RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/10/familiar-names-that-may-appear-in-durham-indictments/

Barr talks the talk. But is he really willing to weather the media firestorm that will rise up to defend the politicized criminal system that has become the status quo?

Recently, Attorney General William Barr met with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier in a surprisingly candid and wide-ranging interview during which he confirmed many of my observations about the FBI and Justice Department’s attempt to interfere with the 2016 election and the peaceful transfer of power from the Obama to the Trump Administrations.

Although Barr gamely blamed the slow-moving “wheels of justice” for the seeming lack of accountability for the many conspirators, we should not forget that the wheels of “injustice” moved rather quickly as the get-Trump forces leveraged the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process and dubious criminal investigations to trump up charges against Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and a Russian catering company that the Department of Justice attempted to prosecute for daring to criticize HIllary Clinton on the internet.

Barr suggested we will learn of criminal indictments before the assigned prosecutor, U.S. Attorney John Durham, issues a report on the Justice Department misconduct. The prosecutions will not reach former president Barack Obama or his vice president. But some of the names will be familiar. Barr declined to name names. For anyone following the Russian collusion hoax over the past three years, the list of possible defendants and people likely to be fired isn’t difficult to guess.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/11/the-who-follies-redux/

The World Health Organization this week showed once again why the motto on its official seal should be, Aperto Ore, Pede Inserta, or in English: Open Mouth, Insert Foot.

On Monday, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging disease and zoonosis unit, said that transmission of COVID-19 from asymptomatic, infected patients to other persons was “very rare.” There was immediate and widespread pushback. For example, on Tuesday the Harvard Global Health Institute issued a statement, which said in part that “all of the best evidence suggests that people without symptoms can and do readily spread SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19.”

Van Kerkove’s statement was a particularly embarrassing failure of scientific communication, one of WHO’s primary responsibilities, because governments and public health officials worldwide have instituted lockdowns and issued guidance to socially distance and wear face masks in an effort, in part, to stop asymptomatic spread.

The day after Van Kerkhove’s misstatement, WHO convened a news conference to walk back her comments, stressing that much remains unknown. But the comment from Monday had already gone viral (pardon the expression) and been seized upon by those who believe that people do not need to wear masks or observe social distancing precautions.

Calling the controversy “a misunderstanding,” Van Kerkhove clumsily tried to perform damage control. “I wasn’t stating a policy of WHO or anything like that,” she said. “We do know that some people who are asymptomatic, or some people who do not have symptoms, can transmit the virus on.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/06/defund-cops-fund-crime-murders-250-la-daniel-greenfield/

Pro-crime policies work. They always do.

Engage in pro-crime policymaking and you will get more crime. But some lives just don’t matter.

The Los Angeles Police Department announced Tuesday that homicides in the city increased 250% over the previous week, and the number of people who were shot increased by 56% during the same period.

The increased numbers were recorded during the week of May 31-June 6, but officials also reported continued violence this week.

The violence is, predictably, gang related.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/california-seeks-empower-illiberal-identity-bruce-thornton/

The link between affirmative action and the current mayhem destroying our cities.

Under the cover of plague and riots, the California Legislature is proposing a November ballot measure that would undo Proposition 209, which in 1996 banned the use of race and sex in university admissions, hiring, and state agency contracts. If the measure passes, the state will return to the days of rank discrimination and mismatching minority applicants with universities, setting them up for failure.

Like the current riots, the restoration of affirmative action will empower illiberal identity politics and the victim-narratives they reflect.

Proponents of undoing 209, of course, trot out melodramas of devastated black and Latino applicants and their shattered dreams. In truth, ending affirmative action did not stop protected applicants from going to college. It stopped the flagship campuses Cal Berkeley and UCLA from skimming minority candidates who were not prepared for the greater rigor of those two universities. Now they attended less prestigious campuses like Riverside or Merced, for which they are better qualified based on their academic record and test scores––exactly what happens with Caucasians, who now comprise, by the way, only one-fifth of U.C. students. And despite the predictions of Armaggedon for minority students, their performance has improved since Prop 209, because they no longer are “mismatched” to universities, as Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr. document in their 2012 book Mismatch. Minority graduation rates, grade-point averages, and majors in science or engineering all have increased after 209.

https://www.city-journal.org/repudiate-the-anti-police-narrative

The following is testimony delivered to the House Committee on the Judiciary on June 10.

“It is understandable and appropriate, when viewing the horrific arrest and death of George Floyd, to ask whether we are seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to policing and the brutal indifference to human life. The history of law enforcement in the U.S. was interwoven with slavery and segregation. The memory of policing’s complicity with racial oppression cannot be easily erased.

But I urge this committee to reject the proposition that law enforcement today is systemically biased. The evidence does not support that charge. Police officials and officers across the country have expressed their disgust at the chillingly callous behavior seen in the Floyd video. It is a violation of everything that the profession currently stands for. Embracing the systemic bias allegation will only lead to more lives lost to criminal violence; many of them, sadly, will be black. To move from the stomach-churning specificity of Mr. Floyd’s case to broader numbers is jarring. Nevertheless, if the charge against policing is systemic racism, we need to look at the system as a whole.

