Millions of Americans losing their jobs wasn't enough to persuade
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to increase funding for the SBA's
Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), so Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is hoping
ice cream will do the trick.
The
speaker, whose job was unaffected by the coronavirus, appeared
virtually on a late-night television show to flaunt her mansion and
personal stockpile of gourmet ice cream. "I like it better than anything
else," the speaker mused, in the middle of a viral outbreak that has
killed tens of thousands of Americans and left millions unemployed.
In mid-March, President Trump announced his 15-day plan to shut down
the economy. His administration’s hope was that we could “flatten the
curve” and “slow the spread” of COVID-19.
Toward the end of that period,
the situation was reassessed and the decision was made to extend the
shutdown until the end of April. By now, most cities and regions of the
US, including New York State, the epicenter of the pandemic, have
managed to achieve this milestone and Americans, currently ending our
fifth week of the quarantine, are growing restless.
The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel writes,
“The goal of the shutdown was never to eradicate the disease—an
impossibility absent a vaccine. The lockdown was designed to buy the
health sector time, to make sure all the cases didn’t hit at once in a
crush that would overwhelm hospitals, à la Italy.”
A professor at the University of North Texas
claims in a lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom that he was
fired for saying that “microaggressions” are “garbage.” A
“microaggression,” in the language of left-wing academia, is a small and
often unintentional slight that allegedly contains prejudicial
judgments.
According to a report
by The College Fix, Professor Nathaniel Hiers of the University of
North Texas claims in a lawsuit that he was fired from his position as a
full-time math professor over his criticism of the concept of
“microaggressions.”
On September 22, 1864, the Illinois State Register reported “A new
feature . . . We noted the sale of three likely able-bodied men
yesterday – color not stated, as it is immaterial to Uncle Abe – at
$400, $450 and $600 respectively . . . They were bought to fill a
Woodford County order.” Only three days later the paper wrote “the
demand for substitutes seems to be on the increase. Yesterday their par
value averaged $700 to $900. About a dozen, most of them Negroes, were
picked up and are already in the service of Father Abraham.”
Milton S. Littlefield was a prewar Republican organizer in Illinois,
and was later sent by Lincoln to fervent abolitionist Gen. David Hunter
in South Carolina as “an agent and symbol of altering Presidential idea
about the Negro and the war.” Littlefield was notorious for shaving
enlistment bounties into his own pocket, and in the postwar was renowned
for his railroad bond frauds in North Carolina.
A list compiled by Brion McClanahan, Tom Daniel, and Jeff Rogers
Blood in the Water – The Jompson Brothers
Before Chris Stapleton became Grammy Award winner Chris Stapleton, he
was a singer/songwriter from Kentucky who wrote several hits for other
musicians and kicked around Nashville as a part of other bands,
including the bluegrass outfit The Steeldrivers, a nod to his family
roots as Kentucky coal miners. He formed the Southern rock band the
Jompson Brothers after leaving the Steeldrivers in 2010. They released
one album, briefly opened for the Zac Brown Band, and hit the dive bar
honkytonk juke joint circuit with minimal commercial success. But all
was not lost. Stapleton snuck in a few Jompson Brothers tunes on his
most recent albums, and his current bass player was also part of the
Jompson Brothers lineup. This song highlights the hard groovy Southern
sound they did so well.
Mud – Whiskey Myers
Texas has become the heart of the modern Southern rock sound, and Whisky Myers is at the forefront. Their second album, Mud,
has all the elements, from homespun lyrics to a “muddy” musical
ambiance. Whiskey Myers are often labeled “country rock,” but that is
the modern method of classifying anything as Southern lest it be called
“racist.” This song has a reverence for history, place, and people, and
is a full expression of Southern distrust of banks and Northern money.
“Ain’t no love for a poor dirt farmer, a genuine son of the South,” and
“We’re just some good old country folk, tryin’ to weather the storm, but
how we gonna pay when the interest rate just got higher than the corn.”
Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi is at home in her San Francisco
mansion during the California lockdown doing appearances on late night
television while American workers and business owners go broke.
As of Thursday Speaker Pelosi would not approve more funding for small business.
Last week, Democrats blocked the $250 billion replenishment of the Paycheck Protection Program prompting Pelosi to partake in a parade praising partisan Democrats for blocking the program.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
(D) says the Michigan protesters pushing back against the state’s
stay-at-home orders may be the reason why people are indoors longer.
Whitmer
discussed the ordeal during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow
where she admitted her greatest concern, at the moment, is a resurgence
of coronavirus cases.
The Michigan governor is concerned about the consequences of reopening prematurely which could lead to a deadlier second wave of the coronavirus.
On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania State Senate passed a bill that
overrode Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s lockdown, or stay-at-home order,
instead allowing all businesses to open back up within the federal
parameters.
Senate Bill 613, reports The Hill,
“would require the governor’s office to align with federal guidelines
in determining which businesses will be allowed to reopen during the
pandemic, allowing all those that can safely operate with mitigation
strategies under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency guidelines.”
The Republican-backed legislation passed in the State Senate 29-21.
All of us are afraid of death. Even those who have faith and believe
in an afterlife of Heaven and Hell, fear the end of their own lives, at
least to some degree. When faced directly with our own mortality and
after going through the well-publicized five phases of grief, most
fantasize about and possibly even do some pretty strange and irrational
things. We could call that a type of temporary insanity, a momentary
lapse of reason.
There are members of our society, however,
that routinely exhibit a total inability to assess facts and reach
logical decisions, which is an integral part of their psychological
nature. In fact, that pathology forces them to support concepts based
on illogical emotion rather than the constitutional principles that
protect individual freedoms. Since we have come to expect that type of
thinking from some, we should not be surprised that the solutions they
desire are unworkable, irresponsible, arrogant, and designed to further
their elitist agenda to control the lives of others.
Last week, a 65-year-old woman saved her fiancée’s life when she shot and killed an intruder in their rural Texas home.
After
midnight last Saturday morning, Curtis Roys awoke to a loud banging on
the back porch. His home is located outside of Fredericksburg, Texas, in
Gilespie County. Fredericksburg is about 80 miles north of San Antonio.
The
73-year-old Roys went to investigate and was confronted by a young man
who pushed Roys into the house through the patio and began beating him
with a blunt object. The intruder then got Roys into a chokehold, the
Gilespie County Sheriff’s Office reported.
About this time, Roys’s
fiancée, Melody Lumpkin, came to check on her husband-to-be. She
shouted for the intruder to let Roys go but he didn’t respond.
