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They’ll Wreck The Economy If They Have To

They’ll Wreck The Economy If They Have To

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Nearly seven centuries ago in the mid-1300s, the first major outbreak of the Bubonic Plague forced Europeans into some of the harshest social distancing measures in history.

As Boccacio wrote in The Decameron in 1353, the hysteria was so extreme that “brother abandoned brother. . . fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their children, as if they had not been theirs.”

When people sensed the worst was over, they slowly came out of their homes.

There was no grand re-opening of the economy like some department store suddenly under new management.  People remained highly mistrustful of one another, continuing to avoid even the most basic interactions with friends, family, and professional colleagues.

Commerce was slow and the economy remained depressed for years.

And just when it seemed that the situation was finally starting to improve, the plague struck again in 1360. And again in 1374.

Medieval Europeans quickly realized that if there was just a single rat left on the planet carrying the disease, then another wave of the pandemic could begin anew.

And that made it next to impossible for anything to return to normal.

Only a handful of industries flourished after the plague. People still needed to eat, so agriculture did well.

And as more people remained in relative isolation, science began to advance at a pace never seen in western Europe.

But most industries suffered immeasurably.

Commercial trade dwindled. Italy’s woolen textile industry practically ceased to exist. Many prominent banks in Europe collapsed. And there were even government debt defaults.

Today our circumstances are obviously different. The world has some of its brightest minds working to eradicate this pandemic, and they have a pretty great track record.

And while there are certainly a lot of challenges to deal with, we’re still able to produce certain goods and services, ship them across the globe, and order online for home delivery.

But there are some similarities that are difficult to ignore.

Right now most people are barricaded in their homes while policymakers wait for this virus to die off.

But that’s not how biology works.

Just like in the 1300s, if there’s even a single carrier of the coronavirus remaining, then the whole thing  starts over.

That person transmits the virus to 2-3 people, those people transmit the virus to 2-3 other people, and the exponential growth curve begins again.

Lockdowns don’t kill off the virus. They just reset the clock.

I’ve been writing about this for a while: what happens if there’s a second wave of outbreaks? Do we all go on lockdown for another two months and send the economy into another tailspin?

Even when they do lift the lockdowns, countless industries will be hideously disfigured; do we really expect crowded bars, airplanes, sports stadiums, and shopping malls to return to normal?

Even something as basic as office space could take an enormous hit.

I wrote last week that big businesses could be downsizing– permanently reducing their work forces and cutting back on office space. Even Disney acknowledged that they will reduce office space.

It’s hard to imagine that trend won’t have a major impact on the entire commercial real estate industry, from agents to construction companies to property owners, to the banks who own the mortgages.

Retail stores have been totally vanquished, and the bankruptcies are piling up; this could impact millions of workers in the retail sector and trigger a wave of defaults against the banks who loaned money to retail giants.

And you probably saw yesterday that the price of WTI crude oil crashed BELOW $0.

We’ll talk about that more in another letter… but it’s fair to say that low oil prices will force a lot of oil companies out of business.

And that will impact workers in the sector who stand to become unemployed… and, yes, the banks who loaned money to oil companies.

[According to a recent report from investment firm KBW, some banks, like Oklahoma-based BOK Financial, have more than 100% of bank equity tied up in loans to oil companies!]

I’ve been writing about this theme since the pandemic started: there will be some banks that don’t make it. They simply won’t be able to withstand the loan losses.

And it’s not just the energy sector.

Banks with loans to retail companies could take a hit. Bank with commercial real estate loans could take a hit.

And banks’ consumer loan portfolios will undoubtedly take a hit as millions of newly unemployed people stop paying their bills.

There will likely even be sovereign debt defaults, and banks will take a huge hit from those.

There’s more than $250 TRILLION worth of debt worldwide, much of it owned by banks. If even 1% of that debt goes to zero, a number of banks won’t survive.

And if you think that bank failures aren’t possible, please remember that oil prices hit MINUS $40 yesterday. Nobody thought that was possible. And yet it happened.

EVERY scenario is possible.

