RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/michael-flynn-was-not-masked-because-fbi-framed-him-as-a-clandestine-agent-of-russia/

The point of all this was politics, not national security.

Well, the mystery is solved, at least if you can believe what the usual sieves — those courageously anonymous “former U.S. officials” — have told their notetakers at the Washington Post. As I surmised in last weekend’s column, Michael Flynn was not “unmasked” in connection with his controversial phone call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. He was never masked in the first place. The Post reported that on Wednesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the Post is leading the media–Democrat effort to contort the fact that many Republicans were wrong in assuming Flynn had been unmasked prior to his name’s being leaked to the Post in early 2017 into a storyline that those Republicans must have been wrong to claim the leak was illegal. To the contrary, the leak is a felony, regardless of whether an American’s identity should have been concealed. Information collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is classified. The point of classifying information is to keep all of it concealed, not just the names.

Though I was right that Flynn was never masked in connection with the Kislyak call on December 29, 2016, I was off the mark in hypothesizing that the conversation may be been intercepted by an intelligence agency other than the FBI — perhaps the CIA or a foreign intelligence service. Sadly, this owes to my giving the FBI the benefit of the doubt: Had Flynn been picked up on a FISA surveillance of which he was not the target (i.e., a surveillance of Kislyak), I reasoned that the FBI would have masked his identity under statutorily required “minimization instructions.” Indeed, we now know that Flynn’s identity was masked (and then unmasked) dozens of times before and after December 29, precisely because the government knew those minimization rules applied to him.

Alas, in this as in so much else throughout the Trump–Russia farce, the Bureau played fast and loose with the rules. When investigators are so inclined, it turns out the privacy vouchsafed by the minimization rules is illusory. FBI officials — if they thought about it at all — figured Flynn need not be masked because they did not see him as an innocent American incidentally caught up in foreign surveillance. They purported to suspect that he was a clandestine agent of Russia.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/499115-the-house-impeachment-inquiry-loses-another-round-and-yes-thats-still

At the urging of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Supreme Court has granted a stay, at least temporarily blocking disclosure to the House Judiciary Committee of grand jury materials from the Mueller probe. 

The committee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), represented to the justices that these materials — transcripts of testimony and other evidence — are vital to its continuing inquiry into whether President Trump should be impeached.

Yes, that’s still going on.

As we noted back in those footloose pre-pandemic days of the Ukraine kerfuffle, the fact that the House filed impeachment articles against the president meant neither that the House impeachment push was over (it never will be over as long as Trump is in the White House) nor that the House would necessarily refrain from filing new impeachment articles — or even the same impeachment articles, there being no double jeopardy bar against successive impeachments for the same alleged offenses.

That last point is not incidental. Double jeopardy does not apply to impeachment because it is a political proceeding, not a judicial proceeding. That is, House impeachment inquiries and Senate impeachment trials are congressional matters focused solely on the removal of political power. They are not criminal court cases to determine guilt and potential imprisonment. 

2020 has been a huge year for our transparency revolution! 

When California asked for a $1 trillion 50-state bailout, we exposed the 340,000 public employees and retirees making $100,000+ costing taxpayers $45 billion. Our investigation at Forbes has 450,000 views.

When Illinois asked for a $41.6 billion bailout, we exposed the 109,881 public employees and retirees making $100,000+ costing taxpayers $14 billion. Our investigation at Forbes has 845,000 views.

When the U.S. Senate passed the CARES Act ($2.2 trillion “coronavirus” bailout), our exposure of the bi-partisan corruption was published at Forbes (517,000 views). It was national news and showcased on The Drudge Report.

We exposed the $4 billion bailout of America’s museums proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congressional delegation, and The Met — despite their $3.6 billion endowment (82,000 views).

We exposed the $3.5 billion in U.S. taxpayer payments since 2010 to the World Health Organization. 

We exposed the 5,100 colleges and universities that have been allocated $12.5 billion in coronavirus bailout! (Including the 20 richest universities with a collective endowment of $350 billion who were allocated $800 million in virus bailout funds.)

Americans are hungry for the truth. And, right now, we need your help.

This type of traction doesn’t happen by accident. But as a non-profit organization, our work depends solely on the support of regular people.

We accept zero government funding. This makes the success of our fundraising efforts critical. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16053/misusing-the-bible-against-vaccination

These are God’s words, as recorded in Leviticus, Chapters 13 and 14. “The priest shall isolate” the contagious person for seven days and then an additional seven days if the contagion persists. “And he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” Nor was this quarantine voluntary. The priest could compel it.

Anti-vaxxers are free to cite science, philosophy, law— but do not miscite the Bible or God. It is irreligious and insults the intelligence of those who have actually studied the Bible by assuming, as many do, that the Bible opposes everything they oppose.

Invoking the Bible and God is intended not as a stimulus to further debate, but rather as an argument- stopper: God is against it; no further discussion, research or argument is necessary; the debate is over.

They simply assume that God is on the side of every political or ideological position they espouse. If that is not taking the name of God in vain, I don’t know what is. And I have a source for that: The Ten Commandments.

