RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ratcliffe-biden-so-concerned-with-proving-trump-wrong-hell-prove-him-right

Biden is potentially forsaking national security to undermine his predecessor, ex-DNI says.

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said Thursday that President Biden appears to be so focused on trying to prove President Trump wrong on several accounts, including Mideast foreign policy,  that it may backfire on him.

Ratcliffe told host Trey Gowdy on “Fox News Primetime” that foreign policy is one specific area where Biden and his administration have essentially taken the exact opposite tact as Trump did during his presidency.

“The Biden administration seems so intent on proving Trump wrong they are going to prove him right at the sake of national security, literally snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” he said.

“We are enjoying peace in the Middle East because Iran is poorer, weaker and less influential than they’ve been in decades and nobody can argue otherwise with a straight face, and that’s because we pulled out of the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) and implemented sanctions that have put Iranian regime on the verge of real trouble and preventing them from engaging in the kind of mayhem across the Middle East that has allowed the peace agreements, the peace accords to move forward.”

https://newsblaze.com/usnews/national/american-constitutional-battleground-for-freedom_176030/

Tony Roman, the proprietor of ‘Basilico’s Pasta e Vino‘ restaurant, located in Orange County, Southern California, is a remarkable patriot. And Tony knows what gives him the inalienable rights to be a genuine patriot. It is called FREEDOM and LIBERTY.

When I first interviewed Tony in December 2020, the United States was already months into the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and government’s draconian orders and overreach, while Tony and his staff were standing firm against these unconstitutional actions using his business as what he calls a “Constitutional Battleground” to wage his battle against them.

In his attempt to unite all patriot restaurants and businesses to fight against lockdown tyranny and sacrifice for American freedom, also to encourage other business owners to pledge their businesses as Constitutional Battlegrounds, Tony launched a website called Make Restaurants Great Again.

Constitutional Battleground: Make Restaurants Great Again – Photo credit Tony Roman

The world has now supposedly been “gifted” with several COVID-19 vaccines, produced to “protect” humanity from the novel illness that is at war with mankind, while life is now, as big media likes to say, “cautiously returning to the normalcy people have been accustomed to.” All is fine and dandy, but what is missing is an update on the state of Tony’s ‘Constitutional Battleground.’

I contacted Tony and he updated me in the following interview:

NG: My first question to Tony: “What type of [real] support have you received from customers?”

Tony: “Customers drive from as far away as Utah, Arizona, and Washington State and from San Francisco, Las Vegas, San Diego, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, etc. So many who live in places where they feel most oppressed like Los Angeles, come in droves to express their support. Parents come with their young children, telling me they want their sons and daughters to see what America is supposed to look like. Show them the norm instead of the locked down society they see everywhere else.”

Our supporters share my message of defiance in defense of liberty with anyone who will listen. People from around the world call and write to express their support. I tell anyone that walks into our restaurant that it makes it clear they are there to support our fight, that they are now part of it. And when they hear me say that, they believe it and they feel it.”

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/03/12/gov_cuomo_solicited_millions_in_campaign_cash_from_state_vendors_766563.html

Soliciting state contractors for campaign cash opens up Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ethical questions.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 347 state vendors that gave $6.2 million in political donations to Cuomo over a six-year period (2014-2019). Meanwhile, these companies reaped $7 billion in state payments.

We reached out to Governor Cuomo and Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor, answered for the administration, “No contribution of any size plays a role in any official action and any official who can be swayed by a single dollar has no business being in government.”

In New York, however, this political patronage is perfectly legal (at least for now).

Cuomo solicited campaign cash from big accounting firms, law firms, banks, cable companies, developers, telco’s, and even LLCs.

Here’s just one example:

The big four accounting firms, Deloitte; Ernst & Young (EY); KPMG; and PriceWaterhouseCooper (PwC) collectively gave Gov. Cuomo $360,000 in campaign donations from 2014-2019. The firms reaped $258.8 million in state payments. 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/11/one-year-later-vindication-for-lockdown-skeptics/ 

One year ago, I tweeted: “This is what the Left wants. They want people stripped of wealth, isolated, and terrified. They want sources of joy—church, sporting events, vacations, large social gatherings—eliminated. This is how they get control. And it’s far scarier than any virus.”

It was not a popular sentiment at the time.

My initial reaction to government-ordered lockdowns, promoted by politicians on both sides and President Trump, was in the slim minority to say the least. “Flattening the curve” required deep personal sacrifices, we were warned.

Anyone skeptical of the alleged effectiveness of lockdowns or concerned about the long-term consequences was condemned as a bloodless “grandma killer” or “greedy capitalist” defying science and lacking compassion.

But from the start, “the curve” was bogus stagecraft. As I explained last year, the curve the authorities presented to Americans wasn’t accurate. 