And this leads me to a very central idea:

I don’t know if the stock market is going to rise or fall. I don’t know what’s going to happen to oil prices.

But I have a strong suspicion that the government and central bank are going to keep working together, printing incomprehensible sums of money to bail everyone out– especially banks.

This ‘whatever it takes’ monetary policy could come at an extremely steep price.

The last thing politicians care about right now is the value of the currency. And history tells us that inflation is almost always the preferred tool of a government in crisis.

If they have to conjure $10 trillion out of thin air to bail out the economy, they’ll do it… even if it wrecks the currency.

This is an enormous implication worth preparing for today.

*  *  *

And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide.


Tyler Durden

Thu, 04/23/2020 – 12:10

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Nolte: The Folly of ‘Testing Everyone’ for the Coronavirus

Testing, testing, testing… So now that President Trump and his team have expertly managed the ventilator situation and were able to ensure everyone who needed a ventilator got a ventilator, the fake news media have moved on to screaming about inadequate testing.

We must all be tested to see if we are infected with the coronavirus, the media say.

Why?

Well, so we know if it’s safe to go back to work or school, the media say.

Okay, so I get tested, am told I’m not infected, and go back to work and school, right?

There you go! It’s the only solution, the media say.

But what if I touch a door on the way out of the testing place and become infected?

And it’s here the media have nothing to say.

Is that what we want, to test everyone, all 325 million of us, to give everyone who tests negative a dangerous and false sense of security when they could easily infect themselves minutes after passing that test?

“Testing everyone” is obviously my shorthand for the madness being pushed by the media. And to be perfectly honest, my shorthand downplays what the media are demanding. What they want is the equivalent (and this is no exaggeration) of “testing everyone” every two weeks.

The demand is for 20 to 30 million tests per day.

Per day.

As I’ll explain in a bit, testing is obviously important. Testing everyone, however, is pointless, it’s useless… It’s a total waste of resources and probably impossible to achieve. And this is why, no matter what the experts say, no matter what Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci say, the media have set this impossible standard of 20 to 30 million tests per day.

You see, the media have decided to set a futile and unnecessary goal, a catch-22, just so they can point to Trump and say he failed.

The other reason the media want all this testing done is that it increases our country’s infection numbers. Because America is doing way-way-way more testing than any other country, our infection numbers look way higher by comparison.

Of course, all this testing has also decreased America’s mortality rate to a number way lower than every country whose numbers can be trusted (i.e., not China and Iran), but our fake media don’t want to talk about that.

This isn’t an argument against all testing. Far from it. Antibody testing, the test to see who has already had the Chinese virus, will be crucial for the clinical trials utilizing plasma as a coronavirus remedy. And if we discover you cannot be reinfected, antibody testing will be crucial to see who can return to a normal life. If you are not at risk of getting sick, you won’t infect anyone else. That’s the perfect position to be in. So let’s hope these anecdotal stories about people being reinfected turn out to be mistaken, turn out to be people who were not yet fully recovered.

And, of course, testing people to see if they have been infected is also vital. But this has to be done efficiently and logically.

If we want to reopen our country, a vigorous but reasonable amount of testing will be crucial. We obviously need to be able to test everyone who’s symptomatic and everyone the symptomatic come in contact with.

Thankfully, according to the experts, that will not be a problem as states and localities move into the first reopening phase.

We also need to test the general population enough just to find out how widespread the disease is and to ensure no more hot spots flare up that might crash the healthcare system because that would be a true catastrophe, one — thank God — we have, so far, avoided.

Don’t forget the virus is still out there, and until there’s a vaccine, the virus will remain out there. So unless you want to remain in lockdown for the 12 to 18 months it will take to create and distribute a vaccine,  it is not at all improbable that millions, maybe tens of millions of us, will eventually become infected.

Mitigation is about slowing the spread, not stopping the spread… Until there’s a vaccine, the spread will continue to spread. All we can do is what’s necessary to ensure our state and local health systems don’t crash. We want to be able to save everyone who can be saved.

And that’s what the testing is primarily for: to ensure infections don’t explode to where the system crashes, to where triage is necessary.

