RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/the-massive-trump-coronavirus-supply-effort-that-the-media-loves-to-hate/

The administration has used deft improvisation to secure huge supplies of PPE.

There is a new cardinal rule in journalism — never write anything favorable about the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, even about its successes.

It’s why the story of how the administration handled the potential ventilator crisis has gone almost entirely untold, and why its effort to secure supplies of personal protective equipment, or PPE, has been gotten largely skeptical or hostile coverage.

Any government response to a once-in-a-generation crisis is going to be subject to legitimate criticism, and there’s no question that almost every major government in the Western world, including ours, should have acted sooner. But to read the press, there is basically nothing good that the Trump administration has done over the last three months.

This is manifestly false. In a briefing for reporters last week on FEMA’s work securing PPE, FEMA administrator Peter Gaynor laid out the raw numbers: FEMA, HHS, and the private sector have shipped or are currently shipping 92.7 million N95 respirators, 133 million surgical masks, 10.5 million face shields, 42.4 million surgical gowns, and 989 million gloves.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/the-hydroxychloroquine-meltdown/

The president claims he’s taking it as a prophylactic. The media met that with hysteria instead of conscientious coverage.

President Donald Trump claims that he’s taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure against contracting coronavirus, and that he has taken zinc and antibiotic azithromycin as well.

There’s no consensus that hydroxychloroquine is an effective therapeutic treatment for COVID-19 (early studies have yielded different results, and the NIH recently began a controlled clinical trial). Few people I’ve read argue that it’s a useful prophylactic. Nevertheless, the frenzied and childish reaction to Trump’s championing what amounts to a commonly used prescription drug is more destructive than his annoying habit of bringing it up.

A CNN columnist warns of “the danger in Trump’s decision to self-medicate.” If Trump is taking the drug, it’s been prescribed and presumably he’s being monitored, yet the CNN piece tries to create impression that the president is popping hydroxychloroquine tablets like mints to soothe his anxieties.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/18/fraudulent-models-fatal-consequences/

It was the model that shocked the world.

In mid-March, British researchers issued an alarming study that predicted 2.2 million Americans would die of COVID-19 by August without immediate, draconian measures to halt its spread. As the virus rampaged across the country, more than 80 percent of Americans would be infected, the experts warned, causing massive shortages of hospital beds and intensive care units. Death and misery would be the new norm for months to come.

Dr. Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at the London-based Imperial College who led the team, made “social distancing” a household term. “A combination of case isolation, social distancing of the entire population and either household quarantine or school and university closure are required,” Ferguson wrote. “All four interventions combined are predicted to have the largest effect on transmission.”

Ferguson’s work terrified policymakers, the news media, and general public. Dr. Deborah Birx referenced the model during a March 16 press briefing at the White House. “Sweeping new federal recommendations announced on Monday for Americans to sharply limit their activities appeared to draw on a dire scientific report warning that, without action by the government and individuals to slow the spread of coronavirus and suppress new cases, 2.2 million people in the United States could die,” the New York Times reported March 16.

Ferguson strayed from the role of objective scientist to global policy advisor, insisting his harsh rules should continue for at least 18 months until a vaccine was found. “It’s a difficult position for the world to be in,” he opined after his paper’s release.

Acting on Ferguson’s doomsday predictions, the Centers for Disease Control issued strict guidance that prompted state officials to close schools; shutter “nonessential” businesses; and issue stay-at-home orders. They simply were acting on the best available science and data, governors claimed, as they ordered their constituents to live under a form of house arrest for weeks on end.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/05/19/america-is-reopening-itself-will-politicians-be-able-to-stop-it/
Weary of more than two months of lockdowns, lost jobs, vanished income, and emotional distress, Americans are practicing a bit of Irish Democracy, shopping, dining out, gathering, and trying to carry on as before the pandemic arrived without approval from authorities. It was bound to happen.

As has been widely noted, we were initially told that we needed to shut down and shelter in place so that we would “flatten the curve” of infection growth to prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed by people sick with COVID-19. That benchmark was met a little more than a month into the lockdowns. Time magazine reported in late April that “The U.S. Has Flattened the Curve.” This New York Times chart clearly shows that the flattening began early last month.

Yet many Americans are still under shelter-in-place orders, some of which have been extended. We hate to use a cliche, but politicians have been moving the goalposts. Flattening the curve isn’t good enough. They want to keep people home until there’s a vaccine; or science, which has sadly become a loose term that means whatever the user wants it to, has established an effective treatment; or maybe until there are zero coronavirus cases.

This has rankled more than a few. The masses are fed up with huddling in their homes and are yearning to breathe free.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/05/18/china-threats-only-embolden-republicans-to-demand-coronavirus-sanctions-n400507

Last week, the Chinese Communist Party threatened “severe consequences” for House Republicans seeking to hold China accountable for its malfeasance in the coronavirus pandemic. China threatened to slap sanctions on them and to interfere in U.S. elections to boot them from office. Far from intimidating these Congressmen, however, the threat appears to have emboldened them. On Monday, three of them sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, urging him to apply sanctions on Chinese Communist Party officials for human rights violations under the Magnitsky Act.

