Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Internal Emails Contradict Michigan Governor’s Story on Controversial Coronavirus Contracts

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: Michigan protesters were 'endangering lives'
 Article written by Collin Anderson in "The Washington Free Beacon": 

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer's (D.) office gave the "green light" on a coronavirus-related contract awarded to a Democratic consulting firm that worked for her campaign, according to internal emails obtained by Bridge Magazine.

The documents contradict the Whitmer administration's public statements denying any knowledge of the lucrative deal, as well as the Democrat's attempt to blame the state health department when controversy over the contact tracing contract erupted. The emails also reveal that agency officials expressed doubts about the purpose of the contract and raised questions about the players enlisted to carry out the collection of sensitive health data from Michigan residents.

In fact, the documents show that Whitmer's office asked the health department to change the names of the organizations listed in the announcement to appear less partisan. Both vendors in question, the liberal NGP VAN and local Democratic consultant Mike Kolehouse's firm, Kolehouse Strategies, had affiliated entities with names less likely to raise eyebrows. Kolehouse, for example, also runs an organization called Great Lakes Community Engagement, and Whitmer's office asked that the health department contract with that entity rather than his consulting firm.

"We got the green light from EOG [executive office of the governor] to move forward with a slightly different organizational arrangement of the contact tracing volunteer work," health department senior adviser Andrea Taverna wrote. "This would still be working with Mike Kolehouse, so work there isn't lost—it's just organized somewhat differently."

Whitmer, a potential vice presidential candidate, canceled the contract hours after the Washington Free Beacon revealed that NGP VAN had served as a vendor on her gubernatorial campaign. She blamed the decision on the state's health department, claiming that the agency "moved forward with the vendor" on its own and did not seek approval from the State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC) and Whitmer's executive office. A health department spokeswoman previously told the Free Beacon that neither the SEOC nor Whitmer had a role in the contract, but internal emails reveal that officials from both offices signed off on press releases discussing the contract.

"Looks good," SEOC spokesman Dale George said on April 18 in response to a draft press release discussing the contract awarding process. "Fine with SEOC/JIC." When the state announced the contract with Kolehouse's Great Lakes Community Engagement two days later, Whitmer communications director Zack Pohl suggested that the subsequent press release should "hit the fact that it's used by [the Michigan Nonprofit Association] again" in an effort to downplay the organization's partisan ties.

The emails emerge as Whitmer faces accusations of hypocrisy stemming from her rigid shutdown order. The Democrat admitted Tuesday that her husband tried to use her name to take the family's boat on the water for Memorial Day weekend even as her administration cracked down on boating during the pandemic lockdown. According to GOP state senator Tom Barrett, Whitmer's office first "adamantly denied" the accusation. Whitmer called it "a failed attempt at humor" during a Tuesday press conference.

Neither Whitmer's office nor the state's health department responded to requests for comment. A Whitmer spokesperson told Bridge Magazine that the contract was "ultimately approved" by officials in the health department and not the executive office. But emails from agency staffers show that the administration played a role in moving the arrangement forward.

In an email sent to health department officials just days before the contract was canceled, Taverna said that Whitmer's office gave the "green light" after altering the announcement to list Great Lakes Community Engagement instead of Kolehouse Strategies. Both are assumed names of Kolehouse's consulting firm, K2K Strategies. Taverna noted that while both entities are "owned and staffed by the same individuals," Great Lakes Community Engagement "serves non-profits." Its top client is Fair and Equal Michigan, an LGBTQ advocacy group with ties to Michigan Democratic politics.

One health department official, senior deputy of financial operations Farah Hanley, questioned the difference between Great Lakes Community Engagement and Kolehouse Strategies in an April 17 email.

"Same organization but a different name?" she said.

Taverna also said the state would list Every Action VAN on the contract instead of NGP VAN. The two groups share top leadership, but Every Action VAN works with nonprofit organizations, while NGP VAN serves Democratic campaigns. Every Action VAN's other clients include Planned Parenthood and the radical anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace.

The emails also show that health department officials questioned the contract days before it was signed. Kolehouse was set to earn nearly $200,000 from the contract, which some within the agency believed to be redundant.

"$21,000 a week and a pre pay for a firm to do where we should be using employees sitting at home," Hanley wrote to Elizabeth Hertel, the health department's senior deputy director.

"Why are we spending money on this instead of trying to work with google or Microsoft on tracing through smartphones," Hertel responded. "This seems a bit antiquated."

The Free Beacon previously reported that the governor's office has an existing data storage contract with Microsoft, and other state agencies use Salesforce products for similar purposes. The states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts announced partnerships with Salesforce for contact tracing projects in early April.

Whitmer has risen to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic thanks in part to an April feud with President Donald Trump. The attention landed her on presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden's vice presidential shortlist, and Whitmer confirmed on May 19 that she had an "opening conversation" with the Biden campaign on the VP role.


at

In Central Park, an unstoppable Karen meets the immovable Karen


The outrage mob destroys one of its own


If you’ve ever smugly pulled out your cellphone to record a confrontation with a stranger, hoping to publicly humiliate that person and even destroy their life, you’re probably a Karen of the worst ilk. Likewise, if approached by an insufferable busybody who lives to scold people minding their own business, and your first reaction is to call the police, you’re also a Karen. Manhattan is filled with Karens, the meme that once referred to the ‘can I speak to the manager’ lady with stacked hair and chunky highlights that evolved into a way to call out any very annoying person who loves rules and tattling.

