The Media Flip On COVID

We're now on day 11 of the presidency of Old Joe Biden.  Let's take a look at the latest COVID numbers and the media response.

1. When Trump left office, the seven day average number of tests nationwide was just about 2 million per day.  There was a constant cry in the media that we had an inadequate national testing strategy.  Now, a week and a half later, the seven day average number of tests is 11% LOWER than it was when Trump left office.  The media, however, no longer even discusses testing strategy.

2.  Before he left office, Trump was saying that the vaccines which were speedily produced, tested and approved un his operation Warp Speed would end the pandemic for the most part.  The media laughed at that and derided Trump for "lying".  Today, under Biden, a saw an article headlined "Don't Look Now But the Vaccine Is Ending the Pandemic".  It was published by The Week, a reliably leftist rag.

3.  Under Trump the vaccination rate climbed quickly and hit just under a million per day on Inauguration Day.  Biden then came in and announced his big plan to do 1 million per day.  In other words, he had no plan.  The momentum that Trump left has pushed the daily rate of vaccination up to 1.3 million per day.  The impending approval of more vaccines developed under operation Warp Speed will enable that number to quickly double and then continue to rise.  No one in the mainstream media gives Trump any credit for achieving all this.

At the moment, something like 7% of the American people have been vaccinated.  These are all high risk people.  In the coming months, this vaccination program should cut the number of deaths due to the virus in a major way.  Cases will decline, but cases among groups that lose 10% or more of those infected will plummet in dramatic fashion.  The death rate should fall at an accelerated pace.

Without a doubt, when the death rate comes down, Biden and the Democrats will claim victory for themselves.  It's a tradition that the party in office takes credit for anything good that happens.  For example, Richard Nixon took credit for the moon landings that resulted from a program begun by Kennedy and pursued mostly under Johnson.  Still, it will be interesting to see if Biden even acknowledges the great efforts towards getting the nation vaccinated made by the Trump Administration.  Surely, the media will say nothing, but Biden and his "unity" talking point surely ought to do this.

Anyway, the good news is that things are moving in the right direction regarding the virus.  Let's enjoy the good news (even if it's not fully or accurately reported.)

The $15 Minimum wage

 According to a government study, raising the minimum wage  to $15 per hour will increase income for about 17 million people.  In the first year, however, it will also result in the loss of 1.3 million jobs.  That figure of jobs lost will increase over time.  Despite the job losses, the Democrats are pushing for the increase as part of the response to COVID which is being placed before Congress.

No one is discussing some of the other effects of a minimum wage increase.  These include higher prices as a result of businesses trying to recover their increased labor costs and a loss of jobs to other countries with low wages where profits are much higher.  Then there are the social costs that result as jobs for high school and college kids disappear at an alarming rate.  How many fast food restaurants will switch to automated ordering systems to save labor costs?  How many small businesses will be forced to close because they can no longer operate profitably due to higher labor costs?

And what happens when businesses decide to hire illegals "off the books" for lower wages?  The distortion of the markets that the increased minimum wage causes provides a major incentive for crimes of this sort.

Right now, the best thing for the US economy would be for Washington to encourage economic growth to CREATE jobs not to take actions to destroy millions of jobs.  Someone ought to explain this to the Democrats.

New President -- Same bs Polls

 When Donald Trump was president, the polls were normally wrong.  Now we got Old Joe Biden.  The polls are still wrong.  Today, the morning consult poll found that by a margin of 27% Americans approve of Biden's job performance.  At the same time, Rasmussen found that Americans approved of Biden's job performance, but by a margin of only 1%.  

There's no way these polls can both be correct.  Indeed, the difference is so large that at least one of the polls must be rigged.  For the moment, let's not decide which one is wrong.  Let's just consider how polling organizations can put out polls that are so clearly wrong.  It's a  travesty.

Making Biden's Lies Clear

 Biden has been in office for a week now.  That's not very long.  It's about a quarter of one percent of a four year term.  In that short time, however, Biden has made clear that he was lying repeatedly with regard to the American oil and gas industry and his plan to destroy that group of companies.  Remember, literally tens of millions of jobs held by Americans depend on the success of the US oil and gas industry.  In the space of seven days, Biden stopped the Keystone pipeline which is mostly constructed and which would have delivered about 5% of total US energy needs in the form of Canadian oil.  In one move, Biden put American energy independence in jeopardy, angered our Canadian allies, and put tens of thousands of workers building the pipeline out of a job.  Remember, this pipeline was approved four years ago and hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, were invested in construction based upon that government approval.  Biden, who said during the campaign that he had no intention of stopping the pipeline, now has done just that.

