Top Republican in Pennsylvania Senate shoots down 'false' theory that legislature would rig Electoral College for Trump

by Salena Zito, National Political Reporter | 

 

 | 

This week, a lengthy article appearing in The Atlantic insinuated that President Trump's campaign was working with Republican legislators and state parties in battleground states to have the legislature step in and appoint pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College after claims of chaos and fraud.

The story quickly made the rounds with the blue-check chattering class on social media and became a hot topic on cable news channels. Yet one of the interviewees in the story, Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, says the hypothetical scenario presented in the story is false.

“The story is pure conjecture,” said Corman in an interview with the Washington Examiner, clearly frustrated by the hornet's nest the story stirred up.

“The story insinuates the Trump campaign is working with Republican legislators and Republican state parties to have the legislature step in and appoint electors to the Electoral College if things drag on and they're disputed ... The genesis of the story is that, despite Pennsylvania voting one way with the voters, that the legislature could step in and thwart that and appoint their own electors. I never said that."

Corman said when he spoke to author Barton Gellman in early August, they went through many electoral code type of issues, “and then, he ventured into hypotheticals — well, I stay away from hypotheticals for this very reason."

Corman, who has represented the 34th Senatorial District for 20 years that spans the rural central Pennsylvania counties of Centre, Mifflin, and Juniata and part of Huntingdon County, said the moment the story hit, his phone lit up; three days later, the inquiries haven’t stopped.

In an editor’s note, the magazine said it published the story early on its website because of its urgency.

“I said on numerous occasions, our goal is to not be Florida of 2000," he said. "Our goal is to have a electoral process where everyone has the opportunity to vote, that everyone is comfortable with the security of that vote and that we have a result tabulated in a reasonable time frame. And I was focusing on that.”

He continued, "And as he kept pushing the hypothetical, I said, ‘Look, if things get into challenges and problems and all that, we'll follow the law, that's our job [as] legislators, to follow the law.’”

Corman said that in Pennsylvania, everything is determined by the election code, which shows the federal government gives the states the right to run the election and how they appoint electors.

“In Pennsylvania, the election code is very clear on how we appoint electors," he explained. "And ahead of Election Day, the individual parties both submit electors to the Department of State. And then, once the Department of State finalizes, certifies a winner, they then appoint those electors to the Electoral College."

Corman went on to say, “The legislature does not have a role in this. And even if the election is up for challenge, as it could be, who knows, the courts will figure that out, not the legislature."

He asserted, “To the best of my knowledge, looking through election code law, there is not a role for the legislature in this. And so, the premise of the story is false. I think it was done to inflame individuals, which certainly has spurred a lot of phone calls to my office. So, I guess the writer's intention was successful, but it's not accurate.”

Corman said his office has researched this, and he repeated there's no role for the legislature.

“And I have had zero conversation with the Trump campaign and top administration or anyone about trying to figure out how to appoint electors," he said. "The only conversation I have had is with the state Republican Party is how to avoid getting to these sort of problems and figuring out ways to make sure we have a winner in a timely fashion. No matter who the winner is."

Corman said, “I represent Republicans and Democrats and independents alike. My job is to make sure, as our legislator, the process is fair, transparent, and, again, hopefully, tabulated in a timely fashion. And then, my job ends. And then, it's up to the parties and the people to vote."

He said point-blank, “I've had zero conversations about trying to figure out ways to change how Pennsylvania appoints its electors. It's by the popular vote in the state of Pennsylvania, that's clearly dictated in the election code. And once the Department of State certifies it, and then there's no challenges out there, whoever gets the most votes in Pennsylvania, that party will appoint the electors.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/top-republican-in-pennsylvania-senate-shoots-down-false-theory-that-legislature-would-rig-electoral-college-for-trump

Democrats Are Truly Sick People

 Democrats Are Truly Sick People

Derek Hunter

|

It’s times like this I regret not being able to really let loose with the language in this column because what the Democrats have become is truly disgusting. Every time you think they’ve gone as low as humanly possible, they break out a shovel. There is no bottom to hit when you will literally do anything to win. This election isn’t about power for the next few years. It’s about the type of existence we’re going to have from this election forward. Once you go over a cliff gravity always wins.

