RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/10/07/great-barrington-declaration-solution-endless-covid-lockdowns-15074

The proposal in the Declaration is certainly worth considering. If I was a policymaker, I would investigate how to implement it. As COVID cases spike in Europe, which once had the coronavirus under control, it’s becoming clear that our current on-again, off-again approach to containment isn’t working as intended. It may be time to try something new. 

Let’s be honest. As we approach late autumn and then winter in the northern hemisphere, nobody knows what’s going to happen. We may see another surge in coronavirus cases, or we may not. We may see flu season exacerbate the effects of COVID, or we may not. We just don’t know.

Making the situation worse is that this uncertainty is absolutely killing the economy. Go downtown in any major American city. It’s a ghost town. We can’t live like this indefinitely. Is there some other approach that we can take as a society to minimize the harm of COVID while maximizing productivity and happiness? A group of successful and respected infectious disease experts says yes, and they have written a statement that they have called the Great Barrington Declaration.

The authors refer to their approach as “Focused Protection,” the gist of which is “to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.” Not that this really matters (because public health policy shouldn’t be a popularity contest), but more than 10,000 scientists and medical practitioners have signed it.

Are the authors right? I certainly think so. Back in May, we reported on a Swedish epidemiologist who believed that lockdowns did nothing other than delay the inevitable; i.e., they simply push new infections down the timeline. Therefore, while lockdowns can be useful to avoid overwhelming hospital bed capacity, they may not lower the overall number of cases. In other words, we’re destroying the economy while essentially accomplishing nothing.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/hillary-clinton-orchestrated-russia-collusion-farce/

The Clinton campaign dreamed up, paid for, and peddled the Trump-Russia collusion farce.

Did she or didn’t she?

Of course she did. In late July 2016, Hillary Clinton, in an effort to divert attention from the email scandal that was haunting her presidential bid, directed her campaign to peddle a political narrative that Russia’s suspected hacking and leaking of Democratic Party emails was in furtherance of a conspiracy between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to swing the election to Trump.

That is, as I argued in Ball of Collusion, the Clinton campaign dreamed up, paid for, and peddled the Trump–Russia collusion farce. And in promoting it, President Obama’s former secretary of state had a willing and able partner in the Obama administration — very much including its intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus.

Democrats Change Their Tune

It was amazing to watch Democrats play Twister this week, as National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe added documentary corroboration to the disclosure he’d made the week before. In that first revelation, via letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ratcliffe explained that, because our spy agencies have very effective foreign-intelligence-gathering methods, they were able to “obtain insight” into a Russian intelligence analysis that concluded Clinton orchestrated the damaging political narrative. That is, Clinton actually did what she accused Trump of doing: She colluded with Russians (through yet another foreigner she recruited to meddle in the 2016 presidential campaign: the ludicrous former British spy Christopher Steele) in order to damage Trump’s campaign and cinch the election for herself. 

https://canadafreepress.com/article/locking-down-the-constitution

These Governors have enabled a slow-rolling insurrection by Black Lives Matter and the Antifa Brownshirts to come into being; and they will likely throw the coming presidential election into chaos

California governor Gavin Newsom has moved the covid lockdown goalposts for a second time. Per last week’s decree, larger counties in the state must “address inequity in communities such as low-income, Black, Latino, Pacific Islander and essential workers.”

Counties with a population greater than 106,000 must follow an equity metric to ensure that their most disadvantaged neighborhoods don’t lag behind. Counties with less than 106,000 residents must submit a plan that defines their disproportionately affected population and show plans to invest in at least interrupting disease transmission in these populations. (CAP Radio, Oct. 8, 2020 )

Mr. Newsom does not see a great need to allow Californians to go back to work any time soon

It appears Mr. Newsom does not see a great need to allow Californians to go back to work any time soon. It also appears that he is enjoying his new, dictatorial powers. And, if recent history is any guide, he has little reason to fear that the courts will interfere with his exercise of those powers. 

This past May, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, found California’s covid-19 restriction that limited indoor church attendance to 25 percent of building capacity or no more than 100 persons to be “consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.” The Court’s majority did not issue an opinion, but in a concurrence with the ruling, Chief Justice Roberts argued that, because the restriction did not discriminate against religious organizations but, instead, applied equally or more forcefully to “lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances,” it did not violate the Free Exercise Clause. 

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/08/one-step-closer-to-despotism/

Donald Trump’s order on Twitter Tuesday night to declassify documents related to the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign suggests that he’s lost faith in Attorney General William Barr and John Durham, the prosecutor tapped to investigate the origins of Crossfire Hurricane. 

Previously, the rationale for Barr’s failure to declassify Crossfire Hurricane documents en masse was that Durham needed to keep a close hold on them to build his case. But with less than a month to go before the 2020 election, the U.S. Attorney’s 18 month-long investigation has only secured one plea deal from an FBI lawyer. In the meantime, corrupt U.S. officials who spied on the Trump campaign and framed him as a Russian agent are basking in the sun. Former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former CIA Director John Brennan are on book tours; Showtime made a mini-series about former FBI Director James Comey; and the Democratic candidate for president is Joe Biden, an avatar for a potential third Barack Obama term. 

A subsequent presidential retweet featuring a photo-shopped image of the late comedian Chris Farley shouting at a complacent-seeming Barr confirms that the commander-in-chief has lost his patience—“For the love of God,” the caption reads, “ΑRREST SOMEBODY.”

Trump knows that at least one of his senior officials is fighting him. CIA Director Gina Haspel reportedly is refusing to turn over documents that may further illuminate the Agency’s role in the anti-Trump plot. Haspel was London station chief in 2016 as Crossfire Hurricane agents and their confidential sources moved in and out of the British capital to target Trump campaign officials visiting the United Kingdom.