THE PANDEMIC: WHERE WE STAND NOW

From Powerline

Worldwide, the COVID-19 fatalities add up to just under 20% of an average flu season. In the U.S., COVID-19 fatalities to date are 26% of the number that we suffered just two flu seasons ago. I am not sure why these numbers are not more widely known. They seem relevant to me.

Crudely speaking, if we assume that the U.S. is around 50% of the way through the COVID-19 epidemic, we might expect something like 33,000 fatalities, equal to an average seasonal flu year. An inevitable second round of infections after our governments finally let people go back to work, and out in public, may raise that number, but no one I know of has tried to guess to what extent. Still, any way you look at it, it is hard to see how COVID-19 deaths will exceed the flu fatalities we experienced two years ago. And that was barely a news story.

I believe Rush Limbaugh said something lie this: the hysterical projections of doom and death are never wrong. If their predictions are right they say I told you so. If they are wrong and catastrophe doesn't arise they will claim credit for the efforts taken to mitigate the death toll.

They haven’t been right from the get-go. But the doomsayers are never wrong because whatever ends up happening, they can claim credit for it because of their mistakes. “Well, yeah, of course we overshot, but because we overshot we scared the hell out of people, people social distanced, people stayed home. Of course our work is responsible for this.” ....

You wonder sometimes whether there are any sane liberals left.

You wonder sometimes whether there are any sane liberals left. Every day the craziness seems to spin farther out of control. Today’s exhibit (one of many, actually) is law professor Larry Tribe, who was once spoken of as a likely Supreme Court nominee for a Democratic president. I knew Tribe when I was a law student and he was a young professor. He was a smart guy then. So, what went wrong? Check out this tweet from yesterday:

1) That's not Mitch McConnell's Twitter account.

2) He's the Senate majority leader. He has nothing to do with the appointment of members to the House Intel Committee. You're making stuff up.

3) This is a conspiracy pushed by Rachel Maddow. The R members will be announced soon. https://t.co/A01x8nsbNl

— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) January 26, 2019

The Internet is forever. pic.twitter.com/f9qm5nhU2J

— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) January 27, 2019

THE FBI HAS “GRAVE CONCERNS”? SO DO I

John Hinderaker: 
I’m so old, I can remember when liberals were in favor of revealing corruption in institutions like the FBI. 

Most of us are eagerly awaiting the release of the House Intelligence Committee’s memo on abuse of the FBI by the Obama administration. It should happen in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, the Bureau is worried, as always, about its public image. The Associated Press headlines: “FBI clashes with Trump, has ‘grave concerns’ on Russia memo.” I’m so old, I can remember when liberals were in favor of revealing corruption in institutions like the FBI. Those days, of course, are long gone.

In a remarkably public clash of wills with the White House, the FBI declared Wednesday it has “grave concerns” about the accuracy of a classified memo on the Russia election investigation that President Donald Trump wants released.

Yeah, well, you know what? I have grave concerns about the politicization of the Department of Justice and the FBI under the Obama administration, which I have been writing about since 2010.

“As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the FBI said.

If there are “material omissions of fact,” the Democrats’ responsive memo no doubt will reveal them. Good: let’s lay the cards on the table. The relevant fact here is that the FBI is no longer claiming that there is a national security problem with releasing the memo, only that it will put the FBI in a bad light.

Trey Gowdy, soon to depart the House, gets the last word:

The Justice Department had said in a letter last week that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release the memo without first giving the FBI and the department the chance to review it.

After those complaints, Wray reviewed the memo over the weekend. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who was with him when he reviewed the memo, said the FBI director did not raise any national security concerns. Gowdy said the memo doesn’t reveal any intelligence methods but does reveal “one source.”

Heh. Christopher Steele, I presume. It’s time for some transparency. Let’s get to the bottom of the FBI’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The Bureau needs, at a minimum, to be reformed via a thorough housecleaning of senior bureaucrats.

I'm so old that I remember when the news media wanted to get the story out. 

Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn't know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.

