As I have stated multiple times in the past, what is perhaps my biggest gripe with NeverTrumpers, aside from the fact that they are NeverTrumpers, is the fact that, for years leading up to Donald Trump’s nomination and eventual election, the people that would become NeverTrumpers were supposedly staunch conservatives. They always spoke against the damage Obama was causing to the country, noted that Leftism is generally a horrible thing and that socialism would be the death of our nation.
 
For years, they had been clamoring for a Republican who could beat just about any Democrat and run the country very much in a conservative manner, opting for conservative policies that would bolster the economy, pick the right battles internationally while making sure we both defend ourselves and our allies without going into needless wars, speak of his or her love and reverence for the Lord and the Constitution and not ever cave to the actually insane Leftist mob no matter what.
 
For years, these people were hoping for the second coming of Reagan, so to speak, and yet, when we basically got that in Donald Trump, they abhorred it and even worse, began siding with THE LEFT.
 
And I could relatively understand their doubts before Trump was POTUS. Sure, he would say the right things about conservatism and the country, but he was not proven just quite yet. I still argued back then, as I do now, that it was far better to take a chance on someone we don’t know if they will be conservative than to allow for someone we know will be a SOCIALIST in Hillary Clinton to run the country. We didn’t know what kind of president Trump would have been back then, but just about many knew roughly what kind of president Hillary would have been, which is why I was angry with the notion of being a NeverTrumper. Those people, I felt, were betraying not only the conservative movement but the country itself.
 
But still, I could understand the doubt. What I refused to try and understand, however, because there really was no understanding it, was the ferocity and viciousness these same people had regarding Trump even AFTER he has proven he is the real deal. Again, for years, these people were clamoring for another Ronald Reagan – a conservative who won’t bend the knee – and when one showed up, they rejected him in favor of either Hillary Clinton (practically a cardinal sin, in my opinion) or a candidate who never had any chance of becoming POTUS like Jill Stein or Gary Johnson.
 
I could understand the doubts before Trump was POTUS, but I simply could not understand the adamant denial of reality – the reality that Donald Trump is a conservative. Maybe he’s not the typical conservative, and definitely not the typical Republican (which is only a good thing), but he is a conservative nonetheless and his policies show that to be true. And yet, these NeverTrumpers have, for the past four years, insisted that he is a fascist and have begun to clamor instead for the approval of the fake news media which insulted, mocked and hated them just a few years before.
 
They abandoned their conservative principles in favor of appeasing the Left, showing themselves to have never truly been conservatives at all. Conservatives don’t bow to the mob; we don’t bend the knee; we don’t clamor for the approval of the Left. We either stand on our principles or we don’t stand at all, and these NeverTrumpers chose not to stand at all, allowing themselves to fall for the Leftist cult of insanity.
 
However, over some time, whether short or long, some NeverTrumpers have come around to actually being “MaybeTrumpers”, if you will. Meaning that, while they still have issues with Trump’s style (they call it his "character", which is different, but they use that word anyway to make him look worse than he is because he does not have major character flaws), they recognize that they have to take him for what he is if we are to actually be conservative and keep the Left from being in power at all. Trump has proven to be a conservative, and even if people have issues with his style and mannerisms, that shouldn’t stand in the way of at the very least voting for him, particularly knowing the extremely dangerous alternative of communism.
 
So when I read Daniel Pipes’ op-ed on Newsweek, I was rather happy to see this development. In his piece, “A Reluctant but Unhesitating Vote for Donald Trump”, Pipes explains that, ever since Trump ran for office on the Republican ticket, he has had issues with his style and mannerisms.
 
Pipes admits that he “watched in dismay as I helped the Ted Cruz presidential campaign, seeing Republican primary voters select Donald Trump out of a field of 16 viable candidates and make him president-elect. I signed an open letter committing to ‘working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted’ to the presidency and wrote many articles lambasting Trump. I left the Republican Party on his nomination and voted for Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson in the general election. After the election, I hoped for Trump’s impeachment and President Mike Pence.”
 
Suffice to say that he was staunchly a NeverTrumper at the time. He further explains that his reasons for it are the same as most NeverTrumpers’ back in 2016: Trump’s style and policies. Pipes had issues with what he called “unethical business practices” in Trump University (which is just a claim as Trump never had to pay any sort of punishment for such "unethical business practices", other than a settlement under questionable circumstances led by a Left-wing activist Judge after he became President), with his “egotism”, the legal troubles he has had in the past (namely the amount of them), his supposed bigotry and his vulgarity. When it came to policies, Pipes explains, he believed he was even worse, believing Trump to be impulsive and a potential neo-fascist. Trump’s 2004 statement saying he probably identifies “more as Democrat” also worried him, believing that to mean that Trump would basically be going back and forth between Republican and Democrat policies.
 
All things that I am not surprised a NeverTrumper of the time would be worried about. Again, for myself, I scarcely cared about his style because I was more interested in simply beating the Left no matter what.
 
But that’s just his style. What about his policies? The ones that Pipes believed to be either potentially neo-fascist or somewhere in between Democrat and Republican? Well, Pipes has come to the same realization any logical person ought to have after the last four years: Trump is a very good conservative president.
 
“[T]o my unending surprise, [Trump] has governed as a resolute conservative. His policies in the areas of education, taxes, deregulation and the environment have been bolder than Ronald Reagan’s. His judicial appointments are the best of the past century… His unprecedented assault on the administrative state proceeds apace, ignoring predictable howls from the Washington establishment. Even his foreign policy has been conservative: demanding that allies contribute their fair share, confronting China and Iran and singularly supporting Israel. Ironically, as David Harsanyi notes, a potential character flaw actually works to out advantage: ‘Trump’s obstinacy seems to have made him less susceptible to the pressures that traditionally induce GOP presidents to capitulate.’”
 
In other words, Trump’s stubbornness keeps him from caving to the insufferable Leftist mob that tries to rule by fear and pressure. Where other Republican presidents would bend the knee (as RINOs tend to do), Trump doubles, triples and quadruples-down, never apologizing to people who deserve no such grace.
 
While there are things that Pipes disagrees with Trump on policy-wise, such as Trump’s “hostility toward allies” (which they hardly can be considered allies when they make under-the-table deals with the Chinese and the Russians) and his “dangerous meetings with Kim Jong-un” (which I don’t consider to be dangerous really, since anyone sane still knows that North Korea is no friend to the U.S. and no conservative has ever even come close to forgiving the acts against God that he commits on a daily basis, but Trump is trying to weaken the power the Chinese have), he does ultimately “agree with 80 percent of Trump’s actions” which is “a higher percentage than any of his predecessors, going back to Lyndon Johnson.”
 
In sum, while he still finds Trump’s style to be repulsive (again, don’t really care what people think about his style and mannerisms) and while he still finds things to disagree with Trump on policy-wise, Pipes has come to understand that Trump has been solidly conservative for the most part in his presidency and that the alternative, that being Joe Biden, is the same dangerous socialist nonsense the Left has been screaming about for the past few years. Allowing Joe Biden to win would present a clear danger to this country and Trump, despite his perceived style short-comings, is a FAR better alternative to anything the Left props up as their nominee.
 
Pipes concludes that he “will do my small part to help Trump get re-elected by writing, giving and voting.” He also says that he will vote for Trump as “the politician who represents my conservative views” and even urges other reluctant conservatives to do the same.
 
The question is just how many are there? Many former NeverTrumpers had the same issues that Pipes had and came around to supporting, or at least tolerating, Trump because of his conservative policies, which are the same ones they had been wanting a president to enact for years and years before. The vast majority of NeverTrumpers today are faux-conservatives who have decided to abandon the movement in favor of appeasing the Left (not to mention they side with people who actually tried to rig an election and stage a silent coup against the duly-elected president – people who present a clear and present danger to liberty and justice itself).
 
That much was particularly evident when NeverTrumper and *chuckles* 2020 GOP Primary opponent to Donald Trump (I really can’t keep a straight face), Joe Walsh said that he’d “rather have a socialist in the White House than a dictator.” In other words, he supports socialism now, which goes to show he never was truly a conservative, since Trump is FAR from a dictator and SOCIALISM NATURALLY LEADS TO A DICTATORSHIP AS EVIDENCED BY LITERALLY THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD EVEN TO TODAY.
 
I do hope that people who would have once considered themselves to be NeverTrumpers realize the existential threat that the Left poses and that the idea of supporting any one of them should repel them to the core. I hope they come to reconsider their position of not supporting Trump, or at least not voting for the guy, simply due to the peril that socialism brings to this country; the type that the Left is entirely enamored by.
 
True conservatives, at this point, recognize the good things Trump has done policy-wise, even if they can hardly stand the guy on a personal basis. I don’t care if they wouldn’t want to have a beer with the guy, all that matters in the end is who they end up voting for.
 
