CARS: Expect U.S. Car Sales and Production to Decline Dramatically.

HOUSE COVID-19 BILL MAY THREATEN FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS. Disturbing analysis from the Institute for Free Speech. The bill reads: “[a]ny corporation that receives Federal aid related to COVID-19 shall, until the date on which all such Federal aid is repaid by the corporation to the Federal Government… not carry out any Federal lobbying activities.” Unless the 1400-page bill has some exception in it somewhere else, this would include not just widget-makers but advocacy groups (disclosure: potentially including my employer, FIRE) that might end up receiving some kind of unemployment, payroll, etc. subsidies, unconstitutionally preventing them from contacting legislators at all.

NEVER LET A PANDEMIC GO TO WASTE: Bryan Preston: Pelosi Dems Treat Coronavirus Bill Like It’s a Genie that Jumped Out of a Christmas Tree.

As the piece Charles linked to in the last hour notes, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that she will attempt to pass the Senate’s coronavirus economic stimulus package – putting aside the alternative, projected $2.5 trillion measure that she proposed.” But her earlier efforts will be the stuff of many a GOP campaign ad this fall.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Great Shotguns for Home Defense.

THIS JUST IN:  NO PORK FOR NANCY! House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Panderville)  just announced she has dropped procedural blockage and will allow a vote on the Senate’s version of the COVID bill instead of holding the nation hostage by demanding what some commentators called “racial and gender pay equity provisions, diversity on corporate boards, increased use of minority-owned banks by federal offices, and a grab-bag of other diversity-themed requirements.”

JustTheNews appears to be the first with this development:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that she will attempt to pass the Senate’s coronavirus economic stimulus package – putting aside the alternative, projected $2.5 trillion measure that she proposed. The California Democrat said she’ll try to pass the Senate’s projected $1.8 trillion measure by unanimous consent, meaning House members can say yes without having to come to Capitol Hill to vote.

More to come, for sure.

Note: Normally the Instateam doesn’t post during certain hours, but the Good Professor thought it important enough to let folks know now.

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ON NANCY PELOSI’S JOURNEY TO AND BEYOND SURREALVILLE ON CORONAVIRUS: Lots of folks on the Right are weighing in on the House Speaker’s Christmas Tree for the Left rewrite of the Senate’s bipartisan coronavirus relief package. Monica Showalter at American Thinker captures it perfectly and in great detail. Here’s a sample:

“Moscow Mitch’s slush fund?  There’s no slush fund; everything here is pinned to specific items, such as checks for workers, and masks and gowns for hospitals.  Slush funds were what were used to reward Democrat groups such as ACORN during the 2009 stimulus package.  We have quite a bit of projecting going on here, for starters.

“More important, take a look at that Moscow Mitch designator — something McConnell reportedly does not like, so she uses it.  There’s no bipartisan spirit there to start, not even any hope of it with this kind of talk, just a desire for political slug-festing.

“More important, the Moscow Mitch thing is a reference to the Democrats’ continuous hobbyhorse: finding some way to overturn the results of the 2016 election.  This is pure partisanship at its most disgusting, business as usual for the rabid and embittered Democrats.”

And you know what Glenn says about scrolling.

CIVIL RIGHTS: Lawsuit Filed Against New Jersey CoronaVirus Gun Ban.

NO, CORONA VIRUS IS NOT JUST LIKE THE FLU.

KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN FOR THE BUNNIES: ‘Great American Resurrection’: Trump Wants America Open and ‘Rarin’ to Go’ by Easter.

I think hoping to completely get rid of restrictions by Easter may be a little over-enthusiastic. But it’s going to be fun to watch the Megalithic Media start arguing for economic collapse.

HARVARD PRESIDENT AND HIS WIFE TEST POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS.

FASTER, PLEASE: Covid-19 vaccines are possible, but we need a public-health mindset to make the most of them.

FREE SPEECH AT FRESHMAN ORIENTATION: When coronavirus fades, the problems on our campuses will remain. That’s why FIRE and NYU’s First Amendment Watch have teamed up to offer six freshman orientation modules that aim to teach students about how free speech works on campus as soon as they get there. Will campuses adopt it? I think people might be surprised at how many administrators would like a way out of the educational dead-end of constant misunderstanding and outrage guaranteed to repeatedly embarrass their schools. There’s a better way!

