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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

How Deadly Has The Covid-19 Pandemic Really Been? Francis Menton

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=39eed4756e

Back in April I wrote several posts on the subject of the severity and expected mortality from the Covid-19 pandemic. It is fair to say that I expressed a high degree of skepticism that the pandemic was of sufficient severity to justify the extreme economic suppression that was being undertaken at that time (much of which still remains in place today). Here is my post from April 16 titled “What Is The Proof That This Covid-19 Thing Really Is A ‘Crisis,’ Or That Economic Suppression Is The Solution?”; and here is one from April 27, titled “What Is The True Level Of Mortality Caused By The Covid-19 Virus?”

I have been holding off revisiting the subject because I have not been able to find data that answer the principal questions that I asked in those posts. In particular, I made this statement in the April 27 post:

The best indication we will get [of the true death rate from this virus] will come when the CDC issues final data for deaths from all causes in the U.S. for the month of April. When we get that number, we can subtract from it the approximate “normal” number of deaths that would have occurred anyway during April. The difference will be a good estimate of the number of excess deaths attributable to the virus.

At this writing I still cannot find those data. If anyone can point me to a source, I will appreciate it.

It was Obama all along – Worse than Watergate: Part 3. Jed Babbin,

https://spectator.org/it-was-obama-all-along/

The publication of a set of notes taken by now-disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok related to the prosecution of former national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn provides the first specific evidence that former President Obama was behind the wrongful prosecution of Flynn and, almost certainly, the investigation of Donald Trump’s campaign and presidential transition.

Strzok took the notes at a January 5, 2017, White House meeting at which he, Obama, Joe Biden, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, then-FBI Director James Comey, and Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, all were present.

The notes recount part of the conversation as follows:

Rice-Comey-Yates: [Flynn cuts] Other countries …

(Note: this probably means they listened to partial recordings of the Flynn–Kislyak conversations)

Comey-Yates: lean forward on [unclass?]

Biden: “Logan Act”

Obama: These are unusual times

Biden: I’ve been on the intel cmte for ten years and I never

Obama: Make sure you look at things + have the right people on it

Obama: Is there anything I shouldn’t be telling transition team?

Trump Will Win If He Responds to Righteous Voter Rage Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/28/trump-will-win-if-he-responds-to-righteous-voter-rage/

The hour of reckoning is here. Either Trump will crush the lawlessness and win swing voters to his side, or he will listen to the trimmers and lose the country.

The 2020 election will be decided in the fall by swing voters in ten or 15 states.

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, those voters were leaning to reelect President Trump, largely on the powers of incumbency and a near-record vibrant economy. The Democratic left-wing primary agendas, from the New Green Deal to reparations, the clownish candidates of the Beto O’Rourke and Corey Booker sort, the arrogance and meltdown of Mike Bloomberg, and Joe Biden’s cognitive impairment collectively frightened voters. 

Meanwhile, the booming economy, record energy production, record-low minority unemployment and reckoning with China had overshadowed Trump’s cul de sac tweeting, 93 percent unfavorable media coverage, and the three-year slow-motion coup of the 25th Amendment nonsense, Russian “collusion,” Robert Mueller, Ukraine, and impeachment.

Then came the contagion, the lockdown, the recession, and the collective madness of looting and arson, which in turn led to the present anarchy of statue toppling, cancel culture, name-changing, and McCarthyism 2.0. 

Of course, a president is blamed for chaos on his watch even if he did not create the chaos. He either stops it and is praised as a winner or, like Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980, is written off as a loser. 

What Stands Between the Public and Mob Rule?

The hour of reckoning is here and either Trump will crush the lawlessness and win the swing voters to his side, or he will listen to the trimmers and lose the country. Trump’s dilemma, however, is real and in some sense unprecedented. We are in uncharted waters when blue-state officials don’t mind the violent chaos in their midst, or at least feel that in a cost-benefit analysis it serves their November purposes more than a restoration of law and order. 

When you want to scare the public into submission just assign deaths to a disease without proof By Jack Hellner

ttps://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/when_you_want_to_scare_the_public_into_submission_just_assign_deaths_to_a_disease_without_proof.html

The scare campaign around Covid 19 keeps chugging along, making things look as bad as possible, and probably worse than it really is.