To paraphrase a certain racist Democrat, if you are on the fence about whether you are for Trump or Biden, then you ain’t conservative.
 
Proverbs 18:15
“An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli

Truth be told, I would like to cover different topics, but considering the relative lack of action taken by state governments to quell the riots, I suppose I have little choice but to talk about this topic once again.
 
Amidst the numerous stories relating to the riots, from the black-owned businesses that were targeted, looted and destroyed because “justice” to the black people that have been killed by rioters because “justice” to the corporations that get to pat themselves on the back for posting a black square on social media and “contributing to change” without actually doing anything, we find the 2020, New York version of Dumb and Dumber in Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose incompetence and idiocy know no bounds.
 
As rioters have been trying to loot, burn and generally sow discord in New York City, the NYPD have been out there trying to quell the riots. But Clown 1 and Clown 2 couldn’t help themselves in getting into a dumb argument throughout this time.
 
During a press conference on Tuesday, Cuomo blasted both the NYPD and de Blasio, saying they “did not do their job last night,” in trying to quell the riots.
 
Cuomo added: “I believe the mayor underestimates the scope of the problem. I think he underestimates the duration of the problem. And I don’t think they’ve used enough police to address the situation because it’s inarguable… that it was not addressed last night.”
 
Furthermore, Cuomo said that his “option is to displace the mayor of New York City and bring in the National Guard as the governor in a state of emergency and basically you take over… I don’t think we’re at that point.”
 
In essence, he was threatening de Blasio with getting rid of him (though it's almost certainly an empty threat).
 
Of course, de Blasio was rather livid at that, as he expressed his displeasure on talk radio late Tuesday, saying that Cuomo “dishonored the men and women of the NYPD in an absolutely inappropriate way for any leader to do. Any elected official who blames the NYPD while they were out there fighting in the streets to restore order, protect people – that’s disgraceful.”
 
De Blasio added that Cuomo “owes an apology to 36,000 hardworking men and women who have been putting their lives on the line for all of us.”
 
I won’t go into too much detail about why both of them are full of crap (if their actions during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic didn’t tell us plenty), but even the NYPD had enough of the two clowns.
 
NYC Police Benevolent Association (PBA) President Patrick Lynch told reporters on Tuesday, as the two were having their squabble: “Rank-and-file New York City police officers were out on the street last night doing our job. Tonight, we’ll go out and do it again. It’s not our fault that our city and state governments can’t plan and work together, but we are suffering the consequences.”
 
Well, I have grievances with ALL THREE of these parties.
 
Let’s start with Cuomo. Obviously, his comments regarding what the NYPD was doing were idiotic (worth mentioning he did apologize the following day). They were trying to quell the riots and were being targeted and attacked in the process (I’ll get to that later). To say they were “ineffective” is unrealistic. Could they use more help? Could they use the National Guard? Absolutely. But for Cuomo to call ANYONE ineffective after the genocide he committed during the pandemic of sending sick people to nursing homes is rich. Not to mention that, while he criticizes de Blasio for not wanting to use the National Guard, he also criticizes Trump for being willing to use the military. So the guy is a bit hypocritical (not that that's news to anyone).
 
Next, there’s de Blasio, who has actually been the biggest clown throughout these last few days. There is, of course, the fact that his own daughter was blocking traffic and was subsequently arrested, which de Blasio is bafflingly PROUD OF, not to mention his own insistence that they don’t really need the National Guard, even though they would be nothing but an asset to the city. But there are also the curfews which are apparently for LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS, not the rioters, and that the rioters are allowed to assemble despite the pandemic due to “400 years of racism”.
 
But the worst of it is that he demanded a police officer be fired after he drew a firearm on a “protester” who had assaulted the officer’s superior with a brick.
 
De Blasio is an absolute clown and he deserves people chanting “de Blasio, resign” amidst the protests and he is by no means a friend to the NYPD.
 
Speaking of which, I believe them to be the least at fault, but at some fault nonetheless. Yes, I understand they are trying to quell the riots. Won’t fault them there. However, that’s not all they’ve been doing.
 
By night, when the “curfew” is in place and the rioters are causing trouble, the NYPD acts the right way. However, by day, some of them are seemingly working hard towards keeping children from playing in parks, kicking them out of them if they have to.
 
Of course, I understand why they are doing this. The lockdown orders are still in place, which goes back to Dumbassio over here. But why even go through with maintaining the lockdown orders? Why kick children out of parks?
 
We have seen PLENTY of people not social distancing at all. The Chinese coronavirus isn’t simply gone just because of a political motive. What’s worse, many doctors have been PRAISING THE PROTESTERS AND RIOTERS.
 
So millions of jobs lost was not a good enough reason to avoid social distancing guidelines but the unjust killing of a black man at the hands of cops was? And let’s not forget that this really isn’t even about that, as I wrote in my previous article.
 
There is simply no excuse to keep lockdown orders in place if so many people who have been adamant about maintaining social distancing guidelines do not care that protesters and rioters aren’t doing that.
 
So why allow the NYPD to harass children and families out of parks?
 
In my mind, all three have done poorly in handling certain things. Cuomo has been abysmal since the pandemic started (really since he became governor, but especially in recent months) and the only thing I agree with him on is the idea that the National Guard ought to be called in. De Blasio has been an atrocity for basically his entire tenure and continues to prove so. The NYPD are the ones I side with the most because they are being unfairly targeted by the insane rioters but even they cannot get my full sympathy when they continue to try to impose idiotic lockdown orders on law-abiding citizens.
 
I pray for wisdom for Cuomo, de Blasio and the NYPD not only because they need it, but because they REALLY need it.
 
Proverbs 10:23
“Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

One main point I have made in the few articles that talk about the recent riots following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers abusing their power is that the people that are looting stores, burning buildings, assaulting people and attacking/killing cops (yes, that is plural now) do not care one wit about George Floyd.
 
They never cared about who George Floyd was as a person. They never cared about him in general. They only cared in the optics of a black man being held down and asphyxiated by a white cop, with three other officers (who were different races themselves) being complicit in the death of a black man. The ONLY reason this story got the attention that it got is because of the color of Floyd’s skin.
 
Now, I of course am not trying to diminish what happened. No matter what you can find about the situation, the killing of George Floyd was totally unjustified and an example of police brutality. However, let’s not pretend like Floyd’s death isn’t being brought up strictly because he was black.
 
Even the Left would admit happily that the reason they talk about him as much as they do is because he was black. But the conversation in general shouldn’t be about racism (though there could have been some of that at play here) but about police brutality. Like I said in my previous article, according to a WaPo database, of 41 instances of police officers killing an unarmed individual in 2019, 19 were white, 9 were black, 6 were Hispanic, 4 were “other” and 3 were unknown.
 
According to Statista, in 2017, 457 white people were shot and killed by police. That same year, 223 black people were shot and killed, with 179 Hispanics, 44 “other” and 84 “unknown” also suffering that same fate. In 2018, 399 white people were shot and killed by police, 209 black people, 148 Hispanics, 38 other and 204 unknowns. 2019 is much the same story as well as 2020, though this year shows the most “unknowns”.
 
What’s more, here is a video (warning: graphic) of two black officers shooting an unarmed white man for the crime of car-hopping in a Chicago train-station. The man was being subdued, but resisting arrest, was briefly maced and eventually shot, though is still alive as far as I know.
 
This happened this past February and few heard a word of it. Certainly, I didn’t hear of it until I did research for this.
 
There is also the arrest and killing of Tony Timpa, who was suffocated by police in a rather similar fashion to George Floyd, with the officers being seen and heard on video cracking jokes about his condition, both as he laid there on the ground, unmoving, and as he was being put on a gurney and put in an ambulance. Interestingly enough, Timpa was also yelling at the officers “you’re gonna kill me!”
 
That instance of police brutality happened in August of 2016. You likely never heard of it because, even though this was an instance of police brutality, the victim was white.
 
What am I getting at? Well, for one, the idea that police brutality only or even mostly happens to black people is statistically untrue. But the media coverage certainly skews in favor of black people who are killed by cops. Which is why there is so much unrest with Floyd’s killing. Yes, his was also a case of police brutality and totally unjustified, but the narrative is simply that the cops were racist (they may have been) and that blacks are hunted by cops. That simply is not the case.
 
But really the main point I am getting at is that the rioters do not care one wit about George Floyd or police brutality in general. They only care that they get the opportunity to sow discord and chaos. Which is why they don’t care at all that George Floyd’s own family is adamantly against the violence.
 
