RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/02/durhams-investigation-fearless-predictions-for-2022/

While the seemingly slow pace of Special Counsel John Durham’s “Russiagate” investigation is frustrating to many, it appears that conditions are ripe for a slew of indictments in 2022, holding to account both FBI personnel and a number of other actors connected to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, possibly including the Clinton campaign itself.

Although grand jury proceedings are kept confidential, COVID restrictions likely caused both its sessions to be postponed and its witnesses to be temporarily excused from appearing. These delays were inevitable and certainly not Durham’s fault.

One strikingly ironic result of the partisan Mueller investigation was that its one-sided focus ignored any attempt to ferret out anti-Trump crimes dealing with “Russian Collusion.” Had it done so, a subsequent investigation, such as Durham’s, might have been foreclosed. In any case, Mueller’s investigation delayed the start of Durham’s.

Durham is scrupulously ethical and does not leak to a thirsty public. That is a good thing, because the partisan Attorney General Merrick Garland would like nothing better than a “good cause” excuse to fire Durham for violating Department of Justice policies. Durham’s silence, though, has frustrated curious citizens.

But recent indictments do tell us something about the focus of Durham’s probe, when viewed alongside other publicly available information such as the Report of FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz on FBI FISA abuse.

For instance, Durham in the Igor Danchenko indictment does not mention, as does Horowitz in his report, that in his January 24-26, 2017, interview with the FBI, Danchenko said his Steele dossier claims were mainly gossip, rumor, and bar talk. After this interview, for the next year and a half, the FBI told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that it found Danchenko truthful and cooperative, a claim repeated to the Senate. But what the FBI did not tell FISC or the Senate was that Danchenko was truthful and cooperative about the Steele dossier’s being untruthful speculation and jest “over beers.” In short, the central thrust of the FISA application was without factual basis.

Accordingly, any FBI agent who knew of Danchenko’s interview and participated in either of the two subsequent FISA renewal applications or the Senate testimony has potential criminal culpability. The Danchenko interview thus places agents Stephen Somma, Joe Pientka, Peter Strzok, Bill Priestap, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, and others in potential jeopardy.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/trouble-in-paradise-the-crumbling-california-model/

California is broken, but it is not doomed.

S ome horrified conservatives dismiss California as the progressive dystopia, bound for bankruptcy and, let’s hope, growing irrelevance. Progressives, for their part, hail the Golden State as the avatar of a better future, the role model for a new, more environmentally friendly and socially just economic order. They often dismiss critiques as conservative misinformation.

Yet California is not doomed, at least in the near term, nor is it anything like a model of social democracy. As long as its tech oligarchs produce enormous profits and generate wealth, California remains fiscally flush for the near term, and the evolving economy, long on digitization and constant entertainment, works to the state’s historic strengths. Key industries such as space and biomedical research also offer promise.

The big problem with the California model is that it does not work for most Californians, who suffer from the highest poverty rate (cost of living adjusted) in the country. Despite being home to three of the nation’s four most expensive housing markets, California has among the lowest cost-adjusted median income of any state, as demographer Wendell Cox notes. Although not particularly hard hit by pandemic fatalities, California continues to recover more slowly than the rest of the states and now suffers the highest unemployment rate in the country — including nine of the 16 metros with the greatest joblessness. Even as the tech oligarchy has reaped record profits and expanded its wealth to unprecedented levels, California ranks as the second-worst place to find a job of all the states. Thank God for Hawaii!

A New Economic Model?

Flush from his recall triumph, Governor Gavin Newsom, along with the legislature, seems determined to double down on his attempt to shape California as the model for the progressive future. He claims that our state is “the envy of the world” and the model of social justice. “Unlike the Washington plutocracy,” he boasts, “California isn’t satisfied serving a powerful few on one side of the velvet rope.”

We can see, in aggregate numbers, some justification for crowing. A writer at Bloomberg claims that the state has “the best economy” in the world, pointing to the bloated stock prices of the major tech firms, soaring home values, and the enormous wealth creation accruing to a relative handful. Other writers insist that California will continue to dominate most of its key industries, owing to its innovation and capital resources.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/debunking-the-latest-round-of-covid-hysteria/

Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we talk Omicron, preview the upcoming January 6 coverage, and tally 2022’s already growing list of media misses.

Age of Omicron

The pandemic has been a wellspring for poor reporting and analysis for portions of three calendar years now, with reactions to the spread of the Omicron variant serving as a catalyst in the opening days of 2022.

Some habitual hysterics, including Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, a public-health scientist who previously taught at Harvard, have sought to use the emergence and spread of Omicron to argue for more restrictions and mandates, mocking the idea that it’s milder than previous iterations of the virus. Feigl-Ding even went so far as to suggest  that “whoever arrogantly pushed the ‘#Omicron is mild’ [narrative]” be fired. In support of his theory, Feigl-Ding points his more than 600,000 Twitter followers to rising pediatric-hospitalization rates.

However, these data neither vindicate Feigl-Ding’s perspective, nor convict those he’s criticizing. A report from the New York Times indicates that overlapping cases attributable to both the Delta and Omicron variants – as well as lower vaccination rates in children – are what’s driving the rise in hospitalizations. The fact that the vaccines were approved later for children than they were adults, as well as the lack of consequences of infection for them relative to their parents and grandparents, has resulted in fewer of them being inoculated.

Moreover, the rising number of hospitalized children who have tested positive for the virus include many who arrived at the facilities with other medical issues. In fact, the Times report stated that “around the country have reported positivity rates as high as 20 percent among children. But the vast majority were asymptomatic and arrived at the hospital with other health problems.” What’s more, one study of southwest Pennsylvania – where Omicron has emerged as the leading variant –  showed that “the proportion of pediatric admissions requiring intensive care services had dropped by half since early fall, and has continued to fall in the last month.” Pediatric coronavirus hospitalizations still have yet to come close to matching the typical amount of seasonal pediatric flu cases seen in a year.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/we-must-accept-covid-19-as-an-endemic-disease

Never mind how virulent the coronavirus is. The key point is that it is now endemic.

Perhaps it will become milder over time, perhaps it won’t. Obviously, we must hope that it does, that it follows the same trajectory as other viruses, becoming less lethal but more transmissible until it joins that sprawling family of rhinoviruses, adenoviruses, and, indeed, coronaviruses that we collectively call “colds.”

But as far as public policy goes, the lethality of COVID-19 is a second-order issue. The more immediate question is whether it is feasible to slow its spread and, if it is, whether there are advantages in doing so.

If we think, for example, that widespread vaccination might heap high a protective rampart, then there are arguments for vaccine passports, possibly even for compulsory inoculation. If we think that the disease can be eliminated, then there are arguments for stringent suppression measures. If we think that dangerous new mutations can be kept out, then there are arguments for border restrictions and quarantines.

But what if none of these things is true? What if COVID-19 is as ineradicable and endemic as influenza? What if it comes and goes seasonally, leaving its victims with a dollop of immunity that wanes over time? What if, like the flu, it regularly mutates, meaning that recovery from one version bestows only partial protection against others? What if it is checked rather than halted by vaccines — again, like flu rather than, say, polio?

If we are dealing with such a disease, a recurrent respiratory virus, then almost all the measures that we have put in place around the world are pointless.

Let me repeat that: Almost all of them are pointless.