If you go hunting and you’re not too concerned about tearing up the animal you’re after and just want to make sure your first shot works, you consider using a shotgun. Shotguns shoot shells full of tiny pellets. Using that does not require pinpoint accuracy. However, to hunt with the intent to make a clean shot without damaging the animal, you use a gun with a single shot — a rifle. Shooting accurately with a rifle requires careful aim to assure than one bullet is successful.
There are so many things happening around us in the world today, it makes me want to pull out a shotgun and just start shooting. I’d probably be able to bag more than a few if I just banged away. And, right now, I just want to take as much as I can out of the eyesight. I’m tired of all this!
Tired of What?
I’m tired of lies, misrepresentation, arrogant pontification to prove one’s point, a demeaning mantra that accomplishes little or nothing at all, impugning the integrities of one’s political opponents. Do I need to go on?
So why don’t we today put all (or as many as possible) of our targets out of their misery? Let’s grab the shotgun and “let r’ rip!”
♦♦ Kennedy Center is in Trouble
Nancy Pelosi’s “love-benefit,” was the recipient of $25 million taxpayer dollars because it is being impactful in ridding the nation of Coronavirus, right? That $25 million may be in trouble.
Two Republican congressmen on Tuesday introduced legislation to reclaim the $25 million allocated in the recent coronavirus stimulus bill to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as reports emerged Tuesday that the opera house will furlough roughly 60 percent of its full-time administrative staff after already suspending pay for more than 700 part-time employees and musicians.
Also, on Tuesday, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Russ Vought urging the administration to freeze the money by submitting a rescission request to Congress under section 1012 of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. Scott wanted the White House to cut off not just the Kennedy Center funds, but also billions of dollars in other “wasteful” spending, including $75 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $30.8 billion for an “Education Stabilization Fund” that he argued would enrich already wealthy universities.
Could Congress actually be awakening to realize that when they tell Americans they’re going to confiscate more taxes from us to pay for necessary things to keep us safe and save us from Coronavirus, the money should go to something to save us from Coronavirus — Duh!
♦♦ How Evil is Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)?
In 2018, the House Intelligence Committee “forged a rare bipartisan moment: Its Republican and Democratic members voted to make public the transcripts of 53 witnesses in the Russia collusion investigation,” John Solomon’s Just the News reminds us. However, that act of transparency has been aggressively thwarted by “Mr. Evil,”Adam Schiff.
Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) took over as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) from Republican Devin Nunes in 2019. It was then that Schiff kicked-off his disgraceful strategy. Schiff sent a letter to the office of then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, which Just the News has obtained.
In the letter, Schiff “ordered that the witness transcripts – some of which contained exculpatory evidence for President Trump’s team – not be shared with Trump or White House lawyers even if the declassification process required such sharing.” The letter, dated March 26, 2019, stated:
Under no circumstances shall ODNI, or any other element of the Intelligence Community (IC), share any HPSCI transcripts with the White House, President Trump or any persons associated with the White House or the President…Such transcripts remain the sole property of HPSCI, and were transmitted to ODNI for the limited purpose of enabling a classification review by IC elements and the Department of Justice.
U.S. intelligence officials explain the severe consequence of Schiff’s actions. Officials say the request made it “impossible for them to declassify 10 of the transcripts, mostly of current and former White House and National Security Council witnesses because White House lawyers would have had to review them for what is known as ‘White House equities’ and presidential privileges.” Just the News states 43 transcripts have been made declassified and “cleared for public release and given to Schiff’s team, but they have never been made public despite the committee’s vote to do so.”
Republicans would like to see testimonies of some key figures such as former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Michael Sussman, a private lawyer for the Democratic Party, be made public. “Republicans had hoped the witnesses’ testimonies would be released before the 2018 election so Americans could see some of the problems with the Russia probe and the false narrative of collusion that had been foisted on the public.” Unfortunately, that did not occur, and the “declassification efforts dragged into 2019 when Democrats took control of the House.”
It probably will come as no surprise that spokespeople for Schiff and House Intelligence Committee Democrats did not return emails seeking comment. Additionally, Schiff’s letter came “just as Special Counsel Robert Mueller was releasing his final report, which declared there wasn’t evidence to prove the core allegation lodged against Trump by Democrats – that Trump had colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election.”
♦♦ Small Business Rescue Earned Banks $10 Billion In Fees
Banks handling the government’s $349 billion loan program for small businesses made more than $10 billion in fees — even as tens of thousands of small businesses were shut out of the program, according to an analysis of financial records by NPR. The banks took in the fees while processing loans that required less vetting than regular bank loans and had little risk for the banks, the records show. Taxpayers provided the money for the loans, which were guaranteed by the Small Business Administration.
According to a Department of Treasury fact sheet, all federally insured banks and credit unions could process the loans, which ranged in amount from tens of thousands to $10 million. The banks acted essentially as middlemen, sending clients’ loan applications to the SBA, which approved them.
