RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/susan-rices-mysterious-email-11590103327?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

“The larger truth here is now undeniable: The Obama Administration spied on the political competition, it continued that spying even after Mr. Trump was elected, and then it tried to cover up what it had done. If Mr. Trump had done anything remotely similar, folks would be calling to bring back the guillotine.”

‘I know nothing about this.” That’s how Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, responded when asked on PBS’s NewsHour in March 2017 “whether Trump transition officials, including the President, may have been swept up in surveillance of foreigners at the end of the Obama administration?”

Now we know that denial wasn’t true. The evidence comes from her own hand. In her last minutes in government, on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, she sent herself an email to memorialize an Oval Office meeting two weeks earlier. Its attendees included Barack Obama, Joe Biden, FBI Director James Comey, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and herself. A newly declassified paragraph from that email quotes Mr. Comey talking about the monitoring of Trump adviser Michael Flynn’s conversations with then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The timing of that meeting is illuminating. The day before, Jan. 4, 2017, internal FBI documents show the bureau was planning to close its investigation into Mr. Flynn’s ties to Russia because agents had found no evidence of wrongdoing.

The day after, on Jan. 6, Mr. Comey gave his now notorious briefing to President-elect Trump. He mentioned the lurid claims from the Steele dossier. But, incredibly, Mr. Comey did not tell the incoming President the concerns he had expressed the day before to President Obama about the danger of Mr. Flynn’s passing classified information to the Russians. No doubt that is because he wanted to keep from Mr. Trump that the FBI was investigating his team.

DELIVERED AT ARLINGTON CEMETERY

My fellow Americans:

Memorial Day is a day of ceremonies and speeches. Throughout America today, we honor the dead of our wars. We recall their valor and their sacrifices. We remember they gave their lives so that others might live.

We’re also gathered here for a special event — the national funeral for an unknown soldier who will today join the heroes of three other wars.

When he spoke at a ceremony at Gettysburg in 1863, President Lincoln reminded us that through their deeds, the dead had spoken more eloquently for themselves than any of the living ever could, and that we living could only honor them by rededicating ourselves to the cause for which they so willingly gave a last full measure of devotion.

Well, this is especially so today, for in our minds and hearts is the memory of Vietnam and all that that conflict meant for those who sacrificed on the field of battle and for their loved ones who suffered here at home.

Not long ago, when a memorial was dedicated here in Washington to our Vietnam veterans, the events surrounding that dedication were a stirring reminder of America’s resilience, of how our nation could learn and grow and transcend the tragedies of the past.

During the dedication ceremonies, the rolls of those who died and are still missing were read for 3 days in a candlelight ceremony at the National Cathedral. And the veterans of Vietnam who were never welcomed home with speeches and bands, but who were never defeated in battle and were heroes as surely as any who have ever fought in a noble cause, staged their own parade on Constitution Avenue. As America watched them — some in wheelchairs, all of them proud — there was a feeling that this nation — that as a nation we were coming together again and that we had, at long last, welcomed the boys home.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/23/following-up-on-fauciism/

In an earlier article, I introduced the term “Fauciism.” But there is quite a bit more to the story, more than I could get into a single short essay. 

I happened to catch Anthony Fauci’s first appearance in front of the cameras with President Trump at the beginning of the Wuhan virus panic. Before Fauci spoke, I turned to my wife and said, “We are in big trouble now.” 

I remembered Fauci from a previous time. Back in the 1980s, Fauci was responsible for a different nationwide panic that turned out to be based on predictions that were  proven false by subsequent events.

I was alarmed and saddened to see Fauci on the dais with the president. Alarmed because of my concern that he was about to set off another panic; saddened that he had not been fired from his government sinecure on account of his earlier bumbling efforts.

In the early 1980s, Americans were told that everyone was at risk of getting AIDS. Fantastic numbers were bandied about. The claim was that millions of ordinary Americans were at risk. Oprah Winfrey had at least one show dedicated to perpetuating that belief. I remember the panic her show caused. When Oprah embraced that frightening vision of what was coming to America, it became a fact beyond dispute in the minds of many.

