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Sunday, March 22, 2020
Don't know if this is true or not
But if it is you would never heard about it from the MSM.
It’s Barack Obama's Fault There’s a Shortage of N95 Respirator Masks
Last week Bloomberg published a story about the mask shortages and how that was making it difficult for hospital workers in various states to take alternative measures to help protect themselves during the coronavirus pandemic, including making masks out of office supplies, and taking masks home to bleach them so they can be reused. It paints a horrible picture of chaos in our nation’s hospitals, and attempts to blame the problem on the Trump administration, because the Strategic National Stockpile, which is maintained by the Health and Human Services Department, is insufficient for the current crisis.
Back in 2005, the Bush administration published the “National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza.” The strategy called for plans to distribute medical supplies from the national stockpile and to assist state and local efforts to handle an outbreak, but last month, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Congress that the national stockpile of N95 respirator masks was 12 million—a mere fraction of the 1.7 billion masks government scientists estimated back in 2015 would be needed in the event of a severe flu outbreak.
How did we end up with such a low stockpile? It used to be much larger. What happened to it?
Buried several paragraphs deep in the aforementioned Bloomberg story we find out that “after the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, which triggered a nationwide shortage of masks and caused a 2- to 3-year backlog orders for the N95 variety, the stockpile distributed about three-quarters of its inventory and didn’t build back the supply.”
That's right, the shortage of N95 masks can be traced back to the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic of 2009... when Barack Obama was president.
A different story from the Los Angeles Times published last week goes into more detail about what happened after the swine flu pandemic depleted the supply. According to their story, “After the swine flu epidemic in 2009, a safety-equipment industry association and a federally sponsored task force both recommended that depleted supplies of N95 respirator masks [...] be replenished by the stockpile.” The problem is that didn’t happen. According to Charles Johnson, president of the International Safety Equipment Association, about 100 million N95 respirator masks were used up during the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010, but, he said was unaware of any “major effort to restore the stockpile to cover that drawdown.”
In short, even though the Obama administration was advised to replenish the national stockpile of the N95 respirator masks, they didn’t. Despite the fact the media traced the cause of the shortage back to 2009, they accuse Trump of poor planning and trying to deflect responsibility. It doesn't take a genius to know that in 2009 Barack Obama was president, but not once in either story did Bloomberg or the Los Angeles Times link the failure to replenish the N95 respirator masks with Obama or his administration, after they apparently ignored recommendations to do so.
President Trump has received criticism for blaming Obama for various deficiencies in the coronavirus response, and here we have the media tracing one particular deficiency back to the Obama years, and yet they avoid directly linking it by name to his administration. Obama had six years to restore that stockpile and even make it bigger. But he didn’t. Yet, the media today wants you to believe it’s Trump’s fault.
Saturday, March 21, 2020
Please Joe pick her
Progressive group's analysis finds Stacey Abrams is Biden's best choice. Here’s why.
March 20, 2020, 6:00 AM EDT / Updated March 20, 2020, 9:06 AM EDT
WASHINGTON — Stacey Abrams would be the strongest running mate for Joe Biden in the November election against President Donald Trump, according to an analysis by a progressive think tank.
Way to Win, a women-led network of deep-pocketed donors, commissioned Data for Progress to look into potential vice presidential picks after Super Tuesday, when Biden ran up an imposing delegate lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The think tank, whose polls of presidential primary contests this year have been highly regarded for their accuracy, conducted an online survey of 4,998 likely voters across the country on March 12 to gauge how potential Democratic tickets would fare against Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
The group tested five buzzed-about potential options: Abrams and Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey (Biden has since committed to picking a woman).
Data for Progress founder Sean McElwee wrote in a memo analyzing the findings that Abrams performed uniquely well across a range of demographic groups, including both independent voters and core Democratic constituencies whose lower-than-expected turnout in 2016 hurt Hillary Clinton.
"A Biden–Abrams ticket would beat a Trump-Pence ticket and perform competitively with other hypothetical tickets, while also over performing with key groups that constitute the Democratic Party's base," McElwee wrote.
Really...
While a hypothetical Biden-Warren ticket performed slightly better among young voters, a Biden-Abrams pairing was not far behind and tied with a Biden-Klobuchar ticket among independent voters (a weaker spot for Warren). But most notably, a Biden-Abrams ticket was the strongest of the options among black voters and women of color.
Biden did well among black voters in the Democratic primaries, but 2016 showed that doesn't necessarily translate to November, said Tory Gavito, executive director of Way to Win.
"Primary voters are your regular voters. If it was church, those are people who show up every Sunday. We need to figure out how to get new people in the pews," Gavito said.
Abrams is the least well known of the potential candidates, but her favorability ratings improved more than those of some other potential candidates after survey respondents were given short bios of each, which included both positive and negative points.
The memo also raised concerns about picking any senator, even from relatively blue states like Minnesota or Nevada (Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada has also been discussed as a potential option), because doing so might give Republicans a chance to win the seat or could, at a minimum, leave the seat vacant during the critical early days of a new administration, when every Democratic vote in the Senate might be crucial.
"Other hypothetical tickets raise significant concerns about control of the Senate," the memo states. "There are even risks for Biden picking Warren to run as his vice president. The governor of Massachusetts is Charlie Baker, a Republican, who will have the power to appoint a replacement for Warren until a special election takes place."
Gavito said that the choice of a running mate will be unusually important this year and that Biden needs not to repeat Clinton's mistake of choosing someone whose main role is to essentially do no harm (she chose Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia in 2016).
"Historically, folks will tell you the VP pick is less important. I think we are not in a typical historic moment," Gavito told NBC News. "When it comes to what it takes to win, we have to balance the ticket with gender, ideological, geographic, racial and generational diversity.
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