AT THE WASHINGTON POST, IF IT MISLEADS, IT LEADS

Powerline:

The lead headline on the Washington Post’s web page right now is: “Putin thanks Trump for CIA intel that foiled a planned terrorist attack in Russia.” The story isn’t earth-shattering but has the virtue of enabling the Post to write a lead headline that includes “Putin” and “Trump.”

Post reporter David Filipov characterizes Putin’s call as “unusual.” He says “countries share intelligence all the time, but presidents rarely publicly thank one another for it.”

In this case, though, the intelligence the U.S. supplied enabled the Russians to thwart a terrorist attack. Seven members of an Islamic State cell reportedly had planned a suicide bombing this weekend at Kazan Cathedral, a St. Petersburg landmark located on Nevsky Prospect, the city’s main thoroughfare.

Putin told Trump that the information provided by the CIA allowed Russian law enforcement agencies to capture the terrorists just before the planned attack. Lives were saved as a result.

Is it unusual for the leader of one country to thank the leader of another country in these circumstances? Probably not. Filipov provides no evidence that it is.

Filipov notes that this was the second conversation between Trump and Putin in the last few days. Filipov says that during the first call, Trump thanked Putin for remarks he made “acknowledging America’s strong economic performance.”

The reader is left with the impression that this is what the call was about. In fact, though, Trump and Putin also discussed the small matter of North Korea and its nukes. Russia’s state-run Kremlin news service reported that there was “an emphasis placed on settling the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.” The White House said the two sides “discussed working together to resolve the very dangerous situation in North Korea.”

The dishonest Washington Post keeps its readers in the dark (or should I say darkness?) about this important fact.

There is no reason why Trump and Putin shouldn’t be talking. There is no reason why they shouldn’t talk about North Korea, which probably poses the greatest threat to America’s security right now. There is no reason why Putin shouldn’t thank Trump for information that likely saved Russian lives and preserved a national treasure.

There is no reason, other than raw hatred of Trump, why the Washington Post should treat Putin’s latest call to Trump as “unusual” or provide a misleading account of Trump’s latest call to Putin.

When it comes to President Trump, if it misleads it leads at the Washington Post.

EXPLAINING THE LIBERAL CESSPOOL

Why is it, Glenn Reynolds likes to ask, that liberal-run cities and institutions all seem to be hotbeds of sexism and racism? To adapt this slightly, maybe there’s a reason the left is so obsessed with sexual harassment and racism, because it is practiced so much in their communities and institutions.

These thoughts come to mind in looking over the peculiar Cosmopolitan magazine (yes, Power Line’s research staff reads Cosmo so that you don’t have to) interview with actress Amber Tamblyn, in which she makes the startling claim that the Harvey Weinstein scandal would likely never have come to light if Hillary Clinton had won the election.

Let that claim sit there and sink in for a moment.

Here’s how Tamblyn actually puts the argument:

Read the whole thing.

Investigate This: 1,2,3,4

A very good series of posts at Powerline about the importance of the Fake Dossier commissioned by the Clinton campaign.

INVESTIGATE THIS

INVESTIGATE THIS (2)

INVESTIGATE THIS (3)

INVESTIGATE THIS (4)

As a retired FBI Special Agent with over two decades of experience in counterintelligence, I’d like to make a point that Scott and Paul are surely aware of, but which it’s useful to keep at the front of your mind.

Scott regularly refers to the Trump dossier as the “Rosetta Stone” of the “muh Russia” narrative. That’s true, but it’s helpful to go one step further. The real importance of the Trump dossier from a criminal law standpoint lies in the use it was put to for official government purposes. To understand that we need to know whether the dossier was used to justify the initiation of Full Investigations (FIs), according to the relevant AG Guidelines for National Security investigations.

The full relevance of these considerations can be seen from Scott and Paul’s review of just how threadbare the dossier really was in terms of authentication. If it was used in applications to the FISC with the knowledge that it was “oppo research” and likely not credible, and if that knowledge was withheld from the FISC, I suspect we’re looking at the real possibility of criminal conduct. And bear in mind that such applications (for FISA coverage relating to a candidate for President or a President-elect) would have been approved only at the highest levels before submission to the FISC.