Then there's fracking and other methods for oil and gas production.  Yesterday, Biden banned any new oil or gas production on federal lands.  This does not pertain to the back yard behind a post office.  The federal government owns all offshore land as well as big chunks of the Western US.  In some states, the federal government owns over 75% of the entire state.  Biden effectively cut off production in a big part of the USA.  In some cases, the areas had already been leased for drilling by the federal government and Biden now is breaching those leases by banning production.

Biden is busy fighting "climate change".  Remember, in 2001, Al Gore told us that if we didn't stop climate change immediately, we were doomed in ten years.  By 2011, ten years later, we were told by climate activists that we only had 12 years left to fight climate change or we would face disaster.  Of course, the problem is that over the last 20 years, world temperatures have not risen in a statistically significant way.  Indeed, there is talk that the currently starting solar minimum could lead to a mini ice age.  No matter; despite the lack of warmer temperatures, every weather even is blamed on climate change.  When there were no hurricanes; it was climate change.  When there were many hurricanes, it was climate change.  Forest fires were due to climate change.  I'm sure there are those who think that the winner of the Super Bowl is determined due to climate change.

The key, here, however, is that Biden lied.  He promised repeatedly that he would not attack the oil and gas industry.  He lied.  The media won't point that out because Biden is a Democrat.   Still, the American people have to recognize Biden for the liar that he is (and has always been).

Biden Takes Action To Raise Drug Prices For Poor

 Last July President Trump signed executive orders that let federally funded health centers buy epi pens and insulin in bulk and then resell the items at cost to individual Americans thereby reducing costs by more than 30%. In his rush to undo everything Trump did, president Biden just put a hold on those orders. The effect of Biden’s actions is to once again put insulin and epi pens out of the reach of poor Americans. No doubt Biden will tell us he is fighting white supremacy or some other bit of nonsense. The truth though is that someone with a brain (not Biden) will have to realize that Trump did a lot of good things and that undoing everything Trump is a poor policy. Biden just attacked poor sick people!

So Hunter Finally Shows His Face

 Hunter Biden who is the target of a federal criminal investigation for alleged money laundering and tax evasion surfaced at yesterday’s inauguration. Hunter has been in hiding for months since his very presence reminds people of not only his own misconduct but also of Old Joe’s part in that mess. 

Hopefully Hunter will use his return to the public eye to actually provide some answers about his questionable conduct 

Biden's First Attempt Looks Like A Joke

President Biden unveiled his new anti COVID plan today by signing executive orders on the subject.  Biden set what he called an 'AMBITIOUS" goal of having one million vaccinations each day across America.  This was to replace the inadequate numbers under Trump.  The media cheered!

So now let's look where we are now.  In the last two weeks, the number of shots of the vaccines administered across the USA averaged 920,000 per day.  In other words, Biden set his goal at less than 10 higher than the current figure.  At Biden's goal rate, it would take two years for the nation to be vaccinated.

Biden's goal is a joke.  So is he.

The Joke Isn't Funny

 With the Trmp Presidency over, it's worth taking a moment to look at the BS pushed by the pollsters up to the very end.  This week Gallup found that by a 28% majority, Americans disapproved of Trump's job performance.  Rasmussen found that by a 3% majority Americans approved of Trump's job performance.

These both can't be correct.  Indeed, the difference is so great that at least one of them has to be either completely erroneous or, more likely, rigged.  Since these are major pollsters, error as a cause is unlikely.  That leaves intentional rigging.

Perhaps media ought to stop publishing polls.  Since 2016, the pollsters have been wrong about as often as they were correct.  The whole industry should be laughed out of existence.

The Polls Are A Joke

 In the 2020 election, the polls were all wrong.  Even on election night, the networks got it all wrong.  The Biden runaway victory predicted by the polls turned into a very close contest.  States like PA, MI, AZ, NV and GA that showed clear leads for Biden or up to 8% came in with margins of less than 1% for the most part.  When the polls closed in most states, some networks proclaimed that based upon their exit polls, the Dems had gained at least 5 and maybe as many as 15 seats in the House.  Actually, the GOP picked up something like 13 seats.