It is high Karen season across the country. The coronavirus pandemic has been their time to shine as petty authoritarians feel emboldened to enforce their government’s frivolous rules about masks and social distancing. Not wearing a panty-liner over your face while out for a stroll, you must want people to die, according to the Karen.

But it’s never really about the rules. Karenism is a spiritual malady and New York is such prime Karen territory perhaps because it’s a place that reminds people every day of their own insignificance. Plenty of people feel compelled to assert themselves in the most asinine circumstances to fight that nagging suspicion they actually don’t matter. Finger wagging at a litterbug or fake coughing as you pass by someone enjoying a cigarette is how the Karens reassure themselves that they are, in fact, here and alive in a world that exists only to disappoint.
It was only a matter of time before an unstoppable Karen collided with an immovable Karen and set the internet on fire. Last weekend in Central Park, a man who claims to be a birdwatcher confronted a woman about putting her dog on a leash. The scene is a now a viral hit. The birdwatcher, in a post on Facebook, described what happened before the camera started rolling. When the woman refused to leash her dog, he says to her ‘Look, if you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it’. He then says that he calls her dog over with treats he removed from his pocket.
‘I pull out the dog treats I carry for just such intransigence’, the birdwatcher says in the post. The camera then rolls and the erratic, trembling woman, with her dog now leashed and appearing to gasp for air as she twists the poor beast around, says twice she’s calling the police to report she’s being threatened by ‘an African American’.  Mobs of left-wing Karens on Twitter doxxed the woman and harassed her employer, Franklin Templeton Investments, which announced Tuesday that she’d been fired. ‘We do not tolerate racism of any kind’, the company wrote on Twitter. The dog-walker was also forced to get rid of her pup, which she adopted only recently.

This is the worst day of this woman’s life and she will forever be known as the Central Park Racist. The ‘African American’ comment was strange and ugly. No one would have seen the video had she not said it. There appeared to be no logical reason to racialize the incident and yet I can’t be the only one who thinks there’s something far sicker and threatening about a man who wanders the park with dog treats in his pocket in case he witnesses ‘such intransigence’. For all she knew, the man just tried to poison her dog after making a direct threat to do something ‘you’re not going to like’.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a wild assumption that, perhaps, the dog-walker isn’t some Klanswoman sleeper agent living covertly in Manhattan. In fact, I’d wager she probably cried for about six days after the 2016 election and wears an ‘I’m still with her’ t-shirt to the gym on Saturdays. In the liberal mind, it is unquestioned orthodoxy that police officers are racist. You could reasonably make the argument the dog-walker, in her frantic, unhinged state, was actually attempting to comment on this deeply held belief that she and the birdwatcher, according to the narrative, both ought to share. In a ghastly manner with very poor delivery, she may have been trying to acknowledge injustice within law enforcement against blacks. ‘If I say he’s black, he and I both know a SWAT team will parachute down in seconds’, she appeared to be saying. ‘Because our country is so racist’.

If that were the case, it’s perfectly in line with the urban, white liberal ethos, which fetishizes black grievance as a construct but is terrified by actual black people.

There are no good guys in this story but there are plenty of villains populating an enduringly gruesome culture of manufactured racial hysteria and moral panic. These creeps, who continue to sneer from the sidelines each time an outrage mob destroys the life of an average person, claim victory when a person is fired in a game only they are playing. And they’ve got it down to a science, knowing very well companies simply don’t want the headache or the headlines.

We’ve learned nothing from Justine Sacco, patient zero for Twitter-scalping. In 2013, during a layover in London, Sacco tweeted ‘Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get Aids. Just kidding. I’m white!’ When she landed hours later and checked her phone, she was the number one trend on Twitter. Her life was completely destroyed. Years later she was able to tell her side of the story — it was a dark humor, drawing attention to racial disparities rather than gloating about them, she said. Sacco’s story captivated the world because it seemed so unfair and undeserved. We didn’t realize at the time that stories like hers would simply become a new form of entertainment.

at

Kathy Griffin Calls for Trump's Assassination and Explains Exactly How It Should Be Done

 
Article by Matt Margolis in "PJMedia":

Kathy Griffin pretty much destroyed her so-called career when she posed with a fake bloodied decapitated head of Donald Trump back in 2017, but clearly she hasn’t learned her lesson that she shouldn’t make threats against the president of the United States.


On Tuesday evening, CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted a comment from Trump during a diabetes event at the White House. “I don’t use insulin. Should I be?”


Griffin retweeted Acosta, adding the remark, “Syringe with nothing but air inside it would do the trick.”



Injecting someone with air via syringe would kill them. Griffin obviously knows this, but tweeted it anyway.

Griffin then doubled down on her original tweet by reacting to a Washington Examiner story about her comments. “@KathyGriffin advocates for someone to stab @realDonaldTrump
with syringe full of air.”




