RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/understating-black-on-black-murders/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

About three weeks ago, we published my column, “The ‘Institutional Racism’ Canard.” In it, I made a point about black-on-black murders, drawing on FBI statistics from 2016. Though the data I drew from the published stats was accurate, there are caveats that I did not explain. When additional information is factored in, the problem is even worse than I suggested.

Specifically, I noted that Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff had drawn on FBI crime statistics for 2016 in support of the proposition that “of 776 black-white homicides, blacks committed 533 and whites 243.” I ended the paragraph with my own observation: “Neither of these numbers, by the way, nor their combined total, comes anywhere close to the number of blacks killed by blacks: a staggering 2,570 — the overwhelming majority male.”

We are going to remove that sentence, with a reference to this Corner post. As noted above, it accurately reflects what is set forth in the relevant table of the FBI’s 2016 crime statistics (Expanded Homicide Data Table 3), but it could be misleading. As an explanatory note explains, Table 3 “is based on incidents where some information about the offender is known by law enforcement.” That is, it “excludes data when the offender, age, sex, race, and ethnicity are all reported as unknown.” Moreover, Table 3 includes only murders where a single offender is known to have killed a single victim; that, too, omits a significant number of murders from the chart. Consequently, Table 3 breaks down only 6,676 murders that occurred in 2016.

As the FBI explains elsewhere in its compilation, however, there were an estimated 17,250 murders in the United States that year. In 7,881 of these, the victim was black.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/why-is-andrew-cuomo-bragging/

New York’s governor surveys the smoldering wreckage of the hardest-hit state and declares victory.

Andrew Cuomo is spiking the football, dunking the basketball, and dashing around the soccer field taking off his shirt. He’s spraying champagne all over Albany. He’s Muhammad Ali standing over the crumpled form of Sonny Liston in 1965: Boom, take that, coronavirus. Woo-hoo! Victory! Only 31,000 deaths. New York suffered through the equivalent of 9/11 times 11 but . . . yay?

“You played politics with this virus and you lost,” Cuomo said in an interview Thursday, referring to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with whom Cuomo is engaging in a bizarre feud to rival his utterly nonsensical ongoing war with fellow liberal Democrat and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. “It’s now undeniable this country paid a terrible price,” Cuomo continued, suggesting . . . what? That other states lacked the sage wisdom of Andrew Cuomo, slayer of the coronavirus? Thirty-one thousand New York families would like a word.

Last week, Cuomo saluted himself as he celebrated several weeks of encouraging coronavirus trends in his state by saying there was no longer a need for his daily press briefings, a habit for 111 days. “We showed that in the end, love does win. Love does conquer all — that no matter how dark the day, love brings the light,” he said. “That is what I will take from the past 111 days. And it inspires me and energizes me and excites me.”

https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/getting-realistic-about-the-coronavirus-death-rate/

With coronavirus infections rising again across the nation, the question of just how lethal the ­virus is has become more crucial than ever.

Early in the epidemic, public-health experts feared the virus might kill up to 2 percent of those infected, potentially causing millions of deaths in the United States and tens of millions worldwide. Those terrifying estimates prompted the lockdowns that have done incalculable harm to the economy, shattered small businesses and left children traumatized and untold numbers suffering from brutal isolation.

But we now know much more about the virus. And we know its lethality is lower than we originally feared — and highly concentrated in the very elderly and people with serious health problems.

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ­esti­mated in May that the coronavirus kills about 0.26 percent of the people it infects, about 1 in 400 people. New estimates from Sweden suggest that only 1 in 10,000 people under 50 will die from the virus, compared to 1 in 14 of people over 80 and 1 in 6 of those over 90.

Estimates for the coronavirus’ lethality have fallen so sharply because calculating the ­so-called infection fatality rate requires scientists and physicians to know both the total number of deaths and the total number of people infected.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/25/obama-and-his-gang-of-untouchables/

In the 1987 classic “The Untouchables,” federal crime fighters take on legendary mafioso Al Capone and the Chicago mob during the Prohibition era. At the time, Capone controlled every power base in the city—from local newspapers to sitting judges. The film spawned a famous line—“he pulls a knife, you pull a gun”—from the scene where Sean Connery’s character explained how to overcome Capone and his thugs.

