What’s going on today has me scratching my head.
We’ve closed our parks and golf courses, beaches and what have you, and discourage people from grocery shopping and if they do, remain six feet apart. Yet we let people ride on transit buses and fly in airplanes with strangers shoulder to shoulder flying from state to state, like from NYC to SF?
When are we going to talk about giving the American people any hope for ending this insanity of an economic calamity, hoping the patient can be revived once the paddles have been applied?
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One might find it odd that I, as a journalist, hold such a cynical view of national media outlets. Their biases are so obvious and shade their reporting of just about every issue. They loathe Trump and have been overt in shading every news article against him.
I’ve often said that if Trump personally developed a cure for cancer the headline would read: “Trump’s cancer cure too late for billions.”
As a Christian, I also see a bias against people of faith in the reporting. Take for example last week when Trump called entrepreneurs to a press briefing to show how industry leaders are stepping up to do their part in manufacturing products to fight the coronavirus. He invited Mike Lindell, inventor of My Pillow products, who noted how his company is manufacturing 10,000 to 50,000 cotton face masks each day. Lindell offered a short prayer and issued a call for families to think about God a little more: “God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the Word (of God). Read our Bible and spend time with our families.”
What did the nasty liberal media pundits do? Miami Herold reporter Julie K. Brown asked “The ‘My Pillow Guy’ was at the Corona Virus briefing today? Boy oh boy, do we need SNL this Saturday. If this had been a SNL skit we would have thought it was fake, right? You can’t make this s--- up.”
CNN opinion columnist Dean Obeidallah called for the media to quit airing Trump’s pressers, saying, “Trump now has the guy from My Pillow doing a campaign commercial for Trump’s 2020 campaign in the middle of a press conference about a deadly virus. How can any real news network air this BS?!”
This is why the American people have contempt for the national news media, including the Boston Globe, which published that “Trump has blood on his hands.” For the love of God, have they lost any sense of courtesy?
Thankfully there are people in their right minds to counterbalance such pettiness and nastiness. Ben Shapiro Tweeted, “If you’re angry at the guy shifting over his factory to produce 50,000 face masks a day for medical professionals, you’re doing being human wrong.”
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“Never let a good crisis go to waste” was something Obama cronie Rohm Emanuel said once. What he meant was, when an emergency crops up, use it for your political advantage.
Last week the coronavirus situation led former President Obama to say “We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic. We can’t afford any more consequences of climate denial.”
It would seem Obama has gone back to his days of smoking reefers. No person would logically conclude that the theory of climate change has anything to do with the virus. After all, the Spanish flu of 1918 occurred at a time when liberals weren’t harping about climate change. Obama is in denial about the virus origins: people in Wuhan China eating bizarre things like bat soup. But you’ll never see him addressing those perilous practices. No, no, no, not politically correct and we can’t say anything about the practices in other cultures.
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Likewise, we have a dastardly California attorney general who uses this crisis for his political ends. Xavier Becerra – the one I warned you against electing, California, but you did anyway – keeps on beating his climate change drum. When Trump suggested rolling back the fuel efficiency requirements for car manufacturers, Becerra suggested that more people will die because those fuel standards will threaten everybody’s health and we’ll all die from Covid-19. I don’t think Becerra believes his own swill – he just hopes you, as a voter, will blindly accept his words at face value.
I’m convince that California is in the hands of rabid socialists because the people have not done their job by vetting these threats to our freedom.
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I was tempted to run my front page headline: “COUNTY SEES NO DEATHS FROM COVID-19.” The point is that more people have died from the ordinary flu than from this so-called pandemic.
The justification for killing the economy and all of our jobs don’t bear it out in the numbers.
The Ebola fatality rate was 50 percent and Obama did not shut down the U.S. economy.
The H1N1 flu had a death rate of 0.02 percent.
Regular flu kills 0.1 percent of patients who are infected.
The Covid-19 has shown a death rate of 0.66 percent according to the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases. That’s a far cry from the figures between 2 and 3.4 percent that have come out of Wuhan, China. But the researchers at the University of Hong Kong have estimated that, in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, the likely death rate was 1.4 per cent — much lower than the previous estimate of 4.5 per cent, which was calculated using official statistics on the region’s cases and deaths.
