.”
We the People must not stand by and let such a tragic fate befall America!
Later that afternoon, still optimistic, I headed over to our nearby Trader Joe’s to buy said toilet paper, only to find that they too were sold out. Not only that, but the people in the store were filling their carts to the brim, and many staples were already sold out. I figured these shoppers must know something I didn’t, so I filled my cart too—mostly with things I didn’t really like or want—as that was all that was left. After all, I was unschooled in how to survive in Venezuela. I did figure out though, that the frozen mahi mahi burgers were not a good bet. They were the only untouched item in the entire freezer case.
Venezuela starting to look good
Within a week or so, ironically, Venezuela started looking good. For now we had more or less entered Communist China. No more Constitution. No more liberty. And still no TP.
There’s a heart-wrenching song by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein that debuted in a film during the early years of WWII, called The Last Time I Saw Paris. The lyrics paint a charming picture of pre-war Paris as a beautiful and beloved city, but the song ends with these haunting words: “The last time I saw Paris her heart was warm and gay; no matter how they change her, I’ll remember her that way.”
They say history doesn’t quite repeat, but that it rhymes. It didn’t take long for fascism to subsume the liberty, and later the lives, of millions of erstwhile free people. Paris was one such casualty. I hope we never need to write songs about remembering the America that was. But here we are in the third week of April, and it’s looking like this may be a sad possibility lurking in our own future.
I just read in one of our local papers, in small print at the bottom of page four, that 15,000 retail stores in America are likely to close for good. Fifteen thousand stores! Are we to be left with nothing but Amazon? In whose interest would that be?
And I suspect that figure mainly encompasses big retailers. No one seems to be tallying up the deaths of our local small businesses—the one-of-a-kind stores that do much to give our towns their special character. We form relationships with the people who run our Mom-and-Pop gift shops, candy stores, pet shops, ice cream parlors, stationers, nail salons, book stores, hair salons, camera stores, boutiques, restaurants, and more. We know them, and they know us. We patronize them week after week.
Desolation. Despair. Depression
Now imagine your city’s downtown street with all those stores boarded up. For good! Imagine all those hardworking entrepreneurs having lost their livelihoods, and all their employees having lost their jobs.
We don’t need any sophisticated computer modeling (which never works anyway) to predict what this would look like across America. We can envision it in our mind’s eye. Desolation. Despair. Depression. The life and vitality and vibrancy sucked out of our suburbs and cities all over the country. Empty streets. Ghost towns.
And for what? Because the flu was a little worse than usual this year? Even the Fauci himself postulated that we may be looking at close to the seasonal flu mortality rate of .1%, in his recently published NEJM article.
Let’s clear up a misconception. We are not experiencing a “pandemic” in America. A pandemic is merely the term for an epidemic occurring in multiple countries. While we can call this virus a global pandemic, in America, we’re experiencing a seasonal flu epidemic, as we do most every year. And this one, by the numbers of deaths, is far from the worst we’ve ever had.
Take a look at the rationale being used by county authorities in Silicon Valley—in San Mateo County, to be precise. An April 17th article in the San Mateo Daily Journal featuring the head of the county’s Health Department, Dr. Scott Morrow, states: “All officials, Morrow included, rely on models to determine the potential impact. …the model projected ICU beds would run out in early April, then this week [April 17th], it appears that is no longer the case because of the shelter-in-place order.” (Italics mine.)
The model’s prediction did not pan out. Not even close
Let’s parse this. The model’s prediction did not pan out. Not even close. So was the model, dare we say it, wrong? Not a chance! It must be that “sheltering in place” is working! Isn’t this a bit like the famous coin toss of “heads I win, tales you lose?”
If the model’s dire prediction had come true, the modeling would be vindicated as correct. If, as happened, it was proven way off, that must prove that placing our citizenry under house arrest was a good idea that paid off. You think? Of course what’s left out of this equation is the fact that we can’t possibly know what would have transpired without the lockdown. And it’s entirely possible the results would have been the same! We truly may have wrecked our economy and the lives of our residents for nothing! I, for one, believe this is exactly what we’ve done.