Testing everyone is useless, testing the equivalent of everyone every two weeks — 20 to 30 million per day — is like asking Trump to empty the ocean with a spoon. And due to the false sense of security it could create, that kind of testing could even be dangerous.

But our sociopathic media don’t care about that. Public health will never be a higher priority than defeating the Orange Bad Man.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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Faulty Chinese Masks Force More than 1,000 Spanish Medics into Isolation

More than 1,000 Spanish healthcare workers have gone into isolation after wearing faulty medical masks bought from China.

Spain had ordered 400,000 masks from the communist nation to protect frontline medical staff. However, due to their poor quality, the medics are in quarantine and will undergo testing for the Chinese-born virus.

The masks were acquired from the Chinese-based firm Garry Galaxy, and are believed to have been in use for ten days before it was discovered on Friday that they were defective. Most of the masks have been recalled, yet as some are still believed to be in circulation, according to El País.

“There are people who worked the whole day using a mask that offers ten minutes of protection,” said the General Council of Nursing Associations.

Spanish healthcare workers have been particularly hard hit by coronavirus. Medical staff represent some 15 per cent of all infections in the country, with the Health Ministry citing the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) as the main cause for the high infection rate.

At least 31,000 Spanish healthcare workers have contracted coronavirus. But it is feared that the real number of infections is much higher, with a recent survey conducted by a nurses association finding that some 70,000 nurses have become infected.

The government of Spain is also seeking a refund for an order of 640,000 defective coronavirus antigen test kits from the Shenzhen-based Chinese company, Bioeasy.

The tests were ordered as a replacement for an earlier batch of kits that were found to be defective in March. Examination of the 58,000 tests found that they were not sensitive enough to detect the virus. The kits had an accuracy rate of just 30 per cent, compared to the expected 80 per cent.

After discovering that the sample tests from the latest batch were also ineffective, the government has decided to cancel the entire order from the Chinese firm.

The Health Ministry has refused to disclose how much money was sent to Bioeasy, though it said it is currently in the process of securing a refund.

Reports of faulty Chinese medical equipment have been rampant, with the governments of The Netherlands and the Czech Republic revealing that they were forced to scrap hundreds of thousands of Chinese test kits.

Initially, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) denied that it is shipping out faulty equipment and even bragged that its economy was “roaring” as a result of the global demand for medical equipment. China later backtracked the claims, announcing that it would be restricting exports by companies that do not have the proper licences.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

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Facebook Censors ‘Anti-State’ Content in Vietnam to Please Government

Facebook has agreed to censor “anti-state” posts in Vietnam after its local servers were taken offline earlier this year slowing traffic in the country to a crawl.

Reuters reports that social media giant Facebook has agreed to censor posts critical of the Vietnamese government after its servers in the country were taken offline earlier this year, slowing traffic to a crawl. Two Facebook sources told Reuters that the servers were taken offline for around seven weeks by state-owned telecommunications companies making Facebook unusable at times in the country.

One Facebook source told Reuters: “We believe the action was taken to place significant pressure on us to increase our compliance with legal takedown orders when it comes to content that our users in Vietnam see.”

Facebook confirmed in an email to Reuters that it has complied with the Vietnamese government’s request to “restrict access to content which it has deemed to be illegal.” Vietnam’s foreign ministry did not respond to Reuter’s request for information, state telecoms firms Viettel and Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) also ignored requests for comment.

Amnesty International has called on Facebook to immediately reverse its decision, stating: “Facebook’s compliance with these demands sets a dangerous precedent. Governments around the world will see this as an open invitation to enlist Facebook in the service of state censorship.”

Despite widespread economic reform and increasing openness to social change, Vietnam’s Communist Party still has a tight hold on media and does not tolerate dissent. The country ranks 175th of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

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Millions More File for Unemployment as Historic Job Loss String Continues

More than 4.4 million laid-off workers applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week as job cuts escalated across an economy that remains all but shut down, the government said Thursday.

Roughly 26 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the five weeks since the coronavirus outbreak began forcing millions of employers to close their doors.