Many Americans who were swept up in this belief about AIDS have forgotten that panic, no doubt because we now know better. Events canceled that belief about AIDS, and it largely has been forgotten. I remember because I had to tell many, many panicked people that it was not true, and explain to them why it was not true. 

I knew then it was not true based on information that was readily available and fairly easy to obtain. I believed then and I believe now the man behind the panic also knew it was not true, though of course I might be mistaken about that.

That man was Anthony Fauci. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/judge_sullivan_does_the_equivalent_of_pasting_im_guilty_on_his_forehead.html

From the beginning of the Michael Flynn case, Judge Sullivan has been hostile to Flynn. By December 2018, based upon a misreading of the facts, Sullivan accused Flynn of conduct amounting to treason and said that he felt “disdain” and “disgust” for what he believed Flynn had done.

Sullivan’s behavior, however, went from hostile to bizarre when the Department of Justice, having uncovered massive wrongdoing the FBI’s and DOJ’s handling of the Flynn matter, moved to dismiss the case. On Saturday, though, Judge Sullivan managed to escalate from bizarre to . . . well, maybe paranoid is the correct word.

A Motion to Dismiss a criminal case is a routine procedure when the government realizes, for whatever reason, that there is no further reason to prosecute a defendant. Because the Constitution gives the prosecutor sole discretion about whether to bring a case and then, having brought it, whether to miss it, the judge has a limited role – and that role is to protect the defendant.

Thus, it is the judge’s responsibility to make sure that the government isn’t toying with the defendant by dismissing a losing case while intending to refile in the hopes of drawing a more amenable judge or jury. Absent that problem, the judge’s only job is to rubber-stamp the dismissal.

Judge Sullivan refused to use that rubber stamp. He also declined to act as Flynn’s last defense against an overreaching prosecution.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/crossfire_hurricanes_origin_document_shows_that_the_fbi_is_a_disgrace.html

Judicial Watch, the dogged organization that forces the government to produce documents it would rather hide, believes that it may finally have gotten hold of the FBI memo that started the Obama administration’s spying, first on the Trump campaign and then, when Trump won, on the Trump presidency. If the email Judicial Watch received is indeed the charging memo, it is a document so careless and ephemeral that it shouldn’t have been used to investigate a ham sandwich, let alone a presidential candidate and incoming president.

The “electronic communication” the government produced is heavily redacted. Nevertheless, there’s enough information in it, especially when combined with what we’ve already learned about Crossfire Hurricane, to show that there was no legal or practical justification for the investigation. (You can see the document here, and the full text is at the bottom of this post.)

The first thing one notices is that Peter Strzok’s name is all over it. He’s a one-man FBI. The document is cc’d to Strzok, he’s listed as a Counterintelligence contact, he approved the document, and he drafted the document.

To refresh your recollection about the smirking Strzok, in his emails to his paramour, Lisa Page, he referred to Trump as a “loathsome human being,” “an idiot,” “a f**king idiot,” and “awful.” Strzok devoutly wished for a Hillary victory. Disturbingly, he believed that it was up to him to “protect our country” from Trump. The Crossfire Hurrican opening document may reflect that delusional sense of self-importance.

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-cdc-confirms-remarkably-low-coronavirus-death-rate-media/

Most people are more likely to wind up six feet under because of almost anything else under the sun other than COVID-19.

The CDC just came out with a report that should be earth-shattering to the narrative of the political class, yet it will go into the thick pile of vital data and information about the virus that is not getting out to the public. For the first time, the CDC has attempted to offer a real estimate of the overall death rate for COVID-19, and under its most likely scenario, the number is 0.26%. Officials estimate a 0.4% fatality rate among those who are symptomatic and project a 35% rate of asymptomatic cases among those infected, which drops the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) to just 0.26% — almost exactly where Stanford researchers pegged it a month ago.

