US Administers Its Fifty Millionth COVID-19 Vaccine
On Tuesday, the United States administered its 50 millionth vaccine according to a report from the Center for Disease Control. About 37.1 million have received at least one dose of the vaccine and about 5.7 million doses were administered to nursing home patients. Just as importantly, the number of new case per day in the United States continues to drop from a peak of 308,013 on January 8 to a most recent daily incidence of 75,651. The death toll has also dropped precipitously from its peak of 4,515 deaths on January 12 to 2,534 on February 24. The favorable trend has been causing a great deal of optimism amongst many, including economists and investors, with most believing economic activity will increase precipitously in 2021. Despite the optimism, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci continues to spread shade on the situation by refusing to reassure grandparents who have received their vaccines in their decisions to visit their grandchildren. In an interview with Savannah Guthrie, where he was specifically asked about grandparents visiting their grandchildren, Dr. Fauci said, "Then you gotta be careful because grandma could still get virus in her nasopharynx, even though the vaccine is preventing her from getting physically ill. She still could have virus in her nasopharynx ... Until we have the overwhelming majority of people vaccinated, and the level of virus is very low. When you're vaccinated, it would be prudent to wear a mask." He has also estimated that American will have to continue wearing their masks well into 2022.
0 Comments
President Designate Biden Opens Up "Kids in Cages" Program
Over the past four years, the Left has wrongly and recurrently accused President Trump of opening up immigrant holding facilities for undocumented children when in fact, the facilities were opened by President Obama. The disingenuous accusations led President Trump to famously ask, "Who built the cages, Joe?" in a presidential debate. Now, in a shocking display of hypocrisy, the Biden pseudo-administration is reopening the camps and not calling them "kids-in-cages prisons," but "overflow facilities." The move has spurred condemnation from the Left and the Right as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, the increasingly famous double speak expert, called the facilities temporary and explained that they were being opened "to ensure the health and safety of the children." As of Wednesday evening, it appears that facilities will be opened in Carrizo Springs, Texas, and Homestead, Florida. Liz Cheney Continues Her Trek Out of Office
Liz Cheney continued her trek out of office at a press conference Wednesday when she was asked whether President Trump should be speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference scheduled to take place this week in Orlando, Florida. The question was first answered by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who responded in the affirmative. Cheney was then posed the same question. Her answer was to remind the reporter that she had already made her position known about the President, and although the decision was CPAC's, she continued, "I don't think he should be playing a role in the future of the party or the country." As reported by thefederalistpages.com Ms. Cheney's assault on Former President Trump is highly unpopular in her home state of Wisconsin. Cheney has was unanimously censured by the Republican Central Committee of Carbon County and targeted for expulsion from her leadership position in Congress. Although ultimately she survived the vote from her colleagues with a tally of 146-61, she was ultimately censured by the Wyoming Republican Party, which called on her to immediately resign and refund donations made to her for the 2020 campaign. Clearly, her tone deafness is not going to win her any favors if she runs for reelection in 2022. Time for Psaki to Stop Sowing Division.
Sadly, bad faith politics is running rampant amongst Democrat leadership today despite owning all three pillar of power. President Designate Joe Biden’s Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, demonstrated a poignant example of this in a recent press conference when asked whether the pseudo-administration could have done more to prevent the 100,000 COVID-19 deaths that have occurred during its mere one-month existence. Needless to say, the question itself was disingenuous as President Designate Joe Biden took office amidst an unprecedented peak in the COVID pandemic. Ms. Psaki would have been well served to simply point out the question's misleading premise and discuss all the things (if any) the Biden pseudo-administration has undertaken to deal with a gargantuan national challenge. Instead, Psaki chose to say the following: "Well, I think; one; we inherited a circumstance where there were not enough vaccines ordered. There were not enough vaccinators available to vaccinate Americans, and there were not enough places to, for people to go, ahh. to get those vaccines shot into their arms." At best, her answer runs counter to the call for unity she and the pseudo-administration for which she works claim to subscribe. More realistically, her answer is a bad-faith, divisive and misleading answer meant to injury her political opponents instead of shedding light onto a most important national challenge. First, it is not true that the limiting factor in the national vaccination effort has been insufficient procurement. The bottleneck lies in production. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is not yet available, while the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been snatched up as quickly as they have been produced. It also follows that since the bottleneck is in production, the issue has not been, at least in states like Florida, the lack of personnel or facilities to "get those vaccines shot into [people's] arms," to borrow Psaki's sophisticated language. Thus, her words are not delivered in an honest attempt to answer a question. It is time for Ms Psaki to stop playing politics in addressing issues of great national importance such as the COVID-19 pandemic and start providing insightful answers meant to promote solutions. Move to Remove Shakespeare From College Curriculum Afoot From the Left
In a furtherance of its attack on Western Civilization, the modern Left is now increasing its efforts to remove Shakespeare from the classroom. The New York Post is reporting efforts at numerous college campuses because of the iconic writer's "misogyny, racism, homophobia, classicism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir." One professor from Arizona State University is quoted as saying that "Shakespeare was a tool used to 'civilize' black and brown people in England's empire." Ironically, the same thing can be said about the Bible. Unquestionably, the Left would like to remove it from our culture as well. The fact is that, despite the Left's ever-growing cancel culture, Shakespeare was the greatest wordsmith of all time–literally. Without Shakespeare, words like exposure, expedience, eyewink, flowery, imploratory, ill-tempered, howl, import, useful, watchdog, gallantry, gentlefolk, and freezing, to name a few would not even exist. Twenty Percent of COVID-19 Deaths Have Occurred Under Biden's Watch.
