A la Art of the Deal, will President Trump knock China virus co$t$ off America's debt$ to China?

Yesterday morning, I wondered if, A la Art of the Deal, President Trump will knock China virus co$t$ off America's debt$ to China?

Meanwhile, here is a bit more reader discussion in The Patriot Post, of which I learned from the indefatigable retired scientist Sancho Panza, who voted for Obama and then for Trump. Maybe Sancho was concerned I was going stir crazy from practicing extreme social distancing at home alone. 

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  MSMsuxLibs Plain and simple, Democraps just want to destroy this county by any means necessary. They have no moral compass, no shame, and love for this country or its citizens. All they care about are illegals, power, control, and the destruction of the Constitution.
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    Sloan Bashinsky  MSMsuxLibs 
    

    I know lots of Democrats, lots of Republicans, lots of Independents, a few Libertarians, a few Green Party people, and none of them want to destroy America. They have different views about how things should be run.

    I thought Pelosi and the House Dems attempt to include a free abortion rider on the relief package was unconscionable. (When I practiced law in Birmingham, Alabama, for a while I represented the local Planned Parenthood agency. Back then, late term abortions were not done nilly willy.)

    I thought Senate Republicans' attempt to stall passage of the relief package was not in the best interest people who do not have a lot of money to protect them during this ordeal.

    The sad, grim fact is, the coronavirus doesn't pick sides, it's after everyone. If that makes divergent viewpoints merge into a common cause rally, good. If the coronavirus results in President Trump ending up kinda like Vladimir Putin ended up in Russia, indefinite president, I'm not in favor of that.
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      MNIce  Sloan Bashinsky 
      

      The attempt to slow down action on the relief package was to get rid of some of the more egregious waste stuck into it, and make sure that what gets passed will be effective. That's what the Senate is supposed to do, and it was definitely in the interest of the people. Remember, there will most likely be life after the virus, and we don't want to make too big a mess to clean up then. "Act in haste, repent at leisure."
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        Sloan Bashinsky  MNIce 
        

        In my first comment, which is toward the end of comments, I asked where the money is coming from for the relief package? U.S. Military budget? Cuts in other federal programs? Loans from, say, China? Treasury Department prints more money?

        China seemed a bit slow to react to the virus.

        Trump definitely was a bit slow.

        
        
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          MNIce  Sloan Bashinsky 
          

          The source of the funds is a huge question, and I don't like any of the potential answers.

          China wasn't just "a bit slow to react." They were criminally negligent. The Communist government knew about it six weeks before it became public knowledge; that's one of the reasons there is suspicion that the virus escaped from the government laboratory in Wuhan. They not only failed to contain it in a timely manner, when they finally did impose a quarantine, they announced it in Wuhan well before the fact, so hundreds of thousands of people, including infected carriers, fled the city and carried the virus elsewhere.

          President Trump acted very quickly to try to keep the virus from coming here from China, as soon as it became known that it was a problem. I recall that his enemies lambasted him for "racism" and "xenophobia" when he banned air travel from China. Unfortunately, because of China's malfeasance, it was probably already too late since the virus could be picked up from other nations. Even so, his measures kept the infection rate down for an extra six weeks - we need only to look at the mess in Iran and Italy to see what we might already have had on the west coast, with its normally high interaction with China. From that time until the national emergency declaration, his administration was very busy working on threat analysis and contingency planning; this is obvious from what they had ready to go when the emergency was declared. There is also the effort to take full advantage of our federalist system. Instead of unconstitutionally locking down everybody in a one-size-fits-all approach, which would be far more devastating to our economy that what we are already experiencing, local officials are being given guidance on how to tailor their responses to the local situations, based on the identified characteristics of the disease.

          You should realize that it has been nearly 60 years since we had an epidemic threat of this magnitude and severity; there are very few people alive in this nation who have experience in managing this type of crisis.

          It has been over 40 years since we have had any major training of the people in coping with large-scale emergencies other than weather disasters; even the response to 9/11 had barely minimal public training in recognizing and responding to terrorist activity. This is the fault of Congress; according to the Constitution, one of its powers and implied duties is "To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, ... reserving to the states respectively ... the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress." The militia in the sense used here is the people (Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution). During the 1950s and early 1960s, Congress mandated the training of the people in dealing with nuclear attack, including fallout protection. With today's possibility of a biological weapon attack, we should now be trained in epidemic response and general national disaster preparation. If we had already had such training and acted on it, I don't think we would have had the absurd run on toilet paper we've seen in the last week.

          
          
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            Sloan Bashinsky  MNIce 
            

            Just a bit ago received in my email account a link to a Pro Publica article:

            Senator dumped stock after reassuring public about coronavirus preparedness
            Intelligence Chair Richard Burr’s selloff came around the time he was receiving daily briefings on the health threat.

            Verbatim from that article:

            ~He was one of the authors of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which shapes the nation’s response to public health threats like the coronavirus. Burr’s office did not respond to requests for comment about what sort of briefing materials, if any, on the coronavirus threat Burr may have seen as chair of the intelligence committee before his selling spree.
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            ~According to the NPR report, Burr told attendees of the luncheon held at the Capitol Hill Club: “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history ... It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

            ~He warned that companies might have to curtail their employees’ travel, that schools could close and that the military might be mobilized to compensate for overwhelmed hospitals.

            ~The luncheon was organized by the Tar Heel Circle, a club for businesses and organizations in North Carolina that are charged up to $10,000 for membership and are promised “interaction with top leaders and staff from Congress, the administration, and the private sector.”

            ~Burr’s public comments had been considerably less dire. In a Feb. 7 op-ed that he co-authored with another senator, he assured the public that “the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus.” He wrote, “No matter the outbreak or threat, Congress and the federal government have been vigilant in identifying gaps in its readiness efforts and improving its response capabilities.”
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            Sloan Bashinsky  MNIce 
            

            When i read a while back that the China virus causes awful runny noses, I wondered if that publicized symptom had something to do with the run on toilet paper, which is cheaper than Kleenex?

            I think the answers to where the funding for the relief will come from should have been made crystal clear by President Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell. That it wasn't done that way, well, perhaps everyone from Trump, Pelosi and McConnel down, who had a hand in it, should catch the virus, for starters, and let the other karmic course of events play out in this lifetime, instead of later.

            This morning I wondered if, a la Art of the Deal, President Trump is thinking of declaring America's debts to China will be reduced by America's costs associated with defending against the China virus? This accused lefty, heh, I'm ambidextrous, hopes Trump will do just that, and - wow - the source of funding the China virus relief packages is solved and revealed!

            I, too, wonder if the China virus is man-made and got loose? That may never be known. I agree, the virus caught the US. Government woefully unprepared, and the fault for that goes back through several administrations and Trump inherited it - although I did read he got rid of a department that focused on spotting and dealing with epidemic and pandemic outbreaks. My problem with Trump and the China virus, however, is he really did play down what the media was reporting, and it looks to me the media had it sized up pretty good, and Trump was slow to catch on, and I think he owes the media an apology, instead of rating his response 10 on a scale of 10.

            In the big scheme, I think the approach being taken everywhere just might wreck the economic and social fabric of every country where the China virus gets loose . Based on what I'm reading, the virus already has mutated, and will continue mutating. A Bloomberg article quoted several doctors, one of whom said generations of the virus will be around until there is a vaccine, or everyone catches it. If it is mutating, will a vaccine be effective?

            I'm 77. Have history of respiratory infections, including pneumonia. Also other medical. My chances of surviving the virus are not good, but I cannot stop going to grocery stores, for example, and given the virus' long incubation period in hosts showing no symptoms, but contagious, it looks like only a matter of time before I contract the virus, despite my social-distancing efforts, which have really altered my life. Lucky for me an internet friend, a retired scientist who voted for Obama and Trump, sent me an article from Patriot Post, to which I responded and the rest, so far, is history unfolding :-).

            China virus deaths mostly are in my demographic: sickly, old people. In olden times, such people often left or were abandoned by their tribes for the benefit of the younger and healthy. Keeping up such people today costs a great deal of money. Perhaps letting the virus run its course is, in the long view, the best course of action? I happen to know the soul is eternal and there is an afterlife, and it isn't exactly as all or nothing as some religions hold forth.
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          MIKE IN TX  Sloan Bashinsky
          

          Hey, Lefty - Odumbass didn't respond to H1N1 at all...

          .... and how in the world could Trump grab that indefinite president seat?

          
          
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            Sloan Bashinsky  MIKE IN TX 
            

            Replies to my comments here went into my junkmail, which I noticed yesterday and marked them "not junk". I don't see in this thread anything to me from H1N1. I bet there are many million MAGAs who would love to see Trump made president for life, something he himself floated a while back. Declaring America at war against the Chinese virus, invoking the War Powers Act to mobilize Ameriance businesses to manufacture needed medical equipment and supplies, a Republican blow out at the polls this year, I can easily envision a Putin-like scenario in the White House. I do truly hope that scenario does not appeal to you, any American, nor Patriot Post.
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