Individually, each piece of the progressive left is harmless; annoying but harmless. As more of them assemble and coordinate, they become increasingly dangerous. Protesters in the street are pointless and inconvenient but coupled with governors, mayors, and prosecutors who encourage and empower them, they embrace violence. When your moral compass is broken and the people charged with protecting citizens publicly announce they’re on your side, no matter what you do, or they won’t pursue charges against you if you’re arrested, what’s the downside to taking all you can from a Target or beating the hell out of someone?

The idea of a Joe Biden presidency is a scary proposition. He never really stood for much of anything, he simply parroted whatever positions were necessary for him to obtain power. Joe’s been the ultimate weathervane – a bandwagon jumper of the highest order. His whole government career seems built on avoiding ever having to get a real job and turning a blind eye to how his family has gotten rich off his name.

That Joe claims to have never talked to his son about how he’s repeatedly fallen ass-backward into lucrative jobs and piles of cash in industries he has no knowledge in strikes me as implausible. If your idiot, drug-addled son starts making more money per month than many small towns generate after he’s tossed out of the military for cocaine use, I’d hope you’d have some questions. And Hunter is just one of many Bidens who’ve hit above their weight class on the issue of income.

There’s a big difference between what’s legal and what’s right. Joe wraps himself in what’s legal because he’s been part of the establishment writing those laws for half a century, but that doesn’t make it right. For a guy who paints himself as holier than thou, when confronted with things he angrily deflects and changes the subject.

I’m not disgusted by his growing senility; he can’t do anything about that. I am bothered by the lengths to which his handlers will go and the lies they will tell to hide it. The claim that he’s not campaigning or giving interviews so he can do debate prep is laughable. Aside from being a lifeguard who enjoyed having little black kids pet his leg hair, Joe Biden has done nothing but politics his entire adult life. If he needs to study up on where he currently stands on the issues, he has no business driving a car let alone running the Executive Branch.

It’s not just the policies of the left, as evil and destructive as those are. It’s the searing hatred that guides them. President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is described by former comedian Bill Maher as “a f*cking nut” for the crime of being a Catholic. Biden and Nancy Pelosi insist they are Catholics too, yet they are spared such remarks. Leftists have even started questioning Barrett’s two adopted children, and attacking her over the concept of interracial adoption. They are only a couple of steps away from demanding punishment for interracial marriage at this point.

A co-founder of the “Women’s March” calls the Daniel Cameron, the Attorney General of Kentucky, a “sell-out negro” for following the law in the Breonna Taylor case. BLM-ANTIFA leaders coordinate prepackaged riots over every manufactured fraud they can while media outlets give voice to every bit of racist vitriol they can find.

Are there better words to describe people willing to engage in these sorts of behaviors? Yes, there are, but they’re all obscene adjectives leading to more explicit nouns that I can’t write here. As this election nears, remind yourself what is at stake. More importantly, enlighten others, getable fence-sitters and uninspired bench warmers who’d either vote wrong or not at all. It’s going to take everyone ready to fight to win. We have to make up for the votes that will “accidentally” end up in a ditch or elsewhere, not to mention the ones which are simply frauds.

This is no time for measured responses. The “high road” in politics only gives you a nice view of your defeat. It’s time to sharpen your elbows and steel your resolve. It’s already been ugly, but it’s only going to get uglier. Be ready.

 

This Obama-Biden Administration Failure Killed More Americans (and Veterans!) Than COVID-19

BY MATT MARGOLIS 

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Joe Biden has been politicizing the deaths of Americans from COVID for months, and today, when the official tally passed 200,000 American deaths, Biden pounced on the news.

“Trump panicked. The virus was too big for him,” Biden claimed without evidence. “He just wasn’t up to it. He froze, he failed to act, he panicked. And America has paid the worst price of any nation in the world.”

This is, of course, not true. Not only did the Trump administration respond early and aggressively, but America has not “paid the worst price of any nation in the world” in deaths per capita.

For sure, 200,000+ deaths is tragic, but that doesn’t mean Joe Biden gets to be Monday morning quarterback and say that “If Trump had done this, it wouldn’t have been this bad,” when Biden himself wasn’t calling for such actions to be done before Trump had. In fact, Biden repeatedly called for Trump to do things he’d already done. sometimes weeks prior.