 The Washington Examiner says it reached out to the Secret Service regarding Griffin’s tweets, as well as Twitter to find out if she violated Twitter’s policies. A Twitter representative says they will “look into” the tweets.
 
Currently, the tweet is still online.

UPDATE:  A Twitter spokesman confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Kathy Griffin’s post violated their rules and must be taken down if she wants to continue using the platform.








Original Article: PJ Media 
Additional Source: Washington Examiner 
at

Kira Davis: Would the World Be Safer If Women Ran Everything? LOL…No.

AP featured image
Article by Kira Davis in "RedState":

“If women were in charge of everything the world would be a better place.”

This was the beginning of a conversation I saw on social media recently and unsurprisingly the entire thread turned into how much everyone hates Donald Trump and how much we need a female president.

I’ve heard this a lot over the years. I’m sure we all have. Like the mythical utopia of a racism-free, poverty-free, trash-free, conflict-free Canada, the mythical belief that women in leadership are incapable of mischief is just that…a myth. How do I know? I’m a woman, and I can’t imagine anything worse than working a job in which women are exclusively in charge in an environment that is exclusively female.

No thank you.

Whether you believe in a God who purposefully created us or an evolutionary process that is built on the survival of live organisms, it is clear that there is a reason it takes a male and a female to create life. There is something necessary in that balance. And if we are to believe either the evolutionary process of that or the Creation process of that (or both) then we must believe it extends to all aspects of our lives. It behooves us to balance our presence and our energy with equal opposite presence and energy. You don’t need a forty-year, peer-reviewed study to understand this. The experiment is historical and observational.

The idea that women are better without men is patently absurd. Women are different without men, and vice versa. Sometimes we women choose to take breaks from romantic relationships with men because it is imperative that we understand how we are different when we are not with men. It deepens our understanding of ourselves. But a space without men isn’t a guarantee of a space without violence or drama. In fact, I find it to be the opposite and it’s why the idea of women ruling the world is terrifying.

Women are ruthless, even the nicest ones. I like to think it is a biological imperative. This has always been a “man’s world” — as they say — and our survival in it means that we often compete for resources. Even our bodies are primed to prioritize survival of our offspring and ourselves. It makes us fierce and it also hardens us. Sure we are nurturers but we are also survivalists.  Some modern feminists abhor the term “catfight” but there’s a reason it is a term. Have you ever seen two women fight (often inexplicably) over a man? It’s ugly and embarrassing. Women will do a lot to preserve that survival instinct. A “catfight” isn’t two women being petty and jealous. On the surface — absolutely. Just below the surface lurks the inexplicable need to protect our resources and sometimes another woman can look like a threat to that.

What I’m saying is — women get ugly too. Don’t think for one second that if women ruled the world there would be no violence. What an utterly naive, farcical thing to say.

One thing I can’t stand in my home is chaotic thought. It makes me condescending at times, because it truly enrages me when people ask questions they already know the answer to or ask questions they haven’t even taken the time to think about themselves. It sounds ridiculous, but I take it personally. Sometimes I feel like people in my family are being stupid on purpose, just to annoy me or to make me do their thinking for them.  It is ridiculous, but don’t you see that is the point?

Let me tell all of you “if women were in charge” folks out there — if I were in charge of the world it would be a lot more frightening than it is right now. I would probably feel offended by everybody all the time. If I ruled the world with my closest girlfriends we’d probably have nuked half the global map by now. You all would be in for a world of hurt, left to figure it out on your own.

Emperor Kira on trade with China?
We’re done with these jokers. They’re nothing but a pain in my arse and enough is enough. They can find someone else to do business with their racist, communist, garbage leaders. What’s that? We don’t have the resources to make up for this loss? Not my problem. Figure it out!
Emperor Kira on education?
I don’t live where you live and I don’t know your kids. Figure it out.
Emperor Kira on welfare?
Look around your community, see who needs what and then help them. You got two feet and a heartbeat. Figure it out.
Emperor Kira on marriage?
Mandatory 12-week pre-marital counseling and the end of no-fault divorce and prenups are illegal. Sound unfair? Figure…it…out.

I would have no mercy and frankly, I’m no different from any other woman and don’t let them tell you otherwise. With women in total control of any environment, one of two things happens: over-feminization or ruthlessness (I skew ruthless, in case you’re keeping score). Don’t let the academic set try to tell you otherwise.

In the entertainment industry, corporate America, and even academia, women often view each other as threats rather than allies. You will not find one woman on earth who doesn’t have a story about another woman being kind to her face and then undermining her behind her back. People often bring up Finland’s all-female government (why are we always so obsessed with lily-white Scandinavian countries? It’s so odd for a nation of social justice warriors force-feeding us “diversity” all the time). When I see pictures of them I just think about how chaotic it must be. There is no balance there. As a woman who has been married for 21 years, I can say for sure that men need us. They complain about us, but it’s not an accident that many risk life, limb, and pride to win us and keep us. They need us. We need them, too. I’ve worked on projects where I purposefully pulled men in if there are too many women. It skews the perspective and perspective is everything. I have no idea why we think men need the female perspective in work/life spaces but not vice versa.