“[S]ometimes I get angry, I want to bust some heads, too,” Terrence Floyd told ABC News recently. “I wanna just go crazy. But I’m here. My brother wasn’t about that. My brother was about peace. You’ll hear a lot of people say he was a gentle giant… Don’t tear up your town, all of this is not necessary because if his own family and blood is not doing it, then why are you? If his own family and blood are trying to deal with it and be positive about it, and go another route to seek justice, then why are you out here tearing up your community? Because when you’re finished and turn around and want to go buy something, you done tore it up. So now you messed up your own living arrangements. So just relax. Justice will be served.”
 
I certainly hope that it is and those are pretty insightful and wise words. Words that, unfortunately, will fall on deaf ears. Because again, the rioters don’t care one wit about George Floyd. They only cared about his skin color and the officer’s skin color. They didn’t see a human being unjustly killed. They saw a white cop killing a black person. That’s all they cared about: the skin color of the persons involved.
 
Because when a white person was killed in a similar fashion as George Floyd in 2016, no one cared. When a white person was shot by black officers earlier this FEBRUARY, no one cared. When 457 white people were shot and killed in 2017, 399 in 2018, 370 in 2019 and 42 so far in 2020, no one cared.
 
Which is why the conversation should not be about race. It’s not about “black lives matter”. It’s ALL LIVES MATTER. But that’s not good for the optics and the optics of white on black killing is preferable to the Left (who has historically been responsible for this sort of thing).
 
The rioters don’t care about George Floyd, his legacy, his memory, etc. They don’t care to honor him. They care about causing mayhem and destruction under the guise of fighting racism all for the sake of enacting a socialist state (which is ironic, considering that would require a strong police presence and the riots are happening in far-Left cities, counties and states).
 
Sane and normal people want peace. We are angry over George Floyd’s killing because it is objectively true that it was unjustified. However, the people involved in these riots are not sane and normal people. They are insensitive, selfish, narcissistic Leftists who are worse than animals because at least animals don’t purposely set things on fire.
 
These are evil people who don’t care for justice, only vengeance. Don’t care for peace, only anarchy. Don’t care for George Floyd, only what he represented in that viral video. Don’t care for George Floyd, only the opportunity his death gives them to destroy things supposedly in his name.
 
The answer to the question as to why Floyd’s own family and blood isn’t doing this, so why are they, is simply that they never cared about George Floyd. They are HAPPY with his death because of the opportunity it gave them to raise hell.
 
These people are nothing short of terrorists who must be defeated totally.
 
1 Corinthians 15:57
“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Over these last few days, many American cities, particularly Democrat-owned cities, have been practical warzones with endless cases of looting, arson, vandalism, assaults and even a few murders here and there.
 
Given all the destruction and chaos we have witnessed over social media, television, etc., I cannot help but thank the Lord for our 2nd Amendment rights. I mean, good grief, if there ever was a better reason to own a gun, it is this insanity.
 
Amidst this chaos, we have seen people looting and burning businesses. But not just any businesses. The businesses that these animals have been looting and destroying all have one thing in common: they were not being protected by armed people.
 
Take for example a place called Corbo’s Italian Bakery, located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The rioters very well could have ransacked the place for its food or just burned it to the ground. However, two armed individuals made sure that there would be no looting or pillaging of the store. That place was not ransacked and razed to the ground precisely BECAUSE of armed people protecting it.
 
Those two individuals are doing good work. Better than some police departments, too. I have seen some attempts by law enforcement to quell the riots, but clearly they are being rather ineffective (not everywhere, of course). Matter of fact, Raleigh Police Chief recently said: “I will not put an officer in harms way to protect the property inside of a building.”
 
In other words, you’re on your own. While no one would disagree that a person's life is more valuable than property, it is the job of the police to protect both life AND property. We are not asking her to send "an officer", implying only one. We are asking her to send however many officers it takes to make sure PEOPLE'S BUSINESSES AREN'T RUINED AND THEIR LIVES DESTROYED AS A RESULT! THAT is the job of the police, otherwise they are not worth the tax money we pay them.
 
Your business could be facing a massive threat, be it via people looting it AT BEST or people outright setting it on fire, supposedly as a means to “honor” George Floyd. The police won’t be there to stop them, that much is clear. The police won’t protect your business. You have to do it yourself and you sure as heck are not going to be able to do it with words of “peace” or whatever liberal nonsense one might try. You’re not going to convince rioters not to destroy your business because you are also outraged at Floyd’s death; they don’t care about George Floyd, else they would not be doing this. You’re not going to convince them not to destroy your business if you tell them you are their “ally” or are also “progressive,” as Left-wing news outlets like CNN have also been attacked. Not even a knife or a melee weapon would be enough to stop them, since the rioters are generally equipped with such weapons of their own.
 
The only thing standing in the way of these savages and your business is you and your ability to wield and use, if necessary, a gun. A big one would be preferable, and one that intimidates people. These people are ANTIFA, after all, and they scare easily at the sight of a gun that looks scary. An AR-15 would be pretty ideal.
 
But considering the gun control legislations in place, it can be difficult for one to acquire a gun to protect themselves or their business. Why else do you think that these riots have occurred pretty strictly in Democrat-controlled cities, counties, states, etc.? And why even in red states like Georgia and Texas, these riots have only occurred in blue cities and counties?
 
John Nolte from Breitbart put it best: “Antifa knows Democrats are cucks who will allow them to riot. Antifa knows Democrat-run cities have gun control laws that ensure you remain defenseless… Antifa knows you’re stupid enough to vote for the same Democrats who coddle them, who fund them, who aid and abet them by looking the other way (clearly talking about the Democrat voters who live in the Democrat cities that have riots going on). Antifa knows you’re stupid enough to vote for Democrats who disarm you so you cannot defend your family or business. Antifa knows you’re stupid enough to vote for Democrats who arrest people who go to church in their car but not the predominantly white left-wing Antifa thugs who loot and burn black neighborhoods (because white Democrats have been looting and burning black America since Reconstruction).”
 
In sum, Antifa is rioting in cities that they KNOW won’t put up much resistance. The ONLY reason they were successful in destroying Minneapolis’ 3rd police precinct is because they knew that the city’s limp-stick, Trudeau-Chinese-knockoff mayor would order the police to allow them to do it. When they attack any other police station that is allowed to fight back, they get quickly taken down and they don’t try the same stupidity again.
 
Moral of the story is that when people are allowed to fight back, the insane and violent people in the world tend to screw off. They know perfectly well that if a particular target of theirs is armed and is not afraid to fight back/doesn’t have orders to stand down, that person is not one that they should target or try anything with.
 
Wherever these insane and dangerous people meet resistance, particularly of the lethal weapon variety, they tend to be a bit more cautious. They want to riot, destroy and kill, if they can get away with it, but they won’t risk their lives in the process.

Of course, there are those who are just insane enough to get a gun themselves and open fire on people, such as in Oakland, California, where a BLACK police officer was shot and killed last Friday night (I guess his black life didn’t matter) and a second officer was reportedly wounded as well. But that only further demonstrates We the People’s need to be able to defend ourselves.
 
These people are bad guys and they are particularly threatening and scary when they are the ones with guns. Few of them do, but still, they are too dangerous to be allowed to do this sort of thing. Gun control law doesn’t keep bad guys from getting guns, it only keeps good, law-abiding citizens from getting them.
 
And such gun control laws show some of their horrible effects in these rioting cities, which generally feature gun-control-heavy laws and police officers being told to stand down to one extent or another.
 
These last few days have utterly butchered the Leftist idea that “you don’t need a gun” because “the police will be there to help you.” That was never true before, but that talking point was utterly annihilated these days. The only person you can ever trust with your life and your safety is yourself, and that comes through the means of arming oneself.
 
Even assuming that there aren’t a LOT of bad apples in police departments (and I’m not just talking about racist cops, since a WaPo database shows that, out of 41 unarmed people who were shot and killed by police, 19 were white, 9 were black, 6 were Hispanic, 4 were other and 3 were unknown, so police brutality extends past race), the idea that calling the police is all you need to protect yourself would be laughable if the subject matter weren’t so serious. Often times, the cops aren’t there on time.
 
Sometimes they might be, sometimes they might be nearby or inside a store being robbed, or something, but the average police response time in the U.S. is TEN MINUTES, according to American Police Beat (ignore the unfortunate name). Police can’t realistically be everywhere and help everyone. In the case of an emergency, where you need prompt action, you simply CANNOT rely on the police to handle everything for you.
 
For example, if your home were to be intruded and you weren’t armed, you stand the risk of losing your life. Most people would seek some sort of hiding place, like a bedroom closet or a bathroom, etc. However, unless you are living by yourself in a massive mansion (and such places are usually well-guarded by people with GUNS), it’s only a matter of time before you’re found out, at which point you are at the mercy of less-than-reputable individuals.
 
In high-stress situations, ten minutes feel like an eternity and a lot can happen. Only the fortunate ones live through such experiences without being discovered.
 