Blaming Trump for a disease that came from China is politicization at its ugliest. President Trump has listened to the experts and done what was necessary. The one time he didn’t listen to the experts was when he implemented the travel ban with China in January, which, experts now agree, saved thousands of lives.

Oh, and Joe Biden opposed that travel ban, only to flip-flop on his position two months later.

Without a doubt, the death toll from COVID-19 is lower than it could have been because of Trump’s leadership.

There’s nothing to gloat about in Joe Biden’s leadership ability. In addition to flip-flopping on multiple COVID-19 issues, his incompetence as vice president still has a higher death toll than the pandemic.

In 2009, the Obama-Biden administration promised to end the horrendous backlog in VA benefits claims, some of which had languished for years. But instead, under their leadership, the backlog skyrocketed. Unprocessed claims exceeded 900,000. Roughly two-thirds of all claims idled for 125 days or longer. From 2011 to 2013, the time it took to process claims increased 40 percent, to a devastatingly long 272 days.

And the Obama-Biden administration did nothing, even as this backlog surge resulted in the number of veterans dying waiting for care and benefits skyrocketing.

After reports of vets dying while waiting for care started getting attention, the Obama-Biden administration tried to cover up the full extent of the scandal, and courageous whistleblowers found themselves targeted by the administration for retaliation. In fact, according to the independent Office of Special Counsel, complaints of retaliation against whistleblowers were filed in 28 states at 45 facilities. The Obama-Biden administration cared more about the public relations disaster than the lives of our nation’s heroes.

According to an Inspector General report released in September 2015, more than 300,000 veterans died while waiting for care from Obama and Biden’s Department of Veterans Affairs. The problems at the VA were fixable and they failed to fix them.

Trump is not to blame for the 200,000 lives lost because of COVID-19—China is. But Barack Obama and Joe Biden are responsible for the 300,000 veterans who died because of their incompetence.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/09/22/the-obama-biden-administration-failure-still-killed-more-americans-and-veterans-than-covid-19-n954086

WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT AT THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE?

 WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT AT THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE?

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, CORONAVIRUS, PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

The first presidential debate will take place on Tuesday. Chris Wallace will be the moderator and sole media participant.

Going back at least as far as Ronald Reagan, incumbent presidents have not done well in first debates. Bill Clinton is the only exception.

I think the problem for incumbents is overconfidence. After four years in office, presidents think they know enough and have enough experience handling questions to get through a debate in good shape. I suspect this overconfidence leads to insufficient preparation.

In addition, incumbents tend not to be used to having their statements challenged. As a result of these factors, incumbents typically struggle under the onslaught of challengers, who typically are desperate.

This year, we have neither a typical incumbent nor a typical challenger. President Trump’s approach to debates doesn’t rely on preparation. He relies less on knowledge of facts than on a combination of sweeping statements with some factual basis, his physical presence, and put downs. He probably can pull these things off in his sleep.

The one topic that I doubt Trump can bluster his way through is the pandemic, for which a segment of approximately 15 minutes will be set aside. I expect Biden to pound Trump on this subject. Undoubtedly, the script has already been prepared for him.

Trump has okay defenses of his handling of the pandemic, but I haven’t heard him blend them into a persuasive case. He usually relies on attacking China and on factually dubious claims about the U.S. is doing in relation to other countries. He’s better, I think, when he talks about the assistance the government provided to New York and about all of the ventilators, masks, etc. produced thanks to his executive orders.

Trump likely will talk about the push to develop a vaccine. I think he needs to be careful here. If he sounds like he’s promising a vaccine by the beginning of November, those who vote at that time will expect delivery.

I expect Trump to go on the attack, citing Biden’s record of dubious pronouncements at the beginning of the pandemic, and I hope he will be ready to attack the Obama administration’s pandemic responses and preparedness. This approach is promising. However, because Trump was the president, not Biden, it might not be good enough unless Trump does an effective job of explaining the administration’s response and of showing empathy.

Biden, for his part, is no more the typical challenger than Trump is the typical incumbent. Biden is not (and never was) as sharp as Mitt Romney, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, and Walter Mondale were.

However, he will be assisted by low expectations. Claims that he suffers from advanced dementia lower the bar considerably.

It’s possible that Biden lacks the mental capacity to debate competently. However, this was not the case earlier in the year when he debated his Democratic rivals. Most of these debates weren’t one-on-one affairs, but his last one, against Bernie Sanders, was.