I bet if you polled the women in Finland’s government you’d find out all kinds of sordid things about how they feel about each other. I’ve never looked at a business or entity that touts and brands itself as exclusively female and thought, “That’s going to be the most successful venture ever!” I’ve only ever thought, “That seems terrible.”

My point is, there is no inherent nobility in the female gender, and if there is, then maybe we ought to stop trying to erase gender because then you’re just erasing that nobility.

But I digress further into common sense.

Obviously girls rule and boys drool but in the grown-up world, women aren’t any better than men. Men aren’t any better than women. Men and women are, however, better together.

Do we really want women alone to rule the world? Anyone who answers yes is trying to get someone killed or trying to get laid.

https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2020/05/27/844525/
at

It’s Not The Trump Administration Politicizing Flynn’s Case, It’s Judge Sullivan


Those condemning the DOJ’s decision to drop the charges against Michael Flynn ignore the growing evidence of misconduct by both the FBI and the federal prosecutors.


Not quite two weeks ago, Judge Emmet Sullivan threw open the doors of his federal courtroom to the swamp when he invited third parties to pontificate on the propriety of the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Michael Flynn. The next day Sullivan went further: He appointed a former federal judge, John Gleeson, as an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, to argue that the government’s motion to dismiss should be denied.

Judge Sullivan’s selection of Gleeson as amicus curiae gave away the game. The same day Sullivan named Gleeson as amicus curiae, an op-ed by Gleeson and two cohorts ran in the Washington Post declaring the government’s decision to dismiss the charge against Flynn “reeks of improper political influence.”

The Washington Post cloaked Gleeson and his co-authors, David O’Neil and Marshall Miller, with an aura of impartiality and authority by highlighting their past service in the Department of Justice: “John Gleeson served as a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of New York and chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in that district. David O’Neil served as the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. Marshall Miller served as the highest-ranking career official in the Criminal Division and as chief of the Criminal Division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District.”

Spritz a Swamp Creature, and There’s Still a Stench

The titles, however, do not tell the whole story. After stepping down from the federal bench, Gleeson joined the law firm of Debevoise, which as Attorney Ron Coleman noted, represented the “Resistance heroine Sally Yates.”
Recall that Yates created political hay when, while serving as acting attorney general, she refused to defend President Trump’s travel ban and directed her subordinates to do likewise, forcing Trump to fire her. (Courts later upheld the travel ban).

Yates’ insubordination drew the accolades of Andrew Weissmann, who later served as Special Counsel’s Robert Mueller’s “pit bull.” “I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects,” Weissmann emailed Yates after learning of her political play.

Weissmann’s applauding of Yates’ political grandstanding was the least of his anti-Trump bias. As I noted previously, “We also have Weissmann’s financial support of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton through thousands in campaign contributions. The Wall Street Journal also reported that Weissmann attended Clinton’s 2016 election night party in New York City, further raising the specter of an anti-Trump bias at play.”

Since the special counsel’s office closed last year, Weissmann hasn’t even tried to mask his bias, signing on to serve as a “legal analyst” for NBC and MSNBC to assist the left in pushing the Ukraine impeachment hoax. Then came news last week that Weissmann will headline a “fireside chat” fundraiser for Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Weissmann’s decision to raise cash for the Biden campaign leads one to wonder what he may be doing behind the scenes to support the Democratic challenger. Might he be suggesting angles or otherwise assisting Gleeson? After all, as the Twitter sleuth Techno_Fog pointed out, Gleeson and Weissmann once worked together.

Actually, they did more than merely work together: together they took on the Gambino crime family. Thomas Gambino’s challenge to his criminal conviction revealed this. In his appeal, Gambino sought a new trial based on the government’s failure to produce notes taken by an FBI special agent during questioning of a witness. As the opinion noted, “also present at that interview were Assistant United States Attorneys John Gleeson and Andrew Weissmann.” (The Gambino court held the government in that case had not wrongly withheld the notes.)

Somebody’s Biased, and It Ain’t Barr

Notwithstanding the many connections between Gleeson and members of the Resistance, and the obvious bias of Weissmann and other former special counsel team members, such as Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the left and Never Trump right are portraying Mueller and the special counsel’s office as the apolitical arbiters of justice and Sullivan and his hand-selected amicus as defenders of the rule of law. Attorney General William Barr, to them, is but a political pawn who cannot be trusted to oversee the Flynn case.

Yet this thesis ignores the reality that Barr brought in two outside U.S. attorneys to oversee the investigation of the Russia-related targeting of the Trump campaign and administration: Missouri-based U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen and Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham. While Mueller stacked his team with political hacks, and Judge Sullivan has now followed suit, there is no similar stench surrounding Jensen or Durham’s staffing decisions. In fact, it was Jensen, not Barr, who initially concluded that the prosecution of Flynn was unwarranted and recommended the criminal charge be dismissed.