About one in six American workers have lost their jobs in the past five weeks, by far the worst string of layoffs on record.

Economists have forecast that the unemployment rate for April could go as high as 20 percent.

The enormous magnitude of job cuts has plunged the U.S. economy into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Some economists say the nation’s output could shrink by twice the amount that it did during the Great Recession, which ended in 2009.

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The painful economic consequences of the virus-related shutdowns have sparked angry protests in several state capitals from crowds insisting that businesses be allowed to reopen. Thursday’s report, showing that the pace of layoffs remains immense, could heighten demands for reopenings.

Some governors have begun easing restrictions despite warnings from health authorities that it might be too soon to do so without causing new infections. In Georgia, gyms, hair salons and bowling alleys can reopen Friday. Texas has reopened its state parks.

Yet those scattered reopenings won’t lead to much rehiring, especially if many Americans are too wary to leave their homes. And there are likely more layoffs to come from many small businesses that have tried but failed to receive loans from a federal aid program.

The number of people who are receiving unemployment benefits has reached a record 16 million, surpassing a previous high of 12 million set in 2010, just after the 2008-2009 recession ended. This figure reflects people who have managed to navigate the online or telephone application systems in their states, have been approved for benefits and are actually receiving checks.

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In some states, many laid-off workers have run into obstacles in trying to file applications for benefits. Among them are millions of freelancers, contractors, gig workers and self-employed people — a category of workers who are now eligible for unemployment benefits for the first time.

“This has been a really devastating shock for a lot of families and small businesses,” said Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist at the University of Minnesota. “It is beyond their control and no fault of their own.”

In Florida, applications for unemployment benefits nearly tripled last week to 505,000, the second-highest total behind much-larger California’s 534,000. Florida has had trouble processing many of its applications. Its figure suggests that the state is finally clearing a backlog of filings from jobless workers.

In Michigan, 17 percent of the state’s workforce is now receiving unemployment aid, the largest proportion in the country. It is followed by Rhode Island at 15 percent, Nevada at 13.7 percent and Georgia at 13.6 percent.

Just about every major industry has absorbed sudden and severe layoffs. Economists at the Federal Reserve estimate that hotels and restaurants have shed the most jobs — 4 million since Feb. 15. That is nearly one-third of all the employees in that industry.

RELATED: Shake Shack To Return $10M Loan, Suggests Money Be Reallocated to Restaurants ‘Who Need It Most’

Construction has shed more than 9 percent of its jobs. So has a category that includes retail, shipping and utilities, the Fed estimated. A category that is made up of data processing and online publishing has cut 4.7 percent.

When the government issues the April jobs report on May 8, economists expect it to show breathtaking losses. Economists at JPMorgan are predicting a loss of 25 million jobs. That would be nearly triple the total lost during the entire Great Recession period.

A $2 trillion-plus federal relief package that was signed into law last month made millions of gig workers, contractors and self-employed people newly eligible for unemployment aid. But most states have yet to approve unemployment applications from those workers because they’re still trying to reprogram their systems to do so. As a result, many people who have lost jobs or income aren’t being counted as laid-off because their applications for unemployment aid haven’t been processed.

Among them is Sasha McVeigh, a musician in Nashville. Having grown up in England with a love of country music, she spent years flying to Nashville to play gigs until she managed to secure a green card and move permanently two years ago. McVeigh had been working steadily until the city shut down music clubs in mid-March.

Since then, she’s applied for unemployment benefits but so far has received nothing. To make ends meet, she’s applied for some grants available to out-of-work musicians, held some live streaming concerts and pushed her merchandise sales.

By cutting expenses to a bare minimum, McVeigh said, “I’ve managed to just about keep myself afloat.” But she worries about what will happen over the next few months.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

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As Dems Trash ICE, Border Patrol Agent Makes and Distributes Hundreds of Masks

Protective masks are some of the most difficult things to come by in the present situation.

Thankfully, a Border Patrol agent and his wife are doing their best to make and distribute them to hundreds of those who need them most — at a time when Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol are under constant attack from liberal politicians.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Ricardo Ruedas and his wife are producing the masks for essential personnel in order to help protect against the coronavirus crisis.