Unless Biden has deteriorated appreciably since that debate in March, we shouldn’t count on an incompetent performance. And as I said, the bar has been set rather low for him.

This year is also different from most recent elections involving an incumbent because this year, the incumbent trails in the polls. Reagan, Bush 43, and Obama all could afford a bad first debate (Bush 41 couldn’t, and he lost). It’s doubtful that Trump has much of a margin for error.

Perhaps Biden simply won’t be capable of hanging in there with Trump, but relying on the other guy to be terrible is not a good approach to any contest. If Biden isn’t terrible, Trump may have to be at his best, especially when discussing the coronavirus.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/09/what-should-we-expect-at-the-first-presidential-debate.php

Predicted Mass Infections From Reopening Schools Fails to Materialize

 Predicted Mass Infections From Reopening Schools Fails to Materialize

BY RICK MORAN 

AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Last month, we were inundated with stories from teachers’ unions, school administrators, and public health officials about the coming catastrophic outbreak of coronavirus in the schools.

It’s still happening, with New York City schools ready to partially reopen and many other school districts allowing only virtual learning.

But experts tracking the pandemic have been surprised that the expected disaster of tens of thousands of kids getting sick hasn’t happened — yet.

It still might get very bad as large school districts begin to reopen, but so far, the number of infections among K-12 students has been far less than public health officials feared.

Washington Post:

Thousands of students and teachers have become sick with the coronavirus since schools began opening last month, but public health experts have found little evidence that the virus is spreading inside buildings, and the rates of infection are far below what is found in the surrounding communities.

This early evidence, experts say, suggests that opening schools may not be as risky as many have feared and could guide administrators as they charter the rest of what is already an unprecedented school year.

“Everyone had a fear there would be explosive outbreaks of transmission in the schools. In colleges, there have been. We have to say that, to date, we have not seen those in the younger kids, and that is a really important observation,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

There is a lot to learn about the coronavirus. The media thinks every pronouncement from “experts” should be believed and acted upon and anyone who doesn’t is a “science denier.” But knowledge is cumulative. And when studying a new pathogen, what was true yesterday — or thought to be true — might not be true today — or believed to be true. It might not be true tomorrow.

That’s why people like Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, and the rest of them should try to go a few days keeping their mouths shut. We’d be the wiser for it.

Public health officials no doubt were sincere in urging communities not to reopen schools. But they were wrong.

On Wednesday, researchers at Brown University, working with school administrators, released their first set of data from a new National COVID-19 School Response Data Dashboard, created to track coronavirus cases. It found low levels of infection among students and teachers.

Tracking infections over a two-week period beginning Aug. 31, it found that 0.23 percent of students had a confirmed or suspected case of the coronavirus. Among teachers, it was 0.49 percent. Looking only at confirmed cases, the rates were even lower: 0.078 percent for students and 0.15 percent for teachers.

“These numbers will be, for some people, reassuring and suggest that school openings may be less risky than they expected,” said Emily Oster, an economics professor at Brown University who helped create the tracker. She noted that the school coronavirus rates are “much lower” than those in the surrounding community.

They will point to the ambiguity of their previous statements on opening schools, but the bottom line is, they urged parents to keep their kids home and told unions it was unsafe to work. What the study shows is that with proper sensible precautions, kids will be fine at school.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/09/23/predicted-mass-infections-from-reopening-schools-fails-to-materialize-n959074

Coronavirus deaths 75% lower in nations using hydroxychloroquine!

Epidemiologists issue 'urgent call to depoliticize medicine'

By WND Staff

Sailors prepare to man the rails on the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson as the ship departs Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Washington, Aug. 23, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jonteil Johnson)

With media solemnly spotlighting the passing of the 200,000 mark in deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the United States, a physicians assocation has a question.

"Why is the death rate about 75 percent lower in many countries?" asked Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

The reference is to a country-based analysis updated Sept. 20 that shows a gap between countries that treat COVID-19 early or prophylactically with hydroxychloroquine and those that, like the U.S., discourage or prohibit its use.

The answer to Orient's question can be found in a white paper published by the Economic Standard this month titled "Hydroxychloroquine and the Burden of Proof: An Urgent Call to Depoliticize Medicine in the COVID-19 Pandemic."

