RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Past vaccines have taken a decade or longer to develop, and more than half over the past 20 years have failed during clinical trials. But four vaccine candidates have entered the last phase of clinical trials before approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Technological breakthroughs that were already in progress got a boost from a bureaucratic one in May, when the Trump administration launched “Operation Warp Speed.” The initiative organized government agencies and private companies around the goal of developing, manufacturing and distributing hundreds of millions of vaccine doses with initial doses available by early 2021.

Leading the operation is Moncef Slaoui, a Moroccan-born Belgian-American scientist who shepherded vaccine development at the U.K. drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline from 1988 to 2017. His interest in immunology and vaccine development is personal: When he was growing up in Casablanca, his younger sister died of whooping cough. He earned a doctorate in molecular biology and immunology at the Free University of Brussels, then immigrated to the U.S. for postdoctoral work at Harvard and Tufts medical schools.

In 1988 he landed a job in GSK’s vaccine division. There he helped develop one of the world’s thickest vaccine portfolios, including inoculations for meningitis, human papillomavirus and rotavirus. The company developed 14 successful vaccines during Mr. Slaoui’s tenure. When the Trump administration tapped him to run Operation Warp Speed, liberals predictably criticized him because he came out of private industry.

https://babylonbee.com/news/california-mandates-all-food-must-be-consumed-through-iv-to-ensure-masks-are-never-removed/?utm_

SACRAMENTO, CA—In order to save lives and also because of science, Governor Gavin Newsom of California announced today that all restaurant food consumed in the state must come from an IV bag or feeding tube to ensure diners never have to remove their masks while dining.

“Unlike some people who hate science and want people to die, we here in California love science and don’t want people to die,” said Newsom during the announcement. “The most effective way in the world to prevent death is to wear a cloth on your face and never take it off, even when eating. This highly scientific new mandate will help Californians enjoy their food without ever removing their masks!” 

Those who are looking for just a light snack will be able to insert a catheter directly into their veins and get a continuous drip of nutritional fluid. For those looking for a heartier meal like steak and potatoes, restaurants will now be required to put the entire meal in a blender and push it through a surgically installed feeding tube directly into the diner’s stomach. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/turns-tables-democrats-russia-hoax-lloyd-billingsley/

Gina Haspel joined the CIA in 1985 and rose through the ranks to deputy director. In 2018, President Trump picked Haspel to replace Mike Pompeo as CIA director. In a hearing, Sen. Angus King asked Haspel if she agreed with a 2016 intelligence report finding that the Russians interfered in the presidential campaign. 

“Senator, I do,” Haspel said. The CIA veteran did not elaborate, but a month before the 2020 election the manner of the interference has at last been revealed in declassifications from director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe.

In July of 2016, U.S. intelligence had learned, a foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton proposed that she smear candidate Donald Trump by claiming interference by Russian security services. The notes of CIA boss John Brennan show that he briefed President Obama on the information.

The declassifications also show that in September of 2016, U.S. intelligence learned that Hillary Clinton approve “a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections.” Intelligence officials referred that information to FBI director James Comey and FBI deputy assistant director of counterintelligence Peter Strzok.

The FBI pair ignored Hillary Clinton’s violations of intelligence laws and instead launched operation Midyear Exam against candidate Trump and Crossfire Hurricane against President Trump. During both operations, the Democrat-media axis demanded that legislators listen to the intelligence community. In 2020, that has all changed. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/californias-illogical-reparations-bill/

Newsom and lawmakers virtue-signal while failing utterly to address the state’s current crises.

California’s state legislature just passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed, Assembly Bill 3121 to explore providing reparations to California’s African-American population — 155 years after the abolition of slavery.

Apparently, when California’s one-party government cannot find solutions to current existential crises, it turns to divisive issues that have little to do with the safety and well-being of its 40 million citizens.California has the highest gas taxes in the nation, even as its ossified state highways remain clogged and dangerous. Why, then, does Sacramento kept pouring billions of dollars into the now-calcified high-speed-rail project?