Most of the emails and phone calls that I have gotten since I stated that the Constitution permits safe mandatory vaccination against highly contagious and lethal diseases have been from anti-vaxxers who claim the authority of the Bible. Have they actually read the Bible? Of course, the Bible says nothing about vaccinations: they were not even imagined at the time, but the Bible speaks volumes about the need to prevent the spread of contagious diseases. Large sections of the Bible deal with diagnosing contagious diseases such as leprosy and quarantining carriers outside the city walls until they were no longer contagious. The Bible also demands that we choose life over convenience, money or other values.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/ap-count-over-4300-virus-patients-sent-to-ny-nursing-homes

More than 4,300 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York’s already vulnerable nursing homes under a controversial state directive that was ultimately scrapped amid criticisms it was accelerating the nation’s deadliest outbreaks, according to a count by The Associated Press.

AP compiled its own tally to find out how many COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals to nursing homes under the March 25 directive after New York’s Health Department declined to release its internal survey conducted two weeks ago. It says it is still verifying data that was incomplete.

Whatever the full number, nursing home administrators, residents’ advocates and relatives say it has added up to a big and indefensible problem for facilities that even Gov. Andrew Cuomo — the main proponent of the policy — called “the optimum feeding ground for this virus.”

“It was the single dumbest decision anyone could make if they wanted to kill people,” Daniel Arbeeny said of the directive, which prompted him to pull his 88-year-old father out of a Brooklyn nursing home where more than 50 people have died. His father later died of COVID-19 at home.

“This isn’t rocket science,” Arbeeny said. “We knew the most vulnerable — the elderly and compromised — are in nursing homes and rehab centers.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/if_only_1199_seiu_union_members_really_knew.html

George Gresham, president of the New York-based 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, a position he has held since 2007, recently penned a piece titled “Donald Trump is Destroying Our Planet.” According to Gresham, Trump has “destroyed the global health security and biodefense directorate that the Obama administration put in place. ” Furthermore, Gresham asserts that “the Trump administration’s complete failure in face of the greatest public health crisis in modern history is only the most glaring example of how dangerous his presidency has been.” According to Gresham “[w]e have all seen the outright corruption — not only his personal corruption in looting our tax dollars to make millions from his hotels and golf courses — but his corruption of the government itself.” Moreover, Trump “has waged war . . . against immigrant workers from Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Muslims, Asians and Africans in our communities.”

These are certainly serious charges and as Ayn Rand wrote in her essay “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society, they “require the most precise, the most exacting, the most ruthlessly objective and rational process of thought” in order to refute them.

The first clue to his ideology is the non sequitur he makes about “looting tax dollars” and Trump’s ventures in construction. Then, Gresham completely ignores the fact that Trump sent 4,000 respirators and 4,400 ventilators as well as a naval ship to assist New York health workers fighting the pandemic. Also Gresham sidesteps the unconscionable actions of Governor Cuomo who absolutely put health workers and patients in perilous situations when he insisted that nursing homes take back corona virus residents.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/05/22/the-cdc-just-gave-us-the-biggest-reason-to-end-the-coronavirus-lockdowns-n417178

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) nows estimates that 35 percent of coronavirus infections are asymptomatic.

But that’s not even the most important part of their latest estimates. It’s the CDC’s new “best estimate” for the case fatality rate amongst symptomatic patients.

But, before I got to that, I should note that back in March, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated a 3.4 percent fatality rate and Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated that the fatality rate of the coronavirus was about 2 percent.

President Trump was skeptical of both those numbers, particularly the WHO’s estimate: “Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number,” Trump told Sean Hannity. “Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot of people will have this and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. I think that that number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/chinas-pandemic-power-couple-lloyd-billingsley/

Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the White House coronavirus task force came out against opening up the American economy and sending the kids back to school in September. That touched off pushback from Sen. Rand Paul, a medical doctor, and President Trump, who for the first time publicly disagreed with Fauci. The president and his supporters, particularly those still unemployed due to Fauci’s lockdown policies, might check out Dr. Tony’s take on World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. 

“Tedros is a really outstanding person,” Fauci said in late March. “I’ve known him from the time that he was the minister of Health of Ethiopia.” Trouble was, the worshipful Dr. Fauci provided no detail on Tedros’ fascinating back story.

Tedros has long been affiliated with the Marxist Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), responsible for atrocities against the Amhara ethnic group in northwest Ethiopia. Tedros earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1986, but never completed medical studies to become a physician. During his tenure as Ethiopia’s health minister from 2005-2012, Tedros purposely covered up cholera outbreaks in 2006, 2009, and 2011.

The next year, as Ethiopia’s minister of foreign affairs, Tedros strengthened his country’s ties to Communist China, which has loaned more than $13 billion to Ethiopia. In December 2014, Tedros and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi co-authored an op-ed hailing the close bonds between the two countries.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-5-20-obamagate-co-ordinating-the-cover-story

When a collection of bad guys pulls off a big heist, or a murder, or another important crime, one of the critical problems they face is co-ordinating the cover story. The cops may arrest one or more of them, and then question each suspect separately. Any cover stories must be completely consistent if they are to succeed. Inconsistencies in the cover story, even slight ones, will prompt focused questioning that could cause the whole house of cards to collapse.

But co-ordinating cover stories is not so easy. You might remember the case of Paul Manafort, recently under investigation for alleged crimes including lobbying of the U.S. Congress without proper registration. On that subject, Manafort’s story was that his lobbying efforts did not relate to the U.S. Congress, but only to Europe; thus, no registration necessary. As the government questioned other witnesses, Manafort attempted to reach out to them to be sure that they were on board with the line that “we were only lobbying Europe.” Unfortunately, the FBI was snooping on everything Manafort did. From the New York Times, June 4, 2018: