The Dog Ate Biden’s Homework

Over 100,000 unaccompanied children will arrive at our border this year. We have no place to put them. When the new administration dumped Trump’s border actions, including our agreements with Mexico, did they take a moment to consider what might happen? Whatever the Biden brain trust calls it, a crisis has developed out of nowhere. A solution won’t come quickly without backtracking to what worked under Trump. Instead of taking things slow and sure, Biden reversed the safeguards, inviting a tidal wave of people on our Southern border.  

This calamity was foreseeable. Much of the new administration’s problems arise from the same flaw, lack of preparation. One of the primary reasons put forth for electing Biden was competence. Joe and those around him knew what they were doing. It appears they don’t.

The first indication of lack of Biden bunch homework is the ignorance of Project Warp Speed. Biden, his crew, and media allies were relentless in their criticism of the Trump vaccine rollout. Proudly declaring they would get 100 million doses in people’s arms in their first hundred days. The Trump administration reached the Biden rate by inauguration Day. This week we’ll have administered 100 million doses from the standing start December 14th. A quick check of the calendar shows this is well under 100 days. Embarrassed, the new administration quickly upped its aspirations to 1.5 million shots a day. Our average for the last seven days is north of 2 million. Biden can’t get a handle on what’s going on.

As I pointed out in the last post, the U.S. and U.K. are way out in front of vaccinating people (see chart below) among larger nations. Former assistant HHS Secretary in the Trump administration, Adm. Brett Giroir, pointed out that this success is 99% due to the Warp Speed Program’s initiated before the administration change. 

Asked at a press briefing whether the Trump White House deserves credit for our vaccine success, press secretary Jan Psaki replied, “I don’t think anyone deserves credit when half a million people in the country have died of this pandemic,” According to Psaki, the multitude working tirelessly bringing about life-saving vaccines in record time and getting them into peoples arms at world-class speed deserves no praise only blame for every death. 

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Gut Check

A common theme of the Rush Limbaugh eulogies highlighted he stood up to the left-leaning dominant culture. No matter how hard they came after him, Rush struck back. To an audience feeling mocked and disrespected, his show was an oasis. A place where being a conservative or a libertarian could hear their ideas and ideals discussed. Instead of being told what to think, they laughed with Rush. He ridiculed the thoughts and actions of the center-left with commentary and parodies. The “mainstream media” was a choice target. 

Rush watched with his audience as President George W. Bush talked like a conservative as he pushed Federal Government intrusion in education with ” No Child Let Behind.” In the Great Recession, Bush bailed out the Big Banks. Both McCain and Romney talked conservative but failed to stand up to the mainstream media. Instead, they vainly sought its approval.  

Rush became frustrated with Republican leaders less willing to stand up for their values than he was. I think he and his audience knew Donald Trump’s limitations, but he had something his predecessors lacked-a backbone. Kristen Soltis Anderson, writing in the Washington Examiner, had it right when she pointed out, “Trumpism isn’t an Ideology-it’s a fighting posture.”

Being willing to tough it out allowed Trump and the Republicans to cut taxes, rein in regulations, appoint a ton of conservative judges, and strengthen the military. Trump directly took on the culture clash, condemning things such as the “1619 Project” and “Critical Race Theory.” He questioned the lockdowns and pushed schools to reopen. Conservatives applauded.

However, regardless of what he says or does now, Trump has virtually no chance of winning back the Presidency. His actions leading up to and after the 2020 election showed his lack of judgment and depth. There aren’t enough people out there willing to take a chance on him again. After his appearance at CPAC, his influence will slowly decline. A third of the CPAC straw poll voters for the 2024 nomination went for someone other than Trump. They’re ready to move on.

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Rising to the Level of His Incompetence

Michael Avenatti, Andrew Cuomo, The Lincoln Project, and Anthony Fauci have enjoyed media adoration. At a certain point in history, each had regular access to the cameras of CNN and MSNBC, among others. The common thread is they willingly and forcibly attacked Donald Trump. Overlooking their feet of clay, opinion leaders in the media lauded their courage to take on the vile Trump. Avenatti and Cuomo each elicited talk of a Presidential Run. Portrayed as Republican stalwarts, the Lincoln Project members put honor above party loyalty in the media’s eyes.

Instead of awaiting his next appearance on CNN, Avenatti is looking forward to his sentencing for his felony conviction. He’s facing up to 40 yrs. Cuomo is still on T.V., but to explain why he put Covid infected patients back in nursing homes and then covered it up. A far cry from his Emmy-winning Covid updates. Beyond concealing one of its key members’ perversions, everyone wants to know where the Lincoln Project’s money went. Were they washed-up grifters looking for a big payday? The media never asked. 

