RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/70801-what-hero-really-means-2020-05-20

EXCERPT:

What ‘Hero’ Really Means “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Mark Alexander

In my capacity as a board member of the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, I’ve been privileged to meet many members of our nation’s most exclusive fraternity — those military personnel whose courage under the most extreme of circumstances has earned them our nation’s highest military award for valor.

Not one of those Medal of Honor recipients would describe their actions as “heroic,” but simply being in a place and time that required something extraordinary of them. To a man, they are then quick to say that most others would have done the same if they’d been in the recipient’s boots.

This week, falling as it does between Armed Forces Day and the upcoming observance of Memorial Day, allow me to express my frame of reference for the meaning of “hero” by telling you about one American.

Last Thursday, I received word from a mutual friend that Staff Sgt. Ronald J. Shurer II had died after a three-year battle with cancer.

In 2008, at the age of 29, Ron was a Senior Medical Sergeant in Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha 3336, Special Operations Task Force-33, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom during the battle of Shok Valley, Afghanistan. He was an ordinary man who faced extraordinary circumstances and summoned the courage to repeatedly run through enemy fire to provide medical care to his brothers in arms. Despite being wounded himself, he tended to four critically wounded soldiers and 10 injured commandos, then helped evacuate many wounded through fields of fire to waiting medevac helicopters.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/05/20/five-people-who-say-hydroxychloroquine-saved-their-life-n2569069

When President Trump announced Monday afternoon that he’s been taking hydroxychloroquine for weeks as a way to help prevent Wuhan coronavirus, nearly everyone in the media turned themselves into a doctor to condemn the move. They claimed it was far too dangerous and that it doesn’t work. 

While lengthy scientific studies about the use of the drug to prevent the disease are still being conducted, it is true that a number of frontline healthcare workers have been taking a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin  as they work to take care of infected patients. Further, we know the drug has been prescribed successfully to a number of Wuhan coronavirus patients who credit it with saving their lives. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-hate-is-making-it-harder-to-study-hydroxychloroquine/

Yesterday, I pointed out the potential consequences of having an overwrought, childish, partisan debate over a lifesaving drug that’s used by millions of Americans. Today, I see, Joe Biden is comparing hydroxychloroquine to poison. “It’s like saying maybe if you inject Clorox into your blood it may cure you,” Biden said of Donald Trump’s admission that he takes the drug. “C’mon, man! What is he doing? What in God’s name is he doing?”

Now, I get that Biden thinks it’s cute to merge the myth that Trump wants Americans to inject themselves with bleach and the president’s unproven prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine. It’s worth noting, however, that the presumptive Democratic Party nominee is also now telling Americans — including those who need this low-risk prescribed drug that has been approved for all public use for over 70 years — that taking hydroxychloroquine is tantamount to injecting yourself with bleach.

Listen to this NPR interview with some doctors trying to conduct tests of hydroxychloroquine effectiveness. Dr. John Giles, a rheumatologist at Columbia University, who says that the partisan fight over hydroxychloroquine has made it virtually impossible for him to find people to test the effectiveness of the drug against coronavirus. Why would anyone want to swallow Clorox, right?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-ron-desantis-florida-covid-19-strategy/

The Florida governor explains a COVID-19 strategy that has gotten bad press and favorable results.

A  couple of months ago, the media, almost as one, decided that Governor Ron DeSantis was a public menace who was going to get Floridians killed with his lax response to the coronavirus crisis.

In an interview with National Review, DeSantis says he was surprised at “how knee-jerk” the hostile coverage was, but he “also knew that none of these people knew anything about Florida at all, so I didn’t care what they were saying.”

The conventional wisdom has begun to change about Florida, as the disaster so widely predicted hasn’t materialized. It’s worth delving into the state’s response — as described by DeSantis and a couple of members of his team — because it is the opposite of the media narrative of a Trump-friendly governor disregarding the facts to pursue a reckless agenda. DeSantis and his team have followed the science closely from the beginning, which is why they forged a nuanced approach, but one that focused like a laser on the most vulnerable population, those in nursing homes.

An irony of the national coverage of the coronavirus crisis is that at the same time DeSantis was being made into a villain, New York governor Andrew Cuomo was being elevated as a hero, even though the DeSantis approach to nursing homes was obviously superior to that of Cuomo. Florida went out of its way to get COVID-19-positive people out of nursing homes, while New York went out of its way to get them in, a policy now widely acknowledged to have been a debacle.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/05/19/why-california-is-in-trouble–340000-public-employees-with-100000-paychecks-cost-taxpayers-45-billion/#20e8a6df5fb8

Despite California’s $54 billion budget deficit and $1 trillion unfunded pension liability, there are 340,390 government employees bringing home six-figure salary and pension checks.

Recently, though, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked U.S. taxpayers for a bailout.

The governor wrote a letter to Congress requesting a $1 trillion in coronavirus 50-state aid. Then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi obliged by adding $500 billion for the states into the HEROES Act – the bill passed and now awaits action in the Senate.

Here, in part, is why California is asking for taxpayers help.

Our auditors at OpentheBooks.com found truck drivers in San Francisco making $159,000 per year; lifeguards in LA County costing taxpayers $365,000; nurses at UCSF making up to $501,000; the UCLA athletic director earning $1.8 million; and 1,420 city employees out-earning all 50 state governors ($202,000).

Using our new interactive mapping tool, quickly review (by ZIP code) the 340,390 California public employees and retirees who earn more than $100,000 and cost taxpayers $45 billion (FY2018-9). Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results rendered in the chart beneath the map.

Here are a few examples of what you’ll uncover:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-rice-cya-memo-unredacted/

How amusing to find President Obama’s national-security advisor, Susan Rice, suddenly calling for public release of the Flynn–Kislyak conversation intercepted by the Obama administration in late December 2016. I called for its release nearly three-and-a-half years ago. Dr. Rice, in a familiar pattern for her, has spent the ensuing years saying things that were obviously untrue only to reverse herself once the paper trail starts to dribble out.

Try not to get dizzy. Rice has gone from claiming to have had no knowledge of Obama administration monitoring of Flynn and other Trump associates, to claiming no knowledge of any unmaskings of Trump associates, to admitting she was complicit in the unmaskings, to — now — a call for the recorded conversation between retired general Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to be released because it would purportedly show that the Obama administration had good reason to be concerned about Flynn (y’know, the guy she said she had no idea they were investigating).

Naturally, we have now learned that Rice was deeply involved in the Obama administration’s Trump–Russia investigation, including its sub-investigation of Flynn, a top Trump campaign surrogate who was slated to replace Rice as national-security advisor when President Trump took office. Last night, I did a column for Fox News, analyzing the newly unredacted paragraph from Rice’s previously reported email memorializing a White House meeting on these subjects.