The term “The Untouchables” referred not to the Chicago mafia but to Eliot Ness’ incorruptible gang of cops. In the Obama era, however, that term is flipped on its head. It applies to the former president himself and his own sort of mob—a broad syndicate of henchmen, including corrupt cops, who continue to serve their Don and enrich themselves in the process. Barack Obama still calls the shots and pulls the strings while his goombahs in the news media, federal government, and Democratic Party carry out his orders. 

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said in 2008, cribbing Connery’s line, during his first campaign for president. It was a warning that the Chicago-machine raised politician would use any weapon at his disposal to defeat his foes—which is exactly what he did.

And it’s the reason why to this day, Obama and his consigliere, Joe Biden, escape any culpability for the biggest shakedown in U.S. political history—the attempted hit on Donald Trump. After getting away with what would have been presidency-ending scandals for anyone else—illegal gun-running in Mexico, intimidating Tea Party activists with the IRS, shipping billions to Iranian mullahs, and lying about a terrorist attack to avoid losing re-election—Obama and Biden knew they could pull off one more caper. But this time, Obama’s lackeys didn’t just ignore or excuse his bad behavior, they were in on it. Now they are trying to hide the evidence.

Despite a steady flow of evidence confirming that Obama’s White House directed the operation to infiltrate, spy on, and sabotage Trump’s presidential campaign and then employ those same forces against Trump after he won, the media refuses to report any of it. Notes released this week once again reveal that the targeting of Lt. General Michael Flynn, Trump’s incoming security advisor, was openly discussed during a high-level Oval Office meeting in early January 2017 with Obama, Biden, James Comey, Susan Rice, and Sally Yates.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/flynn-highlights-new-strzok-notes-in-urging-dismissal-of-case/

Strzok’s notes are significant in what they confirm, but they probably do not reveal anything new.

Well, there is lots going on in Flynn World.

The president’s former national-security advisor, Michael Flynn, is obviously elated that, on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit granted his petition for a writ of mandamus — i.e., it instructed District Judge Emmet Sullivan to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case against him. I have a column about the ruling up on the homepage.

As reported by NR’s Zachary Evans, moreover, Flynn defense lawyer Sidney Powell has filed an intriguing supplement the defense’s concurrence in the Justice Department’s dismissal motion. The supplement, also filed on Wednesday, includes notes said to have been handwritten by Peter Strzok, then a top FBI counterintelligence agent (and, of course, later fired for sundry misconduct).

It is being widely reported that the notes concern a now infamous White House meeting about Flynn that took place on January 5, 2017. (I began writing about that meeting as soon as we learned about it in early 2018, and it is central to my book about the Trump–Russia investigation, Ball of Collusion). The meeting included the top political and law-enforcement leadership of the Obama administration — President Obama, Vice President Biden, national-security advisor Susan Rice, deputy attorney general Sally Yates, and FBI director James Comey — notwithstanding the insistence of Obama apologists that the administration did not permit law enforcement to be influenced by politics. (I would counter that mixing the two was the administration’s M-O).

I suspect the Strzok notes are about the January 5 meeting, too. There is, however, confusion on this point.

The short supplement Ms. Powell filed states that Strzok’s notes are “believed to be of January 4, 2017” (emphasis added). Now, Powell received these notes from the Justice Department as part of its continuing review of the Flynn case (which was prosecuted by special counsel Robert Mueller’s staff). Obviously, she is privy to more information about the case than we are, and we do not know what, if anything, DOJ told her about the provenance of the notes. That said, I am skeptical about the January 4 dating.

Only in Seattle do the tree trimmers make $160,000 per year!

Today, our investigation is an Editor’s Pick at Forbes: Why Seattle And Their Police Department Is In Trouble.