Now let’s look at the terrifying large numbers of deaths from COVID-19 in our county that would lend credence to such drastic measures as the ongoing shelter-in-place mandate, which has just been expanded to include mandatory wearing of face masks, on pain of arrest and/or fines, beginning on April 22nd, while much of the country begins to open up. Beginning tomorrow morning at 8pm, anyone entering a grocery store or other public place without wearing a mask can be charged with breaking a law, and will be fined up to $1,000 and/or thrown in jail for 90 days. Perhaps this is why the Governor has released so many convicted felons from prison—to free up space for our citizens who want to breathe freely, sans mask. It seems in California, we’ve now moved to Communist China.
Back to our data on which all this totalitarianism is supposedly based. To date, how many people have died of the Wuhan flu in San Mateo County? Let’s wend our way to that number. We don’t have hard data on mortality rates, due to so few people having been tested, etc., so I’m going to plug in some numbers that may give us a reasonable idea of the all-important mortality rate. Out of our county of 766,573 people, let’s assume that over the course of the past 3 months, at least 15% have been exposed and would test positive for the virus, if everyone had been tested. So that would be approximately 115,000 people whom we’ll assume caught the virus. Of these, WHO predicted a death rate of 3.4. That would equate to a death toll of 3900. Alarming. But then we were told, oops, the mortality rate is more like 1%. That would mean 1150 deaths. Ah, but Fauci himself later postulated that we may be looking at close to the seasonal flu mortality rate of .1%. Plugging that in, we get 115 deaths. So with all these predictions of doom and gloom, what would you expect the actual number turned out to be? 2500? 1100? 450? 250? OK, how about 107? Give up? Here’s the total: 21. That’s right, 21 people! And 19 of them were 70 years old or more, which makes it likely that some of these folks died of co-morbidities, rather than of the virus itself. By the way, what is the mortality percentage from COVID-19 out of the entire population in our county? .0027%.
Pathetic misfire: sheltering in place didn’t destroy the economy, it was the pandemic
Let’s look at another important metric. How many residents of our county are in ICU beds currently with COVID-19? Twenty-two. Turns out we have more patients in the ICU without COVID-19 than with it! Twenty-nine vs. twenty-two. And how many ICU beds does our county have? Seventy-seven. So we have 26 ICU beds still available. And we were supposedly on track to having all of them full of desperately ill people by the beginning of April. Didn’t happen. And how many of our 302 surge beds are being used? A grand total of 17. Doesn’t look much like Italy, does it?
From the same article, note Dr. Morrow’s critical thinking on the issues the county is facing: But it’s important to note, he said, that the order [sheltering in place] didn’t destroy the economy, it was the pandemic.
Ah! So that’s whom we need to blame! The microscopic virus! Nice try, doc. Actually, a pathetic misfire.
Perhaps someone should inform the good doctor that the Chinese virus can hardly have gotten ahold of the levers of economic and state power. All it can do is to make some people sick. Yes, the frail elderly are at increased risk of dying of it, but the virus didn’t close down our retail businesses. It didn’t mandate that people stay out of churches and synagogues and movie theaters and concert halls and baseball stadiums. It didn’t shut down our restaurants and other vital small businesses that simply cannot survive the draconian and utterly uncalled for policies from state officials exactly like Dr. Morrow himself.
No, Dr. Morrow, it is you and your ilk that are destroying our communities. You and our Governor and the entire entourage of self-aggrandizing, power-drunk bureaucrats are scuttling our businesses, deflating our economy, and causing untold suffering to millions of our citizens. It’s not the virus. It’s the bureaucrats. It’s our officials. You are to blame 100%.
