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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Something seems rotten in Flynn’s case — and maybe others, too Andrew McCarthy

By on April 30th, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/495366-something-seems-rotten-in-flynns-case-

The prosecution of Michael Flynn was rocked last Friday by the disclosure of new exculpatory information, leading to speculation that the exoneration of President Trump’s first national security adviser could be imminent. That would be an amazing reversal, since Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to FBI agents and, later, declined a federal judge’s invitation to withdraw that plea — reaffirming his admission of guilt. (Flynn has since sought to vacate the plea; the court has not yet ruled.)

The Department of Justice’s letter to Sidney Powell, Flynn’s current lawyer who has persisted for months to pry exculpatory evidence from DOJ, indicates that further revelations may be forthcoming. For now, the disclosure has two salient aspects. 

The first involves the factual basis for the Obama-era FBI’s investigation of Flynn — or, rather, the lack of a basis. Under federal law, a false statement made to investigators is actionable only if it is material to the matter under investigation. If there was no basis to believe Flynn had committed a crime, his counsel could have argued that any false statements allegedly made by Flynn when he was questioned in January 2017 were immaterial. Ergo, Ms. Powell contends that the withholding of this information violated the government’s duty to disclose exculpatory evidence.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A critique of Neil Ferguson’s (the Imperial College) pandemic model Sanjeev Sabhlok

By on April 30th, 2020

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/seeing-the-invisible/a-critique-of-neil-fergusons-the-imperial-college-pandemic-model/

A critique of Neil Ferguson’s (the Imperial College) covid19 pandemic model: “much less intrusive, but targeted interventions could have led to similar results to what we are seeing now, with lockdowns”

A few weeks ago our party assembled a team to audit pandemic models that are being used to inform public policy. Team members have a mathematics and programming background, enabling them to examine whether these models’ assumptions are valid.

As part of this independent work, our team has provided input to University College London’s Tim Colbourn on his draft paper on mass-testing in the UK. We also contacted Neil Ferguson of Imperial College and asked him whether he had looked at the option of isolating the elderly as part of his model. I have alluded to his response in an earlier article.

Neil Ferguson has provided his model and source code to a few independent experts. We understand from news reports that he expects to publish it soon on Github, which will enable our team to more thoroughly examine his model.

In the meanwhile, Nirmesh Mehta from our team has made a few observations about the Imperial College model that I believe are wroth sharing at this stage to inform public debate.

Introduction

The 16 March 2020 Imperial College paper, entitled, Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce Covid-19 mortality and healthcare demand, has been one of the most influential papers in shaping policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 40 days after it was published, we are in a better position to judge the accuracy of its predictions.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum Israel is a country, not a concept As deserving of awe and enthusiasm as it is, the Jewish state is not purely the realization of a dream; it is an actual country, made up of real people.

By on April 30th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israel-is-a-country-not-a-concept-opinion-626472

The State of Israel turned 72 on Wednesday, and what a peculiar birthday it was. If not for television and the Internet, it might have passed by unnoticed. Indeed, thanks to the coronavirus-spurred 27-hour curfew, the customary annual celebrations were void of participants, other than dignitaries delivering speeches and celebrities performing to venues filled with empty seats.

The sparse fireworks that were permitted in the end went off with more of a whisper than a bang. And anyone not fortunate enough to possess a balcony – or whose garden is secluded – missed out on the sense of solidarity that singing the national anthem on terraces around the nation provided.

As for the traditional barbecues, well, many took place with immediate family members, either indoors or on private patios. So, while the smell of charred meat wafting through the air was strong, the gatherings were subdued.

THIS IS NOT to say that the atmosphere was lacking in cheer, however. On the contrary, the weeks of virtual isolation leading up to the holiday, alongside the gradual reopening of shops that began a few days earlier, contributed to a sense of shared hardship on the one hand and budding optimism on the other. Nothing symbolized the latter better than the news that the beauty parlors were back in business.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

  Coronavirus hype biggest political hoax in history   By Cheryl K. Chumley

By on April 30th, 2020

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/28/coronavirus-hype-biggest-political-hoax-in-history/?

The new coronavirus is real.

The response to the coronavirus is hyped. And in time, this hype will be revealed as politically hoaxed.

In fact, COVID-19 will go down as one of the political world’s biggest, most shamefully overblown, overhyped, overly and irrationally inflated and outright deceptively flawed responses to a health matter in American history, one that was carried largely on the lips of medical professionals who have no business running a national economy or government.

