RUTHFULLY YOURS

Flatten the Curve!”

It was the watchword of the wildly overreactive COVID-19 lock-down-everything-that-moves strategy – along with “Stay Safe. Stay Home” and the colossally annoying “We’re All in This Together” (uh, no we’re not, you eight-figure morning news anchors safely broadcasting from the Hamptons while the help watched the kids – and 30 million-plus regular folks lost their jobs).

Remember? We were all staying safely home apart together (or was it together apart?) for 15 days (or was it 30 days? or two months? or six months? or indefinitely?). The expressed goal: keep the “curve” of new cases, hospitalizations and intensive-care unit use from rising too quickly and overwhelming the health care system.

Been there. Done that.

Now, a new phrase is needed to explain why, amid the utter media panic so presciently predicted here, America should calm the [expletive deleted] down and stay open for business.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who rightly earned kudos for his handling of the virus from anyone with a lick of fairness or common sense (which excepts 100% of Democrats and 150% of the mainstream news media), in a Friday press conference provided just such a catchall catchphrase – one widely recognized by the global public health community.

“Disease Burden.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/25/as-they-disband-chop-its-leaders-insist-their-anarchy-that-enabled-rape-and-murder-was-successful/

They came, they saw, they killed and raped and pillaged. CHOP was clearly a wild success.

“CHOP,” Seattle’s lawless Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, is no longer occupied.

The “Solidarity Committee” of CHOP, the six-block cop-free area previously named CHAZ for Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, addressed their “Comrades in the struggle” on Twitter Wednesday to break the news: “The CHOP project is now concluded.”

An important message from #CHOP #CHOPSeattle. Please amplify. Thank you for your support over the last two weeks. #ChopWasASuccess #CHOPcomms #CHOPCHAZ ☂️☂️☂️ #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/7e5ISrWvX6

— Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (Official Account) (@CHOPOfficialSEA) June 24, 2020

“Over the last two weeks, we achieved what no one thought possible. We successfully built a self-governing community and convinced city leaders to enact meaningful police reform, including substantial budget cuts to the SPD,” the committee said of their “beloved CHOP,” where very few demonstrators remain. The committee noted that their morning “census” revealed fewer than two dozen CHOP occupants near the police precinct and only 11 near Seattle’s Space Needle.

“Thank you to everyone for your support over the last two weeks and congratulations on your victories. You should feel proud!” the statement continued, accompanied by the hashtag #ChopWasASuccess on the announcement tweet.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/28/in-first-weekend-of-riots-looting-damag

Looting costs in America’s 20 largest metropolitan areas exceeded $400 million from the first weekend of rioting, according to a new report from the Anderson Economic Group.

“This includes property damage, lost inventory, cleanup and reconstruction costs, and closure-related lost wages,” the report stated. “[The study] did not assign any costs to peaceful protests or demonstrations.”

The report, published June 5, used “news publications to identify where looting occurred…and estimate the total costs of looting between May 29 and June 3.” The report authors say this value could be severely underestimated.

“Our estimates are based on observed patterns of looting in the 20 largest metropolitan areas across the country. We did not estimate costs in smaller metro areas that may have also experienced looting,” stated Brian Peterson, the firm’s director of public policy and economic analysis. “Furthermore, our estimates do not include costs to state or local governments that experienced property damage or incurred increased emergency service costs.”

According to an approximation given to Market Watch by Property Claim Services, damage incurred by riots in just Minnesota could total more than $25 million.

“We hope that those businesses that experienced looting and damage will be able to bounce back, but we know that some will not make it,” said Peterson. “That means empty storefronts and the loss of jobs at those businesses, which ultimately hurts local communities.”

https://spectator.us/where-deaths-coronavirus-wave/

The coronavirus doomsayers could not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded second wave. Because the red states recklessly loosened their lockdowns, we are now told, the US is seeing a dangerous spike in coronavirus cases. ‘EXPERTS SKETCH GLOOMY PICTURE OF VIRUS SPREAD: FAUCI TELLS OF “DISTURBING” WAVE, WITH A VACCINE MONTHS AWAY,’ read the front-page lead headline in the New York Times on Wednesday. ‘VIRUS SPREAD AKIN TO “FOREST FIRE”’ read another front page headline in the Los Angeles Times on Monday, quoting Michael Osterholm, one of the media’s favorite public health experts. Osterholm had told NBC’s Meet the Press: ‘I’m actually of the mind right now — I think this is more like a forest fire. I don’t think that this is going to slow down.’

The ‘this’ is an uptick in daily new cases from 19,002 on June 9 to 38,386 on June 24. The high to date in new daily cases was on April 24 — 39,072. Since April 24, the daily case count started declining, then began rising again after around June 9. What virtually every fear-mongering story on America’s allegedly precarious situation leaves out, however, is the steadily dropping daily death numbers — from a high of 2,693 on April 21 to 808 on June 24. That April high was driven by New York City and its environs; those New York death numbers have declined, but they have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country. This should be good news. Instead, it is no news.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/06/28/john-bolton-trump-book-profit-over-patriotism-column/3256625001/

Rep. Adam  Schiff, D-Calif. District 28, is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Bolton provides new evidence that Trump flagrantly abused power and confirms our central impeachment charge that he put his interests above America’s.

Last week, we witnessed the reemergence of John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser, and the release of his book. In it, Bolton describes his personal experiences with Donald Trump and his great alarm at Trump’s incompetence, his dangerous subordination of our national security to his own personal interests, and his fundamental indecency.

In short, Bolton is telling Americans what we already know. That the president is exactly what he appears to be: petty, self-serving, ignorant and utterly supplicant to autocrats in China, Turkey, North Korea and Russia.

We proved during the impeachment trial that Trump withheld hundreds of millions in military aid to Ukraine to coerce that country into announcing a sham investigation of his political rival. Bolton confirms our case and provides additional evidence of that flagrant abuse of power by providing a firsthand account of how Trump confirmed this illicit quid pro quo during a conversation they had. Moreover, Bolton also corroborates the testimony of Gordon Sondland, the former U.S. ambassador to the European Union who testified that “everyone was in the loop.” Indeed they were, including the secretary of State, the Defense secretary and Attorney General William Barr.