Policing today is driven by crime data and community demands for help.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2020/06/10/seattles-autonomous-anarchist-zone-learns-a-hilarious-lesson-about-theft-n514252

Have you heard that a six-block section of Seattle has become an anarchist “capitol hill autonomous zone,” or “CHAZ” for short?

It has. Police and firefighters vacated their premises and bugged out with a Twitter blessing from Mayor Jenny Durkan. Durkan dithered over the descent of protests into violence for a week before doing much, and when she did much, her choice was to tweet in hasty retreat.

Anarchists quickly set up CHAZ to be and do its own thing, as long as that thing conformed with diktats of the CHAZ hierarchy.

They put up makeshift signs saying, “You are now leaving the U.S.A.” As you can see below, they appropriated stolen barricades from America, which they despise. To paraphrase a former president, CHAZ did not build that. Or anything else.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/10/the-story-of-the-ranchers-businesses-and-people-in-the-only-state-to-not-shut-down/

‘If you have a leader that will take too much authority in a time of crisis, that’s when we lose our freedom and our liberties,’ said Gov. Kristi Noem.

The story below is the fifth in a series on America’s small businesses, their struggles under the shutdowns and threats of rioting, and what they’re doing to survive. Over two weeks, The Federalist traveled the country to tell stories like this one.

In South Dakota, the only state in the union to never enforce a government-mandated shutdown, we spoke with cowboys, ranchers, steakhouse owners, hotel managers, great grandparents, actors, bartenders, and even the governor to learn the state of American business. We heard of their successes and perils, those who hadn’t made it and those who still might not.

SOUTH DAKOTA — It’s a long, beautiful haul, driving across Wyoming. Pulling out of Jackson Hole, along the storied Snake River, past Grand Teton Mountain and up into the north. It’s nearly 60 degrees in the town below, but up here the snow is falling fast.

Then it’s back down the mountains into the high desert. Towns of less than 50 residents dot the hills below distant snow-capped peaks. The first sign we’ve entered the Wind River Reservation is a black-haired woman stumbling barefoot from a bathroom outside a gas station, eyes wide, red bandanna tourniquet still tied around her sagging bicep. That and the low price on tobacco.

America’s reservations, already suffering from heightened rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, abuse and poverty, have been especially hard hit in the economic shutdown.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/10/new-russiagate-subpoenas-probe-depths-of-obama-administration-corruption-in-flynn-ambush/

Details released over the last month reveal Obama and Biden knew more about the Michael Flynn ambush than previously realized. New subpoenas of Susan Rise, James Comey, and James Clapper might prove how much.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week authorized Chair Ron Johnson to issue subpoenas for more than 35 people connected to Crossfire Hurricane. Given the breadth of Spygate, it is unlikely Johnson’s committee will succeed in unpacking the totality of the misconduct. Three names on the list, however — Susan Rice, James Comey, and James Clapper — indicate Americans might soon learn more about any complicity by Barack Obama and Joe Biden in our country’s greatest political scandal.

Details released over the last month reveal President Obama and Vice President Biden knew more about the targeting of Trump transition team member Michael Flynn than previously realized. Several recently declassified documents, when read together, suggest Obama had a hand — and, at a minimum, Biden acquiesced in — the attempt to destroy Flynn and intrude upon the functioning of the new Trump administration.

Much of the declassified information concerns a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting. According to the FBI’s 302 interview report, on that date, “Yates, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were at the White House to brief members of the Obama Administration on the classified intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities in Recent U.S. Elections.” Rice, Obama’s then-national security adviser, and others were also present, including Biden, according to an email Rice later sent to herself.

According to Yates, “After the briefing, Obama dismissed the group but asked Yates and Comey to stay behind.” Then, “Obama started by saying he had ‘learned of the information about Flynn’ and his conversation with [Russian Ambassador Sergey] Kislyak about sanctions.” Yates’ 302 further stated, “Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/coronavirus-protests-public-health-experts-ideology-distorts-risk-assessment/

M ere weeks ago, public-health experts worried about transmission of coronavirus sternly warned against large, crowded gatherings. That was before the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 25.

From that moment on, many epidemiologists and public-health officials have justified people congregating to demonstrate against police brutality. On June 2, for example, Dr. Tom Frieden, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and former health commissioner of New York City, tweeted, “People can protest peacefully AND work together to stop covid.” That same day, a senior epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins tweeted, “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”

An open letter signed by 1,288 public-health experts, infectious-disease professionals, and community stakeholders judged marching to be “vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people.” The signers, while counseling marchers to distance, disinfect, and wear a mask, made clear that similar risks should not be tolerated, “particularly protests against stay-home orders [that are] rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.”

Overnight, the risk calculus changed. Instead of expert advice on the danger of exposure to coronavirus when, say, riding a subway, sending your kid to camp, or dining out, now the social value of the undertaking became part of the public-health equation. The risk of thousands of marchers wedged together (many masked but many not) spreading the virus by singing and chanting was suddenly acceptable in the eyes of outspoken members of the public-health establishment.

Flashback to April, when public-health experts were quick to criticize Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Brian Kemp of Georgia for easing lockdowns. Apparently, the two politicians’ values of salvaging the economy and relieving social isolation, both causes of significant emotional distress, failed to “greatly exceed the harms of the virus.” Compared with marching for social justice, they weren’t deemed as worthy.