BUREAUCRATIC INTERFERENCE: FDA Stops At-Home Tests.

BRENDAN O’NEILL: The luxury of apocalypticism.

People’s refusal to panic has been a great source of frustration for the establishment in recent years. ‘The planet is burning’, they lie, in relation to climate change, and yet we do not weep or wail or even pay very much attention. ‘I want you to panic’, instructs the newest mouthpiece of green apocalypticism, Greta Thunberg, and yet most of us refuse to do so. A No Deal Brexit would unleash economic mayhem, racist pogroms and even a pandemic of super-gonorrhoea, they squealed, incessantly, like millenarian preachers balking at the imminent arrival of the lightning bolt of final judgement, and yet we didn’t flinch. We went to work. We went home. We still supported Brexit.

Our skittish elites have been so baffled, infuriated in fact, by our calm response to their hysterical warnings that they have invented pathologies to explain our unacceptable behaviour. The therapeutic language of ‘denialism’ is used to explain the masses’ refusal to fret over climate change. Environmentalists write articles on ‘the psychology of climate-change denial’, on ‘the self-deception and mass denial’ coursing through this society that refuses to flatter or engage with the hysteria of the eco-elites. Likewise, the refusal of voters to succumb to the dire, hollow warnings of the ferociously anti-Brexit wing of the establishment was interpreted by self-styled experts as a psychological disorder.

Read the whole thing.

I’d just add that the Soviets used to declare dissidents to be insane, so there’s nothing new here from the Left.

THE WUHAN CORONAVIRUS SEEMS TO BE HITTING THE ELITE SECTORS PRETTY HARD: Harvard president and his wife test positive for coronavirus. Some of this is probably just a function of who is being tested, but it’s probably also the case that traveling more puts you at higher risk, and elites travel the most.

NEWS I HOPE YOU CAN’T USE: Apple Watch Users Can Now Monitor How Bodies React To Coronavirus.

When we’re sick, cells in our immune system release small proteins called histamines which cause inflammation and expansion of blood cells. This process sends signals to our brain to increase heart rate and the amount of blood sent to such inflamed regions.

This elevated heart rate is most notable during sleep. Hence, Sleeping BPM will help give insight on how the body reacts to a sickness. Obviously, if users want to make use of this feature, they’ll need to wear the Apple Watch while sleeping at night – a time that’s usually used to replenish the battery of the watch. But given how most of us have quarantined ourselves, it shouldn’t be that big of a problem.

Not a replacement for medical care, but if people choose to share their data it will be useful.

NEVER LET A PANDEMIC GO TO WASTE: NY physicians urge Gov. Cuomo to ban tobacco to battle coronavirus.

TO BE FAIR, HE’S YOUNG AND INEXPERIENCED: Biden’s First Coronavirus Shadow-Briefing Was a Disaster.

DOWNLOADS FROM SPACE: SpaceX gets FCC license for 1 million satellite-broadband user terminals. “ SpaceX asked the Federal Communications Commission for the license in February 2019, and the FCC announced its approval in a public notice last week. The FCC approval is for ‘a blanket license for the operation of up to 1,000,000 fixed earth stations that will communicate with [SpaceX’s] non-geostationary orbit satellite system.’ The license is good for 15 years.”

SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76: Joe Biden calls Charlie Baker “Gov. Charlie Parker of Massachusetts.”

Bird lives!

PRIME: Amazon Care to provide delivery and pick-up of at-home COVID-19 test sample kits in Seattle trial. “Amazon is going to be working with a new research initiative backed in part by the Gates Foundation that will distribute at-home coronavirus assessment kits, and then deliver the collected samples to FDA-approved test facilities. Amazon Care, the health arm formed by Amazon initially for internal employee care, will be handling the delivery of the kits, as well as transportation of collected samples to the test labs, as first reported by CNBC.”

If this works, Amazon already has the infrastructure to take it national.

FRANCE’S DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF CORONAVIRUS REPRESSION: “This is France, the home of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, regressing to that of Robespierre and the Great Terror. France hesitated greatly before going down the repressive route. But once they had adopted it, the administration became prisoners of their own logic. Because many French people were not respecting the measures, equality of treatment – that great theoretical French totem – demanded even greater repression. And so the spiral continues.”

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