TRENDING: Every American Needs To See Trump’s ‘Nancy Antoinette’ Pelosi Ad – She Couldn’t Care Less About Us

“Ricardo, a Border Patrol agent out of El Centro Sector, and his wife, Alejandra, a nursing school graduate who owns and operates an online cake business, combined their passion for helping others and their sewing skillset in order to make masks for the community during this pandemic crisis,” CBP reported in a news release last week.

“We have family and friends that work in the local hospitals and we coordinated with them to find out who was in need,” Ricardo Ruedas said in the release.

“We felt the necessity to help those who help others. I learned to sew out of necessity when I was younger, and my wife just recently taught herself from online videos.”

According to the release, the masks are made of “three different layers of material including Halyard H600 two-ply spun polypropylene.”

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The much-needed masks are designed to prevent water, bacteria and particles from getting through. It’s worth noting that the largest virus is smaller than the smallest bacteria, according to WebMD, but any mask is still better than no mask in terms of preventing the spread of coronavirus.

“The couple began by making masks for their immediate family and quickly realized they could continue constructing them to donate to help combat the spread of the coronavirus,” the news release stated.

“Alejandra explained that their mission is to provide masks to essential personnel like nurses, doctors, pharmacies, local retail personnel and individuals that are at high risk.  Their inspiration came from similar stories from across the nation and the generosity of the local community in lending them sewing equipment and donating fabric to the cause.  The Ruedas family strongly believes that everyone has a responsibility in protecting the community from this pandemic.”

“Agent Ruedas and his wife are doing a wonderful service for the first responders as well as the local communities here in the Imperial Valley,” Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino said in the release.

“I commend them both for their selfless contribution in the fight against the spread of this dangerous virus.”

RELATED: As COVID Fear Spreads, Dems Ramp Up Pressure on ICE To Release Illegals

Sounds like a pretty selfless task to me — even though I had been led to believe ICE agents and Border Patrol personnel were supposed to be heartless, last I checked. Nevertheless, heartless though they may be, Ruedas and his wife plan to keep on producing the masks.

“The couple have made and handed out over two hundred masks free of charge. The couple work on the masks on their off time,” the media release states.

“Ricardo helps after his long shift and Alejandra has put a hold on her online cake business to make the masks.  They plan to continue to manufacture the mask for as long as they can.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are — quelle surprise — continuing to trash ICE operations.

“Deportations to Honduras and El Salvador have also continued, despite the concerns of migrants’ advocates and some government officials in Central America,” The Times reported last week.

“Those countries, like neighboring Guatemala, are beset by widespread poverty and weak public health systems, making them particularly vulnerable to the impacts of the pandemic.”

Much further down in the story: “Even as the coronavirus pandemic has posed serious new threats to those held in crowded custodial settings, ICE officials have said the agency is continuing with ‘mission critical’ arrests of immigrants without legal status.”

But that is too much for Democrats. Both the ICE and the Border Patrol are agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, and that department is a target for some of the country’s top liberals.

“Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter this month accusing the Department of Homeland Security of ‘exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic by claiming new, sweeping powers to summarily expel large, unknown numbers of individuals arriving at our border in clear contravention of existing federal laws,’” The Times reported.

“The senators, led by Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said the department was ‘blatantly misinterpreting its limited authorities’ in enforcing the border closure.”

As an 80-year-old senior senator from Vermont, who has been a senator since 1974, it’s safe to say Leahy’s attitude about the department reflects mainstream Democratic thinking about homeland security.

And in an era when former Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders made dismantling ICE, the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection part of his presidential campaign, it’s clear that Democrats as a party don’t offer a lot of support to ICE or the agencies charged with protecting the country’s borders.

The Times story isn’t particularly explicit in terms of what was involved in the deportations it described.

One could extrapolate that the adults include serious criminals. Given the history of these repatriations, “mission critical” deportations generally involve individuals who have been accused or convicted of crimes — but again, given the paucity of detail here, I’m not in a position to judge.