Given the poor performance of the pollsters, one would think that they would take more care now to get it right.  But they don't.  Today, we saw two polls concerning the public's view of President Trump's job performance.  Both polls were taken after the mess at the Capitol last week.  Rasmussen found the public disapproving of Trump's performance by a margin of 3%.  Quinipiac, however, found that the margin of disapproval was 24%.  That's impossible.  It is not a sampling error.  It has to be intentional.  The likelihood of these being two good faith polls with such different results is less than one chancer in ten billion.  One side or the other is rigging the results.

Throughout the last two years, Quinipiac has always shown results more favorable to the Dems by about 5-7 percentage points.  Even that margin does not account for the latest differential.

Realistically, the polls need to be ignored.  They are BS pushing BS results.

A New Low - and that ain’t easy

 Ready for this?  Now the story on the protest at the Capitol has morphed into a terrorist attack by white supremacists supported by the military. Really. The leftist crazies are frothing at the mouth as they continue to get more and more worked up over the protest. 

The left never misses an opportunity to go too far. Any sane person understands that this incident had nothing to do with race, had no military involvement and was hardly a terrorist attack.  As the crazies keep going, they will only lose support from those who can recognize BS for what it is. 

Congrats to Facebook and Twitter

 Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets blocked the President of the United States yesterday for posting things that these companies did not agree with.  It was the ultimate in left wing censorship.

Be fair for a moment.  Trump has said many things about the election being stolen.  He has claimed that there was massive voter fraud to support Biden.  Tens of millions of Americans agree with him if the polls are to be believed.  One thing Trump never did, however, was to call for violence or any of the mess that happened at the Capitol yesterday.  No matter!  For the left wing social media elites, Trump was fomenting riots and violence by tweeting, etc to set forth his views about the validity of the election.  These self proclaimed final authorities now take it upon themselves to censor the President of our country.  They may not like what Trump says.  They can disagree with the facts he states or the arguments he makes.  They do not have the right to censor him, however.

Social media has now made it perfectly clear that they are on the side of the Democrats and the left.  Remember, these same people supposedly horrified by violence did nothing to stop BLM and its announcement of "peaceful demonstrations" that led to deaths, injuries, arson, looting and the like.  The same social media giants also never silenced the thugs of Antifa who commit all sorts of crimes in the name of "justice" and "anti-facism".  

There is no excuse for censorship by the social media companies.  Remember, Americans have the right to free speech and free assembly.  The content of what gets said or the point of the gathering does not matter.  No one should be censored.

There needs to be consequences for these social media companies.  What they are doing is unforgiveable.

So Explain This

 Today, protesters upset at the vote fraud that gave Joe Biden victory in November held a protest at the Capitol in Washington.  Among other things, they broke some windows and forced their way past Capitol Police and into the building.  The did not attack anyone.  It truly was a mostly peaceful protest.

To hear the media commentary, however, this was like the beginning of an uprising of white supremacists across America.  What total nonsense.  When BLM or Antifa held riots last Spring and Summer, we were told it was no big deal because they had a grievance and protest is totally American.  When they looted small and large businesses alike and beat up people in the street, we were told to ignore it because protest should not be stopped.  When Trump's supporters break some windows (and the police shoot and kill one unarmed woman), it's an insurrection, however.

 I don't condoned violence or vandalism by anyone, but let's not try to paint BLM and Antifa as anything saints nor to paint today's mob as the ultimate in sinners.  It's lies like that that lead to the sort of thing that happened today.

A New Year

 I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a very good new year.  There were some good things in 2020, but not many.  It was a truly awful year.  Let's hope 21 is a whole lot better.

Amazing Double Standard

 I just read the umpteenth article complaining the the Trump administration is not "fully cooperating" with the transition to Biden and his administration of mostly retreads from the Obama years.  It's an amazing double standard.  Remember, we now know for certain that during the transition from Obama to Trump, people at the highest levels of the government including Joe Biden himself schemed to create a phony narrative of "Russian collusion" and to ensnare many in the new Trump administration in that mess.  Biden and others tried to bring down President Trump and his people with phony criminal matters.  Four years later, the same group of retread thugs are complaining that they aren't getting enough meetings and access to the inner workings of the government from the Trumpsters.  Amazing!

Of course, the media is following the Dem line totally.  So what else is new?