In one month, an average of 223,560 Americans die from all causes. Keep that number in mind as I write this: Originally the models had Covid-19 killing upwards of 2.2 million Americans. Now the White House has lowered the forecast of the U.S. death toll to be 100,000 to 240,000 due to corona virus before the curve flattens. You can bet some of those deaths are inclusive of the existing natural death rate of 7,452 per day in the US.
Let’s talk about death. Each day in America, about 7,452 Americans pass away. That includes about 102 of all ages per die killed in U.S. car crashes and 1,662 who die from cancer daily and 1,772 who die from heart disease every day.
In California, to date, it’s been reported that 350 deaths have occurred from Covid-19 since this thing started over a month ago. Do you see why a lot of us Americans are asking why it makes no sense to destroy our economy, people’s jobs and small businesses?
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We need to talk about government overreach. I don’t believe any of these “shelter in place” or “stay at home” orders are anything but unconstitutional.
Benjamin Franklin said this: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Andrew P. Napolitano wrote in the Washington Times: “Of what value is a constitutional guarantee if it can be violated when people get sick? If it can, it is not a guarantee; it is a fraud. Stated differently, a constitutional guarantee is only as valuable and reliable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those in whose hands we have reposed it for safekeeping.” He goes on to suggest the only reason they are getting away with it is they’ve successfully scared the daylights out of all of us. Napolitano also rallies a call for people to fight this in court. He wrote: “These decrees — issued by those who have no legal authority to issue them, enforced by cops who hate what they are being made to do, destructive of the freedoms that our forbearers shed oceans of blood to preserve and crushing economic prosperity by violating the laws of supply and demand — should all be rejected by an outraged populace, and challenged in court.”
I agree.
We all need to ponder deeply this question: “What good are constitutional rights if they are violated when Americans get sick?”
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You can send a letter of thanks to Gov. Newsom (1303 10th Street, Suite 1173. Sacramento, CA 95814) for making California a more dangerous place by commuting the sentences of 21 state prison inmates, including 14 convicted of murder or related crimes.
Who are these wonderful people who Newsom thinks should enjoy life living with the rest of us outside of prison? People like Joann Parks, 64, who set a fire to her home that killed her three young children. People like Rodney McNeal, 50, who stabbed to death his pregnant wife. Steven Bradley, 56, of Kern County, who killed a gas station attendant during a robbery. Richard Flowers, 64, of Tulare County, who killed a woman during a robbery. Ramon Rodriguez, 49, who was hired to kill a victim. And this upstanding citizen: James Harris, 56, who committed a drug-related kidnapping and killed his two victims.
Where is the outrage?
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This borders on the ridiculous: Eight or nine police officers showed up at the Friendship Baptist Church in Boston, Mass., to break up a church service even though the pastor limited the crowd to 10 and had them all sitting six feet apart. The officers seemed clueless when it was pointed out that Gov. Larry Hogan issues an order to limit size of gatherings to 10 or fewer.
Pastor Alvin Gwynn Sr. vowed to keep meeting, as he should.
A similar situation played out in Lodi where Pastor Jon Duncan of Cross Culture Christian Center was also threatened for holding church services. Escondido attorney Dean Broyles issued a cease and desist letter to the City of Lodi and the police department, claiming a violation of religious freedom.
And Sweden is not carrying on like we are. All are free to move there without fear of government control.
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Meanwhile, your state California state Attorney General continues to use the crisis for his political agenda. His jurisdiction ends at where our state borders Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Mexico but he acts like he is attorney general of the United States.
Democrats like Gavin Newsom have shut down church services and other businesses at the detriment of the economy. What does Xavier Becerra want to do? Open up abortion clinic services so women can terminate the babies growing inside them!
On Friday he joined a multistate coalition of 19 other liberal Democrat attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit Court supporting abortion providers in their case challenging a Texas executive order that declares abortion non-essential medical care during the COVID-19 response. The order would ban all abortion services in the state. In the brief, Becerra argued that abortion care is an essential healthcare service.
Did you catch that? Becerra thinks abortion is healthcare!
You have to ask yourself why depraved human beings like Becerra do back flips to ensure that more babies die.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
