RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/justice-department-intervenes-against-northams-communal-worship-restrictions/The Virginia restrictions run afoul of the First Amendment.

‘There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.” That, yet again, was the Justice Department’s message as it intervened on Sunday on the side of a Virginia church, which is suing Governor Ralph Northam’s lockdown against communal worship.

As I related back in April (here and here), Attorney General Bill Barr has admonished states and municipalities that the Justice Department stands ready to take action against social-distancing edicts that unduly restrict fundamental constitutional rights. The DOJ’s Civil Division has been paying particular attention to restrictions on the free exercise of religion — specifically, heavy restrictions or outright bans on communal worship.

A number of governors and mayors, particularly in blue states and cities, have decreed that, in their considered opinion, religious observance is not sufficiently “essential” to be indulged while the authorities are trying to stop the spread of COVID-19, the potentially lethal infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus. State and municipal executives are relying on their emergency powers to dictate draconian restrictions (i.e., these are not legislative enactments).

We need not speculate whether insufficient weight has been accorded the Constitution in the fashioning of various prohibitions on worship, work, and assembly. As New Jersey governor Phil Murphy smugly put it when questioned by Fox’s Tucker Carlson, the Constitution is “above my pay grade,” so “I wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this.” His Honor was relying on a purportedly higher authority: “scientists.”

https://canadafreepress.com/article/an-end-to-the-chaos

Tom McCaffrey is the author of Radical by Nature: The Green Assault on Liberty, Property, and
Prosperity.

Finally, someone is in control.

For too long, Americans have been free to come and go as they pleased. They could climb into their cars and drive anywhere they wanted, at any time of day, for any reason they chose, or for no reason at all. And they never had to justify themselves to anyone. It was a deplorable situation.

A fifth of the U.S. workforce has been put out of work by the new edicts

If a store was open for business, a person could just walk right in and shop to his heart’s content. If it was too crowded for his taste, he was free to go elsewhere. Or he could go about his business cheek by jowl with other customers, possibly exposing himself to all manner of illness. Worse, if he had children with him, or children at home, he risked exposing them to whatever horrible disease he might pick up at the store. Deplorable.

He could go to a Walmart, or a dentist, or a barber shop, or a restaurant, or even a church for God’s sake, and it was left entirely up to him to decide whether the risk of contracting an illness was worth whatever benefit he stood to gain. But such decisions are too important to be left to any old Tom, Dick, or Harry. It’s about time someone put a stop to all this. 

Yes, a fifth of the U.S. workforce has been put out of work by the new edicts. Tens of thousands of small businesses have been destroyed, along with their owners’ life savings. Collateral damage. It was unavoidable and well worth the price if it meant that someone would finally be put into control, that someone would finally have the authority to do what’s necessary to keep us SAFE. Because that’s all that matters in the end.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/495833-how-to-open-society-using-medical-science-and-logic?rnd=1588469307

As of the first week of May, more than 66,000 Americans have died from the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that three to four weeks typically elapse before death, thousands more who are already infected will also succumb to the virus. That said, the direct toll from the infection has markedly declined throughout the United States, including the epicenter of New York. The curves have been flattened – the stated goal of the isolation has been accomplished – for both hospitalizations per day and deaths per day.

We now have an even greater urgency, due to the severe and single-minded policies already implemented. Treating COVID-19 “at all costs” is severely restricting other medical care and instilling fear in the public, creating a massive health disaster, separate from a potential world poverty crisis with almost incalculable consequences. Half of neurosurgery patients still refuse to come in for treatment of diseases that if left untreated risk brain hemorrhage, paralysis and death, even when their doctors directly reassure them. That’s just one subset of the latest reports of skipping two-thirds to three-fourths of cancer screenings, most childhood vaccinations and treatment for new strokes and known cancer.  

There are two critical aspects of this urgently needed re-entry plan. First, policymakers must apply logic and critical thinking to the massive amount of evidence we have acquired and combine that with decades of established medical science. Second, we must demonstrate and fully convey the logic underlying the plan to reassure a public that has become almost paralyzed with panic and fear.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/smart-or-lucky-how-florida-dodged-the-worst-of-coronavirus-11588531865?mod=hp_lead_pos5

MIAMI—When the coronavirus pandemic swept toward Florida, public-health professionals nationally warned of a potentially devastating wave of infections that could imperil the state’s large senior population.

