America surging (via Instapundit)

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: How 3M Plans to Make More Than a Billion Masks By End of Year. “The company is using ‘surge capacity’ to increase the production of N95 masks to fight the pandemic. Localized supply chains are a secret weapon, too.”
Inside the Story of How H-E-B Planned for the Pandemic. “The grocer started communicating with Chinese counterparts in January and was running tabletop simulations a few weeks later. (But nothing prepared it for the rush on toilet paper.)”
Four Seasons Hotel offers New York City medical workers free rooms so they don’t infect their families with coronavirus.James Dyson designed a new ventilator in 10 days. He’s making 15,000 for the coronavirus pandemic fight.Inside the Maine factory racing to supply America with virus test swabs.Grassroots 3D printing efforts help produce medical safety gear.

I am an American

“Conservative.” “Liberals.” These two categories are not the same. Not all “Conservatives” are “Republicans,” and – unfortunately for the life expectancy of the Republican party – not all “Republicans” are “Conservative.”

An attempt to pull all the Trump voters into one group was made under the ham-handed and, frankly, Deep State 1984esque label, “Alt-Right.” ...


I don’t know about you, but I do not consider myself either a “Conservative” or a “Republican” or a member of the “Alt-Right.” Never have. Never will. I consider myself to be one thing and one thing only:


I AM AN AMERICAN.

Always have been.

Always will be.

Nothing less.

Couldn’t be anything more.

Born and bred from ancestors that go back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636.

To call me a Conservative is to miss the point.

To call me a Republican is to mistake me by a mile.

To call me an AMERICAN is to know me down to the bone. I suspect this blunt fact is true of all those who term themselves “Independents,” all those who call themselves “Conservative,” all those who joined the Tea Party, and the Trumpening; they and all the others who,

Came from the hills and mountains,
The valleys and the plains
,
Some were kind and gentle,
And some too wild to tame.

That’s who we are and that’s who we shall always remain — Americans.

A single, obvious, and overarching word to cover a wide, wide tent:

Americans.

Americans all regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin.

Let’s rebrand ourselves from this point forward. Let us go back to the original brand:

When you are called a Conservative, you reply, “No, I am an AMERICAN.”

If someone tries to tar you with the label “Republican,” you must correct them by saying, “No, I am an AMERICAN.”

If accused of being some sort of stealth fascist by being labeled “Alt-Right,” you need to sort those mental midgets out by reminding them, “No, I am an AMERICAN.”

If they say you are arguing from Republican or Conservative views, point out to them that you are arguing from AMERICAN views only.

Do that consistently and we can all look forward to future disputes and elections that pit the “Progressives” against the AMERICANS. I know which way I’d bet.

It’s a big country and it needs a big rebranding. If we call ourselves “AMERICANS” we’re going to need a bigger tent.

Conrad Black: America's resurgence is reshaping the world

... the economy of the United States is astoundingly strong: full employment, an expanding work force, negligible inflation and about three per cent economic growth. And it is a broad economic recovery, not based on service industries as in the United Kingdom (where London handles most of Europe’s financial industry, while most of British industry has fled), and not based largely on the fluctuating resources markets as has often been Canada’s experience. In the eight years of president Obama, the United States lost 219,000 manufacturing jobs; in the two years of Trump, the country has added 477,000 manufacturing jobs. This was not supposed to be possible, and this time, unlike in the great Reagan boom, it cannot be dismissed by the left (and it was false in the eighties) as a profusion of “hamburger flippers, dry cleaners and people delivering pizza,” (all necessary occupations).


It is clear that China is feeling the heat of American tariffs. Their magnificent hypocrisy of gamboling in a $360-billion trade surplus with the United States while extorting technology from American companies and reducing American high-tech giants like Apple and Google to snivelling on China’s behalf when their sales in that country are reduced, and all the while leading G-77 in cupped-hands requests for relief from the economically most advanced countries for their pollution of the world environment (although China is the world’s greatest polluter), all of it is ending. The United States will not be the world’s premier chump anymore. The most enthusiastic support the United States is receiving in its trade stance with China is from China’s neighbours, from India to Japan. Of course China is the world’s second-greatest power and must be treated with respect, but that does not mean the shameless grovelling of Trump’s predecessors, paying court to Beijing like lackeys kowtowing to the emperors of the Middle Kingdom.