Our auditors dug into how Seattle is actually spending taxpayer dollars. We found: 

tree trimmers lopped off $160,604
the chief librarian made $197,704
electricians earned $271,070
electrical lineworkers made $307,387
police officers earned up to $414,543 

Last year, 601 city employees out-earned the mayor ($199,593), and the mayor out-earned 49 out of 50 state governors (top pay: $202,000).  

The city council member ($131,336) leading the charge to defund the police made more than the members of the New York general assembly — the most highly compensated state legislature in the country ($130,000). 

Read our breaking oversight piece at Forbes where we outline all the details. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/25/falling-covid-19-death-rates-are-even-smaller-than-they-look/
Once again, the U.S. is undergoing a media-driven COVID-19 scare after a “spike” in infections. But as we noted earlier this week, the number of cases depends on the amount of testing. The key gauge to watch is deaths. They’ve been falling since April, and there’s strong reason to believe they’re lower than the official count suggests.

The dreaded Wuhan virus is no doubt a nasty bug, worthy of our vigilance and ongoing concern. That said, its virulence, as measured by the daily number of deaths, appears to be waning, as the chart with this piece, courtesy of the COVID-19 Tracking Project of the Atlantic, clearly shows.

The average number of daily COVID-19 deaths on a weekly basis has fallen from a peak of just over 2,000 to 700 or so. That’s a roughly 65% decline. And it’s no fluke. The figure has been dropping steadily since April.

Hold on. That last number for June 23 on the chart shows a huge jump. Should we be worried? Is this the much-dreaded surge some have been talking up?

Apparently not. A big part of that one-time gain came from a revision by one state: Delaware.

As the Youyang Gu, an MIT data scientist who created the COVID 19-projections.com site, tweeted: “To put the increase in deaths in context, Delaware added 69 deaths today: ‘The revision came from identifying 67 deaths dating back to April.’ So if you take out those 67 deaths, the week-over-week deaths have not changed.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/24/explosive-new-fbi-notes-confirm-obama-directed-anti-flynn-operation/

Handwritten notes from fired former FBI agent Peter Strzok show that Obama himself directed key aspects of the campaign to target Flynn during a Jan. 5, 2017 meeting in the Oval Office.

Newly released notes confirm President Barack Obama’s key role in surveillance and leak operation against Michael Flynn, the incoming Trump administration national security adviser. The handwritten notes, which were first disclosed in a federal court filing made by the Department of Justice on Tuesday, show President Obama himself personally directed former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to investigate Flynn for having routine phone calls with a Russian counterpart. He also suggests they withhold information from President Trump and his key national security figures.

The handwritten notes from fired former FBI agent Peter Strzok appear to describe a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting between Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Comey, Yates, and then-national security adviser Susan Rice. The meeting and its substance were confirmed in a bizarre Inauguration Day email Rice wrote to herself.

It was at this meeting, which was confirmed by testimony from Comey and Yates, that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming administration.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/federal-appeals-court-orders-judge-sullivan-to-dismiss-the-flynn-case/

A divided panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals this morning ordered Judge Emmet Sullivan to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the indictment against Michael Flynn, who fleetingly served as President Trump’s first national-security adviser.

In a majority ruling written by Judge Naomi Rao and joined by Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, appointees of Presidents Trump and Bush 41, respectively, the court held that the executive branch has the constitutional power of prosecutorial discretion, including the authority to decide which cases to charge and whether to persist in charges once they’ve been brought. This power is in tension with Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which requires the Justice Department to seek “leave of the Court” before dismissing an indictment. While not deciding the potentially legitimate parameters of this requirement, the majority reasoned that it is for the protection of defendants from prosecutorial harassment.

Relying on the D.C. Circuit’s 2016 Fokker precedent, the court found that Rule 48(a) does not permit a thoroughgoing inquiry into the executive branch’s reasoning for dismissal — at least in a case in which the accused joins the prosecution in seeking a dismissal with prejudice (such a dismissal stands as a final judgment and bars the government from re-charging the defendant with the same offense at a later date).