When fires raged, killed dozens, polluted the air for months, consumed thousands of structures, and scorched 4 million acres of forest, the governor reacted by thundering about global warming. But Newsom was mostly mute about state and federal green policies that discouraged the removal of millions of dead and drought-stricken trees, which provided the kindling for the infernos.

When gasoline, sales, and income taxes rose, and yet state schools became even worse, infrastructure remained decrepit, and deficits grew, California demanded that federal COVID-19 money bail out its own financial mismanagement.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/trump-declassifies-information-on-russia-investigations-but-it-may-be-too-late/

The American people needed to know the truth about efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration to sabotage the president’s campaign sooner.

President Trump made a stunning announcement this week when he ordered the declassification of all documents related to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Trump’s decision was heavily influenced by a recent letter from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to the Senate Judiciary Committee revealing that Russian intelligence believed in July 2016 that Clinton had personally authorized a scheme to smear the Republican nominee for colluding with Russia to distract from the scandal that had arisen over her private email server. Ratcliffe reported that this knowledge came from then-CIA director John Brennan’s notes, and that although it may have been Russian disinformation, it was taken seriously enough at the time that President Obama was briefed on it and it was referred to the FBI for an investigation.

In light of the Ratcliffe letter, Trump said “Enough!” He is fed up with years of delays and in getting the truth out on the Russia collusion hoax. The letter, which included crucial details on the hoax that have been kept from the American people since 2017, was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Specifically, the president’s decision is a rebuke of former DNI Dan Coats and current CIA director Gina Haspel. Coats turned a blind eye toward the hoax and at times even seemed to promote it. He also, like Haspel, repeatedly blocked the release of information to Congress related to it. A House Intelligence Committee source has told me that Haspel is currently blocking the release and declassification of a House Intelligence Committee report that found Brennan personally blocked the inclusion of intelligence from a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment which stated that Russia wanted Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/520153-not-treason-not-a-crime-but-definit

President Trump did himself no favors with Wednesday’s ALL-CAPS tweet about how the latest disclosures from Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe implicate President Obama, Vice President Biden and Hillary Clinton in a “TREASONOUS PLOT.” 

Ratcliffe has declassified and released handwritten notes by former CIA director John Brennan (undated, but probably from late July 2016) and a memo from the CIA to the FBI (dated Sept. 7, 2016). These documents corroborate Ratcliffe’s revelation, in a Sept. 29 letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, to wit: In late July 2016, Russian intelligence assessed that Mrs. Clinton approved her campaign advisers’ proposal to blame Moscow’s hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails on a conspiracy between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Put aside Ratcliffe’s acknowledgement that, although U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Russian intelligence assessment is authentic, they cannot say with confidence that it is true. There is, after all, abundant evidence that the Clinton campaign blamed Trump for the Russian hacking of DNC emails that were published on the eve of the 2016 Democratic national convention. The Clinton campaign would not have done that unless the candidate authorized it.

That said, what is the crime?

Don’t get me wrong. I have argued for years that the real “collusion” in the 2016 presidential campaign was not between Trump and Russia — it was between the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration, which put its intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus in the service, first, of Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy and, ultimately, of the Democratic Party’s resistance to Trump’s presidency. This arrangement centered on a false political narrative that Trump and his campaign were complicit in Russia’s suspected hacking of Democrats’ emails.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”James Madison (1751-1836)

We should forever be thankful for the brave and wise men who fought our revolution and created our government, between the years 1775 and 1789. They defeated the world’s foremost military power. Their experience with Parliament and the King made them wary of governmental power. They knew enough about human nature to recognize that power was an aphrodisiac. In February 1775, Alexander Hamilton wrote in “A Farmer Refuted:” “A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.” They recognized that warning applied to them – and their political heirs.