Those condemning the DOJ’s decision to drop the charge against Flynn likewise ignore the growing evidence of misconduct by both the FBI and the federal prosecutors who handled the Flynn case. In its motion to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn, the government highlighted the already-public evidence of misconduct, such as the text messages that revealed that FBI management intercepted the closing memorandum in the Flynn case, holding open the investigation to provide a pretext to question Flynn on January 24, 2017, about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

The government also detailed in its motion to dismiss changes made to the FBI’s 302 interview form that, when read in light of the corresponding text messages, establish that FBI attorney Page wordsmithed FBI agent Joe Pientka’s interview summary, with Strzok’s help, to create the impression that Flynn had made false statements to the FBI—the crime for which he was later charged.

And then there are the handwritten notes of now-retired FBI Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap, questioning the department’s goal in interviewing Flynn: “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

FBI Review Unlikely to Change Resistant Minds

Rather than express outrage over this government misconduct, the left and Never Trump right decided to spin the DOJ’s decision to dismiss the Flynn case as politically motivated and directed by a tainted attorney general.

One would think, however, that last week’s announcement by FBI Director Christopher Wray that the bureau will undertake an “after-action review” of the Flynn case should squelch that storyline. After all, to date, Wray has avoided the press’ guilt-by-association smear other members of the Trump team have been subjected to. So the director’s decision to evaluate the FBI’s role in the Flynn case and assess whether any “current employees engaged in misconduct” should give the media pause.

It won’t, though. Just as corporate media ignored Weissmann, Page, and Strzok’s clear political bias, they will continue to ignore the growing evidence of misconduct and the near-daily revelations of impropriety coming from the Jensen and Durham investigations, as well as from newly declassified material.

Rather than come to terms with the fact that it was President Obama and his team who weaponized the DOJ, Judge Sullivan, by welcoming third-party briefing in the Flynn case, gifted the Resistance a platform to continue to push nonsensical conspiracy theories under the guise of law and order.

A Bunch of Hypocrites

Already the anti-Trump Protect Democracy Project has submitted an amicus curiae brief to Judge Sullivan. That brief rehashes many of the political talking points left-leaning pundits and politicians have been peddling since Trump took office, then argues that in seeking to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn, Trump and Barr have “flouted” the principle that the DOJ’s investigatory and prosecutorial powers should “be exercised free from partisan consideration.”

The irony couldn’t be richer. The Obama administration targeted Flynn because the glow of Orange Man Bad reached the retired general’s orbit. But, according to Protect Democracy, it is the Trump administration’s DOJ that is playing politics with prosecutions!

Then there’s Protect Democracy’s ridiculous casting of itself as “a bipartisan group of former federal prosecutors and former high-ranking supervisory officials in the Department of Justice,” including “nonpartisan career” employees and political appointees of both parties. The facts tell a different story, as I previously reported for The Federalist:
Protect Democracy was founded in 2017 by Ian Bassin, who was the associate White House counsel for President Barack Obama from 2009-2011, and Justin Florence, who also served in the Office of the White House Counsel as a special assistant to the president and associate counsel of the president.
Bassin is also the president of the liberal American Constitution Society and Florence had also served as a senior counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee for Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). Protect Democracy also boasts a Who’s Who of the Never Trump resistance as advisors, such as failed presidential candidate Evan McMullin and running mate Mindy Finn.

The self-branded “bipartisan” group of former prosecutors also leans heavily left, and any “bipartisanship” comes from extreme Resistance members claiming Republican status.

In any event, why should Judge Sullivan consider the opinion of some 1,100 former federal prosecutors significant? The size of the contingency says nothing of the merits of the DOJ’s action, and if size mattered, the total number of signatories is but a sliver of the total number of DOJ attorneys now retired or working elsewhere.

The former prosecutors also have no special knowledge of the Flynn case and their status provides them no claim to moral authority. In fact, to the contrary, the history of some of the former federal prosecutors—which includes a felony conviction for stealing more than $600,000 from a client’s investment account for one signatory and being suspended from the bar with a pattern of misconduct for another—suggests their views should hold no weight.

Some Great Judges You Have There

The chutzpah award, however, must go to signatory Shira Scheindlin, who identified herself in the Protect Democracy brief as a former first assistant U.S. attorney. Later in her career, Scheindlin served as a federal judge in New York, where among her more infamous rulings was her decision to toss the conviction of Judith Clark. Clark was a member of the Weather Underground who had been convicted of three counts of murder in the second degree for driving a getaway car following the group’s robbery of an armored truck.

In that case, Scheindlin ruled that the government had violated Clark’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel, even though Clark declined legal representation then opted to “absent” herself from the courtroom as a form of political protest. The Second Circuit promptly reversed Scheindlin’s ruling and rejected Clark’s challenge to her conviction.

The idea that Judge Sullivan should take guidance from Scheindlin is laughable. But what isn’t funny is that Sullivan invited the politicizing of the legal process. Not President Trump. Not William Barr. Judge Sullivan.

While that process has already begun, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals may abruptly halt the circus, having ordered Sullivan to respond to Flynn’s request that the appellate court order Sullivan to dismiss the criminal charge against him. The D.C. Circuit gave Sullivan until June 1 to respond.