The facts are this: COVID-19 is a real disease that sickens some, proves fatal to others, mostly the elderly — and does nothing to the vast majority.

That’s it.

Or, in the words of Dan Erickson and Artin Massih, doctors and co-owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, California: Let’s get the country reopened — and now.

“Do we need to still shelter in place? Our answer is emphatically no. Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no. … [T]he data is showing it’s time to lift,” Erickson said, in a recent interview.

He’s right. They’re right.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Earth Day in the Year of Plague How modern environmentalism morphed into a “black market” religion. Bruce Thornton

By on April 30th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/earth-day-year-plague-bruce-thornton/

Last week’s Earth Day came in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. At a time of sickness, death, and an economy stunned into recession, the incoherence of the romantic idealization of the natural world that Earth Day epitomizes is more obvious than usual. As the current crisis shows, nature is not a benevolent mother from whom we have alienated ourselves, and against whom our ravages have sown existential consequences. It is, as Keats put it, “a fierce, eternal destruction.”

Because of that misguided idealization, modern environmentalism has morphed into a “black market” religion, as Chantal Delsol describes the various substitutes for the decline of traditional faiths. Like similar belief systems such as Marxism, romantic environmentalism drapes itself in the jargon and quantitative data of real science. This makes the cult even more dangerous, for it uses the prestige and authority of science as the realm of objective truth, to create and promote policies that are dangerous, if not deadly.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is exhibit number one. A century-old hypothesis about temperature increases created by elevating levels of atmospheric CO2 has become a scientific “fact,” even though our understanding of global climate is nowhere near adequate for such claims. Yet billions of dollars a year go to “research” based on computer models that––as we’ve seen with the shifting models of the coronavirus’s lethality––rely on filling the gaps left by our ignorance, a process rife with moral and cognitive hazard. Billions more have been spent on subsidies for “green energy” like wind-farms or solar panels, which are nowhere near to replacing the cheap, efficient energy that comes from fossil fuels and coal. Worse, warmists promote policies like the Green New Deal that have multi-trillion-dollar price tags with no chance of achieving its promised boons.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

7 High-Risk Sex Offenders Freed to Protect Them From Coronavirus Daniel Greenfield

By on April 30th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/04/7-high-risk-sex-offenders-freed-protect-them-daniel-greenfield/

The coronavirus jailbreak continues. While Americans are locked up, the pro-crime lobby is freeing criminals at a record rate. This pro-crime policy is allegedly being carried out to protect the criminals, but who’s going to protect their victims?

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer on Tuesday issued a warning to residents after seven registered sex offenders who he said were “high-risk” were recently released from custody early, amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Spitzer said the convicted men spent “just days” in jail instead of the six months required by law for those registered as sex offenders.

The men apparently had also been charged with cutting off their GPS monitors or tampering with their tracking devices.

I’m sure that wonderful folks like these, who already tampered with their monitors, won’t do anything untoward.

Luis Joel Ramirez, 27. Ramirez was last known to have lived in Costa Mesa. According to the DA’s office, his criminal history includes sexual battery, assault with a deadly weapon, resisting a peace officer, burglary and possessing of a leaded cane, a deadly weapon. He was released on April 7 after serving 20 days on a parole violation for cutting off his GPS, then released again on April 24 after serving 16 days on a parole violation for failing to report, the DA’s office said.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Meet the Hudson Valley’s Anti-AOC By Joseph Duggan-(R-NY district 19)

By on April 30th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/29/meet-the-hudson-valleys-anti-aoc/

Is Washington, D.C. ready for a Christian Arab, pro-life—and pro-Israel!—glamorous, conservative, Second Amendment stalwart, fashion model cancer-survivor as a member of Congress?

Ola Hawatmeh is a name to learn and remember. This dynamic conservative Republican woman appears poised to win the GOP nomination to oppose a left-wing, first-term Democratic incumbent in a mostly rural and small-town, conservative district covering the Catskills and the Hudson Valley running south from the suburbs of Albany to Poughkeepsie.

Hawatmeh (pronounced ha-WAHT-meh) was born in New York state and grew up in the district. She’s a native speaker of Arabic as well as English.  She is the devout daughter of Eastern-Rite Christian parents who settled in the Hudson Valley after leaving their native homes in Jordan and Lebanon.

Ever since her surprise victory in New York’s 14th district primary and easy ride to the general election in 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has captured much of the nation’s attention as a young, energetic, female federal legislator with a passionate oratorical style and glamorous looks.