The police simply cannot be one’s lone lifeline in case of an emergency. There is a reason it is a RIGHT for people to protect themselves and their property. When someone kills another person, if it is proven that it was in self-defense, the “killer” is allowed to walk because they were being attacked and they have the right to defend themselves.
 
Guns are the means through which millions of Americans rightfully and justly defend themselves and their families and property. I can guarantee that if each of the places that were looted and/or burned had armed guards posted on them, be it a small mom-and-pop shop or even Target itself, rioters would think twice about causing mayhem there.
 
The police, even when allowed to work uninhibited, can only do so much to help even when they want to.
 
So I don’t want to hear anyone on the Left tell me that I don’t “need” guns because this past weekend has PROVEN otherwise. I need any and all kinds of guns. I need as much ammo as I possibly can have for them. I need to be able to defend myself from clearly disturbed individuals who have little to lose other than their lives and would love nothing more than to see my own end in an instant.
 
The gun control debate is over. Forever.
 
Psalm 144:1
“Of David. Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Make no mistake with regard to the title, the author of the Politico article, John Harris, is still very much in the belief that Trump has been utterly disastrous with his response to the Chinese coronavirus because he is part of the Leftist club that bafflingly believes any Democrat could/would have done a better job (even though Democrats have gone on record signaling they wouldn’t have shut down international travel and shutting of borders even though that is an obvious step towards mitigating the spread of a virus). However, for a brief moment, a Leftist fake news media source is making an attempt at relatively objective reporting, so Harris ought to get some points for it.
 
The article begins by noting that Melinda Gates, someone who everyone knows is no fan of Trump’s, gave the President a “D-“ in terms of his handling of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Harris, though he still writes with the assumption that Trump has been disastrous, ponders the possibility that Trump might have done better because one of his colleagues brings up the argument that just about everyone in the media agrees with Gates’ views and as a result, they “risk group-think – becoming hardened in perceptions and impervious to either improvements in his performance or reasonable counter-interpretations of his pandemic record.”
 
While initially, he declined to try and be even remotely objective, he did eventually come around to at least somewhat playing “devil’s advocate” and make some arguments in favor of Trump.
 
At one point, Harris writes: “*The country did mostly shut down and the public health system did not comprehensively fail.” (Bold was from Harris himself).
 
“Everyone has been surprised, not just Trump. I don’t know many people who supposed on March 11 (the night of the president’s error-filled Oval Office address on coronavirus) that by Memorial Day much of the country would still be working from home, or not working at all, and that campuses, baseball stadiums, and much else would be closed. On the positive side, only in the New York area, and only for a brief window, was there anything like the collapse of the health system in Italy, the fear of which is what prompted the shutdown.”
 
John Sexton at Hot Air has also commented on Harris’ piece, noting following his quotation of the paragraph I just shared that “in most places we did bend the curve and avoid overwhelming the medical system. Could we have avoided even more deaths? Probably, but that would have required an earlier shutdown (or more focus on protecting care homes rather than hospitals). And that was never really going to happen for several reasons.”
 
One of those reasons is something that Harris somewhat shares:
 
“*The United States is a lumbering giant”
 
“A sprawling and diverse country with a complex federal system of government is often caught flatfooted, before summoning strength. Before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army was smaller than Portugal’s. In the case of the pandemic, many of the acute shortages that marked early coverage have been mitigated. Testing on a per capita basis has surged, including in comparison to many hard-hit countries, though it is still far short of what health experts say is needed. The same is true of early shortfalls in protective equipment and ventilators.”
 
In other words, an earlier shut down wasn’t going to happen in part because of our federalist system of government. The federal government is above the local and state governments, but it is not in complete control over them. Trump never had the power to shut down individual states and he still doesn’t (and that’s a good thing). California, under orders of Gov. Newsom, began to shut down on March 19. New York shut down three days later on the 22nd.
 
Due to our system of government, the decision to shut things down didn’t come from Trump, though he agreed to it. The decision was ultimately up to the governors, which is why someone like Governor Whitler can just about indefinitely (and unnecessarily) extend the lock-down of her own state. She is the one who can make the decision to close the state or open it back up (there will be questions about the Constitutionality of arbitrarily shutting down businesses and whether or not a governor can deem a business “essential” or “non-essential” but that’s beside the point).
 
To argue that Trump should have shut things down sooner is an illogical and ignorant Leftist talking point. For one, Trump never had the power to shut states down himself. Two, as a result of one, the governors are the ones who made that decision and the Democrat governors began to shut things down in late March.
 
On March 1st, the death toll stood at 2, and ten days later, it stood at 38. At the time, no one knew how bad it could get and the response reflected caution but not exaggeration. Only once the death toll began to go up by a lot did state governments get more aggressive.
 
As Sexton remarks in his own piece: “the idea that Trump should have shut down the country by mid-February is a progressive fantasy with no basis in reality.”
 
The truth is that, if the Left can say that Trump should’ve acted sooner or that he wasted weeks, then the Democrat governors can be accused of the same because they are the ones who had the authority to shut down their states. Not to mention that we lost weeks not because of anything that Trump did but because of China’s lies and withholding of information.
 
Ryan Saavedra has a great thread of the timeline of actions the Trump administration took with response to the virus (in a thread responding to “comedian” Sarah Silvermann’s attempt at painting Trump as someone who did nothing positive towards fighting the virus).
 
The Trump admin:
 
“01/03: Tried to get CDC into China (numerous attempts made/China never allowed)
01/06: Began issuing travel notices (issued multiple)
01/07: Created issue management system
01/17: Began screening at airports
01/20: Announces work on development of a vaccine
01/21: Activated its emergency operations center to provide ongoing support to the coronavirus response
01/23: Sought a ‘special emergency authorization’ from FDA to allow states to use its newly developed coronavirus test
01/23: CHINA finally quarantines Wuhan, had lied to the world for weeks about what was going on and how contagious the virus was and deadly it was. Dr. Birx even said scientists misjudged the disease because of China’s lies and deception
01/29: Created Coronavirus Task Force
01/31: Bans travel from China/Declares public health emergency/suspends entry from foreigners who pose risk of transmitting coronavirus…”
 
And keep in mind, that was just in JANUARY. Remember what the Democrats were doing in January? TRYING TO REMOVE TRUMP AND FAILING MISERABLY! This is why I say Trump was among the first people in Washington to do anything about the coronavirus. He began to prepare for it even amidst the attempts from the Democrats to remove him.
 
You can read the rest of the thread yourself if you wish, which is quite detailed and offers a lot of good information, but I don’t think there’s enough room for it here alongside the general commentary I wish to share with you all here.
 
My overall point is that, unlike what Harris thinks and what the rest of the fake news media and the Left (but I repeat myself) think, Trump hasn’t done a bad job at all with regard to the coronavirus. Any argument levied against him, such as “he shut things down too late” can easily be countered with not only the fact that he never had any power to shut things down but that the governors, including Democrat ones, were the ones who decided when to shut things down, so if anyone were to bare the blame, it would be the governors.
 
The argument that the N95 mask supply was depleted is more of a knock on Obama because his administration, even while the country was going through the swine flu epidemic, was the one that had depleted the supply of masks and didn’t restock it.
 
The idea that Trump didn’t do a good job with the response to the coronavirus is ridiculous. That’s not to say there were no bumps on the road, but the major screw ups that occurred along the way were not Trump’s doing. Cuomo, not Trump, was the one who sent sick people to retirement and nursing homes, which contribute to a sizeable portion of the total deaths (which is a rather dubious number, considering Washington was counting gun deaths as COVID-19 deaths, among other things).
 
I won’t say Trump was perfect because that is an impossible standard for any person. However, the idea that he has been a disaster or even that he has done a poor job is entirely devoid of facts and is nothing more than “a progressive fantasy with no basis in reality,” as Sexton said.
 
Proverbs 18:2
“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

On Monday, four Minneapolis police officers responded to a call of an African-American man, now known as George Floyd, having tried to use a counterfeit bill at a local Cup Foods. Once the officers found a man who fit the description given of the suspect, they proceeded to arrest him in what is perhaps the worst way: pinning Floyd to the ground and one officer pressing his knee on the back of his neck.
 
Now, one would think: “Did Floyd do something to warrant him being pressed against the ground?” And yes, he did… he fell.
 
There are a number of videos on the fatal arrest but a relatively recent video showed that Floyd was being taken to a police car, and then he fell. The video I saw was part of a segment on CBS News (take that for what it’s worth), so it cut from Floyd falling to the video of the fatal arrest as it was happening, with Floyd telling the officer that he “can’t breathe” and that his “stomach hurts, my neck hurts, everything hurts,” however, there was absolutely nothing about the situation or the call that warranted such a response from the officers, particularly as THREE of them were pinning him down in the new video.
 