Later, looking back on those years, Madison, in the same speech quoted in the rubric above, spoke to the risks of different forms of government – that monarchies can become despotic and aristocracies may sacrifice the rights and welfare of the many to the demands of the few. In republics, he added, “the great danger is that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.” It was because of the failings and risks of other forms of government, along with the fallibility of man, that the Founders created a government based on a written Constitution, which emphasized the natural rights of individuals that must be protected. It clearly stated that power would be diffused through three equal branches, with the legislative branch being bicameral – a lower chamber reflecting the population of the nation and a Senate representing each state equally. It further stated that powers not delegated to the federal government, nor prohibited by it, are reserved for the States or the people. Freedom for the individual came foremost; governmental abuse of power was the great internal risk.

In 1789, the federal bureaucracy consisted of employees in three departments – State, Treasury and War. Today, the Federal Register lists 454 departments, agencies and sub-agencies.  Excluding members of the military, approximately three million people are employed in the federal government, plus about four million federal government contract employees – the fastest growing segment of the federal workforce.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/is-there-a-doctor-in-the-house/91291/

Too bad there’s not a 25th Amendment-type clause in the Constitution granting to the cabinet the power to remove from office the Speaker of the House. That’s our reaction to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that she is going to lead tomorrow in the House a discussion in respect of using the 25th Amendment against President Trump. She’s upset that he called off negotiations with her over a Covid relief bill.

It seems the speaker thinks that might have been a reaction to the steroid the president is taking for his case of the coronavirus. The Daily Mail is reporting that some doctors are concerned that it can cause insomnia, mania, mood swings, and rage. Then again, Congress itself has been known to cause in ordinary taxpayers insomnia, mania, mood swings, and rage. So this could yet turn out to be tomorrow quite a discussion.

Plus, one doesn’t have to be taking a steroid to see the logic of Mr. Trump calling off negotiations with the Speaker and her camarilla. Just read the Wall Street Journal, which issues what is, clinically speaking, the sanest editorial page in the Milky Way. It noted that the talks from which Mr. Trump withdrew were over a “ransom demand” for a $2 trillion “blowout” in new covid relief spending. Mrs. Pelosi would take nothing less.

That’s just crazy. Particularly since in order to get the $2 trillion, the Congress would have to borrow the money from the Chinese communists or other lenders. Or just have the Federal Reserve create it out of pixels (it would be borrowing 2 trillion dollars whose value has not been set by, in the Congress, the only body empowered to regulate the value of the dollar). Put that, as they say, in your 25th Amendment and smoke it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-wont-the-media-listen-to-these-scientists-11602013456?st=eb16j3x84nc3q0n&reflink=article_copyURL_share

This week dozens of esteemed medical experts with blue-chip academic credentials published a warning about the destructive policies adopted to address Covid-19. Since the Sunday publication of this “Great Barrington Declaration” more than a thousand biological scientists and more than 1,500 medical practitioners have added their names to the petition. Yet it’s been almost entirely ignored by the media outlets that spend much of their days presenting themselves as obedient to science.

Maybe this is because the accomplished group of scientists behind the declaration is refusing to obey political narratives. According to the petition:

Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.

The scientists go on to note that the poor are “disproportionately harmed” by current policies and that for children, “COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.” They add that the best approach “is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.”

This means that those “who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal,” including attending schools, going to restaurants, participating in sports and even gathering at public events. Meanwhile attention should be focused on protecting those most at risk. According to the scientists.

https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/biden-surrogate-jane-fonda-calls-covid-gods-gift-to-the-left/

“I just think that COVID is God’s gift to the Left,” Fonda said. “That’s a terrible thing to say. I think it was a very difficult thing to send down to us, but it has ripped the band-aid off who [Trump] is and what he stands for and what is being done to average people and working people in this country.”

“What a great gift, what a tremendous opportunity, we are so lucky, we have to use it with every ounce of intelligence and courage and wherewithal we have,” she added.