But so far, the state seems to have dodged that fate, despite not following advice to impose measures such as an early, blanket lockdown to minimize spread.

With Gov. Ron DeSantis preparing to start reopening the state on Monday, epidemiologists and others are asking: What happened? Was Florida smart or lucky?

The answer may be a bit of both. Mr. DeSantis restricted visitation to nursing homes but he left early lockdown decisions to local authorities. Mayors in some hard-hit large communities shut down faster and more aggressively than the state, gaining valuable time.

Walt Disney World closed two weeks before the statewide order. Spring breakers, who packed Florida beaches and bars until mid-March, went back home. Some scientists point to Florida’s low population density, while others to its subtropical climate to explain fewer infections.

A key factor, many say, is a change in the behavior of Floridians. Though the governor didn’t impose a statewide stay-at-home order until April 3, people began hunkering down en masse in mid-March, according to firms that analyze anonymous cellphone data.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/j-christian-adams/2020/05/03/foundation-funded-journalists-lie-about-voter-fraud-n387767

Last week I wrote about a new constellation of leftist philanthropy trying to influence the rules of the 2020 election, including pushing vote-by-mail, paying reporters to deny that voter fraud exists, and lobbying Congress to federalize state power over elections. Less than 24 hours later, I saw these dollars in action – through a smear by the propagandists at ProPublica.

ProPublica is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) posing as a newsroom. It is the new model in a changing media landscape, where groups like George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society give ProPublica hundreds of thousands of dollars and ProPublica does what the funders ask.

It should be no surprise that ProPublica is tasked with attacking anyone who reports on voter fraud or election security vulnerabilities but sometimes it rises to the level of parody.

A few weeks ago, my organization reported that federal data published by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission revealed a terrible problem with vote-by-mail. It turns out that tens of millions of ballots went missing, were rejected, went to the wrong address, and ultimately were never counted as valid votes.

You can read the disheartening data here.

Reporting on millions of ballots that were mailed out but never counted as valid votes is too much for ProPublica’s donor masters. So this weekend, Derek Willis of ProPublica penned a ham-handed attack on the revelation.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/05/03/at-least-five-studies-have-shown-that-the-coronavirus-fatality-rate-is-under-1-percent-n387776

Appearing on Justice with Judge Jeanine on Saturday night, Dr. Debora Birx admitted something that anyone paying attention to the coronavirus pandemic has known for some time now. “I think we underestimated very early on the number of asymptomatic cases,” Dr. Birx said. “And I think we’re really beginning to understand there are people that get infected that those symptoms are so low-grade that they don’t even know that they’re infected.”

The question, of course, is how much? Well, we have a rough idea already.

But, first, let’s go back to what experts said originally. 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. “If you look at the cases that have come to the attention of the medical authorities in China, and you just do the math, the math is about 2%.”

Some of us will remember how President Trump endured a lot of criticism for saying that he had a “hunch” that the WHO’s estimate was too high and that the fatality rate of the coronavirus might actually be below 1 percent. “Well, I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. 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,” Trump said. “I think that that number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under 1 percent.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/05/01/now-we-know-there-was-an-anti-trump-conspiracy-at-the-fbi/

Recently unsealed notes show top FBI officials debated whether they should get President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn “to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired,” or “admit to breaking the Logan Act” for talking to former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition. As the deep-state onion gets peeled back layer by layer to its rotten core, it becomes clear this wasn’t mere government misconduct. It was a criminal conspiracy.

These are not mere procedural quibbles, but profound questions about the integrity and legality of the FBI’s investigations into key officials in the incoming Trump administration, including Trump himself. A pattern of collusive illegality on the part of the FBI and key Justice Department officials has become increasingly clear from these and other revelations.

The newly released notes contain shocking revelations of how the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigators and top FBI officials set their “perjury trap” for Flynn.

Flynn, you will recall, pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to federal officials. But he did so only after being forced to sell his home to fund his legal defense, and after threats to prosecute his son if he didn’t cop a plea.

