RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/justice_for_roger_stone_.html

President Trump has corrected a miscarriage of justice. His commutation of the sentence, rather than a pardon, allows Stone to seek redress via the courts

On Friday, July 10th, President Trump commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence.  The clemency order, not to be confused with a pardon, allows Stone to fight in the appeals court to clear his name against what many consider a legal railroading. Friends of Stone claim that Trump had offered a pardon only to be rebuffed by Stone who asked for clemency to remain out of jail as he fights through the appeals court.

The decision to grant clemency came after a series of revelations which proved that Mueller’s team of prosecutors had tampered with evidence, manufactured statements, and buried exonerating evidence in their case against General Flynn, prompting the Justice Department to drop the case out of embarrassment. Mueller’s prosecutorial misconduct in the Flynn case strongly mirrors the prosecution of Roger Stone. Despite no underlying crime or Russian collusion found, the prosecution chose to push forward with process crimes.

Stone was accused of threatening a witness after sending text messages to comedian Randy Credico, telling him “my lawyers are dying to rip you to shreds…prepare to die”. Stone felt Credico had spun a false narrative to Mueller’s investigators to throw him under the bus. Even Credico claims the texts were taken out of context and were not threats of violence or intimidation.

Stone was also charged with lying to Congress. When Stone was asked by Congress if he was speaking with Wikileaks, Stone replied that he did not have a contact in the organization, but was speaking with Credico, who had interviewed Julian Assange. This turned out to be a factual statement, but prosecutors alleged that Stone claimed his contact was Credico in order to protect Jerome Corsi. In hindsight, the claim that Stone was lying to protect Corsi from prosecution rings hollow, as Corsi was never found to have committed any crimes and was never charged.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/supremes-signal-a-brave-new-world-of-popular-presidential-elections/

The Court’s decision in Chiafalo v. Washington seems sure to intensify the partisan fight over the Electoral College’s future.

Whither the Electoral College?

The Supreme Court had its say on the matter during the always-eventful last week of the term. To repeat a contention often made in these columns, the High Court has evolved into an essentially political institution, robed in the judiciary’s apolitical veneer. Given that we are a deeply divided nation, that the late-term cases are usually the most controversial, and that the four left-leaning justices — those appointed by Democratic presidents Clinton and Obama — tend to vote as a bloc in these cliffhanger rulings, one doesn’t expect many 9–0 decisions when the calendar reaches late June (let alone July).

Yet there it was on Monday: Chiafalo v. Washington. At issue was the question of “faithless electors.” Specifically, may a state enforce the pledge it compels electors to make to vote for the presidential candidate who wins the state’s popular vote? The Court’s holding that states have the power to do so was unanimous. Significantly, though, the Court was not of one mind about why.

The case is worth our attention because of what’s been going on under the radar.

Among the Left’s many transformative projects is the drive to have presidents elected by a national popular vote. The project, known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, would effectively eliminate the Constitution’s Electoral College system. It would reduce the College to a nullity by requiring a state’s electors to vote for the candidate who wins the national popular vote — regardless of whether that candidate loses the state’s popular vote. As Hillary Clinton and Al Gore could tell you, that would radically change how presidents are elected, and ultimately how we are governed.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/alex-berenson-schools-should-reopen-no-restrictions

Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer on the “Hemmer Time” podcast that his preferred response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic “is not that different than what people who are experts on infectious disease were saying we should do about flu pandemics.

“That means,” added Berenson, “you don’t shut down the schools. You know, maybe you temporarily shut them down if there’s a large rash of cases for a week or two. But you don’t shut down the schools. You don’t shut down society. You don’t force people to wear masks in public unless there’s really good evidence that doing so is going to reduce transmission, which we don’t have.”

Berenson, the author of “Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and Lockdowns,” has drawn a large social media following — and become a divisive figure — for his skepticism about the effectiveness of lockdowns and mask-wearing in stopping the spread of the virus.

He told Hemmer that a case to “temporarily shut down the country … for a week or 10 days or two weeks” could have been made around mid-March, as confirmed cases began to multiply in early hotspots like New York City.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/10/fauci-is-a-deep-state-fraud/

I knew for sure that Anthony Fauci is a fraud after listening to him for about 10 seconds—as anyone who listens carefully would have known as well. President Trump had been charging the Chinese government with obscurancy and deception in its handling of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Fauci had dealt intimately with the Chinese on that matter. His National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control had partially financed the notorious Wuhan laboratory where Chinese scientists were researching the virus. Fauci knew a lot.