Until now, we have been ridiculed for thinking the death rate was that low, as opposed to the 3.4% estimate of the World Health Organization, which helped drive the panic and the lockdowns. Now the CDC is agreeing to the lower rate in plain ink.

Plus, ultimately we might find out that the IFR is even lower because numerous studies and hard counts of confined populations have shown a much higher percentage of asymptomatic cases. Simply adjusting for a 50% asymptomatic rate would drop their fatality rate to 0.2% – exactly the rate of fatality Dr. John Ionnidis of Stanford University projected.

More importantly, as I mentioned before, the overall death rate is meaningless because the numbers are so lopsided. Given that at least half of the deaths were in nursing homes, a back-of-the-envelope estimate would show that the infection fatality rate for non-nursing home residents would only be 0.1% or 1 in 1,000. And that includes people of all ages and all health statuses outside of nursing homes. Since nearly all of the deaths are those with comorbidities.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/23/21-million-brooklyn-field-hospital-closes-after-treating-zero-patients-n420444

A field hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., built to deal with the coronavirus has been closed without treating a single patient. The $21 million facility was part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s response to the growing number of coronavirus patients at New York City hospitals. That response included smaller facilities at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center and Stony Point (Long Island), and a huge, 1,100-bed medical center at the Javits Center.

All told, the state spent upwards of $350 million on facilities that were built but never used.

The City:

[City officials] expect the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pick up the costs for both of the temporary hospitals — which include an additional $2 million paid out to a second firm for construction management.

“As part of our hospital surge, we expanded capacity at a breakneck speed, ensuring our hospital infrastructure would be prepared to handle the very worst. We did so only with a single-minded focus: saving lives,” said Avery Cohen, a City Hall spokesperson.

Except they were building these facilities at “breakneck speed” at the same time the hospitalization rates for the virus were falling.

Dear President Trump,

This is an open letter written to ask: Would you speak to the nation about the virus we have confronted and the economic consequences of the response? I have read the speeches you gave in Warsaw in 2017, London in 2019 and at Davos this past January. Those were speeches that resonated with audiences. In the midst of this pandemic and economic slump, people need your leadership.

The country is fractured. COVID-19 has been politicized and has widened an already-deep divide. People are frightened. The lockdown has scared them further – lost jobs, a shrunken economy and collapsed financial markets. Reported economic numbers are backward looking, so will appear bad even as recovery takes hold. No one knows when or if a vaccine, or even a therapeutic, will be available. Nevertheless, people need confidence that tomorrow will be better than today, and they need it said fairly and honestly. They need to know that jobs will be restored, not just for the incomes necessary for food and shelter, but for the dignity a job provides. The desire to be independent is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. They need to know that shops, schools, restaurants and theaters will be re-opened safely. They don’t want platitudes. They want the truth, which gives rise to courage, pride and morale.

And they need to know that while the economy is being addressed those most vulnerable to the virus are being looked after. The American people are smart and empathetic. They need to be told the truth – that, like any virus, this one cannot be totally eradicated, but it can be managed.

This should be a speech that is not self-laudatory and does not assign blame. It should not be a campaign speech. It should be a recognition of where we are, not of where we might have been had different decisions been made. Leave speculation to others. It should be straight forward and honest. It should praise the bravery of healthcare workers, acknowledge the successes of governors and mayors and applaud the people for looking after one another. It should state the need to continue common-sensical practices of washing one’s hands, social distancing and wearing masks when with others. But it should also recognize the freedom of the American people – that liberty is the highest goal of a free people.

As well, it should be a speech that doesn’t shy from the economic costs incurred in combatting COVID-19, that the extraordinary debt government incurred – money printed  by the Federal reserve, the appropriation of funds by Congress and expenditures by the Executive – are obligations of the American tax payer.

I know this is asking a lot, but having listened to you, I know you are equal to the task. I recognize the press has not been your best friend, but it is the people who need your words, not the media.

Best regards,