If I turn out to be correct, however, these are people who deserve to be in custody — and, given the risk of exposure in jail, deportation actually seems to be an effective way to stop them from being infected with coronavirus, albeit not in a way liberals might approve of.

However, there is one clue as to who else is being deported: The Times notes Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pushing for the deportation of “detained migrant children who were already in the United States when the border restrictions came down.”

So, “the coronavirus pandemic has posed serious new threats to those held in crowded custodial settings,” but The Times is also tacitly frowning upon the deportation of “detained migrant children who were already in the United States when the border restrictions came down” — even though deportation would remove them from the “crowded custodial settings” that make them prone to coronavirus infection.

In short, The Times would seem to prefer no one get deported and that anyone in custody at the moment should be released.

Well, as the kids like to say, “whatever.”

ICE is doing its job and a Border Patrol agent is making masks for mission-critical staff in places like hospitals, pharmacies and the retail outlets that remain open to keep daily necessities available.

Liberals might not like anything border protection personnel do, but I’m fine with that arrangement.

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Gov Cuomo on People Stuck in Abusive Households: Domestic Violence Is ‘Very Bad,’ But Shutdown Isn’t Just About You

One of the great catch-22s during the coronavirus pandemic are spouses and children stuck in abusive households.

It’s a wretched situation, and one states need to do more to address. Once this is over, we’re going to have to deal with a legacy of sick relationships that are more difficult for those being abused and which, thanks to emotionally blackmail and gaslighting, will likely be more difficult for them to leave.

Also, while I’m not necessarily in favor of lockdown protests that don’t involve social distancing or utilizing cars to make their point without creating a risk of infection, I’m also not in favor of governors pushing their citizens to the point where protest becomes inevitable due to entirely superfluous, petty and ineffectual lockdown policies. (See: Whitmer, Gretchen.)

Expecting your constituents to obey policies enacted on whims as opposed to evidence — particularly when those policies are imposed with a shrug — is basically the recipe for turning the public view of lockdowns away from seeing them as a necessary expedient to limit the spread of the coronavirus and toward lockdowns being seen as the kind of petty, superfluous and dangerous regulatory regime that not only invites protests but makes them necessary.

All of which is to say that Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York could go from the hero of lockdown — both for his fellow Democrats and to Republicans willing to put aside party grudges — to the poster child of how it all went wrong.

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On Wednesday, Cuomo lashed out at lockdown protesters and the idea that stay-at-home orders were a cure worse than the disease, telling reporters that “economic hardship doesn’t equal death.”

“You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker,” he said.

“Economic hardship, yes, very bad,” Cuomo said. “Not death.”

The idea that “economic hardship” doesn’t equal death when it can potentially lead to higher incidence of heart disease, depression and suicide is dubious, especially when you consider a Lancet study said the Great Recession led to 500,000 cancer deaths alone.

Fine, though, let’s take that bit of Cuomo’s tough talk at face value. That wasn’t my issue with Wednesday’s press conference. It was arrogant and misinformed, but not dangerous, per se.

The next part was, though:

“Economic hardship — yes, very bad — not death. Emotional stress, from being locked in a house — very bad, not death. Domestic violence on the increase? Very bad, not death. And not death of someone else,” Cuomo said.

“See, that’s what we have to factor into this equation. Yeah, it’s your life, do whatever you want. But you’re now responsible for my life. You have a responsibility to me. It’s not just about you.”

RELATED: Betrayal? California Gov. Newsom Helps Chinese Get $1 Billion in COVID Aid

Yeah, it’s your life, being a victim of domestic violence. Don’t burden him with it, though.

And it got worse:

“We started here saying, ‘it’s not about me, it’s about we,’ get your head around the ‘we’ concept. So it’s not just all about you. It’s about me too, it’s about we,” he explained. “ . . . And think about it as if, it was your family that might get infected, right? And that’s what we’re talking about. And when you think about it as your family, you have a different perspective.”