“The Chinese regime’s open threat to interfere in American elections is just the latest of many aggressive, hostile actions. It is desperate to avoid responsibility, so it has reverted to desperate tactics,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), the first lawmaker to suggest China should pay reparations for the fallout from coronavirus, said in a statement Monday. “I’m neither surprised nor intimidated–I’m encouraged.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/attorney-general-barr-remarks-on-obama-and-biden-make-an-important-point/

Attorney General Barr is right in his commitment to purge the Justice Department and the FBI of their recent political proclivities.

Attorney General Barr’s remarks on Monday, signaling that the Justice Department anticipates no criminal charges against former President Obama and former Vice President Biden, should come as a surprise to no one (certainly, ahem, to no one who read Ball of Collusion).

As I noted here, less than a month ago, the AG observed during a wide-ranging interview with Hugh Hewitt that the subjects of the Durham investigation are not candidates for public office; thus, they were not affected by a Justice Department guideline against bringing charges close to Election Day. By then, Biden was already the putative Democratic presidential nominee. Obviously, if serious consideration were being given to an indictment of Biden, Barr would not have made the point about the guideline.

To be sure, the media reporting will portray Barr’s latest comments as indicative of a rift between the AG and President Trump, whose latest “Obamagate” rhetoric frames Obama-era investigative abuses as “crime.”

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

A friend, who thinks politically as we do here, phoned this morning after just hearing Barr’s comments doubting that Obama or Biden would be criminally prosecuted.  We both would love to see it, but consider how destructive the Dems’ legal efforts to get Trump to testify so they could prosecute him have been for the past three years, and then imagine what could happen if the precedent were set to prosecute future presidents of either party.  Such a spectacle would draw worldwide attention and obliterate everything else our country needed to be doing that would have more impact on our country’s, and even the world’s, future.

If there were a trial, it would go on for years, and that wouldn’t even include all the appeals.  No matter how it concluded, whether it were an acquittal, a partial conviction, a hung jury, or a jury nullification, it would still be argued for decades.  Either way, Obama would be a hero to millions throughout the world, and he could go on another anti-American world tour as a victim of an unfair justice system.  The ones who actually did the crimes at his direction would be brushed aside in the frenzy and even forgotten.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-andrew-cuomo-reckless-choices/

The media’s golden boy made three breathtakingly bad moves in March that in retrospect amounted to catastrophe.

Bill de Blasio made terrible decisions as mayor of New York City. But as more reporting emerges about the catastrophic decisions made by New York’s governor, it’s possible Andrew Cuomo deserves even more blame than de Blasio for what the coronavirus has done to the tri-state area and consequently the nation.

New York and New Jersey combined have suffered more COVID-19 deaths than any other country being tracked by researchers who run the Johns Hopkins crisis dashboard. Cuomo made three breathtakingly bad moves in March that in retrospect amounted to catastrophe. First, Cuomo failed to call for, and even actively discouraged, informal social-distancing measures in early March. Next was the delay in mid-March in ordering formal closures when the virus started rampaging through his state. Third was his March 25 edict to long-term care facilities that they must accept infected patients, which caused a mass deadly outbreak among helpless, trapped, elderly New Yorkers. Only in the last few days have some corners of the media begun to call attention to just how badly Cuomo has failed us.

Like de Blasio, who as late as March 10 was on MSNBC telling New Yorkers that most of us were at little to no risk and that the coronavirus was much like seasonal flu, Cuomo persisted with his don’t-scare-away-the-tourists happy talk well into March, the critical month.

https://canadafreepress.com/article/trumps-baptism-scene

While the Corleone family of Godfather fame was the embodiment of mob life and the acquisition of money, power and prestige through criminal activity, the Trump family––in stark contrast––embodies the nose-to-the-grindstone, upward-mobility glory of the American Dream.

Nevertheless, when I think of the fanatical, maniacal and relentless persecution, accusations, vilification, and sabotage that President Trump has experienced for the past four years at the hands of crazed Democrats––both in and out of office––the infamously stunning Baptism Scene at the end of Godfather One comes immediately to mind. 

In that scene, Michael Corleone––who attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he met his future wife Kay, and who then left college to join the U.S. Marines after the attack on Pearl Harbor––is featured in the baptism ceremony where he has been asked to be the godfather of Michael Rizzi, the infant son of his sister Connie and her husband Carlo Rizzi, in 1955.

The solemn ritual takes place in the splendiferous Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral––built in 1809––a Roman Catholic Church on Mulberry Street in New York City. It is held shortly after the funeral of Michael’s father, the powerful Don, Vito Corleone.

Before Don Vito’s death, however, he and Michael––the ordained heir to his father’s mafia fiefdom––concoct a complex plan to vanquish all their enemies.