The call, like I said, was about a man using a counterfeit bill at Cup Foods. At best, that’s an honest mistake and at worst it was trying to scam the store. Neither of which are crimes punishable by death and neither of which warranted the sort of treatment the officers gave to Floyd. Pinning a suspect on the ground and putting your knee on them is naturally bound to cause damage, be it in terms of asphyxiating the suspect or damaging/breaking their neck, etc.
 
Now, I’m not a cop and I don’t know if that is standard procedure for Minneapolis cops (if it is, it really shouldn’t be), but allow me to share this link of a video of Florida police arresting the Parkland shooter who killed 17 people, including 14 kids. The monster that carried out that heinous act of violence got better treatment from the Florida police than George Floyd got from the Minneapolis police officers for allegedly using a counterfeit bill to buy food (and he might not even have been the right guy. He just matched the suspect’s description).
 
Of course, I’m not saying that the Florida police should have been brutal with the Parkland shooter, but I am saying that it’s absolutely asinine and outright insane that a school shooter was treated better during his arrest than a guy who matched a suspect’s description for the crime of using a counterfeit bill.
 
What happened last Monday to George Floyd was nothing short of manslaughter at best. There was no real reason for Floyd to have been treated like he was and people’s outrage over the incident is 100% justified. People protesting his death is 100% justified. The officers that were involved, particularly the officer who had his knee on Floyd’s neck, need to pay the price. Thankfully, it seems that four officers involved in the death of Floyd were fired, but of course, that doesn’t go far enough.
 
I don’t know what charges ought to be brought to the other three officers, but the officer who had his knee on Floyd’s neck needs to be charged with involuntary manslaughter at the very LEAST.
 
There is no real defense that I can find for the officers acting in the manner in which they did for the call which they responded to. There were far better ways to arrest Floyd. For crying out loud, Floyd wasn’t even resisting his arrest! Again, all he seemingly did was fall on the ground. The response to this call was not at all warranted.
 
So like I said, people are right to be outraged, angry, sad and people are perfectly justified in protesting against this tragedy. This tragedy showed that there are bad cops out there, not that we didn’t know before, of course. The bad cops make the good ones look bad and it drives people, particularly Leftists, to accuse virtually all police of being bad. A distinction must be made between the good and bad cops. We must defend the good cops while justifiably lambasting the bad ones and levying punishments for their bad behavior.
 
What people are not justified to do, however, is turning this tragedy into an opportunity to commit crimes. There have been multiple reports about fires in various places from a police station to a construction site to an auto shop to a Wendy’s and a McDonald’s. Multiple lootings have been reported from a Target to other retail stores to a US Bank, and there have been many reports of vandalism and outright destruction of property from destroying the aforementioned Target to destroying the windows of a local charter school, etc.
 
Many businesses, particularly the small businesses, had already been hurt because of our response to the Chinese coronavirus in shutting down our economies. This doesn’t help them and most importantly, it doesn’t honor Floyd in the least.
 
Protesting his death honors him. Rioting, setting things on fire, looting stores and destroying private property dishonors the guy. If anything, it hurts the cause. It brings the attention off of the police and onto the rioters, looters, arsonists, etc. It turned what was supposed to be a national conversation about police brutality into a conversation about how people went absolutely nuts and took the opportunity to do things they otherwise would not. People took the opportunity to loot stores because they would be arrested far more easily otherwise. People took the opportunity to set ablaze places that had NOTHING to do with Floyd’s unjust death. That doesn’t get people to think about the consequences of police brutality – it gets people to think bad people will always seek any excuse to be bad and seek any opportunity to do bad things, even seeing the tragic death of a man as an opportunity to do evil.
 
It definitely doesn’t help that idiots like Cardi B, Ice Cube and Ilhan Omar have incited this kind of violence and have even excused it. NO ONE is justified in rioting, looting, committing arson, etc. The tragedy that is George Floyd’s death does not justify this sort of behavior. It justifies protesting against police brutality, as tons of people were doing before the rioting began. It justifies being outraged over injustice. It does not justify further injustice, however.
 
I hope the officers get the punishment they deserve and I hope that they turn to Christ, that they might beg for forgiveness both for the actions that they undertook and their overall sins. I hope that all police officers recognize that their most important duty is to protect the people and not exaggerate in their response to mild calls. I get that such calls can escalate to worse things, but there was no indication that there was any escalation happening or bound to happen with Floyd’s arrest.
 
I also hope people realize that rioting, looting and setting ablaze random businesses does nothing to teach people about police brutality and does nothing to make things better. Also, no, the looting of stores in Minneapolis is not the same as the Boston Tea Party, as some on Twitter have suggested. The revolutionaries didn’t set random businesses ablaze to “own” the British Parliament. They didn’t loot random shops to “stick it” to King George. They didn’t vandalize random businesses because they knew doing such a thing would be monumentally stupid and would accomplish nothing positive, and certainly wouldn’t get their point across.
 
Isaiah 1:17
“Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli

In the past, I have talked about how Dr. Birx’s comments relating to people who died “with” the coronavirus being counted as people who died “from” the virus and the dangerous precedent that sets because just about any death therefore could be counted as a Chinese coronavirus death provided someone just has the virus or even if they are suspected of having the virus, via having the symptoms or something like that.
 
I’ve even half-joked that if you got shot 16 times in the head and had the virus, it could count as a coronavirus death even though it very clearly was the result of getting shot. Well, there is a reason that that was a half-joke and not a full-on joke because the State of Washington’s Department of Health (DOH) confirmed that their coronavirus death totals include deaths from other causes, among which are gunshot wounds.
 
According to the Freedom Foundation: “In remarks made during a telephonic press briefing, DOH officials even acknowledged knowingly including multiple deaths caused by gunshot wounds in the state’s COVID-19 fatality count.”
 
The Freedom Foundation was actually among the first to report such non-COVID deaths counting towards the death count, but Gov. Jay Inslee dismissed those reports as “dangerous,” “disgusting” and “malarkey.” However, state health department officials have now confirmed that this is what they have been doing so the only one who appears to be “dangerous”, “disgusting” and spreading “malarkey” is Governor Inslee.
 
In the Freedom Foundation’s original report, they concluded that, out of the 828 (at the time of the report, of course) Chinese coronavirus deaths in the state, 681, or 82%, “’list some variation of ‘COVID-19’ in one of the causes of death’ on the death certificate”; 41, or 5% “of the death certificates do not list COVID-19 as a cause of death, but indicate it was a ‘significant condition contributing to death’”; and 106, or 13% of “deaths involved persons who had previously tested positive for COVID-19 but did not have the virus listed anywhere on their death certificate as either causing or contributing to death.”
 
Let’s go through each one. The most prominent one here is the 82% of deaths being “some variation” of the Chinese coronavirus. This is a problem because there are different types of coronaviruses that are NOT COVID-19.
 
According to the CDC website, there are six other known types of human coronaviruses: 229E, NL63, OC43, HKU1, MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), and SARS-CoV (severe acute respiratory syndrome). COVID-19 is also known as SARS-CoV-2. In other words, unless there is another kind of COVID-19 virus out there that I am not aware of, the Washington State DOH might be counting OTHER TYPES OF CORONAVIRUS as deaths from COVID-19.
 
Which means that the REAL number of COVID-19 deaths in the State of Washington could be FAR LOWER than they are reporting. And if that’s the case in Washington, that could be the case for much of the country as well (depending on how some states are counting the deaths, of course).
 
Next, they listed that 5% of death certificates did not list the Chinese coronavirus as a cause of death, only that it was a “significant condition contributing to death.” That is so vague, I can hardly believe it. With that sort of reasoning, one could count a piano falling on someone who is sick in bed because of the virus and killing them as a COVID-19 death. Of course, the chances of that happening are astronomically low, but if that precise scenario were to happen, the DOH would count such a death as a death to the coronavirus.
 
Finally, we have 13% of people who, on their death certificate, COVID-19 was nowhere to be found as a cause of death or even as a vague contributor to death, but just because they had it at some point in the past, it counts. That’s like saying that someone who once had cancer but beat it and eventually died of something other than cancer can be counted in the statistics of number of people who died of cancer even if their death certificate does not even mention the terminal illness at all.
 
And that is why I was so outraged when Dr. Birx said that people “with” the virus who die can be counted as people who died “from” the virus. Because someone who just simply had it but CLEARLY DIED FROM SOMETHING ELSE can be counted towards this disease’s death toll. We NEVER would even dream of doing the same thing for any other disease.
 