It’s about “we,” domestic violence victims. There’s no “I” in “we,” after all. You’re not people in his family, either, so don’t endanger their lives. Hey, can we get Chris Cuomo on Zoom to talk about that coronavirus-induced dream he had about his brother in a ballet outfit? Bet that’ll make you think twice about endangering his life.

I’m not entirely sure what the governor’s “it’s all about we” ramble was supposed to say.

Is Cuomo admitting his state’s police and domestic violence shelters can’t deal with the uptick in abuse so, hey, you’re on your own? Shouldn’t this be a priority given what he admits is an uptick in domestic violence?

Did he not realize that, when he said “Domestic violence on the increase? Very bad, not death,” that he was profoundly wrong about that death part, considering how often domestic violence does, in fact, end in the death of the abused?

But perhaps most disturbingly, did he not realize — if he believes that protests cause coronavirus infections — that this is the kind of talk that infuriates Americans and makes more protests inevitable?

It’s not just economic hardship that sparks demonstrations. If it were, every state in the nation would be protesting. It’s not even those superfluous, petty, overly restrictive lockdown measures we’ve mentioned before.

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Rather, it’s the profound arrogance of state officials who believe their job is to be confrontational jerks under the misapprehension this will prevent Americans from violating their states’ lockdowns.

You don’t like the lockdowns? Tough cookies, Gov. Cuomo seems to be saying (although I doubt he’s using the word “cookies” in his mind).

Unlike Gov. Whitmer in Michigan — whose “let them eat gardening equipment” messaging for her new lockdown order was as much responsible for the protests at the state capital as the more restrictive lockdown order itself — Gov. Cuomo isn’t stopping at petty regulations. Instead, he’s telling victims of domestic violence to “suck it up, buttercup.” I’m sure abused wives love hearing that.

Now, did he actually mean that as it sounded? I can only assume that’s a no because I can’t picture leaders who are that sickeningly uncaring whose surnames aren’t, say, Maduro, Putin or Bolsinaro.

However, that is how it sounded, and when Cuomo’s primary job in these daily coronavirus media filibusters is to manage how he sounds, he’s responsible for the Bolsinaro-esque tone of this remark — and, by extension, making the protesters outside the Albany state capital Wednesday look entirely justified.

To New York domestic abuse victims: The Empire State has a slew of domestic violence hotlines, all of which have workers trained to make sure your abuser doesn’t know you’re on the phone with them if you call. I beseech you, click on this link and use them.

Do not take your governor’s profoundly irresponsible advice. It could, quite literally, end in your death.

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After Failing To Remove Trump from Office, Schiff and Nadler Now Target Barr

The House Democrats are at it again: They want another investigation of the Trump administration, and this time they hope to bring down the nation’s brilliant and stalwart attorney general, William Barr.

By doing so, they seek to weaken their ultimate target: President Donald Trump.

Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of California and Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York are obsessed with destroying the reputation of the president and anyone who does not support their twisted leftist agenda.

Now, they have their sights on Barr.

These Democrats are calling for a Justice Department investigation into Barr in relation to the April 3 firing of Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community.

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Atkinson gave legitimacy to a whistleblower complaint regarding Trump’s July 25, 2019, phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which eventually led to the president’s impeachment.

When Trump dismissed Atkinson, he sent a letter to Congress stating he had lost confidence in the intelligence community IG.

The president said at an April 4 news conference that Atkinson “did a terrible job — absolutely terrible.”

“He took a whistleblower report, which turned out to be a fake report — it was fake,” Trump said. “It was totally wrong. … He took a fake report and he brought it to Congress, with an emergency.”

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The administration’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a Sept. 3 memorandum opinion detailing Atkinson’s misconduct.

The Democrats, however, contend that Barr was dishonest in his April 9 comments to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham about Atkinson, when the attorney general unequivocally supported Trump’s decision to fire him.

“From the vantage point of the Department of Justice, [Atkinson] had interpreted his statute, which is a fairly narrow statute, that gave him jurisdiction over wrongdoing by intelligence people and tried to turn it into a commission to explore anything in the government and immediately reported to Congress without letting the executive branch look at it and determine whether there was any problem,” Barr told Ingraham.

