Month: May 2020

Data from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that the novel coronavirus’s true fatality rate in the United States, which takes into account mild and asymptomatic cases, stands at 0.26 percent, about eight to 15 times lower than earlier mortality rate estimates of between two and four percent, which prompted the lockdowns.

However, the true (or infection) mortality rate is more than double the flu’s 0.1 percent.

It’s pretty amazing how many negative activities gather around Michigan’s hard-faced and ambitious Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Besides her outrageous performance on the coronavirus crisis – banning sales of garden seeds, seeding nursing homes with COVID-19 patients, forcing private dam operators to overfill their reservoir for greenie purposes, causing two of them to burst – she’s also a liar.

We saw that clearly enough when her husband tried to put himself at the front of the boating queue by citing his marriage to her — cronyism at its worst — and she claimed it was a joke. It was a story so egregiously bad the only reason we didn’t comment about it here at American Thinker earlier is that we mistakenly thought the story was fake. Now there’s the matter of Whitmer’s political corruption – succoring her political cronies at state expense to spy on Michiganders to beef up the Democratic Party operation, which she’s also lying about.

According to the Daily Wire:

Newly released emails show that Michigan Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s office gave the “green light” for taxpayer money to be awarded to Democrat groups as part of the state’s coronavirus tracing program.

“Whitmer’s office gave the ‘green light’ for a COVID-19 contact tracing ‘arrangement’ she denied knowledge of and canceled amid outcry over a contractor with Democratic ties,” Bridge Magazine, a local Michigan publication, reported. “Emails obtained through a public records request appear to show Michigan officials tried to avoid controversy by shifting work to apolitical subsidiaries of firms with known partisan leanings.”

It would be bad no matter what the sneaky money was for, but in this case, the awfulness is multiplied because it’s state money for leftists to spy on Michiganders and not just spy on them but use that information to benefit one political party’s campaign operations, guess which:

In late April, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Whitmer had given control of the state’s contact tracing program to “one of the left’s biggest technology firms” and that the move was seen as potential way of her “using the coronavirus to strengthen the Democratic Party’s data operation.”

The Washington Post reported that the group that hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars were going to go “would be managed in coordination with EveryAction, a firm that is closely linked to NGP VAN, a technology provider that boasts that it powers ‘nearly every major Democratic campaign in America.’”

That’s handing leftists an illegal campaign contribution at taxpayer expense, amounting to naked political corruption.

Now she’s lying about the whole thing. According to the Wire:

Whitmer struggled to respond and had to resort to reading prepared notes when pressed during a news conference in April about why she awarded the contracts to partisan left-wing groups.

“When it was brought to my attention, I told them to cancel it,” Whitmer claimed. “This was an unnecessary distraction. Leadership is about solving problems. The correct process was not followed.”

Whitmer refused to answer who was responsible for making the decision to use those companies.

This sounds like her bizarre response to the boat-dock scandal, or her strange intransigence on keeping Michigan’s economy closed, or her insistence on all mail-in ballots. She claims to be the good guy when it’s clear as day that her hands are filthy with scandal. She seems to recognize it, too, which is why she keeps lying.

She’s already under investigation by the state legislature for her nursing home scandal. She ought to be under bigtime federal probe for this one. Something is way off about this woman who will do anything to advance her own political prospects and those of her cronies. Her supposed popularity in her state is astounding, given the scale of her scandals. I suspect it’s fake.

It’s time for the feds to step in, this isn’t normal politics.

Image credit: Julia Pickett, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s pretty amazing how many negative activities gather around Michigan’s hard-faced and ambitious Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Besides her outrageous performance on the coronavirus crisis – banning sales of garden seeds, seeding nursing homes with COVID-19 patients, forcing private dam operators to overfill their reservoir for greenie purposes, causing two of them to burst – she’s also a liar.

We saw that clearly enough when her husband tried to put himself at the front of the boating queue by citing his marriage to her — cronyism at its worst — and she claimed it was a joke. It was a story so egregiously bad the only reason we didn’t comment about it here at American Thinker earlier is that we mistakenly thought the story was fake. Now there’s the matter of Whitmer’s political corruption – succoring her political cronies at state expense to spy on Michiganders to beef up the Democratic Party operation, which she’s also lying about.

According to the Daily Wire:

Newly released emails show that Michigan Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s office gave the “green light” for taxpayer money to be awarded to Democrat groups as part of the state’s coronavirus tracing program.

“Whitmer’s office gave the ‘green light’ for a COVID-19 contact tracing ‘arrangement’ she denied knowledge of and canceled amid outcry over a contractor with Democratic ties,” Bridge Magazine, a local Michigan publication, reported. “Emails obtained through a public records request appear to show Michigan officials tried to avoid controversy by shifting work to apolitical subsidiaries of firms with known partisan leanings.”

It would be bad no matter what the sneaky money was for, but in this case, the awfulness is multiplied because it’s state money for leftists to spy on Michiganders and not just spy on them but use that information to benefit one political party’s campaign operations, guess which:

In late April, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Whitmer had given control of the state’s contact tracing program to “one of the left’s biggest technology firms” and that the move was seen as potential way of her “using the coronavirus to strengthen the Democratic Party’s data operation.”

The Washington Post reported that the group that hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars were going to go “would be managed in coordination with EveryAction, a firm that is closely linked to NGP VAN, a technology provider that boasts that it powers ‘nearly every major Democratic campaign in America.’”

That’s handing leftists an illegal campaign contribution at taxpayer expense, amounting to naked political corruption.