"The COVID-19 pandemic struck America nine months before a presidential election, turning basic medical activities like testing and treatment into partisan battlegrounds," writes Economic Standard Editor-in-Chief Erik Sass in the overview. "No subject has been more distorted than hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a safe, versatile medicine that has treated hundreds of millions of people for numerous diseases for seven decades."

President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks during a coronavirus (COVID-19) update briefing Monday, March 30, 2020, in the Rose Garden at the White House. (Official White House photo by Tia Dufour)

Sass notes the paper was written in close collaboration with practicing physicians and infectious disease specialists in the United States and around the world.

Most Americans became aware of the drug in March, when President Trump mentioned it during a press conference, saying it showed "very, very encouraging early results" and "could be a game changer."

However, "political opponents defied longstanding scientific and medical consensus to portray HCQ as harmful and Trump as a mortal danger to public health," Sass writes. "Flawed and even falsified studies were published and promoted by media outlets eager to discredit Trump, while positive studies were impugned or ignored."

"This campaign persists even as evidence of HCQ’s benefit against COVID-19 grows – including scores of observational controlled trials showing therapeutic effect when administered early in disease progression."

The paper points out that hundreds of drugs have been approved for both indication-specific and general usage on the basis of similar observational trials, "especially when conducted in large numbers and subject to careful meta-analysis."

"The U.S. is an international outlier on HCQ," says Sass. "Right now, doctors around the world are prescribing HCQ to treat COVID-19 outside of hospitals, as well as prophylactically to prevent infection among healthcare workers and vulnerable populations."

The paper argues that hydroxychloroquine "has met the appropriate burden of proof and urges members of the U.S. news media, public health community, and regulatory agencies to stop politicizing the use of this medicine."

"Tens of thousands of lives still hang in the balance."

Some of the key lessons:

• Flawed and even falsified studies were published and promoted by media outlets eager to discredit Trump, while positive studies were impugned or ignored.
• HCQ is commonly prescribed for at least 25 indications in addition to malaria.
• The drug's prolongation of the QT interval is in the mid-range of 30 commonly used drugs.
• Hundreds of drugs have been approved without randomized controlled trials, including the tetanus vaccine, insulin, tetracycline, warfarin, heparin, prednisone, Keflex and high-dose penicillin for neurosyphilis.
• Only 8.5% of the American Heart Association's guidelines are supported by randomized controlled trials.

https://www.wnd.com/2020/09/coronavirus-deaths-75-lower-nations-using-hydroxychloroquine/

Don's Tuesday column

                          THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News   9/29/2020

                             Merriment comes; what’s not funny

A sincere “welcome to this page” to our newest regular columnist, Liz Merry. Never shy of outspokenness, she earns my respect for her decades-long pursuit of…“merriment.” While not politically sympatico, I bow to the talent I lack: her and her partner, Mr. Standish’s, pursuit of humor—sarcastic, sardonic, pungent, ironic, incisive or otherwise. Years ago, we split our sides over her portrayal of Hillary Clinton as an Andrew Dice Clay-character; my attempts at anything beyond a wry smile or cheek-planted tongue fall short. Opine on, Liz.

There is, however, nothing funny about the Democrat left’s reaction to President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, 7^th Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett. The news media have decided to sanitize and “mainstream” the left’s objections, but the fringe resonates with congressional Dems and their leadership.

First, a bigoted charge that her involvement in a Catholic/nondenominational religious group, “People of Praise,” was supposedly the basis for a dystopian, women-subjugated-by-men fiction, “The Handmaid’s Tale.” That from the side that 1) has never distanced itself from Bill Clinton’s sexual abuses (even refusing to admit them); 2) sheepishly looked away from prominent moneybag Democrats Jeffrey Epstein’s and Harvey Weinstein’s predations of (often underage) female victims; and 3) forgot that elected officials with scandals involving young women were mostly Democrats.

Apparently, rising above religious bigotry in electing Catholic President John Kennedy, makes it ok for Democrats to now boldly attack a Catholic judicial nominee, Ms. Barrett, for hewing to her faith and opposing abortion. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” despicable words from our Senator Diane Feinstein. Pro-abort-up-till-birth Dems Pelosi and Biden? Don’t dare question their faith.