To put two names to that process: James Comey and Loretta Lynch. If they knowingly deceived the FISC–and that depends, as far as we can tell at this point, largely on how they may have used the “dossier”–they’re looking at serious criminal liability.

All of this explains the FBI and DoJ stonewalling. Comey and the rest are well aware of the implications for them. Bear in mind too that the stonewalling isn’t limited to document production–important as that may be. FBI and DoJ have been refusing to allow their personnel to testify to Congressional committees–that is, personnel below the top few officials.

I have said this before, but the evidence against criminal actions by the Obama administration and its FBI and DOJ is becoming stronger.  They though they would win and as a result left too many clues.

This time around some very high profile politicians may go to jail

No one really expected that Trump would win, so the Democrats left too many threads to their crimes lying around loose.

America has a long history of new administrations turning a blind eye to crimes and peccadilloes committed by members of previous administrations. Doing so is considered bad form and smacks of the flavor of a Banana Republic, where new leaders jail their predecessors.

But the reaction of the Democrats and the rabid Left is unprecedented as they attempt to erase the results of a free and fair election.

And Trump is not your run-of-the-mill Republican "establishment" mush mouth. We may be witnessing the result of the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson “when you strike at the king you must kill him.”

SIX SECONDS TO LIVE

General Kelly via Powerline:

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” The two Marines had about five seconds left to live.

It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was halfway through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing nonstop, the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have known they were safe, because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber. The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty—into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.

What I notice is that the worse Obama does at his job, the more racist America seems to become.

Scott Johnson at Powerline (headline courtesy of Glenn Reynolds)

After Dylann Roof murdered nine pastors and churchgoers in the course of Bible study in Charleston, President Obama couldn’t wait to use the occasion for his narrow political purposes. “Let’s be clear,” he said with urgency in his voice. “At some point we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence … doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.” The implication, of course, was that additional gun control legislation was required but that his political opponents refused to see the light.

Now we learn in whose power it was to do something about it, and it wasn’t anyone Obama was talking about. The Washington Post reports: “Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine people at a church in South Carolina three weeks ago, was only able to purchase the gun used in the attack because of breakdowns in the FBI’s background-check system, FBI Director James B. Comey said Friday.” The White House, of course, declines to comment.

If there has ever been a smaller man or bigger jerk than Barack Obama holding the office of president, we need to know now.

Booby Kennedy likes heroin

Bobby Kennedy is unhinged.  He wants the death of people and institutions that disagree with him.
 

From Power Line

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Apparently yesterday’s rant about the Koch brothers wasn’t enough for Little Bobby. Here he is calling for the jailing of the Koch brothers, and possibly politicians who “deny” climate change, when all they’re really denying is the will to power of brownshirts like Little Bobby. (John referred to this rant yesterday, but here’s the tape.) He cites “reckless endangerment” as the legal cause of action for jailing the Kochs, who belong “with all the other war criminals.” Hmm: shouldn’t Little Bobby be in prison for the “reckless endangerment” of his unrelenting claims that vaccines cause autism, which every scientific review has debunked? How many children of getting the old childhood diseases again because their stupid, gullible parents listened to this demagogue? (Video is just 45 seconds long—hardly time to pour a shot glass for Power Line’s Little Bobby Drinking Game.)

But here's a possible explanation for his outbursts ... (in an article about RFK Backtracks Amid Skakel Furor 11/15/2002)

Kennedy served as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office from 1982 until 1983, when he was arrested for heroin possession. He checked into treatment, pleaded guilty, and was given probation. He currently heads an environmental group working to protect the Hudson River.

It's amazing what the rich and famous can get away with.  Unfortunately, Bobby Kennedy may well be saying what much of the Liberals really believe.  What they really want to the rest of America. The new Brownshirts, who were also radical anti-capitalists.