Via the good folks at Power Line:
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The Doctors Video
Here, through the efforts of One America News Network, is the video of facts and considered medical opinion that the amateur censors of Facebook, Alphabet (through its YouTube and Google subsidiaries) and Twitter don’t want you to see because it runs counter to their pre-written narratives.
It’s 45 minutes long and well worth every moment, whether or not you agree with their opinions, because it’s useful to get all sides of the matter. Especially if Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey don’t want you to see the whole story.
Waiting for Biden
Even as Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden hides out in his Delaware basement—will he give his Convention acceptance speech from there, too, or will he head for a nearby rec center?—while insisting that he’s anxious to debate President Donald Trump, he’s busily declining to press the matter. His acolytes are increasingly urging him to duck the already agreed three debates, too.
However.
The Commission on Presidential Debates declined the Trump campaign’s request for a fourth debate, one that would occur next month, before early voting starts in so many States. Such a debate, timed as it’s suggested, would let voters assess the two candidates as they address each other and each other’s positions face to face before they vote.
It’s not actually a rejection, though.
[The Commission] added that it would “consider” adding an additional encounter between Trump and Biden to the three that are already scheduled if both candidates agree.
If both candidates agree. Trump already has, as demonstrated by his campaign’s request for a fourth debate.
Ball’s in your court, Mr Biden. What’s your answer?
Maybe Not So Much
Some economic news from the end of last week:
The latest jobless claims figures from the Labor Department, which cover the week ending August 1, show that more than 1.18 million workers sought aid last week….
Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected 1.41 million new claims.
And
Continuing claims, the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid fell by 844,000 to 16.1 million.
The data coincide with the expiration of the $600/week Wuhan Virus-related payments added to ordinary unemployment payments, so that’s not a driver of this sharp labor improvement; although the impending end of the addendum could have had some impact. The overall improvement in our economy is the driver.
This weakens the case Progressive-Democrats are making to continue paying folks to not work, and it emphasizes their blatant obstruction to getting any sort of relief into our economy.
The biggest relief, of course, would be for the Federal government as a whole to get out of the way of our recovery, to let businesses reopen unfettered. Progressive-Democrats, though, and too many Republicans are continuing to insist on interfering.
Pen and Phone
The editors at The Wall Street Journal expressed worry about President Donald Trump’s use of his “pen and phone” over the weekend to render the Congressional Progressive-Democrats’ obstructionism regarding Wuhan Virus relief for Americans irrelevant. They think he’s aping too closely ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) pen and phone.
It’s true that Trump is using his pen and phone. The differences between his actions and Obama’s, though, are two: Trump is undoing Obama’s pen and phone actions, not creating new things—with this exception, which is the other critical difference: Obama’s actions were largely illegal, struck down on legal challenge; Trump’s have proven legal, in the main, upheld on legal challenge.
The editors are worried about this use in particular:
Mr Trump’s FEMA order is a bad legal precedent that a President Kamala Harris could cite if a GOP Congress blocked her agenda on, say, climate change.
This is mistaken. For one thing, not doing a useful thing because a bad person (of either party) might misuse it later is simply foolish. If the thing is useful, it’s usefully done. Full stop.
For another thing, Obama already set the general precedent—Congress not performing to his satisfaction was his rationale for his own pen and phone use.
Finally, the question of precedent enabling a President Harris to use FEMA funds on her global warming agenda—to take a particular example—is plain wrong. Harris needs no precedent to use FEMA funds for her agenda; she’d do that anyway. And set her own precedent, without a care.
RTWT, though. Aside from this last item, it’s a generally soundly reasoned piece.