This week, the United States reached the 500,000 COVID deaths milestone, a random number the press has sought to publicize. Ironically, the same press that has been cushioning President Designate Joe Biden's candidacy and early incumbency is now pointing out that 100,000 of those deaths, or 20% of them, have occurred in his one-month watch. These stark figures mean that, despite the Left's relentless attacks on President Trump's handling of the pandemic, he has actually lost about a third of the number of Americans per month due to the pandemic than Biden has lost in his first month of office, a grim reminder of the hypocrisy of modern political discourse in this country. A Day of Trump Carnage at the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court denied Trump and his allies the opportunity to have cases regarding election fraud and constitutionality reviewed, ending the possibility for these issues to be evaluated through judicial review. The multiple rulings ended cases in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In an unrelated matter, the Supreme Court dealt Former President Trump another blow when it allowed New York state prosecutors access to his personal and corporate tax returns despite the vague and nonspecific motivations for the request. This means that the Court has allowed a prosecutor to access an individuals' personal tax records, not because he has committed a crime, but rather for the sole purpose of finding a crime to prosecute. The difference between the two postures threatens to immensely magnify government's power over the individual. Newsmax Making Strides. Fox News Plummets.
USA Today is reporting Newsmax's viewership gains amongst Trump voters against Fox News. According to a poll performed by Suffolk University/USA TODAY of Trump voters, 34% trusted Fox News most, 17% trusted Newsmax and 9% One America News. The numbers represent a significant shift compared to prior polling data. On a side note, the poll also asked Trump voters whether Joe Biden was "legitimately elected" President. Seventy-three percent of the Trump voters polled responded he was not. Another Blow to Boeing. This Time From Its Pratt & Whitney Engines.
Boeing Airlines suffered another blow Sunday when a Boeing 777 jet owned by United Airlines suffered a catastrophic engine failure, mid-flight, over Colorado. Fortunately, no one was hurt as a result of the mishap. This is the third engine failure involving the Pratt & Whitney engine, which The Wall Street Journal reports is used in the United States only by United Airlines. Boeing responded to the news by ordering all airlines to stop flying the Boeing wide-body 777 jets equipped with the Pratt & Whitney engines. The move will affect about a dozen American jets, but in Japan, over a hundred such planes have been grounded by authorities. A Long-Ago Abandoned Concentration of Faith. by Julio Gonzalez, M.D., J.D. This is the first of a Sunday series by thefederalistpages.com about the Christian faith. It is hoped that through it a greater appreciation for the indispensible role Christianity plays in supporting a just society will be developed and eventually, lead us back to a road of charity, love, and peace. It was two years ago when I first heard a speech by Dr. Timothy O'Donnell on the nineteenth century plight of Irish Catholics. The lecture was delivered in support of the Institute for Catholic Culture, an organization designed to promote the understanding of the Catholic faith and its evangelization. In it, Dr. O'Donnell, President of Christendom College, told a story of an Irish man to whom a priest had attended in his final days of his life. The events took place in the early twentieth century, and the man, in a state of terminal weakness, lied on his gurney, awaiting his passage to the Kingdom of God. As the priest began attending to him, he noticed the man's left leg draped over the side of the cot. He attempted to lift the man's leg onto the cot, but found that he resisted him. "No, no, father," the man uttered despite his weakness, and told the priest of how he had purposely placed his left leg over the side of the bed so that it would not receive the comfort he afforded the rest of his body. The priest, of course, was befuddled, and it was then that he learned of the man's life-long oath, a promise he was in the final stages of fulfilling. You see, as a youngster, the man lived at the time of the potato famine. Those were times of utter devastation, interminable suffering, and overwhelming disease. It was around 1845, and Irish Catholics had just come off a period of unspeakable oppression at the hands of British Protestants. Among other unjust restrictions, Irish Catholics were not allowed to purchase land, or lease it. They could not vote or enter a