Welcome to July!

Quote of the day:

This President, I’ll tell you, is the most informed person on planet Earth when it comes to the threats that we face. – White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany

Today’s independent commentary deals with these people/issues:

• Church & State
• Dereliction of Duty
• Testing in the USA
• One More Thing

CHURCH & STATE:

In my column for Tuesday I wrote that John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States, is currently on the bad boy list of many conservatives and that Roberts received a good boy star from the progressives. Why? Roberts sided with the liberal justices on the Supreme Court on Monday to block a controversial Louisiana abortion law.

The conservatives are probably in a somewhat forgiving mood as Roberts sided with the conservatives in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue giving them a victory.

The Associated Press (AP) reported that the high court ruled 5-4 that states must give religious schools the same access to public funding that other private schools receive, preserving a Montana scholarship program that had largely benefited students at religious institutions.

I don’t agree with the U.S. Supreme Court decision on this case. Public schools are inadequately funded in many states, Montana included. Tax money should not be going to religious schools at all. Doing so will harm public schools.

Maybe this decision is not the one that opens the floodgates and blurs the lines that separate church and state, but thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court there’s now a crack in the wall that separates the two.

DERELICTION OF DUTY:

Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden was out of his basement yesterday and landed some punches on Donald Trump. The Associated Press (AP) reported that Biden took aggressive aim Tuesday at President Donald Trump’s fitness for the Oval Office, suggesting he has abdicated his duty to protect U.S. troops facing Russian threats abroad and American citizens facing a pandemic and economic calamity at home.

It was also reported:

Biden stopped short of saying Trump had violated his oath of office or should face any consequences from Congress based on any inaction on potential Russian bounties. But he called it “an absolute dereliction of duty if any of this is even remotely true,” and, in that case, he added, “the public should, unrelated to my running, conclude that this man is unfit to be president of the United States of America.”

Biden even held a press conference and took several questions from the press in attendance. Biden did not say anything about “fake news” or say someone was stupid for asking a question. Biden did not make any racist comments, either.

Toward the end, Biden was asked about his cognitive capability compared to Trump. Biden responded with, “I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capability to the cognitive capability of the man I’m running against.

TESTING IN THE USA:

If we listen to President Donald Trump and others in his administration, you would hear that if we do more testing for the coronavirus “you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases, or “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, actually.”

You probably have a relative or two who drink the MAGA juice and believe everything Trump says. In the case of testing, Trump is wrong.

There’s an opinion piece from an expert in the field that you should read and maybe forward to Uncle Joe if you are still friends!

Jennifer B. Nuzzo is an epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Health Security. She is also lead epidemiologist for the university’s COVID-19 Testing Insights Initiative.

She writes that the extreme version of the argument obviously makes no sense: If we stopped testing for cancer, cancer diagnoses would also go away, though cancer’s prevalence in the population would remain the same.

I know, I know, getting Trump people to use their brains and think about that will be almost impossible.

Nuzzo closes with:

Testing, in short, is not an obstacle to Trump’s goal of reopening the economy. It is one of the tools that will allow us to control disease spread, to keep people safe and confident as they begin reengaging outside of their houses. Ignoring the data is not a serious strategy: It is a threat to health and the economy.

Click HERE to read the whole article.

ONE MORE THING:

Some breaking news…

The President does read, and he also consumes intelligence verbally. – White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany (Source)

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