A reporter asked Fauci if he agreed with Trump that the Chinese have not been fully forthcoming about the scope of the pandemic. Fauci answered that although the Chinese had lacked candor in previous years, this time they had turned over “the sequence of the virus.” Spoken like a wily swamp reptile!

His words were factually correct. The Chinese had turned over all they knew about the virus’s “sequence”—namely, its genetic structure. But the reporter and the audience neither knew nor cared about that. They were interested in the Chinese government’s misrepresentations of the virus’s contagion, fatality rate, and so forth. That is what they had dissembled and lied about. 

Fauci’s answer artfully deceived the audience into believing the opposite of the truth. Thus did Fauci help plant a dagger between Trump’s shoulder blades and help his party—the Democrats and the deep state—extort the American people’s compliance to their agendas.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/the_racism_and_sexism_at_americas_woke_institutions.html

You may recall that an organization called Sleeping Giants was one of the primary movers and shakers behind the corporate boycott side of the left’s cancel culture. Most famously, it was the tip of the spear in the attack against Breitbart after Trump’s election. Now, one of its founders stands accused of racist and sexist behavior. This is an increasingly common charge against woke companies, and it makes sense, not just because employees are marinated in victimhood, but because of the moral hazard doctrine.

Moral hazard describes a situation in which someone who is insulated from consequences is more likely to engage in risky behavior. Although the term is mostly used in economics, we see it routinely in people’s overall conduct.

For example, you might have noticed that, as cars get safer, people are more likely to take driving risks, such as tailgating or weaving through traffic. Likewise, as football helmets seemingly became more sophisticated, the game changed with players using their heads as battering rams. Sadly, the high incidence of ALS shows that the helmets weren’t as safe as people thought they were.

A variation of moral hazard also shows up when people have behaved virtuously in one area of life. Draped in their moral superiority, they think they have a pass in other areas. A perfect example comes from bicycles. As a former Bay Area resident, I can tell you that many urban bicyclists are deeply impressed with their moral purity in eschewing polluting automobiles. Borne upon a cloud of self-righteousness, they entirely ignore not only bicycle safety rules but general traffic safety rules. In their minds, their one act of virtue is a hedge against all risks.

And that gets us to the stories about accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other bad behaviors at excessively woke organizations. These companies tout all the appropriate leftist virtues: They despise Trump, hate Republicans generally, fight climate change, donate millions to Black Lives Matter, offer 52 gender options for their employees, and so on. One would think, then, that women, minorities, and people on the LGBTQ etc. spectrum would be thrilled at these places . . . but they’re not.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/10/goya-foods-ceo-trump-white-house/

The CEO of Goya Foods is refusing to back down in the face of a boycott over his comments praising President Donald Trump.

Goya Foods President and CEO Bob Unanue came under fire after he said at the White House Thursday that “we’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder,” according to Fox News. His comments sparked calls to boycott Goya Foods, the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the country.

“Oh look, it’s the sound of me Googling ‘how to make your own Adobo,’” Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. In a subsequent tweet, Ocasio-Cortez included a recipe for homemade adobo.

Former presidential candidate Julian Castro tweeted: “@GoyaFoods has been a staple of so many Latino households for generations. Now their CEO, Bob Unanue, is praising a president who villainizes and maliciously attacks Latinos for political gain. Americans should think twice before buying their products.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-minnesota-doctor-says-he-is-being-targeted-for-his-viewpoints-on-covid-19_3420129.html

A Minnesota doctor says he is under investigation by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice for his vocal views about the CCP virus and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidelines on certifying COVID-19 deaths.

Dr. Scott Jensen, a family physician and a Republican state senator, took to social media to share that the Board of Medical Practice in Minnesota was investigating him for “spreading misinformation in regards to the completion of death certificates on a news program” and providing “reckless advice” by comparing COVID-19 to influenza following two public complaints filed to the Board.

“I should have seen it coming because I saw the threats on social media; I’ve seen them for the last two or three months,” Jensen said. “They didn’t agree with me. They didn’t like that I was trying to provide some context for the flu, for COVID-19.”