People are probably shocked at the inclusion of the near-sainted Dr. Fauci in this infamous group. After all, isn’t the good Doctor the embodiment of “Science.” in this pandemic? The media has undoubtedly made this a bedrock of its reporting. Readers of this blog, especially the series on COVID-19, know I don’t share this adoration. 

The permanent medical bureaucracy charged with protecting us from epidemics early on dropped the ball when COVID-19 made its debut in China. They never pushed to into Wuhan to obtain the facts. The World Health Organization(WHO) hadn’t sounded the alarm. The likes of the C.D.C., F.D.A., and Dr. Fauci instead downplayed the risk. On February 29, 2020, Dr. Fauci informed us, “No need to change lifestyle ,yet.” When Pres.Trump banned flights from China in Jan. 2020, these medical experts opposed the move.

Only after the publication of the Imperial College’s model prediction of millions of Covid deaths in the U.S. did these worthies do a 180 to locking down the country. As cases appeared, we found shortages of P.P.E. The Bureaucrats bungled our testing to a degree we haven’t yet fully caught up. Those charged protecting us failed miserably. You don’t have to take my word for it. Take a look at Former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottenger on CBS’s Face the Nation. He details the failures of WHO and our bureaucracies. 

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Lacking Unity And Competence

Well, this has been a week. We got an acquittal in Trump’s second impeachment trial. Also, we received new C.D.C. guidelines for in-person schooling. President Biden announced how he would have enough vaccine for everybody by the end of July. He also claimed his actions would save us from Trump’s failures. All of this gave us some insight into the competence of the Biden administration. The signs aren’t good.

Knowing you’re going to lose a battle and attacking anyway may make for a stirring poem. Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” highlighted reckless bravery. It wasn’t a good idea then, and it’s foolhardy politics. There never was a chance of getting 17 Republican Senators to convict Trump. Why would you give the Ex-President a victory to lord over you? All it did was further divide the country along partisan lines. Wasn’t Joe all about bringing us together?

There was a win-win way out of the Capitol Riot mess if only Biden had the sense to see it. Republicans offered a censure rather than impeachment—a bipartisan measure condemning the departed President for his part in the rampage showing unity rather than division. A Gerald Ford moment is opting to focus on the National healing and needs instead of revenge. The Democratic left-wing might scream, but most of the nation would think of Biden as a bigger person.

Instead of asserting control of his party as all successful presidents have done, he allowed his party’s legislators to charge into “the Valley of Death.” Now Biden is faced with following the divisive impeachment with the highly partisan Covid Relief Bill. This massive legislation will lack any Republican input. It would’ve been far better to have a unifying action under his belt before pushing this highly partisan package. This sequence negates Joe Biden’s campaign promise to be a unifier. Worse, it upends his claims to competence.

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Max And Leo Would Understand

Major retailers run loss leader sales simultaneously on toilet paper. Consumers buy to stock up at a bargain price. A week later, these companies find their reorders are cut or refused. It turns out, manufacturers oversold toilet paper by 140%. Word gets out of a severe shortage, and People bid up the existing supply and hoard it. The price of toilet paper soars. The manufacturers face very costly lawsuits for failure to deliver. This scenario sounds familiar. That’s because we just had a toilet paper shortage with sharply rising prices during our present pandemic.

Keeping this in mind will help us understand what happened with GameStop and other traded stocks. Some individual investors felt these beaten-down stocks were selling below their actual worth. They bought and shared their reasons for buying with others on the internet. They may or may not have been aware of large short positions, but it would become apparent in any case as the share prices jumped.

Short selling is a widely used method of selling something today for delivery or liquidation later. Futures markets exist for most of the things we need. A farmer looking at the corn vs. soybeans price for delivery next November chooses the more profitable to plant. The farmer then sells corn contracts for delivery at that time. The farmer presently has no corn but will have by fall. By what we call hedging, the farmer locks in his profit. People needing corn in the future are on the buy-side. We do this with everything from copper to U.S. Treasury Bonds. We’ve done this for a long time. The Chicago Board of Trade dates back to 1848.

Other people see the November price of corn as too high or too low, and they buy and sell contracts simply hoping to profit from the price movements. These traders have no corn now or use for it in the future. These speculators are welcome to give liquidity to these markets.

Selling something you don’t own is nothing new and is needed to facilitate commerce. However, stock trading has an added wrinkle. Because of settlement rules, short-sellers have to borrow the stock to settle the trade. Generally, brokers facilitate this between their clients, but not having enough supply to borrow is always dangerous for the short seller.

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