The New York Post Reports:

New Jersey’s coronavirus death toll adds nearly 2,000 probable fatalities

New Jersey’s coronavirus death toll climbed by nearly 2,000 Thursday — after the state began recording probable fatalities from the bug.

The state added 1,854 fatalities that were deemed likely due to COVID-19, but were not confirmed by a test, to its tally

New Jersey’s coronavirus death toll adds nearly 2,000 probable fatalities

This is sort of like claiming that humans, CO2, and hydrocarbon use causes temperature rises with no evidence. Or that masks save lives, with no data that supports that. 

The agenda is all that matters

Standardized absentee voting degrades democracy and encourages political illiteracy. Kerry Jackson

https://www.city-journal.org/the-case-against-mail-in-ballots

Voting by mail represents progress, we’ve been told; no one should have to leave his home to exercise the franchise. Thus goes the reasoning behind a new law that requires every registered Californian to receive a ballot for the fall election through the U.S. Postal Service. But will convenience voting yield better outcomes? More likely it will make them worse.

Assembly Bill 860, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on June 18, is premised on ensuring safety in the era of the coronavirus. Yet Wisconsinites voted in person in April, and the predicted spike in coronavirus cases from that public assembly never materialized. The state’s caseload did climb, but no steep increase occurred in the days and weeks after the primary, just a steady rise that has continued, partly driven by expanded testing. Apparently the same can be said for the locations where George Floyd marches, encouraged by the media and many public officials, were held. The pandemic, it appears, was a useful crisis—voting by mail has long been a priority among progressives, and the coronavirus outbreak provided sufficient cover to institute it.

Proponents promise that vote-by-mail elections will be corruption-free. Yet we know that in the 2016 elections, as many as 319,000 mailed ballots were tossed out for various reasons, including signatures that didn’t match; that, according to a Los Angeles Times examination, “the preferred way to cheat is with mail-in ballots”; and that absentee ballots, typically submitted by mail, provide the “easiest” path “to commit election fraud.”

Mark Hemingway persuasively argued recently in RealClearPolitics that “a significant increase in mail-in voting this fall could greatly incentivize ‘ballot harvesting’ where third parties collect mail-in ballots on behalf of voters and deliver them to election officials.” Ballot harvesting is a “recipe for mischief and wrongdoing,” says the Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. von Spakovsky. It’s risky, he argues, to let “individuals other than the voter or his immediate family to handle absentee ballots,” because “neither voters nor election officials can verify that the secrecy of the ballot was not compromised or that the ballot submitted in the voter’s name by a third party accurately reflects the voter’s choices and was not fraudulently changed by the vote harvester.”

Arizona COVID-19 hospitalizations plunge by 14%; ventilator usage drops by 25% It’s the first drop in hospitalizations in 10 days.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/arizona-covid-19-hospitalizations-plunge-12-ventilator-usage-drops-25

Reported coronavirus hospitalizations plunged in Arizona on Friday, falling 14% in the state’s first reduction in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in over a week. 

A total 2,110 coronavirus patients statewide were listed as hospitalized on Thursday per the Arizona coronavirus dashboard, dropping from 2,453 on Wednesday. The dashboard’s data is on a one-day lag. 

That’s the most significant drop in COVID-positive inpatients in Arizona since the state started keeping track in early April, according to the dashboard data. It also breaks a 10-day steady increase in hospitalized patients in the state, part of a steady uptick Arizona has had since the second week of June. 

Arizona has received national attention in recent weeks as one of several states with worrisome coronavirus trends. Texas, California and Florida have also been noted for their increasing case rates, though deaths in those states have remained largely flat. 

The number of ventilators being used by “positive or suspected COVID-19 patients” dropped even more steeply, falling 25% from 415 patients to 312, Arizona numbers show.

‘Disease Burden’ Is The New ‘Flatten the Curve!’ Bob Maistros

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.”

As They Disband CHOP, Its Leaders Insist Their Anarchy That Enabled Rape And Murder Was Successful By Kylee Zempel

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.

In First Weekend Of Riots, Looting Damage In 20 Major Cities Exceeded $400 Million By Jordan Davidson

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.”

Where are the deaths? The drum beat to halt the reopenings gets louder by the day. It should be resisted Heather Mac Donald

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.