When describing the 1940’s song at the beginning of this article, I left out the poignant ending of the opening verse about Paris. It goes like this: “Lonely men with lonely eyes are seeking her in vain; Her streets are where they were, but there’s no sign of her.”
We the People must not stand by and let such a tragic fate befall America!
Cherie Zaslawsky is a writer, editor, educator and English tutor who lives in California.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mask maker, mask maker make me a mask:
Mask-maker shows this is the fabric America is made of
By Salena Zito
NEWVILLE, Pennsylvania — It all started because Rebecca Fickel liked to wear headbands.
NEWVILLE, Pennsylvania — It all started because Rebecca Fickel liked to wear headbands.
“Whenever I was early high school age, I wore headbands all the time. I always loved being crafty, so I was just interested in trying something new. I found a YouTube video and started making headbands for myself,” said the 19-year-old Shippensburg University student.
"Then, I would wear them at school all the time, and then, it became the thing I would always do. People would be, like, ‘Oh, look, Becca's not wearing a headband, oh, no, what's wrong?'" she said, laughing from her home here in Cumberland County.
“Some of my other friends would ask me to make them for them, and of course, I did," she explained. “Then, I just got the idea to start selling them because I've always been a natural businesswoman, I'd say."
She then made an Instagram account, and it took off from there.
But that was then; this is now.
In front of her is not one, but two sewing machines and stacks of colorful swatches of material that she has either bought or has been donated to her. In the past two weeks, she has gone from one sewing machine that kept breaking down to one on lend and funding to buy a new one.
Click here for the full story
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If you can't win the legal way there are other options and Democrats know all of them. This is why they are pushing for absentee voting.
Pennsylvania admits to 11,000 noncitizens registered to vote
A top Pennsylvania lawmaker called on the state Wednesday to immediately expunge the names of 11,198 noncitizens whom the state confirmed are registered to vote, despite not being eligible.
State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican and former chairman of a House government oversight panel, said the administration of Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, belatedly acknowledged the large number of noncitizens in communications over the past two months.
“I believe that we need to take action and have those people removed immediately from the rolls,” Mr. Metcalfe told The Washington Times. “They were never eligible to vote.”
Just days earlier, officials in Texas announced they had found nearly 100,000 noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls.
The numbers, while not yet evidence of massive voter fraud that President Trump said marred the popular vote in the 2016 election, are nonetheless higher than the almost-zero levels of voting mischief that the president’s critics have suggested.
Some of those Trump opponents don’t believe the latest numbers, particularly in Texas, where Hispanic activists sued to stop a potential purge of the noncitizen names that the state identified.
“It’s clear that the right-wing elements in Texas government are trying to rig the system to keep power and disenfranchise 95,000 American citizens,” said Domingo Garcia, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “There is no voter fraud in Texas. It’s a lie repeated time and again to suppress minority voters, and we’re going to fight hard against it.”
Texas Secretary of State David Whitley used state driver’s license records, which include immigration status, and compared those with voter rolls. He found that about 95,000 people whom the state says weren’t citizens were among the 16 million registered voters.
Of those, about 58,000 had voted at some point since 1996.
State officials followed a similar process in Pennsylvania after admitting that a glitch in state motor vehicle bureau computers allowed noncitizens to register to vote easily. They, too, matched driver’s license records with voter rolls and came up with nearly 11,200 names.
The state did not release the names to Mr. Metcalfe or to Rep. Garth Everett, a Republican and chairman of the House State Government Committee, so they weren’t able to figure out how many had cast ballots.
Contacted by The Washington Times, the Pennsylvania Department of State did not provide a comment on its numbers.
Voter integrity advocates said the findings undermine arguments that there is no problem.
“Demonstrating, much less discussing, noncitizen voting activity is the worst form of heresy one can commit for left-wing groups,” said Logan Churchwell, director of communications and research at the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which is involved in lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Texas to try to pry loose voter data.
He and other advocates said states need to act.
