RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-with-no-mask-mandate-and-schools-open-florida-ranks-11th-lowest-in-excess-deaths-among-seniors

There’s a reason why the Biden regime is trying to attack Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and create an illusion of a disproportionate viral crisis in the state. With no declared emergency restrictions in place at the state level since last September, the fact that Florida is doing better than the national average completely exposes the lie of lockdown and masks having any effect whatsoever on the fixed natural progression of the virus.

Dr. Fauci is suggesting a novel scientific principle – that schools can’t reopen until Congress passes yet another “stimulus” bill. Yet in Florida, schools have been open all year, and the state’s excess deaths for 2020 rank the 16th lowest in the nation, according to a new analysis. What’s more, the Sunshine State, which is regarded as God’s waiting room for seniors, experienced the 11th lowest per capita rate of COVID deaths for seniors in 2020.

A new analysis conducted by RationalGround.com and exclusively obtained by TheBlaze collated CDC excess death data for 49 states (excluding North Carolina, which has incomplete data) and ranked the states from smallest to largest increase in excess deaths from 2019 to 2020. As we have seen in study after study, there is absolutely zero correlation between non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as business and school closures or mask mandates, and a lower rate of excess deaths.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/02/18/u-s-will-pay-who-200-million-in-dues-after-trump-cut-funding-n1426476

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has informed the United Nations that the U.S. will pay the World Health Organization $200 million in dues. The money is owed to WHO after the Trump administration cut funding to the group.

The cash certainly isn’t for a job well done. As of today, more than 2.5 million people have died in a pandemic that the WHO knew about early on and after the organization failed to take steps against China to mitigate the disaster. In fact, the organization has been a Chinese toady throughout the pandemic, running interference for China and keeping a lid on Chinese incompetence, mismanagement, and perhaps even negligence in handling a dangerous pathogen.

The WHO hasn’t saved a single life and probably cost lives with their contradictory and confusing directives on how to stay healthy. Why give them anything?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/02/18/unity-watch-democrats-introduce-a-bill-to-punish-trump-when-he-dies-n1426572

Democrats want to make Donald Trump’s death as miserable as they tried to make his life in office.

The Democrats began trying to politically kill off Donald Trump before he took office and now they want to kill off his memory up to and after he leaves this mortal coil.

California Democrat Congresswoman Linda Sanchez has introduced a bill to deprive President Trump of the typical honors of every former president.

Her bill, HR 484, is called the “No Glory for Hate Act,” and seeks to deprive the former president from being buried in Arlington National Cemetery or to have any kind of memorials erected in his honor.

Attorney and GOP activist Harmeet Dhillon has a question for Sanchez and her co-sponsors.

This is pathetic, even for you, House Democrats. I heard some of you went to law school. Ever heard of a bill of attainder?

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/02/team-bidens-witches-brew/

“Until differing opinions aren’t censored and their advocates de-platformed or fired; until law and order (including at the border) is highly prized; until jobs are a priority; and until education and hard work are widely esteemed, things look bleak for the US. And that means things look bleak here in Australia and throughout the West.”

Last week I was speaking on matters political with Larry Alexander, an American friend who also happens to be one of the world’s leading legal philosophers. Larry’s rather unusual in that he’s a US academic who holds right-of-centre political views in a US law school.  I thought it worth giving readers the gist of his views about our current situation, all of which are spot-on in my view.  You see Larry believes that we are living in what seem to be terribly fraught times, times that are even more worrisome than those at the height of Cold War tensions.  So what are these overweening concerns of his?

Many relate to US government policies. The Biden administration seems hell bent on reversing every Trump administration policy, even those that were quite successful. On illegal immigration, which the Trump team managed to reduce significantly, Team Biden seeks to make illegal entry easier and its legal consequences less of a deterrent. This will almost assuredly result in a significant influx of the unskilled, themselves infiltrated by gang members, cartel mules, and parentless children. Where the Trump administration managed to achieve energy independence, Team Biden has now halted drilling on federal lands and offshore and has killed the Keystone pipeline. With respect to the climate, which saw carbon emissions decrease during the Trump years, Team Biden has announced its intention to rejoin the Paris Accord, which will have no effect on the world’s major polluters but will impose needless costs on Americans, and other signatories, including Australians. (And why, if Team Biden is really concerned with greenhouse gases, does it not push for nuclear power?)

The Trump administration, pre-pandemic, engineered a very good economy with spectacularly low unemployment rates and widespread increases of incomes. It did so with a combination of deregulation and lower taxes. Team Biden appears to favor a large influx of foreign unskilled labor, a more than doubling of the minimum wage, the elimination of energy sector jobs, higher taxes, and more regulation. This is a witches’ brew of anti-employment, anti-growth policies.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/17/our-descent-into-collective-madness/

An ungracious and neurotic elite whose judgment is bankrupt and whose privilege is paid for by those who don’t have it threatens to drag us to the depths of unreason.

These are crazy times. A pandemic led to national quarantine, to self-induced recession, to riot, arson, and looting, to a contested election, and to a riot at the Capitol. 

In response, are we focusing solely on upping the daily vaccination rate? 

Getting the country back to work? Opening the schools as the virus attenuates? Ensuring safety in the streets? 