It was coercion, plain and simple. The kind of thing a totalitarian or dictatorial regime would do. Yet such skullduggery was routine for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which tried to gin up false charges of Russian collusion first against the Trump campaign and later against the incoming Trump administration.

In questioning Flynn in January 2017, the FBI circumvented its own rules that require it to go through the White House counsel’s office. Instead, it brazenly barged in and questioned Flynn, a former Army lieutenant general, in his office just three days after Trump was sworn in.

Among the other illegalities, the FBI’s own notes of the meeting were later re-written – that is, tampered with – by both FBI special agent Peter Strzok and his paramour FBI lawyer Lisa Page. That tampered document was used as a pretense to overturn a decision in early January to close the case against Flynn. Instead, lacking any real evidence, the FBI chose to pursue an investigation it hoped would lead to a prosecution.

An honest mistake? Earlier emails released in the investigation of the FBI’s misconduct show that Strzok and Page loathed Trump and desperately wanted Hillary Clinton elected president. Yet, Strzok spearheaded the investigation into Trump, a clear conflict of interest. And he was one of the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn in the White House.

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

Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently called the United States government’s coronavirus testing data “bogus” because of testing inequality and slow turnaround, with three to four days to get results.

Earlier in the week, President Trump, during a news conference, came under fire from a reporter who claimed that South Korea had tested more people per capita than the U.S. The Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, who was present, defended the president, saying: “I just want to make it clear that South Korea’s testing was 11 per hundred thousand [residents], and we’re at 17 per hundred thousand.” This matches the latest statistics at Worldometers, which maintains a constantly-updated database of coronavirus statistics globally, by country, down to the state level.

Seems there’s not enough bad to say about testing, and Gates was out front in that effort.

The tech tycoon had previously taken a swipe at the president for publicly castigating China for its cover-up of the coronavirus.  During a Sunday interview on CNN, Gates not only argued that it is not time to be questioning the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPC) efforts in handling the COVID-19 outbreak, but went so far as to dispel any wrongdoing by the communist regime:

“China did a lot of things right at the beginning, like any country where a virus first shows up. They can look back and say where they missed some things.  You know, some countries did respond very quickly and get their testing in place, and they avoided the incredible economic pain.  It’s sad that even the U.S. that you would have expected to do this well, did it particularly poorly.  But it’s not time to talk about that.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/against_heavy_odds_trump_rises_6_points_in_two_weeks_according_to_gallup_poll.html

His face showing the strains of office, President Trump has obviously been on the job in the coronavirus pandemic.

Apparently the voters have noticed, and Fox News reports that Trump is rising with voters:

President Trump’s job approval soared 6 points in the last two weeks, according to the latest Gallup poll.

The new survey found 49 percent approve of the president’s job in office and 47 percent disapprove, a personal best with Gallup for Trump. Two weeks ago, 43 percent approved of the president’s job, according to the pollster.

Trump also had a 49 percent approval rating in mid-March, according to Gallup, before his rating took a 6-point plunge in the first half of April.

For us, that’s reason for ‘cautious optimism’ as the market guys like to say. Or better still ‘the trend is your friend.’

It comes against so many external negatives that would otherwise sink any other politician.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-approval-rating-hits-all-time-high-in-new-gallup-poll/

President Trump’s approval rating hit an all-time high in a Gallup survey released on Friday, with 49 percent of respondents approving of his performance versus 47 percent disapproving.

The results continue a wide swing in polling for Trump, who garnered a 43 percent approval rating two weeks ago.

“Most of the variation in Trump’s recent job approval rating is among independents,” Gallup said. “In the current poll, 47% of independents approve of the job he is doing as president, the highest Gallup has measured for the group to date. 93% of Republicans and 8% of Democrats approve of the job Trump is doing.”

However, RealClearPolitics polling averages place the president at 44.3 percent approval versus 50.6 percent disapproval as of Friday. Averages of general election polls give Trump 42.1 percent to Joe Biden’s 47.4 percent.

Last week officials including Trump-campaign manager Brad Parscale, adviser Jared Kushner, and Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel presented the president with internal campaign polls showing him falling behind Biden in key swing states, the Washington Post reported. Advisers showed Trump the polls as part of an effort to convince him to stop or scale back his presence in the daily White House coronavirus briefings.