“It is the tip of the iceberg,” Tom Fitton, director of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, told The Times. “This shows the urgent need for citizenship verification for voting. The Department of Justice should follow up with a national investigation.”
No state requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. A U.S. District Court judge last year struck down a law championed by then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to require citizenship documentation. Kansas took the ruling to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Texas, however, will take some verification steps in the future. The secretary of state every month will compare newly registered voters with federal immigration records at the Department of Homeland Security.
“This carries the benefit of being a report plus a reform,” Mr. Churchwell said. “This wasn’t a one-off research project. Texas will be actively screening for existing potential noncitizen registrants on a monthly basis, which is something we’ve long pushed for.”
A coalition of 13 liberal groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, has challenged Mr. Whitley’s methodology and called his findings suspect.
They said that since driver’s licenses are issued every six years in Texas, the person could have become a citizen after the immigration status was submitted to the Department of Public Safety. The League of United Latin American Citizens says in its lawsuit that more than 50,000 Texans are naturalized each year and that most of them vote in their first election.
To account for that, Mr. Whitley created a process for election boards to notify each of the 95,000 names and ask them to verify whether they are citizens and should remain on the rolls.
In Pennsylvania, the state’s Democrat-led administration has been less enthusiastic about confronting the issue.
After an earlier estimate put the number of noncitizens on state voting rolls at 100,000, Mr. Metcalfe made a right-to-know request under state law for the voter information. He was preparing to get the information early last year when the Wolf administration objected and went to court to try to keep it secret.
The state Commonwealth Court, an appellate panel, scheduled a hearing for last month — after the November elections. Just a week before the court hearing, the Wolf administration withdrew its appeal and announced that it would turn over the information.
Mr. Metcalfe said the timing was suspicious.
“This governor has been an obstructionist in revealing this information to the citizens, and thereby I believe a participant in allowing this fraudulent activity to occur because it benefits him and his party,” the lawmaker said.
Mr. Trump tried to spark a national debate over voter fraud in 2017 and even created a presidential commission to calculate hard numbers. Plagued by mismanagement, uncooperative states and myriad lawsuits, the panel disbanded early last year.
The noncitizen debate reached the national level in 2014 when Jesse T. Richman, a professor at Old Dominion University, and two colleagues began publishing estimates of thousands and perhaps millions of illegal voters.
Mr. Richman based his numbers on the comprehensive Cooperative Congressional Election Study conducted by YouGov polling and a consortium of colleges. It is one of the few polls that attempts to find noncitizen voters.
The consortium’s professors dismissed Mr. Richman’s work. After whittling down their own polling, they determined that, statistically, “zero” illegal immigrants vote in U.S. elections.
They have allies at the liberal Brennan Center. Two scholars wrote in 2017: “Like voter fraud generally, non-citizen voting is incredibly rare. Simply put, we already know that ineligible non-citizens do not vote in American elections — including the 2016 election — except at negligible rates.”
The National Hispanic Survey, conducted in 2013 by Republican pollster John McLaughlin, found that 13 percent of noncitizen Hispanic respondents said they were registered to vote.
James D. Agresti, who directs research at the Just Facts nonprofit, applied the 13 percent figure to the 2010 census, which found that 11.8 million noncitizen Hispanics were living in the U.S. Mr. Agresti calculated that the number of illegally registered Hispanics could range from 800,000 to 2.2 million.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Raising the next generation and other commentary. Click on delete ad to continue:
(60) Child Discipline Isn't What It Used To Be. Fred Klett - Full Special - YouTube
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This was sent to me by a long time dear friend and fellow memo reader. It was written by a friend of his and makes sense.
A view from the Front
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I am an ER physician and I have been reading everyone's take on the Covid 19 pandemic for the last 2 months and having worked directly with it every day, thought I would share the way I see it. Sorry that this is long, but I have a lot to say.