In a letter Monday to Jeffrey Ragsdale, acting director of the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Nadler and Schiff called for a review of Barr’s comments.

Nadler Schiff Letter by The Western Journal on Scribd

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They claimed the attorney general “blatantly mischaracterized Mr. Atkinson’s conduct and DOJ’s own actions relating to the complaint filed last summer by an Intelligence Community whistleblower and misrepresented DOJ’s legal opinion concerning the whistleblower complaint.”

The Democrats also said Barr tried to block the whistleblower complaint from reaching Congress.

But isn’t all of this already old news? Barr certainly has the right to give his opinion of such matters to journalists who ask him questions. Moreover, the whistleblower complaint was eventually revealed and Democrats got their vaunted prize: impeachment.

Do we really need to dive deep into the weeds of this case again? Does this serve the public interest now, especially during this era of national emergency and economic turbulence?

Despite the fact that Democrats succeeded in impeaching the president on partisan and flimsy grounds, they are still trying to find another way to bludgeon his administration. They want investigations, more investigations and then investigations into the investigations.

We have endured nearly four years of an endless, unproductive sea of investigations.

They pursued the Russia collusion conspiracy for years, then the Ukrainian abuse of power theory, and now they want to take down the attorney general.

Simultaneously, Democrats want to review how Trump has handled the coronavirus crisis.

Of course they do. That is easier than trying to pass constructive legislation that benefits the American people.

Democrats repeatedly descend into a feverish, mad quest to destroy a duly elected president and his appointees. Despite all their investigations, almost four years later, Trump is still standing.

Yet the ultimate verdict of history will be that these ceaseless inquiries have done nothing to improve the daily lives of American citizens.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

via The Western Journal

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Here’s How Many Americans Filed For Unemployment After Dems Let PPP Run Out Of Money

Via Townhall:

The Labor Department announced on Thursday 4.4 million more Americans filed for unemployment benefits as the United States continues to reel from the effects of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

In the last five weeks, 26.5 million Americans have filed for unemployment, as many have lost their jobs due to “Stay-at-Home” orders designed to prevent the spreading of COVID-19. Many businesses had to close down after being designated as “non-essential,” resulting in layoffs and permanent business closures.

CNBC reports the 4.4. million does have a net decline of 810,000 claims from the previous week.

Keep reading…

via Weasel Zippers

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Publix Buys Excess Produce, Milk from Florida Farmers to Donate to Food Banks During Pandemic

The Publix supermarket company is offering a helping hand to its community in Lakeland, Florida, during the health crisis.

Wednesday, the company announced its initiative to buy over 150,000 pounds of produce and 43,500 gallons of milk from local farmers and donate them to Feeding America food banks in its first week, according to a press release.

The statement continued:

The initiative will support Florida produce farmers, southeastern dairy farmers and the growing number of families looking to Feeding America for fresh fruits, vegetables and milk during the coronavirus pandemic. Kicking off today, the initiative is expected to run for several weeks.

…

With numerous reports of farmers discarding produce and milk that isn’t being sold — mostly as a result of school, restaurant and hotel closures — Publix hopes to address the needs of both the farming community and its local partner food banks through this initiative.

“According to Feeding America, an estimated 17.1 million additional people will experience food insecurity due to school closures and rising unemployment during the pandemic,” the release said.

Wednesday on Twitter, Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried thanked Publix for its generosity:

Also on Wednesday, Feeding South Florida President and CEO Paco Velez said the supermarket chain understood that right now, more families were turning to food banks for help.

“We’re grateful to Publix for not only supporting growers, but also for their years of support of Feeding South Florida,” he stated.

Thankfully, Floridians’ efforts to flatten the curve of the disease have been successful, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Tuesday, adding he wanted the anticipated reopening plan to lead the state in “resurging back to where we all want to be.”

Following Wednesday’s announcement, Pero Family Farms Food Co. CEO Peter F. Pero IV said farmers were humbled Publix wanted to buy from them.

“Thank you to Publix, the participating food banks and their volunteers for making this initiative possible for those less fortunate while supporting local farms,” he concluded.

via Breitbart News

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