Now she’s lying about the whole thing. According to the Wire:

Whitmer struggled to respond and had to resort to reading prepared notes when pressed during a news conference in April about why she awarded the contracts to partisan left-wing groups.

“When it was brought to my attention, I told them to cancel it,” Whitmer claimed. “This was an unnecessary distraction. Leadership is about solving problems. The correct process was not followed.”

Whitmer refused to answer who was responsible for making the decision to use those companies.

This sounds like her bizarre response to the boat-dock scandal, or her strange intransigence on keeping Michigan’s economy closed, or her insistence on all mail-in ballots. She claims to be the good guy when it’s clear as day that her hands are filthy with scandal. She seems to recognize it, too, which is why she keeps lying.

She’s already under investigation by the state legislature for her nursing home scandal. She ought to be under bigtime federal probe for this one. Something is way off about this woman who will do anything to advance her own political prospects and those of her cronies. Her supposed popularity in her state is astounding, given the scale of her scandals. I suspect it’s fake.

It’s time for the feds to step in, this isn’t normal politics.

Image credit: Julia Pickett, via Wikimedia Commons

The Twitter official responsible for the platform’s fact-checking policy has tweeted that members of the Trump administration are “Nazis,” among other false and inflammatory statements on the platform.

Yoel Roth, whose official job title is “Head of Site Integrity,” explained the platform’s new policy in a May 11 blog post on “misleading information” on coronavirus.

It’s strange days indeed when getting a haircut is a sign of defiance and freedom, but that’s where 2020 has brought us. So we have a man draped in an American flag getting a haircut from a barber being harassed by two police officers on the lawn of the Michigan State Capitol. That’s how we’re rolling nowadays.

The video comes from one of the more unusual protests against the lockdown. In Michigan, hairdressers aren’t going to be back at work anytime soon, which has led to no small amount of unrest.

That’s sometimes hard to notice in a state where pretty much everyone is restive thanks to a lockdown order from Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that goes beyond restrictive to the point of punitive.

I suppose if you need attention, however, putting on an event in front of the state legislature in which hairdressers gave free haircuts to whoever was willing to brave the ruckus is a pretty good way to do it.

And what a ruckus it was:

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State police issue a verbal warning to stylist Brenda Root,of Swartz Creek. @LSJNews pic.twitter.com/ORmGipCKdq

— Nick King (@nickkingphoto) May 20, 2020

The clip is from the “Operation Haircut” protest Wednesday in front of the Capitol in Lansing.

As two officers got in the face of the hairdresser (by the way, nice social distancing, fellas), our rather bald haircut subject gave a running commentary on how ridiculous this whole thing was.

“The state of Michigan is going to go down because of this,” the flag-draped man mused.

He told the officers they “need to get your priorities in line. Not with the governor. I know you work for her.”

If they want to be of service, they should “go to your chief and say, ‘Hey, just put me on traffic duty today,’” the man advised.

“Operation Haircut” was a PR success, not in the least because of videos like this.

I have absolute respect for police officers and the work they do, but it’s a waste of resources and amazingly poor messaging to have two law enforcement officers with their faces literally inches from a hairdresser. I don’t know what they were saying, but my assumption is that they weren’t offering advice. “You know, you really should take a little more off there — those sideburns are very 2003.”

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The act of haircutting has become a symbol of public defiance in Michigan in part because of Karl Manke, a 77-year-old barber in Owosso, 30 miles northeast of Lansing. He’s managed to keep his shop open in spite of the fact that Michigan authorities have stripped him of his license. Just in case you needed another reason to detest the state-sponsored scam that is occupational licensing, well, there you go.

His barbershop has become a cause célèbre for conservatives and the site of plenty of rallies. That energy eventually morphed into “Operation Haircut,” an event organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition. That’s the same group behind the in-car protest last month against Whitmer’s lockdown order.

Neither haircuts nor motorcades seem to have moved Whitmer in the direction of softening her dictum. Polling, however, might eventually start convincing governors it’s time to seriously work on reopening.

A poll published Thursday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that Americans were still afraid of the disease spreading once the country reopens.

The survey found that “that 83% of Americans are at least somewhat concerned that lifting restrictions in their area will lead to additional infections, with 54% saying they are very or extremely concerned that such steps will result in a spike of COVID-19 cases.”

However, there was an interesting divide in terms of who believed the country needed to reopen.

“Just 45% of Republicans now say they favor stay-at-home orders, while about as many are opposed. A month ago, 70% of Republicans backed them. Among Democrats, 78% favor stay-at-home orders, down from 91% in April,” the AP reported.

The poll, sadly, didn’t include any opinion about this clip — a clip in which a hairdresser engaged in civil disobedience by giving an “illegal” haircut, two police officers who should have been doing something productive and a patriotic American giving a running commentary on how silly the whole thing was.

I suppose if this man gets COVID-19, we’re all going to look like cavalier idiots. However, that’s quite unlikely, and that’s the point. We can help control the spread of the novel coronavirus without Wuhan-esque restrictions.

Michigan is quickly turning into a powder-keg, and the official sitting on top of it — Gretchen “Let Them Eat Gardening Supplies” Whitmer — doesn’t seem to realize she’s perched atop a mound of explosives.

She’s made a few positive moves, mind you — reopening parts of the state with low infection rates and quickly reversing that silly gardening restriction — but Michigan still remains one of the most restrictive states when it comes to lockdowns.

Perhaps with a few more well-played acts of civil disobedience like this, that could start to change.

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