Shutting down our borders when we did was a great move. It probably should have been done sooner actually. Shutting down everything else when we did was also a bold and wise move. Initially, the information on the virus was suspect at best, and we needed to prevent our hospitals from getting overwhelmed. Unfortunately that did happen in several larger cities such as NYC, New Orleans, Detroit and Washington state.
The reality of the situation in most other areas of the country, however, is far different. Most rural hospitals, like the one I work in have seen few if any cases. Unfortunately most hospitals have also severely limited the access to our health care system to people with anything but potentially Covid related symptoms. Initially this was a wise and prudent move. We had no way of predicting how bad things were going to get. But every week, we are getting more reliable information that this virus has already spread much more than we initially thought but the death rate is much less than we thought. The feared deluge of Covid patients, outside of a few hot spots has not yet materialized.
The initial estimates talked about hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid. But as we get more information and as we see the benefits of self-quarantining those estimates are being consistently being down graded. The most recent estimate I saw today was 60k deaths. This may seem like a large number, and it is, especially if a family member or a friend is in this group. But a bit of perspective is warranted. According to the CDC data, the average number of people who die from influenza over the last 10 years was around 37k. In 2018 it was over 60k. Furthermore we have a vaccine for the seasonal flu, but many people refuse to take it.
Furthermore, and this may sound callous, but as far as what steps we should take during a pandemic depends greatly on who is getting sick and who is dying. The vast majority of CoVid deaths (and influenza deaths) are elderly patients and those with other medical conditions, particularly diabetes and obesity or those with any type of immune compromise. The chance of dying from CoVid if you are under 60 and otherwise healthy is extremely small. Yes, there are cases of young healthy people dying but these, while tragic, are outliers. Most younger, healthy people will get mild illness or have no symptoms at all. Knowing this, it makes great sense to protect those who are most vulnerable. We all do this every year during flu season. If we have elderly parents or grandparents or friends with other illnesses we often have them stay home if possible. We wouldn't drop our sick kids off at grandma's house or have your aunt with lymphoma watch them while you are on vacation. But we wouldn't prevent young healthy people from going to work.
Another issue is what we are calling a CoVid death. As physicians we fill out a death certificates on any patient who dies while under our care. We are asked to put down a main cause of death and any other possible contributing causes. So for example if a patient dies in my ER from a heart attack, that would be listed as the main cause of death, but we would also need to list diabetes, hypertension or any other condition that MAY have contributed to the death. Many elderly patients have many serious medical conditions. If they had CoVid on top of that, what is the cause of death? Is CoVid the main cause? If a patient with CoVid gets hit by a bus, is that a CoVid death? That may sound absurd, but I have heard of physicians being pressured to add CoVid to the death certificates in cases like this. Furthermore there is, as you know, a lack of testing ability. If someone dies and has flu like symptoms, but never got tested, physicians are being pressured to add Covid to the death certificate for presumed CoVid. This would also skew the statistics and make having a sensible plan to combat the virus difficult.
However, the main problem I see is that were are focusing entirely on preventing CoVid deaths. While this is a noble goal, many other patients with other serious conditions are being ignored or are falling through the cracks of our health care system. Most of our clinics and hospitals are having such low volumes because we have stopped most elective or non urgent procedures. These are what keep hospitals open and in business. Nurses, staff and even physicians are being furloughed. We have turned our clinics into what seem like armed military institutions. Clinics are surrounded by barricades, large warning signs and crime scene tape. You will be greeted at door by someone in a hazmat suit who takes your temperature and asks if you have coughed in the last month. I am intimidated just showing up for work. Imagine how patients feel.