Jensen claims that the threats came from “people in all walks of life” including physicians. He says he’ll never know who made the complaints.

“I don’t know if they’re routinely in a political camp if they’re activists. I’ve gone online and looked at what it takes to complete a complaint that the Board of Medical Practice has to follow up on,” Jensen said. “It’s a one-page deal. You can say what you want, you could be a huge donor for the other party.”

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/new-steele-evidence-strengthens-durham-prosecution

It was in London that the whole Russia collusion caper began four years ago, so it seems only fitting that as the discredited probe enters its final phase that damning new evidence of the FBI’s failures would emerge back in England.

This week when a British judge ruled against the former FBI human source Christopher Steele, the decision delivered more than an order for the former spy’s company to pay damages to two Russian businessmen maligned by his dossier.

It also introduced new incontrovertible evidence that bolsters Attorney General William Barr’s and U.S. Attorney John Durham’s probe into whether the FBI engaged in misconduct and criminally deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to win permission to spy on the Trump campaign.

Buried in Justice Mark Warby’s ruling were several new pieces of evidence that answer long lingering questions about just what the FBI knew, and when it knew it.

For instance, Congressional Republicans have long questioned when exactly the FBI knew that Steele’s dossier was a product ordered up for the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic Party. After all, the bureau never revealed the connection to the FISA court despite its central relevance to the motives of the dossier.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/goya-boycott-ceo-robert-unanue-praise-donald-trump/

Goya, which claims to be the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the U.S., is facing a backlash after CEO Robert Unanue praised Donald Trump during a Thursday event at the White House. “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder,” Unanue said.

Unanue, who is of Spanish descent, was one of a handful of Hispanic supporters on hand as the president signed an expansion of the “Hispanic Prosperity Initiative.” The executive order is meant to “improve access by Hispanic Americans to educational and economic opportunities,” according to a White House press release.

Calls to #BoycottGoya quickly spread on social media, with hashtags including #Goyaway also trending. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro tweeted his disapproval of the company, urging consumers to “think twice before buying their products.”

Julián Castro

@JulianCastro
.@GoyaFoods has been a staple of so many Latino households for generations. Now their CEO, Bob Unanue, is praising a president who villainizes and maliciously attacks Latinos for political gain. Americans should think twice before buying their products. #Goyaway

https://www.city-journal.org/deadly-cost-of-lockdown-policies

Many years ago, one of my duties as a young surgical intern was to fill out death certificates for recently deceased patients. Under “cause of death,” Part I asked for the immediate cause, other conditions leading to it, and the underlying cause. Part II asked for “other significant conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause given in Part I.” If you think this is confusing, you’re right. Did the post-operative patient found dead in bed really die of a heart attack, a pulmonary embolism, or some operative complication, like bleeding? Where do you list their colon cancer or hypertension?

The task has not gotten any easier during the Covid-19 pandemic. People are still dying of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and accidents. But now there is a new respiratory illness to account for. Not every decedent who tested positive for the virus that causes Covid-19 died from it—in fact, the disease is mild for most people. Conversely, some deaths due to Covid-19 may be erroneously assigned to other causes of death because the people were never tested, and Covid-19 was not diagnosed. Nearly everyone dying of Covid-19 has concurrent health problems—the average decedent has 2.5 co-morbid conditions—and hypertension, heart disease, respiratory diseases, and diabetes are among the most common. The presence and interaction of these co-morbid conditions is what sometimes changes Covid-19 from a relatively benign disease into a killer. But co-morbidities can also cause death regardless of Covid-19.

A common way to distinguish the mortality burden of a new infectious agent from other causes of death is to estimate the excess deaths that occurred beyond what would be expected if the pathogen had not circulated. A recent study of 48 states and the District of Columbia estimated 122,300 excess deaths during the pandemic period of March 1 to May 30, compared with expected deaths calculated from the previous five years. Deaths officially attributed to Covid-19 accounted for 78 percent of the total; approximately 27,000 deaths (22 percent) were not attributed to Covid-19. A second study, using the same database with different statistical methods for the period March 1 to April 25, found that 65 percent of 87,000 excess deaths were attributed to Covid-19.