There’s the unspoken bias against large families—based on some lunatic, climate-related aversion to children, particularly those born in the U.S.—using “scarce” resources out of proportion to our place in the world (say environmental radicals). The Barrett’s five natural children have been augmented by two Haitian-born adoptees; their relatively smaller Haitian carbon footprint will now rise to America’s shameful level.

It gets worse. Baseless offences: Adoptions may have skirted the rules; white, privileged Americans adopting dark-skinned children smacks of colonialism designed to say “look at us, we done helped the natives.” The abominable posts disappeared but the sentiment “lives loudly within” the demented left.

Democrats “can’t hep it” when their mental and emotional inclinations stem from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and amount to “if Trump says or does it, I’m agin’ it” and vice versa. How else to explain the nearly delusional, even hysterical, dismissal of a proven drug, HCQ which, with zinc and another drug, have beneficial results.

“Why is the death rate about 75 percent lower in many countries?” asked Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. It is irrefutable that in cases where HCQ is medically administered or prescribed upon first symptoms, even in an outpatient setting, hospitalizations and deaths drastically decline. Only institutional hyper-sensitivity to leftist messaging (loud beyond their numbers), in spite of the science, can explain it. From Wnd.com:

“(Orient’s) reference is to a country-based analysis updated Sept. 20 that shows a gap between countries that treat COVID-19 early or prophylactically with hydroxychloroquine and those that, like the U.S., discourage or prohibit its use. The answer to Orient's question can be found in a white paper published by the Economic Standard this month titled "Hydroxychloroquine and the Burden of Proof: An Urgent Call to Depoliticize Medicine in the COVID-19 Pandemic." Medicine politicized by the left=countless deaths.

Based on the experience of other countries, South Dakota, Florida and Indiana, we should see all emergency orders, mandates and economic restrictions lifted tomorrow, returning to regular, constitutional legislation. Continue self-selected isolation and mask use by vulnerable groups (that’s me). Local health and governing officials cannot deny that, for a county with a fraction of the state’s per capita cases and deaths, in a state that is about 26^th (“1” being worst) in the country, we’ve been under an unwarranted avalanche of paperwork, regulations and policies—despotic bureaucracy at its worst.

Oregon is about 46^th in those statistics but their Gov. Brown et al have imposed and expanded the same type of top-down micro-mandates; Washington, at #35, is likewise still under their Democrat Gov. Inslee’s rule, lacking any rationale for continuing the semi-lockdown of its economy and citizens. Maybe you missed the news that less than 10 percent of the so-called “Covid-19” deaths stemmed from the coronavirus alone. The rest, mostly in “Long Term Care,” had terminal conditions; they would have died, anyway.

The lessons should have been, after the first wave of infectious deaths: Most of us could live normally; school children are mostly immune and are not contagious. Use HCQ+ for early symptomatic cases; apply objective analysis of the effectiveness of the health mandates. Cancel emergencies; Trump will.

See “Schools aren’t spreading coronavirus,” at Joannejacobs.com: “Reopening schools isn’t spreading coronavirus, say public health experts” (Laura Meckler and Valerie Strauss, Washington Post).

“This Obama-Biden Administration Failure Killed More Americans (and Veterans!) Than COVID-19” by M. Margolis (pjmedia.com, 9/22), may push the bounds of cause and effect, but not by much. The Biden/media/Democrat complex are constantly updating Wu-flu numbers—209,177 as of Sunday. Biden’s Monday-morning-quarterbacking always includes things Trump already did, minus the criticism he heaped on Trump at the time; Democrats DeBlasio and Pelosi encouraged massive gatherings even into March.

In 2009, unlike they promised, the backlog of veterans’ benefits claims skyrocketed up to 900,000, with wait times up to 9 months. “According to an Inspector General report released in September 2015, more than 300,000 veterans died while waiting for care from Obama and Biden’s Department of Veterans Affairs. The problems at the VA were fixable and they failed to fix them.”

AMERICANS ARE LOSING PATIENCE WITH RIOTS

 AMERICANS ARE LOSING PATIENCE WITH RIOTS

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN RACE, RIOTS

Poll data, including data generated by my own organization, show that Americans draw a clear distinction between demonstrating and rioting. Large majorities have no problem with demonstrations, but strongly disapprove of riots, looting and arson.

