RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/to_mask_or_not_to_mask_.html

Americans are being urged to, forced to, guilted into, and bullied into wearing masks. If we don’t wear masks, Democrats smugly tell us, we’re selfish killers who have no regard for the life and safety of others. But is that true? It turns out that the science about masks is anything but settled – and that masks come with some significant downsides.

Even as Fauci the Hypocrite says masks for thee but not for me, serious scientific authorities are moving in the other direction. Holland’s scientific community holds that masks don’t help and could hurt:

‘Face masks in public places are not necessary, based on all the current evidence,’ said Coen Berends, spokesman for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. ‘There is no benefit and there may even be negative impact.’

[snip]

[The Outbreak Management Team] believes they detract from a clear three-pronged message that has kept deaths from coronavirus down to less than half the rate in Britain: wash hands regularly, maintain social distancing of 1.5 metres and stay at home if suffering any symptoms.

The one exception outside of the medical frontline has been on public transport, where masks are mandatory on the basis it is difficult to stay apart on crowded buses, ferries and trains.

[snip]

‘The evidence for them is contradictory. In general, we think you must be careful with face masks because they can give a false sense of security. People think they’re immune from disease or stop social distancing. That is very negative.’

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/08/24/barrs-dilemma-how-to-get-politics-out-of-the-justice-department/#slide-1

The Democrats’ case against the attorney general is wildly distorted

Attorney General William P. Barr has a dilemma: how to purge federal law enforcement of the politicization that has left its reputation in tatters, while simultaneously ensuring accountability in one of modern history’s most politically combustible criminal probes.

That probe, conducted at Barr’s direction by John Durham, the United States Attorney for Connecticut, is scrutinizing the origins and predication of what even the attorney general has taken to calling “Russiagate.” This is the “investigation of the investigators,” focusing on the Obama administration’s — in particular, the FBI’s — counterintelligence and criminal investigations into claimed suspicions of Trump “collusion” with Russia. Based on rank hearsay and speculation, much of it sourced to the Hillary Clinton campaign and since discredited, Obama officials developed a theory that Donald Trump had been complicit in the Kremlin’s hacking of Democratic Party emails. The Kremlin’s supposed goal was to snatch the 2016 presidential election from the heavily favored Hillary Clinton and force Trump, under threat of blackmail, to do Vladimir Putin’s bidding in the Oval Office.

Durham’s probe has drawn the rapt attention of our mercurial president, who, in familiar Trumpian understatement, describes the Obama gambit as “treason.” Ditto for the restive Trump base, which longs for the Democrats’ comeuppance after a three-year “witch hunt,” first by the FBI and then by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. With Election Day less than three months away, Barr has indicated that decisions about whether criminal charges should be filed are imminent.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-s-adds-1-8m-jobs-unemployment-drops-to-10-2-percent/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

The U.S. unemployment rate dropped from 11.1 percent to 10.2 percent in July, beating economists’ predictions even as many states have paused or reversed their reopenings in light of coronavirus case spikes.

Employers added 1.8 million jobs in July, according to the Labor Department’s Friday jobs report, a significant slowing down from the 4.8 million jobs created in June, which was the highest recorded. While the economy has recovered 42 percent of the 22 million jobs it lost during the pandemic over the past three months, there are still 10.6 million more unemployed Americans today than there were in February

Economists had expected unemployment to drop to 10.5 percent and for the economy to have added 1.6 million jobs in July, according to a survey by Refinitiv. 

“While these numbers are a bit better than forecast, there still isn’t much to be upbeat about from this jobs report,” Steve Rick, chief economist at CUNA Mutual Group, told Fox Business. “Re-openings have been rolling backwards, weekly jobless claims are continuing to pile up and we’re still operating from a huge deficit compared to the beginning of the year.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/five-more-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-susan-rice/

Ineptitude is the theme that runs throughout her diplomatic and national-security career.