In yet another irony, over the weekend news broke that Sullivan had hired Washington D.C. attorney Beth Wilkinson to represent him before the D.C. Circuit. While the optics of a federal judge hiring an attorney proved jarring to some, it is entirely appropriate for an attorney to represent a judge in a mandamus petition.

But, still, Judge Sullivan’s selection of Wilkinson—the lawyer who represented Hillary Clinton during the FBI’s investigation into her mishandling of classified information on her homebrew server—solidifies the image of the long-time federal judge standing ensconced in the swamp.

at

The CDC’s New ‘Best Estimate’


The CDC's New 'Best Estimate' Implies 
a COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rate Below 0.3%

That rate is much lower than the numbers used in the horrifying projections that shaped the government response to the epidemic.

CoronavirusAbstract
(Dgmate/Dreamstime) 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current "best estimate" for the fatality rate among Americans with COVID-19 symptoms is 0.4 percent. The CDC also estimates that 35 percent of people infected by the COVID-19 virus never develop symptoms. Those numbers imply that the virus kills less than 0.3 percent of people infected by it—far lower than the infection fatality rates (IFRs) assumed by the alarming projections that drove the initial government response to the epidemic, including broad business closure and stay-at-home orders.

The CDC offers the new estimates in its "COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios," which are meant to guide hospital administrators in "assessing resource needs" and help policy makers "evaluate the potential effects of different community mitigation strategies." It says "the planning scenarios are being used by mathematical modelers throughout the Federal government."

The CDC's five scenarios include one based on "a current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States." That scenario assumes a "basic reproduction number" of 2.5, meaning the average carrier can be expected to infect that number of people in a population with no immunity. It assumes an overall symptomatic case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.4 percent, roughly four times the estimated CFR for the seasonal flu. The CDC estimates that the CFR for COVID-19 falls to 0.05 percent among people younger than 50 and rises to 1.3 percent among people 65 and older. For people in the middle (ages 50–64), the estimated CFR is 0.2 percent.

That "best estimate" scenario also assumes that 35 percent of infections are asymptomatic, meaning the total number of infections is more than 50 percent larger than the number of symptomatic cases. It therefore implies that the IFR is between 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent. By contrast, the projections that the CDC made in March, which predicted that as many as 1.7 million Americans could die from COVID-19 without intervention, assumed an IFR of 0.8 percent. Around the same time, researchers at Imperial College produced a worst-case scenario in which 2.2 million Americans died, based on an IFR of 0.9 percent.

Such projections had a profound impact on policy makers in the United States and around the world. At the end of March, President Donald Trump, who has alternated between minimizing and exaggerating the threat posed by COVID-19, warned that the United States could see "up to 2.2 million deaths and maybe even beyond that" without aggressive control measures, including lockdowns.

One glaring problem with those worst-case scenarios was the counterfactual assumption that people would carry on as usual in the face of the pandemic—that they would not take voluntary precautions such as avoiding crowds, minimizing social contact, working from home, wearing masks, and paying extra attention to hygiene. The Imperial College projection was based on "the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour." Similarly, the projection of as many as 2.2 million deaths in the United States cited by the White House was based on "no intervention"—not just no lockdowns, but no response of any kind.

Another problem with those projections, assuming that the CDC's current "best estimate" is in the right ballpark, was that the IFRs they assumed were far too high. The difference between an IFR of 0.8 to 0.9 percent and an IFR of 0.2 to 0.3 percent, even in the completely unrealistic worst-case scenarios, is the difference between millions and hundreds of thousands of deaths—still a grim outcome, but not nearly as bad as the horrifying projections cited by politicians to justify the sweeping restrictions they imposed.

"The parameter values in each scenario will be updated and augmented over time, as we learn more about the epidemiology of COVID-19," the CDC cautions. "New data on COVID-19 is available daily; information about its biological and epidemiological characteristics remain[s] limited, and uncertainty remains around nearly all parameter values." But the CDC's current best estimates are surely better grounded than the numbers it was using two months ago.

A recent review of 13 studies that calculated IFRs in various countries found a wide range of estimates, from 0.05 percent in Iceland to 1.3 percent in Northern Italy and among the passengers and crew of the Diamond Princess cruise ship. This month Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis, who has long been skeptical of high IFR estimates for COVID-19, looked specifically at published studies that sought to estimate the prevalence of infection by testing people for antibodies to the virus that causes the disease. He found that the IFRs implied by 12 studies ranged from 0.02 percent to 0.4 percent. My colleague Ron Bailey last week noted several recent antibody studies that implied considerably higher IFRs, ranging from 0.6 percent in Norway to more than 1 percent in Spain.


Methodological issues, including sample bias and the accuracy of the antibody tests, probably explain some of this variation. But it is also likely that actual IFRs vary from one place to another, both internationally and within countries. "It should be appreciated that IFR is not a fixed physical constant," Ioannidis writes, "and it can vary substantially across locations, depending on the population structure, the case-mix of infected and deceased individuals and other, local factors."