Ocasio-Cortez is appealing on her side of the ideological divide because she dramatically symbolizes the possibility that an outsider can beat a well-funded pillar of the old-boy network. She offers an attractive face for the anti-establishment, left-wing of the Democratic party. She is an uncompromising socialist in an environment where that stance wins votes and accumulates power.

New York’s 19th district now is about to launch the political career of the Anti-AOC. If elected in November, Hawatmeh will become La Pasionaria of conservative politics.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Long Decline of American Higher Education Has Begun It’s wrong to say that higher education will be unrecognizable in ten years. Rather, it will be recognizable to people who were alive in the middle of the 20th century. By Byrne Hobart

By on April 30th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/29/the-long-decline-of-american-higher-education-has-begun/

The paradox of American higher education is that going to college used to be aspirational, but now the sales pitch is that it’s scary not to get a degree. Long ago, universities were a place where students could explore new academic frontiers and challenge themselves with new ideas. And now, school is safe: four more years of deferring big decisions and optimizing for easy A’s.

In the last few weeks, everything has changed. Now, it’s the schools that are scared. And they should be.

The American higher education system faces four immense challenges: COVID-19, China, competition, and demographics. Think of them as two hammers and two anvils: COVID-19 is hitting enrollment and attendance, as students can’t gather on campus and are forced to reconsider whether school is the best option right now.

China has provided a steady flow of students, with strings attached; those strings are getting burdensome, and Chinese students now have better options. Competition is rising everywhere, from better trade schools to a better version of the Ivy League.

Demographics make things even more challenging: U.S. birthrates were steady throughout the 90s, but after a peak of 2.12 in 2007, birthrates steadily declined, and now average 1.77. Fewer births in 2008 translates to fewer 18-year-olds starting in 2026, with the decline slated to continue for a decade.

This means that each year, colleges around the country will face the same problem: how to pay for tenured professors, administrators, and fancy facilities while suffering from declining enrollment and an end to the rising-tuition gravy train?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

It’s Time to Boycott China To ensure we recover from this virus, we must do two things: Wash our hands and wash our hands of China. By Curtis Ellis

By on April 30th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/29/its-time-to-boycott-china/

President Trump says he expects China will pay a “substantial” amount of money for damages caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

You can’t help but suspect the Chinese Communist Party deliberately withheld crucial information and hoarded protective supplies needed to prepare for the virus in order to wreak maximum damage both mortal and material on the West.

When asked if he will submit a bill as Germany has done, Trump demurred, saying “We have ways of doing things much easier than that.”

You bet we do.

Consider: Every dollar the CCP would possibly pay us in damages would be a dollar we gave them in the first place.

We can save ourselves the trouble of trying to collect the bill by not sending them the money in the first place.

Let’s say it out loud: Boycott China.

China’s Communist dictators have been waging economic warfare against us for decades, launching missiles from their mines, mills, and factories in an attack that has destroyed our industries as effectively as any precision-guided munitions.

Now the pandemic has wrought further destruction.

They have succeeded in effectively stopping our way of life. We can’t let them do that again.

How?

Just as the CCP has waged economic warfare against the United States, we can do the same.

The Chinese Communist Party lives off the money we send them, and we send them a lot.

We should stop sending them our money. Americans should boycott China.

Our government should boycott the CCP.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Democracies Need to Back Taiwan’s Bid to Join the World Health Organization by Jagdish N. Singh

By on April 30th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15937/who-taiwan-support

With a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, China has so far been able to impose its will and deny Taiwan entry into the WHO. Perhaps China should no longer be on the UN Security Council?

Thankfully, the U.S. administration of President Donald J. Trump recently enacted the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act, aimed at supporting Taiwan’s international presence.

As a member of the WHO, China had an obligation to provide accurate data to help the world learn more about the virus. China, however, still refuses to be transparent.

It would also undoubtedly be better for the world if all 184 countries afflicted with Covid-19 and its ruinous economic aftermath would stop doing business with China: it has proven that it is not friend.

Recently, 127 European parliamentarians backed a bid by Taiwan (The Republic of China) to join the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO). All democratic governments — in fact, every government: 184 have been ravaged by Covid-19 and its economic ravages — need to make Taiwan’s WHO membership a reality.

The WHO was founded in 1948 with a mandate to ensure that all peoples of the world attain the highest possible level of health. Ironically, the WHO excludes Taiwan and its more than 23.8 million people from its care. WHO shares little of its biomedical and health research information with Taiwan, which is not invited even to its emergency meetings.

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