Or are we descending into a sort of madness?  

It might have been understandable that trillions of dollars had to be borrowed to keep a suffocating economy breathing. 

But it makes little sense to keep borrowing $2 trillion a year to prime an economy now set to roar back with herd-like immunity on the horizon. 

Trillions of dollars in stimulus are already priming the economy. 

Cabin-feverish Americans are poised to get out of their homes to travel, eat out, and socialize as never before. 

Meanwhile, the United States will have to start paying down $30 trillion in debt. But we seem more fixated on raising rather than reducing that astronomical obligation. 

We are told man-made, worldwide climate change—as in the now discarded term “global warming”—can best be addressed by massive dislocations in the U.S. economy. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/17/rush-limbaugh-death-of-a-giant/

Though widely anticipated, the death of Rush Limbaugh after a long battle with cancer is a major blow to conservatives. His witty, often acerbic commentary had been a daily anchor to reality for many Americans, tired of the mainstream media’s lies, bias and prevarications. But with his death, Limbaugh leaves a hole in the conservative movement that is impossible to fill.

The center-right media firmament has many bright stars. Unfortunately, none shine as brightly as Rush did. As the numerous accounts of his death and life point out, he was the most listened to radio show host in history.

He was a master of the medium, and used his three-hour daily radio platform both wisely and well. With 20 million listeners at his peak, Limbaugh singlehandedly turned more liberals and moderates into conservatives than perhaps anyone outside of Ronald Reagan. He was a cultural phenomenon.

That gave him unprecedented political clout for a radio personality. Frankly, we’re not sure who picks up the torch from here. Dennis Prager? Ben Shapiro? Mark Levin? Laura Ingraham? Dan Bongino? Sean Hannity? Andrew Klavan? John Batchelor? Michael Knowles? There are many possible candidates, each excellent and brilliant in his or her own way.

But none is likely to ever match Limbaugh’s raw muscle, reach and influence.

National Review’s description of Limbaugh’s media legacy is on target: “His lashing critiques of the Left, comic riffs, and combative ebullience spawned many imitators, but none of them came close to being his equal.”

https://www.city-journal.org/cuomo-under-fire-for-hiding-nursing-home-deaths

Something is rotten in the state of New York. And, as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it starts at the top. For the past year, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, with the aid of a credulous and adoring media, has touted his performance in combating Covid-19 and chided other states for their comparative deficiencies. He was rewarded with a lucrative book contract and an Emmy for providing “reliable information” in his news conferences. The cover has finally been blown on a prolonged and concerted effort by Cuomo and his associates to hide his policy mistakes.

Between March 25 and May 10, 2020, an advisory from Cuomo’s Department of Health (DOH) compelled nursing homes to readmit hospitalized Covid-19 patients without checking if they still had active infection. Health experts cautioned that the policy could lead to additional deaths by introducing infected people into closed facilities where those most vulnerable to the disease—the elderly and infirm—live. Cuomo’s responses ranged from the devil—aka the Trump administration—made me do it; to we didn’t force anything—facilities had discretion to turn down admissions; to “nothing to see here”—the policy didn’t increase the number of deaths; to “who cares” where they died.

Cuomo repeatedly and falsely claimed that the policy was directed by federal guidance.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-spins-into-the-wind-11613605698?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

While millions of Texans remain without power for a third day, the wind industry and its advocates are spinning a fable that gas, coal and nuclear plants—not their frozen turbines—are to blame. PolitiFact proclaims “Natural gas, not wind turbines, main driver of Texas power shortage.” Climate-change conformity is hard for the media to resist, but we don’t mind. So here are the facts to cut through the spin.

Texas energy regulators were already warning of rolling blackouts late last week as temperatures in western Texas plunged into the 20s, causing wind turbines to freeze. Natural gas and coal-fired plants ramped up to cover the wind power shortfall as demand for electricity increased with falling temperatures.

Some readers have questioned our reporting Wednesday (“The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage”) that wind’s share of electricity generation in Texas plunged to 8% from 42%. How can that be, they wonder, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) has reported that it counts on wind to meet only 10% of its winter capacity.

Ercot’s disclosure is slippery. Start with the term “capacity,” which means potential maximum output. This is different than actual power generation.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/02/16/cnn-nbc-john-sullivan-footage-capitol-riot-shooting/

A left-wing activist facing criminal charges for his involvement in the Capitol riots received $35,000 from both CNN and NBC for footage he recorded of a Trump supporter being fatally shot inside the Capitol building, according to records he filed in federal court on Tuesday.

Lawyers for John Sullivan, a 26-year-old Utah native, disclosed the payments as part of the activist’s argument that he was acting as a journalist in the Capitol rather than a rioter.

“Defendant is legitimately self-employed as a documentarian and it is oppressive to require that he not be allowed to continue his primary area of employment for an extended period of time,” Steven R. Kiersh, the Sullivan lawyer, wrote in a court filing in which he argued for Sullivan to be allowed to continue using Facebook and Twitter.

Sullivan, who founded the social justice group Insurgence USA, was charged on Jan. 13 with illegally entering the Capitol, civil disorder, and violent or disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.