And I get some people who say “well, people don’t die from AIDS, they die with it and we count those deaths as AIDS deaths”, which would be fine if people weren’t so dishonest. Someone who CLEARLY died of something that is not AIDS would not (or should not) count towards the death toll for AIDS. If someone has AIDS and was shot to death, that’s not an AIDS death, it’s a death by gunshot wound. Any sane and normal person would acknowledge this and yet, for COVID-19, all logic and reasoning has flown out the window and we have a rather clearly inflated death toll.
 
But moving on, let’s get to the main point of the story. According to Katie Hutchinson, a DOH health statistics manager: “Our [DOH COVID-19] dashboard numbers do include any deaths to a person that has tested positive to COVID-19.”
 
“We don’t always know the cause of death for a death when it is first reported on our dashboard. That is true. Over the course of the outbreak, we have been monitoring and recording the causes of death as we know it. We currently do have some deaths that are being reported that are clearly from other causes. We have about five deaths – less than five deaths – that we know of that are related to obvious other cases. In this case, they are from gunshot wounds.”
 
Of course, the DOH sees little problem with that and Hutchinson even said that they believe they might actually be “under-counting” deaths as opposed to “over-counting” them and that they will begin counting “probable” cases of COVID-19 as being cases of the disease, because why not double and triple-down on lunacy?
 
Seriously, they believe they are under-counting deaths when they are KNOWINGLY counting deaths that are clearly non-COVID-19 as being deaths to the Chinese coronavirus? What sense does that make? What purpose does that serve?
 
Regardless of the answer(s) to those questions, it is pretty clear to me that we are counting as Chinese coronavirus deaths things that ought not be counted as such. Be they other types of coronavirus being counted towards this novel type or gunshot wounds that even someone lacking even basic medical knowledge would understand should not be counted as COVID-19, these causes of death really should be discounted from the total death toll.
 
Hutchinson noted that “it may take up to a year or more to get final counts on COVID-19 deaths”, and I definitely hope that, when that time comes, we get some clarity about what exactly happened here and why exactly the health departments, at least the one in Washington State, were counting GUN SHOT WOUNDS as COVID-19, as well as other things that are not the Chinese coronavirus as deaths to the virus.
 
2 Timothy 3:13
“While evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

We all know perfectly well that the Left benefits when people are suffering. This is generally the case, but particularly so in this day and age when the Left is banking on a large portion of the country to remain locked down due to the Chinese coronavirus fears. They know that they could not possibly hope to beat Trump when the economy is doing well, particularly as well as it was before this entire scenario happened, so Plan A for them, seeing as impeachment and removal did not work, is to destroy the economy as much as they possibly could.
 
Given the option, Democrats would demand Democrat-run states to remain as locked down as possible, implementing as many draconian policies as possible and blaming the inevitable economic collapse under such a circumstance on Trump’s “poor leadership” or something akin to that nonsense. They truly view our economic suffering as the single BEST option for winning an election.
 
Which is why it’s not surprising to see the Democrats in absolute panic over being given perhaps some of the worst news from THEIR OWN SIDE with regard to the possibility of Trump being re-elected.
 
You see, Harvard professor Jason Furman, a top economist for the Obama administration, said last month that the U.S. is on track to witness the “best economic data” in its entire history.
 
Furman, speaking to a group of bipartisan leaders, said: “We are about to see the best economic data we’ve seen in the history of this country.”
 
Politico reported: “Instead of forecasting a prolonged depression-level economic catastrophe, Furman laid out a detailed case for why the months preceding the November election could offer Trump the chance to brag – truthfully – about the most explosive monthly employment numbers and GDP growth ever. Furman’s counterintuitive pitch has caused some Democrats, especially Obama alumni, around Washington to panic.”
 
The Left panics when there is the chance for the best economic prosperity, or at least raw data, that the country has ever seen. Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know about them? Instead of being happy over the prospect of a great economic recovery from the current situation unlike anything we had ever seen before, they are reportedly running around in sheer panic and worry. How anyone can say that they are the party of “The People” or how they are “compassionate and tolerant” is beyond reason.
 
According to Politico, one former top Obama administration official expressed that this scenario was their “big worry”, and when asked about the level of concern this sort of situation has amongst top Democrats, the Democrat replied: “It’s high – high, high, high, high.”
 
Furman had also explained that, once the economic data from the past few months began to come in, he realized that the data was indicative of an economic recovery mirroring the sort that economics see following major natural disasters or “industry-wide catastrophe[s] like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.”
 
Furman further explained that consumption and hiring began to tick up “in gross terms, not in net terms,” describing the turnaround as a “partial rebound.” This bounce back “can be very very fast, because people go back to their original job, they get called back from furlough, you put the lights back on in your business. Given how many people were furloughed and how many businesses were closed you can get a big jump out of that. It will look like a V.”
 
Considering many of the economic policies that led to the economic prosperity pre-Chinese coronavirus are still in place, provided the vast majority of the country opens back up, I generally agree with the sentiment that it would bounce back big time. My biggest concern, as I have noted many times in the recent past, is that we might be too slow in reopening and businesses will soon find that they cannot afford to bring back their furloughed workers. Small businesses have definitely taken a massive hit over the last few months (and a piece from The Federalist indicates this shutdown did nothing to combat the virus, so this was an exercise in futility at best) and every day that they are disallowed from opening back up is another day in which they cannot make money and get back on track.
 
Bigger giants in the business world will fare better, I imagine, and will be able to hire back the people they had to furlough but things definitely got messed up. Thankfully, with states opening back up and people having the ability to go back to work basically unimpeded, I do agree with the sentiment that we should be seeing quite a bounce back in the economy over the second half of this fiscal year.
 
And I’m not the only one to agree, as Larry Kudlow, the head of the White House National Economic Council, told Politico that he “totally agree[s].” “Q3 may be the single best GDP quarter since regular data. 2nd half super big growth, transitioning to 4% or more in 2021.”
 
Other Trump officials, such as Kevin Hassett and Peter Navarro, also agreed with Furman.
 
Of course, while people on the Right are ecstatic over the prospect of an economic rebound (Furman further stressed to Politico, when asked about his “new fans” in the Trump administration, that “they get the rebound part, but they don’t get the partial part”, sort of trying to dampen the mood, but it also is fairly contradictory to the idea that the economy would rebound “like a V,” as he explained earlier), people on the Left are outright panicking, as I mentioned before, particularly since Trump has always been ahead of Biden in the polls when it came to handling the economy.
 
One Democrat told Politico: “Trump beats Biden on the economy even right now! This is going to be extremely difficult no matter what. It’s existential that we figure it out.”
 
Another former Obama White House official told Politico: “Even today when we are at over 20 million unemployed (remember, this was back in April), Trump gets high marks on the economy, so I can’t imagine what it looks like when things go in the other direction. I don’t think this is a challenge for the Biden campaign. This is THE challenge for the Biden campaign. If they can’t figure this out, they should all just go home.”
 
Political strategist Arthur Schwartz tweeted the Politico article, adding: “Dems are spooked because the economy is going to rebound quickly. Their strategy for November is to keep the country closed. Their interests are served by hurting as many Americans as possible.”
 
Exactly my thoughts. The Left seemingly can only hope to win elections when the American people are suffering greatly. I can only imagine the glee they felt back in 2007-08 when the financial crisis and Great Recession was hitting this country. I can also only imagine the glee they felt the last few months in seeing the number of unemployed cases rolling in. They probably fully expected the country to automatically blame Trump for the bad news just because “blame Trump” is basically the Left’s default response to anything.
 
China unleashed a deadly virus on the world and lied about it for months (and still continues to lie) and is trying to coerce other countries into not punishing them as they deserve? Nah, it’s Trump’s fault, particularly as he is “blaming” China. Which reminds me: Trump isn’t “blaming” China. To say that he is is to insinuate that China is blameless and without fault. Trump is holding China accountable for their deadly actions which have killed a hundred thousand Americans (and God knows how many Chinese citizens and residents) and hundreds of people around the globe (according to official estimates, of course, which have to take China’s numbers at face value even though China has been lying about their numbers).
 
But in any case, getting off of that slight tangent, I am not even a little bit surprised that the Left would be so perplexed at seeing Trump beating Biden even with the economic news that we are getting. The VAST majority of Americans aren’t going to blame Trump for this simply due to the fact that we KNOW why it’s happening.
 
The news that we are seeing aren’t the result of a fundamental problem in our economic system or in the policies we are espousing. They are the result of a virus that has gotten people so freaked out as to shut down everything (and, again, this was negligible at best when it came to dealing with the virus) and the actions of relatively independent governors deciding to shut down their states to one extent or another.
 
It is only the hardcore, borderline actually insane Leftists that are blaming Trump for this whole fiasco. It’s only the Left-wing political hacks in the fake news media, Washington and around the country that are blaming Trump for any of this.
 