Often in the last month I have seen patients in my ER who come in with potentially serious conditions that have been having symptoms for several days. I ask why they didn't come in sooner. They say either that they thought we were too busy and they didn't want to bother us or they thought that we had people dying of CoVid lining every hallway of the hospital and they didn't want to get sick. I have seen patients with diabetes and heart failure out of control because they couldn't get in to see their doctor. What if your breast cancer is missed because you couldn't get a mammogram or your colon cancer was missed because you couldn't get a colonoscopy? We are seeing actual harm to actual patients because they are being prevented from getting the care they need. This needs to be balanced with the damage from CoVid. Furthermore, I fear once CoVid is conquered we will see a huge rush of very sick patients to clinics and hospitals that are short staffed because nurses and staff have been laid off.
We are making strides in getting video visits up and running and this is helpful, but many of the older patients I see in my ER still have flip phones. I doubt they will be pulling off a Facetime call or a Zoom conference anytime soon.
And we can't ignore the economy. Millions are out of work. Government bailouts with money we don't have. This doesn't just affect the 401k values for the 1%. This affects everyone. My brother in law is a HS teacher and he told me that more than one of his students expressed concern that their family would lose their home as both of their parents are out of work. This is in a fairly affluent part of town, so I am sure it is much worse in other areas. We can buy time with bailouts for a short time, but not much longer. Millions are out of work and or needing to go to food banks. Poverty is real and a major source of illness and death.
Mental health is suffering. I am seeing this in my ER also. Loneliness and lack of human connection is a major problem for anyone, but especially those suffering from underlying mental illness. Binging on Netflix can only go so far. We are also seeing a surge in domestic violence from people cooped up with their families for too long. This will only get worse as the weather gets nicer.
Don't get me started on people who wear gloves all day, This makes zero sense. This just drags the same bacteria and viruses around as if you had no gloves. The check out person at the grocery store wears the same gloves for hours. Unless she changes them after each customer it is useless. She would be better off with a container of hand sanitizer and washing her hands every few minutes. And wearing a mask that doesn't cover your nose is pointless. The best way to not get Covid is to wash your hands regularly and not touch your face.
I have no doubt that CoVid was here long before the first official case was found. The initial cases in Wuhan were in October and November and there was no shortage of people coming here and travelling to Europe from that area during that time frame. During the last part of 2019 and the early part of this year, I saw an unusual amount of patients in my ER with severe flu like symptoms who tested negative for influenza A and/or had the vaccine. I get the fact that the flu swab is not always accurate and the flu shot isn't 100% effective, but the amount of people like this I saw was very strange. I have talked to many of my colleagues who noticed the same thing and have seen many physicians online reporting the same thing. This is relevant and fits with the data that were are seeing more people who show exposure to the virus and who are possibly at least somewhat immune to further infection.
There are two main way to defeat any illness or pandemic. One is to wait until the virus naturally dies out. With influenza this happens when the weather gets warmer and the virus becomes less virulent. It seems this doesn't happen as much with CoVid. The other way is by making most people immune. This can happen with a vaccine, but this won't be here for many months if at all. The other way is by herd immunity where most of a society has had the illness and is theoretically immune. That is why it is a good thing if many more people than we thought have been infected and potentially immune.
So what would I recommend that we do?
1) Make sure we have enough protective gear for our health care workers and others regularly are exposed to the public.
2) Work diligently to find treatments and a vaccine for CoVid.
3) Continue to quarantine as elderly and vulnerable as much as possible, but make sure they have the support they need.
4) Get our clinics and hospitals running more normally when and where it is possible. We can't jeopardize every other patient to focus on CoVid.
5) Use masks and gloves as you see fit or if you are vulnerable, but use them wisely and properly.
6) Start getting society back to normal quickly. There is no reason a small store can't be open but hundreds of people are jammed into WalMart and Home Depot. Open restaurants with tables spread out. Open hair salons. These things can start to save our economy and let us develop the herd immunity we need to stop the virus. And yes, I am aware that this will cause a spike in CoVid cases but the damage from this I believe will be far less than the damage for keeping things shut down much longer.
7) And for the love of God, STOP HOARDING TOILET PAPER!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment