October 10, 2020
Countdown 24 Days Until Election
PENCE AND HARRIS
As compared to the presidential debate the only real excitement was the fly on Mile Pence nesting for over 2 minutes in his finely quaffed silver hair. The fly should now go into quarantine and be tested for Covid-19. Did Pence have pink eye? This has been reported as a rare symptom of the Covid-19 virus. A sty in the eye with the fly guy.
Pence had the habit of interrupting Kamala and was rude and tried to get her to answer his questions. The debate was rife with lies and change of topics when either were asked a probing question that they did not want to answer. Pence kept trying to paint the democratic campaign as a left wing socialistic tone given in to the Green New Deal. Kamala painted Pence and the republicans with the picture of a failed presidency in regard to safety and health of all the people. Both Pence and Harris dodged direct questions.
Mike Pence uttered a slew of misstatements and talking points laced with outright lies. Kamala stuck mostly to the facts during their encounter. Some of the obvious misstatements are shown below:
Pence overstated the China flight ban Trump implemented on Jan 31. The ban applied to mainland China only and did not apply to U S Citizens. Trump was the 24th country to ban Chinese and Trump was the 34th country to ban European flights. Over 40,000 citizens returned from the China and Hong Kong, many were not screened. Pence accused Biden of being against the move which was false. What Biden said in a tweet a day after the announcement of the ban was: ‘’we need to lead the way with science—not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fearmongering.” Biden made no mention of the ban contrary to Pence’s rhetoric.
The Pence insistence that the presidents’ non-existing health care plan will cover pre-existing conditions was a falsehood. The republicans have promised a replacement for the ACA for ten years Trump has promised a new replacement within weeks for two years. No the Trump administration is not protecting the pre-existing conditions from insurers gauging patients. The administration has signaled with two things recently. The first is the appointment of the new Supreme Court Justice that has written articles against the legitimacy of the ACA, and the second is Trump’s Justice Department’s ongoing lawsuit currently being heard by the Supreme Court whereas the Trump Justice Department would normally argue for legislation legitimacy and not against. Attorney General William Barr’s Justice department is arguing against the legality of the entire ACA. Killing the ACA also removes individual protections for 80-100 million people with pre-existing conditions to be discriminated against by insurers and 20 million individuals will lose their health insurance. On Sept. 24th Trump signed an executive order made a commitment to protect those with pre-existing conditions, unfortunately this order has no teeth and having absolutely no effect.
Pence tried to claim the Swine Flu H1N1 outbreak during the Obama administration was handled poorly, of course it only killed 12,500, similar to every other annual flu outbreak. The death rate was .02% vs Covid-19 being almost 3% which is 150 times more lethal. The Trump people like it two ways, Trump has claimed that the pandemic is similar to the flu with as many as 100,000 deaths (I don’t know where he gets his numbers?) yet he chides Biden for only 12,500 H1N1 flu deaths but infected 60 million? The two viruses were very different and the responses were as well. Like Trump has said before you don’t shut down the economy with a seasonal flu outbreak. I would caution the pandemic is 150 times deadlier than the H1N1 Flu.
The one question that Harris avoided was whether or not a Biden administration would pack the courts with additional members if they had the Senate and the Presidency? Her answer should have been, we will only do what the republicans have done and no more. Of course 2 more is not a crowd in this case.