The problem is how to define what is going on around us. Democrats insist that protests are “mostly peaceful,” even as looting is rife and buildings are going up in flames. “Demonstrators” shut down highways, inconveniencing thousands and potentially endangering others’ lives. As time goes by, more voters are being convinced that what we are witnessing belongs largely in the riot category, rather than the demonstration category.

This, I think, lies behind the AP-NORC Poll’s finding that Americans are souring on race-related protests:

The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 44% of Americans disapprove of protests in response to police violence against Black Americans, while 39% approve. In June, 54% approved.

While the AP doesn’t put it this way, those numbers mean that a plurality now disapproves of “protests in response to police violence,” whereas a majority approved of such protests in June. And this survey was conducted before the latest round of violence in Louisville and elsewhere.

This shift is ominous for the Democrats:

Just 35% of white Americans approve of the protests now, while 50% disapprove. In June, 53% approved, while 34% disapproved.

But disapproval of the riots is growing among all ethnic groups. Note that Latinos sympathize with rioters even less than whites, which helps to explain President Trump’s growing strength in that demographic:

Among Latinos, 31% approve, compared with 44% in June; 63% of Black Americans support the protests, down from 81%, with more now saying they neither approve nor disapprove.

Nothing about this is surprising. Riots have never been popular, and Democratic Party happy talk about “mostly peaceful” assault, looting and arson isn’t fooling anyone. Watch for this trend to continue from now through Election Day.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/09/americans-are-losing-patience-with-riots.php

My Slow Conversion to 'Existential Crisis' Mode for Election 2020

 My Slow Conversion to 'Existential Crisis' Mode for Election 2020

BY STEPHEN KRUISER 

(AP Photo, File)

Fine, I’m In

Throughout my entire voting life I’ve never viewed a presidential election as a watershed event in my American life. Any American life. We do this every four years, after all.

At least we have so far.

I have been a political activist for most of my adult life, so I had a very pragmatic approach to dealing with losses for my side in presidential elections. If the Democrat won the presidency, the only thing I could do was wake up the next day and begin working on that not happening four years later. Given the power of incumbency, that doesn’t always work out well, obviously. Still, it’s a proactive coping mechanism.

Whiskey helps too.

 (AP/Sebastian Scheiner)

This attitude has gotten me through a presidential voting record of about .500. It’s also kept me from fretting too much during the lead-up to an election.

Well…it’s 2020 and I find myself experiencing the occasional sense of foreboding about the choice that the Republic faces this November.

There are two aspects of this election that trouble me. The first is the now nonstop “mostly peaceful” protesting that’s going on in America. Things have only gotten out of hand in cities that are run by Democrats. The elected Democrats in riot cities have all but donned antifa masks and lobbed Molotov cocktails themselves. The rioters have been emboldened by the actions of the Democrats in charge, especially by the way they’ve denigrated and kneecapped local law enforcement.

Democrats have embraced all things about Black Lives Matter without question or reservation. At its core,  BLM is a violent Marxist anti-cop movement. It has been able to thrive because the Democrats in the cities where it does give it institutional support.

 (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

It’s bad enough having this happen in blue municipalities and states. BLM will run amok if the Democrats take over the Senate and White House in November. There will be no peace even if the preferred candidate of the unhinged Left wins. BLM is fueled by blood lust, not a desire for justice. A Biden-Harris presidency and a Schumer Senate will — to borrow a favorite word of the lefties — “normalize” BLM.

An even bigger worry is the fact that Joe Biden is, as has been noted by many, a Trojan Horse for the progressive commies to get into the White House.

The progressives have been very successful in taking over the Democratic Party. A fringe minority now exerts almost total control over even those Democrats who still insist they are moderate.

All of the progressive candidates who ran for the Democratic nomination failed, however.

Joe Biden’s complete mental decline has given them a second chance.

There is no one on either side of the aisle who believes that Grandpa Gropes is going to be president for very long if he wins in November. Kamala Harris may be president before Biden can finish his first hundred days. The progressives will be able to make a woman so loathsome to her own party that she didn’t even make it out of 2019 in the Democratic primary the president of the United States.

Once she is in, there is no walking back the socialist havoc she will wreak upon this country.

So yeah, I think there is a lot more at stake in this election.

And there’s a lot more whiskey on hand here in the Kruiser Bunker.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2020/09/24/my-slow-conversion-to-existential-crisis-mode-for-election-2020-n959643