I hope that Furman’s prediction regarding the economy is what really happens. Models are generally always going to be wrong because no one can account for absolutely everything that could occur, but they can sometimes be useful in understanding at least one possible outcome.
 
Provided the country opens back up almost in full (New York might take more time, but even Cuomo himself has begun to talk about reopening), we should be seeing better economic news as time goes on. Here’s hoping that this is what ends up happening.
 
Hebrews 11:1
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

Last Friday, presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden appeared on the Breakfast Club podcast being interviewed by co-host Charlamagne tha God to discuss Biden’s black voting base. The entire thing was not exactly great and Joe Biden delivered perhaps what is one of his most racist statements of his life, which is saying plenty.
 
At one point, Charlamagne told Biden: “It’s a long way until November, we’ve got more questions.” Joe Biden seemed insulted by the notion that he would have more questions and replied: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
 
And the mask falls off. Time and time again, I have alluded to the Democrat Party essentially being a slave plantation of thought and Joe Biden all but confirmed that idea. You aren’t black if you are thinking of voting for Trump or if you are on the fence about who to vote for.
 
Naturally, this spurned backlash online from both sides of the aisle.
 
Machine Gun Kele tweeted: “I don’t know what kind of level of comfort you have to attain to make a statement like Joe Biden did in this video clip. Qwhite something.” (Not a typo, I think she completely meant to write that and I found it funny).
 
“Whoever helped Biden with this particular interview flopped. ‘You ain’t black’ will never bang coming from a white man’s mouth. Soz. I know your forefathers decided on the racial categories buy you really have a nerve whether in jest or not,” she continued.
 
Andrew Surabian tweeted: “A white guy lecturing black Americans that they ‘ain’t black’ if they don’t vote for him is about as condescending and racist as it gets.”
 
If you’re wondering what Charlamagne said following Joe’s statement, he seemed to have briefly brushed it aside to say: “It don’t have nothing to do with Trump, it has to do with the fact – I want something for my community.”
 
Following the clip, the Breakfast Club’s twitter page tweeted: “#joebiden said ‘If you have a problem figuring out if you are for him or Trump… you ain’t black’ Do you agree??” followed by a poll, which at the time of me seeing it, was an overwhelming: “Wait what.. no,” with thousands of votes.
 
For those of you who have been tuned in to politics for some time, you know very well that Joe Biden often says seriously stupid things. I even highlighted some of them in an article a month ago, detailing gaffes from the misinformed to the outright racist. Let’s revisit some of the racist ones because Joe Biden has an explicitly RACIST history, both in terms of things he has said and in terms of his actions.
 
Let’s begin with one of his most infamous statements, which he made in 2007 with regard to then-Democrat candidate Barack Obama: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
 
Obviously, this was abhorrently racist and insinuated that no other African-American has ever been articulate, bright, clean or a “nice-looking guy”, which is wrong on so many levels. The Washington Post tried to excuse that statement as saying Biden was just referring to presidential candidates but even that doesn’t work. For one, not that I think he is a smart person, in fact I believe he is a deeply racist idiot, but Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984 and 1988 and was a relatively serious contender for both. So to say that Obama was the first African-American presidential candidate (which Biden didn’t specify, but let’s just assume that’s what he meant to go along with the WaPo for now) that was “ the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright, clean and an nice-looking guy” dismisses Jesse Jackson altogether.
 
Again, I think Jesse Jackson is a racist idiot, but the Left doesn’t, so it was a stupid and racist comment no matter how you slice it.
 
Moving on to another instance of Biden being racist, we have the infamous “7-11” comment: “In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”
 
Ignoring the fact that Indians moving to America from India doesn’t automatically make them Indian Americans, so that statement makes little sense, there is no denying the blatant racism here. Despite the fact that he finished the statement as saying “I’m not joking”, it’s pretty obvious he was, indeed, joking. Or at least, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt here, otherwise he is an even bigger racist than even I thought. But even if that was a joke, and I think most people would agree that it was, it was an awfully racist joke.
 
I’m not sure what point he was trying to get across, but one can hardly look at something like this and not consider it to be insensitive and racist. It alludes to the idea that Indian people can’t communicate with others well if they do not have a similar accent to their own. At least, that’s what I think Joe meant here, given he was referring to the self as having a “slight Indian accent”. But regardless of what he meant, it was awful and something the fake news media would NEVER let Trump or a Republican get away with.
 
Of course, there is also the infamous “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids”, alluding to the idea that ALL black people are poor and that all poor people are black, but we have had plenty of examples of things he has said that make Biden a blatant racist.
 
Now, let’s move on to things he has DONE that make Biden a blatant racist.
 
New York Magazine has a pretty good piece on Biden’s atrocious civil rights record that I think one should read (and it's surprising because the writer is clearly a Leftist himself). It’s titled: “Will Black Voters Still Love Biden When They Remember Who He Was?”
 
Of course, this was written back when the primaries were still going and Joe wasn’t the obvious winner, but it still holds up fairly well. Other than the title itself, I guess. Joe is still the same racist he always was in the past. He clearly hasn’t changed in that regard and fully expects all black people to fall in line and support him, otherwise they cannot be considered black. He is still the slave-driver that Democrats always have been, but let’s get down to the meat and potatoes of the article.
 
Right off the bat, the writer, Eric Levitz, lambasts Joe with things he has said in the past: “Joe Biden once called state-mandated school integration ‘the most racist concept you can come up with,’ and Barack Obama ‘the first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.’ He was a staunch opponent of ‘forced busing’ in the 1970s, and leading crusader for mass incarceration throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. Uncle Joe has described African-American felons as ‘predators’ too sociopathic to rehabilitate – and white supremacist senators as his friends.”
 
Following that, he mentions that “Biden helped kill the most effective policy for improving black educational attainment that America has ever known.”
 
He talked about how, originally, Joe Biden was in favor of desegregating schools, until his constituents were against it. After some time, he argued that “forced busing was appropriate for the South (where segregation was the product of racist laws), but unnecessary for the North (where, Biden pretended, it merely reflected the preferences of the white and black communities.),” according to New York Mag.
 
“Once in the Senate, Biden continued to triangulate, voting for most, though not all, of the anti-busing amendments that came before him. But for his overwhelmingly white constituents, nothing less than massive resistance to busing would suffice. The New Castle County Neighborhood Schools Association booed Biden off the stage at one event in 1974. One year later, the Delaware senator broke ranks with northern liberals – and joined his virulently racist North Carolina colleague Jesse Helms in voting to kneecap all federal efforts to integrate schools, anywhere in the country.”
 
The Helms amendment, which aimed to give the federal government the ability to withhold funds from schools that refused to integrate, failed, but Biden implemented an amendment of his own, “stipulating that none of those federal funds (of a $36 billion education bill), could be used by school systems ‘to assign teachers or students to schools… for reasons of race.’ His amendment would prevent ‘some faceless bureaucrat’ from ‘deciding that any child, black or white, should fit in some predetermined ratio,’” according to historian Jason Sokol.
 
Sokol continued: “Like the Helms gambit, [Biden’s provision] would still gut Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. But this time, a number of liberal senators that had opposed Helms’ amendment now supported Biden… Watching his liberal colleagues defect, Republican Jacob Javits of New York mused, ‘They’re scared to death on busing.’ The Senate approved Biden’s amendment. Biden had managed to turn a 48-43 loss for the anti-busing forces into a 50-43 victory.”
 
NY Mag notes that “The NAACP called Biden’s proposal ‘an anti-black amendment.’ The Senate’s sole African-American member, Ed Brooke, called it ‘the greatest symbolic defeat for civil rights since 1964.’”
 
It’s worth mentioning, though the NY Mag completely ignores it, that Ed Brooke was the first African-American to be elected to the Senate and that he was a Republican.
 
The reason it’s worth mentioning this is that Joe Biden, following the passage of his amendment, employed a tactic that the Left often uses against the Right: calling them the real racists.
 
“The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, Chicanos, or whatever in each school. That, to me, is the most racist concept you can come up with. What it says is, ‘In order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin to be able to learn anything, he needs to sit next to my blond-haired, blue-eyed son.’ That’s racist!,” Joe Biden remarked in an interview in 1975.
 
That same year, he essentially repeated his thoughts in an interview with NPR: “I think the concept of busing… that we are going to integrate people so that they all have the same access and they learn to grow up with one another and all the rest, is a rejection of the whole movement of black pride… a rejection of the entire black awareness concept, where black is beautiful, black culture should be studied; and the cultural awareness of the importance of their own identity, their own individuality.”
 
It is interesting to see what b.s. the Left would use to justify the unjustifiable. From denying the humanity of unborn babies to denying the benefits black people get when they attend desegregated schools over segregated ones (studies show that black kids who attended desegregated schools earned an average of 25% more than those who attended segregated ones), the Left will stop at nothing and come up with the most insane b.s. to deny humans their God-given rights.
 