Joe Biden is reportedly considering Barack Obama’s former national-security adviser Susan Rice to be his running mate. National Review’s Jim Geraghty recently told us “20 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Susan Rice.”

I worked with Rice during the Clinton administration and have five more things the public needs to know.

1. Rice was obsessed with U.N. peacekeeping to solve world conflicts. Rice was a key architect of a disastrous Clinton-administration policy — Presidential Decision Directive 25. PDD-25, as the document was called, sought to implement “assertive multilateralism” to address all global conflicts with U.N. peacekeepers. This concept, the brainchild of Rice’s mentor Madeleine Albright, former ambassador to the United Nations, rested on the assumption that due to the end of the Cold War, the U.S. and U.N. peacekeepers could be used to address global conflicts instead of U.S. troops. PDD-25 was so radical that at one point an early draft advocated giving the U.N. the ability to tax international phone calls to pay for new peacekeeping missions. Assertive multilateralism was a spectacular failure since it led to the deployment of lightly armed, often poorly disciplined U.N. peacekeepers in war zones such as Bosnia, Haiti, Liberia, and Somalia, where many were killed or taken hostage.

2. Rice disliked hearing opposing views. As part of my duties as a CIA analyst covering U.N. issues, I briefed Susan Rice on classified and unclassified information related to her job. It was clear that she was not interested in — and objected to — hearing intelligence that contradicted her personal views. She and her NSC boss Richard Clarke were determined to ram through PDD-25 and tried to silence officers from other government agencies (including myself) who expressed skepticism about deploying U.N. peacekeepers to war zones and civil wars. Rice also made clear to me that she did not want to hear about U.N. waste and corruption. During the one occasion when I tried to brief her on an incident of serious U.N. corruption, she cut me off by saying, “Do you know how much a B-1 bomber costs?” Her point was she did not care how much money the U.N. wasted because she believed the U.S. government wasted more.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-signs-executive-order-to-reduce-us-rel

In response to supply disruptions caused by the pandemic, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 6 in Clyde, Ohio, to ensure that essential medicines, medical supplies, and equipment are made in the United States.

Speaking at Whirlpool Corporation’s manufacturing facility in northwest Ohio, Trump said, “We’ll end reliance on China just like we did with the washers and dryers.”

“As we celebrate Whirlpool’s 109-year legacy of American Manufacturing excellence, today I want to lay out my vision to bring millions more jobs and thousands more factories back to American shores, where they belong.”

In 2018, Trump imposed tariffs on imported washers to help domestic manufacturers such as Whirlpool, a Michigan-based manufacturer.

As a result of the tariffs, Trump said Whirlpool’s nine factories across the country have thrived.

“During the course of the next four years, we will bring our pharmaceutical and medical supply chains home,” Trump said. “We cannot rely on China and other nations across the globe.”

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/06/bill-de-blasio-confesses-to-violating-nyc-permit-process-to-paint-black-lives-matter-mural/

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-N.Y.) was forced to admit that his administration ignored the usual rules and processes for acquiring a public art permit to paint the now-infamous “Black Lives Matter” mural on 5th Avenue, according to the Daily Caller.

The city of New York was sued by the group Women for America First, who claim that their application to paint a mural was denied. De Blasio, in a transcript posted to the city government’s website addressing that denied request, claimed that “we haven’t said no to people. We’ve said, if you want to apply, you can apply, but there’s a process.”

However, in making the decision to paint the controversial mural on the street right in front of Trump Tower, de Blasio said that they circumvented the usual permit application process because the mural, in his mind, “transcends all normal realities because we are in a moment of history where this has to be said and done.” He even admitted that the “normal process continues for anyone who wants to apply.”

The mural, which was partially painted by de Blasio himself and professional race-baiter Al Sharpton for a photo-op, has since become the site of numerous heated confrontations between conservative demonstrators and far-left agitators. Several activists have performed acts of civil disobedience by throwing paint on the mural.