“It’s not unreasonable, in fact, it’s necessary and responsible, to consider that COVID-19 has been in the states since the first of the year,” I wrote March 19, an assessment we now know is true. “If this is the new normal, where incomplete data and media-fueled panic rule the day, that is an even more frightening prospect than what’s happening right now.”

Sadly and shamefully, it has been America’s new normal for one year and counting.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/12/the-blatant-fraud-behind-the-new-1-9-tril-covid-relief-law/

With the COVID-19 relief bill now signed into law, it can’t be any clearer that Americans have had the wool pulled over their eyes on what this really was all about. Far from “COVID relief,” the mantra of the far-left Democrats, it was really all about “Blue State” relief.

That’s right, in case you haven’t been paying attention, the bill that many Americans thought would bring them fat checks and some reprieve from their government-induced lockdown woes has turned into a giant Christmas tree surrounded by goodies for Democrat-run Blue States and their Big Labor allies.

As we’ve pointed out here, here, here and elsewhere in recent weeks, the $1.9 trillion virus relief bill wasn’t even needed. The economy has already been bouncing back sharply, while most states actually weathered last year’s downturn nicely. Some 22 states actually reported higher tax revenues during the pandemic than in the same period in 2019.

So why was it passed? Democrats knew it wasn’t needed, so they used this crisis — remember, their unofficial party motto is “never let a crisis go to waste” — for an unparalleled expansion of the size and scope of government.

Looked at another way, the $1,400 checks handed out to Americans were merely bribes. Democrats could have asked for much more for struggling families and those truly in need, but didn’t.

Why? They really don’t care about them, as the bill plainly shows.

https://news.yahoo.com/pfizer-vaccine-blocks-94-per-183448165.html

The Pfizer vaccine blocks 94 per cent of asymptomatic cases, an Israli study has shown, reigniting hopes herd immunity can be reached.

The Israeli ministry of health found that the Pfizer vaccine has an efficacy of 97 per cent against disease and death and 94 per cent against infection without symptoms.

The figures, which have not yet been peer-reviewed by scientists, were welcomed by scientists as they will help the UK reach herd immunity and eventually relax social distancing rules.

Israel is the first country to have vaccinated more than half its population, which it has done with Pfizer/BioNTech.

As of Wednesday, 55 per cent of its nine million population had been given at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and 43 per cent had received a second dose.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lessons-of-the-long-covid-year-11615506819?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

“The pandemic is now easing thanks largely to the ingenuity of American drug and biotech companies. The Trump Administration’s Operation Warp Speed made the inspired decision last year to invest $20 billion developing six vaccine candidates. This is the best decision government made. Vaccines typically take a decade to develop, but years of private investment and innovation have paid off in advanced technologies that have cut the time to a year.”

When a SARS-like virus was reported spreading in Wuhan in late 2019, most Americans never imagined their own government would soon close schools, churches and businesses, order people to stay home, and spend more than $5 trillion to offset the damage. Yet a year later, here we are.

The anniversary is a moment to consider what the pandemic has wrought and how well the U.S. has responded. Healthcare workers have been courageous, drug companies ingenious, and average Americans resilient. The political class and health experts? Not so much.

*Start with China and the World Health Organization, which is supposed to patrol for global health threats. China lied and the WHO played along. After censoring doctors, Beijing denied there was evidence of human-to-human transmission until shortly before it locked down Hubei province with 60 million people. Many Chinese had already left the country for Lunar New Year.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-covid-advisor-i-would-tip-my-hat-to-trump-admin-for-vaccine-development-distribution/

Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to the White House’s COVID team, on Thursday applauded the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed for the “record time” in which the COVID vaccine was developed, after months of Biden administration officials claiming they had been forced to start from scratch on vaccine distribution efforts.

“We’re grateful for the work that came before us and are doing the best we can to continue it and accelerate it,” Slavitt said on Fox News. “I would absolutely tip my hat. … The Trump administration made sure that we got in record time a vaccine up and out. That’s a great thing and it’s something we should all be excited about.”

The comment contradicts other Biden administration officials who have claimed their predecessors left them “a mess” of a vaccine rollout. The president has previously called Trump’s vaccine distribution a “dismal failure.”

“The sad part is the last administration didn’t leave anything. They didn’t leave a plan,” Biden senior adviser Cedric Richmond told CNN in January. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said “the process to distribute the vaccine, particularly outside of nursing homes and hospitals out into the community as a whole, did not really exist when we came into the White House.” 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki similarly called the vaccine situation that the new administration had inherited “much worse than we could have imagined.”

As National Review has previously reported, a look at the Bloomberg vaccine tracker shortly after Biden took office reveals that on the last day of the Trump administration more than 1.5 million Americans were vaccinated. The Biden administration inherited a system that had already reached a pace that would meet the president’s goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in his first 100 days in office.

Slavitt said Thursday that the Biden administration hadn’t been trying to “point fingers.”