For every transaction made, banks took in 1% to 5% in fees, depending on the amount of the loan, according to government figures. Loans worth less than $350,000 brought in 5% in fees while loans worth anywhere from $2 million to $10 million brought in 1% in fees.
♦♦ Media Now Taking Bailout From Paycheck Protection Program
News site Axios announced Wednesday that it had qualified for a small-business loan as part of the economic stimulus passed amid the coronavirus outbreak.
In a blog post, editor Jim VandeHei indicated that the company was suffering financially because of the hit to its events business and the hit to advertising caused by the economic fallout from the pandemic.
“We are in a somewhat unique position of being both a media company, which covers government and business and a job-creating small business with a national presence. So we wanted to be fully transparent about our thinking,” VandeHei wrote.
“We have taken a financial hit like other small businesses,” he added. “The media, broadly speaking, is getting crushed by the economic fallout.”
VandeHei went on to add that the company had qualified for a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) valued at “just shy of $5 million,” and pledged that Axios would make that clear in its future reporting on the economic stimulus packages.
“This loan ensures we can avoid layoffs and pay cuts for our almost 200-person staff for the rest of the year, regardless of how much the overall economy deteriorates,” VandeHei wrote.
The Senate on Tuesday passed a $484 billion package to replenish the PPP after money from the initial fund ran out quickly. The bill will now move to the House. The second injection comes amid anger over reports that some larger corporations were able to tap the PPP loans, leaving out some smaller businesses.
And if the above stories don’t make you feel like you got sand in your bathing suit, this one certainly will:
♦♦ CDC’s Failed Coronavirus Tests Were Tainted with Coronavirus, Feds Confirm
A federal investigation found CDC researchers not following protocol.
As the coronavirus took root across America, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent states tainted test kits in early February that were themselves seeded with the virus, federal officials have confirmed. The contamination made the tests uninterpretable, and—because testing is crucial for containment efforts—it lost the country invaluable time to get ahead of the advancing pandemic.
The CDC had been vague about what went wrong with the tests, initially only saying that “a problem in the manufacturing of one of the reagents” had led to the failure. Subsequent reporting suggested that the problem was with a negative control—that is, a part of the test meant to be free of any trace of the coronavirus as a critical reference for confirming that the test was working properly overall. Now, according to investigation results reported by The New York Times, federal officials confirm that sloppy laboratory practices at two of three CDC labs involved in the tests’ creation led to contamination of the tests and their uninterpretable results.
Shortly after the problems became apparent in early February, the Food and Drug Administration sent Timothy Stenzel, chief of in vitro diagnostics and radiological health, to the CDC to investigate what was going wrong. According to the Times, he found a lack of coordination and inexperience in commercial manufacturing. Problems that led to the contamination included researchers coming and going from labs working on the test kits without changing their coats and researchers sharing lab space to both assemble test components and handle samples containing the coronavirus.
The CDC said in a statement Saturday to the Times that the agency “did not manufacture its test consistent with its own protocol.” Though the CDC appeared reluctant to admit contamination was at the root of the problem, the Times noted that in a separate statement the CDC seemed to acknowledge such problems, saying the agency has since “implemented enhanced quality control to address the issue and will be assessing the issue moving forward.”
After the CDC first sent its test kit to states in early February, it took the agency around a month to fix the problem. By then, the virus had invaded many communities unimpeded, and any chance that the US had at containing its spread had virtually vanished. By mid-March, many states turned to mitigation efforts, such as social distancing, to try to blunt—rather than prevent—the life-threatening, healthcare-overwhelming effects of COVID-19.
“It was just tragic,” Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, told the Times. “All that time when we were sitting there waiting, I felt like, here we were at one of the most critical junctures in public health history, and the biggest tool in our toolbox was missing.”
As of the morning of April 20, the US has confirmed more than 760,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 40,700 deaths. The numbers are expected to be underestimates due to the slow and still limited amount of testing.
Summary
There is nothing more to say: each of these briefs speak volumes of how the sanity of many leaders in America long ago leaked out into the streets. And they don’t realize what little they had is now gone!
It’s time for us all to awaken and realize how desperate we SHOULD be. It’s going to take God and a couple of miracles to awaken the nation to reality: miracles like parting the Red Sea or walking on water. Either is fine with me.
Here we are on another Thursday morning and we’re still looking for facts!
That’s the biggest debacle of all of these.
Someone asked me Tuesday morning, “What are you going to do today?” My reply was, “I’m gonna feed the chickens and build a boat.”
Have you figured out yet what that means? I’m not going to tell you! Figure out who said that and what it means and email the answer to me at Dan@TruthNewsNet.org. I’ll share the answers in the next day or two.
I bet I have stumped you all!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