Moving on, and trying to keep things a bit short now since this article is so long already, we have the most obvious contribution to black suffering that Biden has made: the 1994 crime bill and a facet of other tough-on-crime bills that disproportionately affect black people.
 
“During the 1980s, Biden helped pass laws reinstating the federal death penalty, abolishing federal parole, increasing penalties for marijuana possession, expanding the use of civil asset forfeiture, and establishing a 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for possession of crack cocaine and powder cocaine,” according to New York Mag.
 
And while I agree with some of these things, namely the reinstating of the federal death penalty and being tough on drugs, these are things the Left often decries as “racist” and Biden has helped in pushing them through and getting them passed in the Senate.
 
Not to mention the ’94 crime bill itself was created by him.
 
In 1989, when H.W. gave a national address about his war on drugs, Biden said that Bush wasn’t being “tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough to meet the crisis at hand.” Biden called for tougher measures of increasing police presence to “catch the violent thugs”, increasing the number of prosecutors to convict them, increasing the number of judges to sentence them and increasing the number of prison cells to “put them away for a long time.”
 
Again, I, myself, am an advocate for tough sentencing for drug operations, dealers and (slightly less) for drug possession. But the Left currently is all for letting people mess themselves up in whatever way possible and Joe is their CURRENT NOMINEEE and he has this kind of track record when it comes to putting black people in jail.
 
This is without mentioning his comments regarding black youth possibly becoming “predators 15 years from now.”

There is plenty more to discuss when it comes to Biden’s blatant racism, such as the fact that he openly BRAGGED about receiving an award from segregationist George Wallace in 1973 and saying “We (Delawareans) were on the South’s side in the Civil War”, thereby including himself among the people who SUPPORTED THE PRO-SLAVERY SOUTH, but I think you get the point and this article is long enough as it is.
 
Biden fully expecting black people to submit to his Democrat whip and be enchained to his Leftist collar is really par for the course for the despicable man.
 
Isaiah 48:22
“’There is no peace,’ says the Lord, ‘for the wicked.’”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

One aspect of people’s lives that largely goes unnoticed is the emotional well-being of people as they have to go through collective hardship, such as the Chinese coronavirus, and the subsequent restrictions to limit its spread. We have talked extensively about people’s health and about people’s financial well-being, but an important aspect of humanity itself is our ability to feel emotions and as of late, things have started to make a turn for the better.
 
According to a recent Gallup poll measuring people’s emotions from April 27th to May 10th, U.S. adults are beginning to worry less and be a little bit happier now that the worst is (hopefully) over.
 
Gallup reports that, from April 27 to May 10, 72% of surveyors reported “happiness” “during a lot of the day yesterday.” This is up 5 points since March 23-April 5, when the restrictions began to be put into place and the economy began to be shut down.
 
Similarly, 47% reported feeling “worried”, which is down 12 points from late March/early April, when 59% of people reported they were “worried”. “Boredom” has also fallen from 46% to 41% in that same time span and loneliness has remained the same, though it slightly went up two points in the middle of April.
 
This shows a pretty good turnaround from the doom and gloom many people (especially on the Left) were harping about with relation to our current situation. Things are beginning to get better as we are opening back up and they will improve further once we are completely open once again.
 
Splitting things up by demographics, we find that those who earn less than $36,000 are less likely to be happy than those who earn between $36,000 and $90,000, as well as those who earn over $90,000 a year.
 
Only 56% of people who earn less than $36,000 said that they were “happy” as opposed to 74% of those earning between $36,000 and $90,000, and 75% for those who earned more than $90,000. This is not even a little bit surprising for a number of reasons.
 
Generally, when you have more money, you tend to be happier. Whoever said that “money can’t buy you happiness” has clearly never been on a jet ski. All jokes aside, the numbers generally show that wealthier people tend to be happier than those who are poorer and when the economy is shut down, those at the bottom suffer the most.
 
Which is another reason as to why lower-earners are less happy than higher-earners. Millions upon millions of people have lost their jobs. The first to go are usually the ones who are least valuable/have the least experience and those tend to be at the bottom. Aside from general financial worries that lower-income people have to contend with when there isn’t a pandemic that got our leaders to shut down our economy, they now have to contend with exactly that scenario which is overall bad for most people, but especially for bottom-earners.
 
Which is also why it’s not particularly surprising to see those earning less than $36,000 be more worried (58% compared to 44 and 48% for the other two higher income brackets respectively), experience more boredom (49% compared to 41 and 39) and are more lonely (38% compared to 23 and 19 percent) than those who earn more than $36,000.
 
Thankfully, as restrictions are being lifted and people are capable of returning to work a little bit more, people will begin getting some of their jobs back, including low-income people.
 
Along party lines, we find that Republicans experience the most happiness (77%), while Independents are close behind (74%) and Democrats are the least happy (66%). Not that this is surprising in the least. Leftist ideologies require one to be perpetually outraged, angry, distraught, disheartened and generally unhappy. The Left is never happy even when they get everything they want. They cry about injustice in America when it is one of the most just countries in the world, at least relatively speaking.
 
Pandemic or not, the Left is never happy. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Leftist happiness WENT UP as the economy began to be shut down, the stock market fell and they could try and blame Trump both for the number of deaths due to the virus and the unemployment rate. As we are beginning to open back up for business, I wouldn’t be surprised if happiness among Democrats FELL.
 
In any case, staying with the party demographics, we find that 38% of Republicans express feelings of “worry”, as opposed to 44% of Independents and 58% of Democrats. This is not surprising either because the Left chooses to listen to the fake news media to be “informed” and the fake news media sows nothing but discontent and “reports” nothing but bad news. This has generally been the case for the last three and a half years, but it’s been particularly bad in recent time. People who watch the fake news media believe that there is no hope at all, that the economy will never recover, that believing drugs like Hydroxychloroquine could help with treating the virus is just “false hope” and that this period of economic downturn is “the new normal”, like Obama had insisted after his tenure being the worst economic president of all time.
 
When it comes to getting feelings of boredom, everyone was about as equally bored, with 40% of Republicans, 43% of Independents and 42% of Democrats all experiencing boredom. As far as “loneliness” goes, only 19% of Republicans experienced “loneliness”, while 23% of Independents and 28% of Democrats said the same.
 
That one is also not particularly surprising. I imagine Republicans generally had less concerns with the virus and were more willing to meet up with friends and family, so that would naturally translate to not feeling quite as lonely.
 
Dividing things up by marital status, we find that 77% of married people and 76% of widowed people reported feeling “happy”, while 61% of single/never married people and 62% of divorced people said the same. This one is also not too surprising, except for the widowed people part. Considering this pandemic has resulted in around 100,000 people dying, most of which tend to be older people, one would expect a number of people have recently become widowed and I am surprised that widowed people in general would report as much happiness as they do.
 
Of course, I’m not saying that widowed people can’t feel happy, it’s just surprising that it’s as close to what married people report as it is. I don’t know what that says about the married people.
 
In any case, 45% of those who are married reported feeling worried, while 38% of widowed reported the same, and 50% of both single/never married and divorced people responded the same. When it came to boredom, surprisingly both married and divorced people reported feeling this at the same rate (39%), while 45% of widowed said they were bored and 46% of single/never married people said the same.
 
And when it came to loneliness, completely unsurprisingly, those who are married reported the least amount of loneliness at just 17%, while those who are widowed reported the same at a rate of 26%, divorced people were lonely at a rate of 35% and single/never married people were the most lonely at 36%.
 
By gender, we find that 73% of men reported being happy, which is two points higher than women. 44% of men reported being worried as opposed to 51% of women. Both were close when it came to boredom, with 43% of men and 40% of women reporting feeling this. And when it came to loneliness, women were lonelier at a rate of 27% as opposed to 20% of men.
 
But of course, the biggest takeaway from all of this is the fact that people are beginning to feel happier as time goes on and as restrictions begin to be lifted.
 
We find a pattern of increased happiness and decreased worry and boredom from late March/early April to mid-April and now.
 
Happiness went up by two points in mid-April from late-March/early-April (67 to 69%), while worry went down by a lot from 59% in late-March to 53% in mid-April, while boredom had only slightly decreased in that timespan.
 
My point here is that it’s not a simple fluke to find the numbers that we are. There is a pattern of American adults beginning to feel better and more comfortable as time goes on, being happier and less worried about the situation with more of the restrictions being lifted and more people being able to do the things they could do before the restrictions were put into place, be they outdoor activities or simply going to work.
 
Here’s hoping we continue down this road, see this trend going in a positive direction and we can get back to the economic prosperity we were experiencing pre-Chinese coronavirus.
 
Romans 12:12
“Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.