Important headlines for January 29th
Bottom Line: These are stories you don't want to miss and my hot takes on them...
Medical examiner: Tests indicate Influenza B killed West Palm boy - Palm Beach Post
Excerpt: Preliminary findings suggest that Influenza B tragically killed a 12-year-old boy in West Palm Beach on Tuesday, according to a tweet from the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner.
On Sunday, Dylan Winnik came down with flu-like symptoms and died 48 hours later.
Hot Take: Most of us associate the flu with a form of evil contagion that can make us miserable for a week or two. And while you've doubtless heard that the flu can be deadly it still just isn't something we think about generally but here are alarming facts to consider from the CDC's database.
Since the CDC began tracking flu related deaths (1976) in the US we've never had fewer than 3,000 deaths in a year in the US and we've had as many as 49,000. That's a range of 8 to 134 people who die daily due to it on average. In other words, as much as we try to avoid it, it's probably more serious than we appreciate. Looking at the weekly update from the CDC's map here's the scorecard for Florida:
The flu's widespread
Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties are showing moderate activity
Broward is in mild territory
So, the good news is that it hasn't been getting worse recently in SFL but it's still everywhere around us (with Broward being the best of the worst in SFL).
Sorry, Skeptics, Trump's Tax Cut Working Wonders Michael Goodwin, New York Post
Excerpt: Millions of workers will get the bonuses, most of which are for $1,000, and untold others will get new or higher-paying jobs.
Most of those workers also will see their take-home pay increase because they will get personal income tax cuts and a doubling of the standard deduction. Those changes will become apparent in a week or so when the new lower rates are applied to payrolls.
The cash-in-the-pocket benefits are great news to many families, but the boom is doing something else too: It’s giving the millennials a firsthand lesson in economics.
Hot Take: This story picks up on the point I made last week about the Millennial generation being introduced to what the real American economy can do and looks like. As I cited then. I'm as bullish on younger adults learning from this economy as I am the economy itself. It's already apparent that what many in academia, along with their allies on the left perpetuated, were bold faced lies. Now get ready for the good stuff as younger adults learn and engage an economy that their parents remember fondly from the 80's & 90's.
FBI Went to Great Lengths to Plot Against Trump Wayne Allyn Root, LV Review-Journal
Excerpt: Many in the FBI/DOJ leadership will be fired or forced to resign. Many others may wind up serving prison time. The scandal involving texts from FBI investigator Peter Strzok and his lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, is so deadly, it goes far beyond the wildest imagination of anything in a Hollywood movie. FBI agents openly texted about how Hillary was about to win the presidency — and no one wanted to be on her bad side. Page texted to the lead Hillary investigator (her lover): “She might be our next president. The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more DOJ than FBI?”
So the intimidated FBI agents rigged the investigation, asked her softball questions, didn’t record her interview, didn’t put her under oath and then changed the wording of the conclusion from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.”Here’s how bad the story gets. Even the crooked FBI agents out to fix the investigation against Hillary believed and recommended that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe could not possibly be in charge of the probe after his wife took a $700,000 donation from Terri McAuliffe, the Clinton’s great friend and financial bagman for decades. It’s clear top FBI leadership hated Donald Trump, used fraudulent pretenses (a fake dossier paid for by Hillary and her campaign) to get FISA warrants against Trump and were out to stop Trump at all costs. As I’ve warned from Day One, the main purpose of obtaining illegal wiretaps to spy on the Trump campaign was to pass along his campaign plans to Hillary and her team. This was how the FBI leadership tried to guarantee an election victory for Hillary.
Until tomorrow...