One important factor is the percentage of infections among people with serious preexisting medical conditions, who are especially likely to die from COVID-19. "The majority of deaths in most of the hard hit European countries have happened in nursing homes, and a large proportion of deaths in the US also seem to follow this pattern," Ioannidis notes. "Locations with high burdens of nursing home deaths may have high IFR estimates, but the IFR would still be very low among non-elderly, non-debilitated people."

That factor is one plausible explanation for the big difference between New York and Florida in both crude case fatality rates (reported deaths as a share of confirmed cases) and estimated IFRs. The current crude CFR for New York is nearly 8 percent, compared to 4.4 percent in Florida. Antibody tests suggest the IFR in New York is something like 0.6 percent, compared to 0.2 percent in the Miami area.

Given Florida's high percentage of retirees, it was reasonable to expect that the state would see relatively high COVID-19 fatality rates. But Florida's policy of separating elderly people with COVID-19 from other vulnerable people they might otherwise have infected seems to have saved many lives. New York, by contrast, had a policy of returning COVID-19 patients to nursing homes.

"Massive deaths of elderly individuals in nursing homes, nosocomial infections [contracted in hospitals], and overwhelmed hospitals may…explain the very high fatality seen in specific locations in Northern Italy and in New York and New Jersey," Ioannidis says. "A very unfortunate decision of the governors in New York and New Jersey was to have COVID-19 patients sent to nursing homes. Moreover, some hospitals in New York City hotspots reached maximum capacity and perhaps could not offer optimal care. With large proportions of medical and paramedical personnel infected, it is possible that nosocomial infections increased the death toll."

Ioannidis also notes that "New York City has an extremely busy, congested public transport system that may have exposed large segments of the population to high infectious load in close contact transmission and, thus, perhaps more severe disease." More speculatively, he notes the possibility that New York happened to be hit by a "more aggressive" variety of the virus, a hypothesis that "needs further verification."

If you focus on hard-hit areas such as New York and New Jersey, an IFR between 0.2 and 0.3 percent, as suggested by the CDC's current best estimate, seems improbably low. "While most of these numbers are reasonable, the mortality rates shade far too low," University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom told CNN. "Estimates of the numbers infected in places like NYC are way out of line with these estimates."

But the CDC's estimate looks more reasonable when compared to the results of antibody studies in Miami-Dade County, Santa Clara County, Los Angeles County, and Boise, Idaho—places that so far have had markedly different experiences with COVID-19. We need to consider the likelihood that these divergent results reflect not just methodological issues but actual differences in the epidemic's impact—differences that can help inform the policies for dealing with it.

at

New NIH Study: Transmissibility of COVID-19


New NIH Study: 
Transmissibility of COVID-19 by Asymptomatic Carriers Is Weak

May 26, 2020

AP featured image
Employees work in a research and development lab of Beijing Applied Biological Technologies, a firm which is developing COVID-19 molecular diagnostic test kits, during a government organized tour for journalists in Beijing, Thursday, May 14, 2020. China reported three new coronavirus cases Thursday while moving to reopen for business and schools. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)


One of the concerns often cited by those who fear opening up the economy too soon is the impact of asymptomatic carriers on the rest of the population. Are those who are completely unaware they’ve been infected with COVID-19 able to spread the disease?

Earlier this month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published the results of a study of 455 people, identified through contact tracing, who had some degree of contact with one asymptomatic carrier. (The full study can be viewed here.)

A 22-year-old woman with a medical history of congenital heart disease (CHD) had suffered from shortness of breath for 16 years. For a month, her shortness of breath had been worse than usual and she went to the emergency room of a Guangdong hospital on January 13. “The accompanied symptom was chest distress, without cough, sputum production and fever. Apart from CHD, she had no other diseases and had no smoking habit. Her temperature was normal, and laboratory measurements showed no apparent abnormalities. Echocardiography displayed atrial septal defect and severe pulmonary hypertension. The diagnosis was congenital heart disease, atrial septal defect and pulmonary hypertension.”

This young woman was treated and within three days, her condition had improved and she was transferred to the emergency department observation unit (EDOU). During a February 11 examination, she tested positive for COVID-19 and was immediately admitted to the quarantine ward in the infectious diseases department.

Notably, in isolation, she did not experience any symptoms typically associated with COVID-19.

She had no idea how or when she had become infected. By then, she had interacted with 455 individuals. Medical information about these contacts was gathered and a study was conducted.
They were divided into three groups: 35 patients, 196 family members and 224 hospital staffs. We extracted their epidemiological information, clinical records, auxiliary examination results and therapeutic schedules.
Results: The median contact time for patients was four days and that for family members was five days. Cardiovascular disease accounted for 25% among original diseases of patients. Apart from hospital staffs, both patients and family members were isolated medically. During the quarantine, seven patients plus one family member appeared new respiratory symptoms, where fever was the most common one. The blood counts in most contacts were within a normal range. All CT images showed no sign of COVID-19 infection. No severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections was detected in 455 contacts by nucleic acid test.
Conclusion: In summary, all the 455 contacts were excluded from SARS-CoV-2 infection and we conclude that the infectivity of some asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers might be weak.

This, of course, is good news.