profession. They were prohibited from holding public office. They weren't even allowed to gather for mass. The conditions were so bad that it was not uncommon for Irishmen to create wagons designed as makeshift altars so they could be dragged onto the sea, just beyond the Protestant landowner's property line, from which they could hold mass with the parishoners gathered in the cold North Atlantic water. Others would take on the responsibility of dressing up as priests and standing near where the masses were held so that when the British officials came near, they would chase down the decoy instead of destroying the actual flock, often resulting in the bait's death. The English, anti-Catholic penal laws were lifted in 1829, but not in time to prevent the interminable sickness that was to strike the Irish just sixteen years later, when a fungus destroyed the island's potato crops; the only food sufficiently cheap and plentiful food to sustain the Irish Catholics who at this time were relegated to serving as peasants and hired hands. Adding to the insult was the fact that there was really no food shortage in England, or even in Ireland proper, as the exportation of rabbit, peas, and honey continued at robust levels during the Great Hunger while that of livestock and butter even increased. Yet the Irish population was decimated, so much so that it was not uncommon for the frailest to make their ways into prefabricated holes to die so that they would not burden others with the task of burying them. It was there that our old man lived when he was young, continuously tempted with the lure of warm soup, or even a ration of bread. All he had to do was renounce his Catholic faith. One day, in a moment of weakness, the young man did falter and made his way to the nearby Anglican Church, resolved to get a bite to eat. He actually went so far as to open the door and take one step inside with his left foot before coming to his senses and abandoning the idea. He quickly became so disgusted with himself that he promised never to give his treasonous left leg comfort. The old man's personal saga is indeed poignant, but so are the questions it invites. What happened to the fervent faith this man had? Where is this strength of conviction shown not only by him, but by millions of other Irish who refused to escape their torture for fear of renouncing their love for Christ? To these questions, Dr. O'Donnell adds more testimony through the letters of Comte De Monte Lombaires, a French noble who traveled to Ireland in 1829. He wrote:
In a separate letter, the Count continues:
Of course, this level of dedication by a whole nation did not survive. What tyranny and oppression could not extricate from the Irish, wealth, modernism, and liberalism did. Thus Ireland, the nation responsible for saving Christianity during the Middle Ages, now stands in a state of moral turpitude.
But Ireland is not alone in its debacle. Indeed, all of western society has waivered and similarly stammers under the torments of strengthened demons and a generalized moral apathy. Part of the reason for our fall is that we have forgotten what it is like to have a country united in faith, to live in a community committed to the divinity of Christ and to the service of the Lord. We exalt those who died in battle or triumphed in discovery, but we forget those who died in prayer and love, chasing only the aspiration of promoting God's peace on earth. With all the misery, the violence, and the chaos that surrounds us, it is time we resume honoring and remembering those men and women who chose Christ over all else, who chose love over hate, and who spread His word and grace despite the insurmountable threats that confronted them. Some say our present condition stands without remedy, but as we shall see, ours pales in comparison to those confronted by other Christians at other times. Whether we think our nation beyond salvation or not, one thing holds true, it is for this battle in the name of righteousness and virtue that we Christians have been placed here on this earth. And it is likely we are the last hope for improvement of the condition of man. Thus, we will next visit those who best knew the man who for our salvation died. We will continue by visiting the apostles themselves. Read more from our Christianity Series by visiting thefederalistpages/news. Dr. Julio Gonzalez is an orthopaedic surgeon and lawyer living in Venice, Florida. He served in the Florida House of Representatives. He is the author of numerous books including The Federalist Pages, The Case for Free Market Healthcare, and Coronalessons. He is available for appearances and book signings, and can be reached through www.thefederalistpages.com. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
July 2021
Categories
All
|