On the other hand, in an earlier article, the NIH presents the case of an asymptomatic carrier whom they believe did transmit COVID to others. They cite a man who was released from a Chinese prison on February 25. He was told to self-quarantine for 14 days because a prison officer was confirmed to have COVID‐19 infection on February 14. He failed to do so and his brother, with whom he had spent time with early on became infected. The former prisoner, who had exhibited no symptoms of the virus, tested positive. Now, obviously the brother may have contracted COVID-19 from another source, but the extended periods of time the two spent together make it more likely he had picked it up from his asymptomatic brother.

The NIH also documents cases where those living with people who later learned they’d had COVID had not become infected as well as cases where one or more members of a household became infected while another did not.

So what does all of this prove? My unscientific take is that asymptomatic carriers are considerably less likely to pass on the disease than those who exhibit symptoms.

The NIH’s conclusion? “COVID‐19 transmission through asymptomatic carriers is a challenge to containment.” Decisive as always.


at

NASA SPACEX set for historic launch from Florida.





Don't Forget to Recommend
 and Follow us at our

W3P Homepage


at

Spygate Law Firm That Attempted To Overturn 2016 Election Behind 2020 Voting Lawsuits


A Democratic effort is underway in at least 16 states to overturn restrictions on mail-in balloting and third-party ballot harvesting.


A nationwide effort by Democrats is underway in at least 16 states to overturn restrictions on mail-in voting and third-party ballot harvesting. States where suits have been filed include the swing states of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

The effort is being backed by the National Redistricting Foundation, a Democratic group headed by the Obama administration’s Attorney General Eric Holder. The suits appear to be funded by Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC. A Wall Street Journal headline from April read, “Biden Campaign Indicates Priorities USA Is Preferred Super PAC — Nod from the presumptive Democratic nominee sends a message to top donors on where to focus contributions.”

For example, the Pennsylvania lawsuit, funded by Priorities USA, seeks to mandate mail-in ballots, require the counting of votes received by mail after election day, and strike down Pennsylvania prohibitions on ballot harvesting, meaning the third-party mass collection of absentee and mail-in ballots.

The efforts in other states are similar. Democrat lawsuits in Minnesota take a similar, if less direct, path. A suit filed in Minnesota earlier this year by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seeks to strike down a law prohibiting ballot harvesting.

Last week, conveniently just after Minnesota Democrats failed to get mail-in voting through the state legislature, another suit was filed by the Minnesota Alliance for Retired Americans Educational Fund, the local chapter of D.C.-based political action group Alliance for Retired Americans, a prominent left-wing and union-linked group that supports Democratic causes across the United States. The plaintiffs claim that requiring voters to have a notary public or registered voter witness and sign their absentee ballot is a threat to safety.

Another plaintiff in the same suit is a 24-year-old Yale Law School student, who complains that he cast his Minnesota absentee ballot too late in 2018, which disallowed it from being counted.

Getting rid of Minnesota’s rule requiring a witness when casting an absentee ballot and requiring that ballots be received by election day would turn Minnesota’s absentee voting system into a de facto mail-in balloting system. Critics allege Minnesota’s absentee voting system is already subject to abuse. For example, more than 25,000 Minnesota voters in 2018 had a challenged voter-registration status, meaning something in the state’s systems flagged them as ineligible to vote. Nevertheless, these voters are allowed to vote absentee and “self-certify” that they are eligible.

In the 2008 election between former Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and Al Franken, D-Minn., election judges controversially rejected about 12,000 absentee ballots, and more than 1,000 ineligible felons were still allowed to cast votes in that election. After Coleman initially won by about 700 votes, a recount declared Franken the winner by a mere 312 votes.

Unfortunately, the corporate media has grossly mischaracterized these lawsuits, couching their aims in humanitarian terms. Minnesota’s Star Tribune ran a headline titled “Older Minnesota voters file suit to change absentee voting rules.” The corporate media has conveniently ignored that Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic to accomplish their longtime goal of overturning much of American election law.

Even more stunning, all 16 lawsuits are being run by Perkins Coie attorney Marc Elias. Elias was chief counsel to both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the 2016 presidential election, and was one of the key figures in the Russiagate conspiracy to remove President Donald Trump from office.

Elias and another Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, hired the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS to try to create ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. This led to Fusion GPS paying money to former British spy Christopher Steele, who paid money to anonymous Russian sources via a British national named Edward Baumgartner, who had ties to Russia.

These Russian sources, working with Steele and Fusion GPS, came up with the allegations in the so-called Steele dossier, which circulated throughout the highest levels of the Obama administration during the 2016 election. This occurred despite no part of the dossier being anything close to verified. The intelligence agencies had good reason to doubt the dossier’s author, and knew it was politically motivated.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration’s intelligence agencies used them to spy on the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team. In one specific instance, Democratic lawyers Elias and Sussmann directly worked to plant now-debunked stories in the media about a server in Trump tower communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank. Elias has faced no repercussions to date for his role in the Russiagate matter.

In total, Democrats plan to spend tens of millions of dollars on the lawsuits run by Perkins Coie and Elias. The Trump campaign and Republican groups are planning to spend at least $10-$20 million to counter the Democrats’ efforts.

at