Physicians Slap Whitmer with a Coronavirus-Related Lawsuit

Grand Health Partners, Wellston Medical Center, Primary Health Services and patient Jeffery Gulick on Tuesday filed a lawsuitagainst Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), State Attorney General Dana Nessel and State Health Director Robert Gordon over the state's stay-at-home order.

According to the plaintiffs, Whitmer has continually extended her stay-at-home order to "flatten the curve" from the Wuhan coronavirus. The group believes Whitmer continually extending her stay-at-home order – without approval from the state legislature – infringes upon individual rights and liberties.

"Many decisions made in immediate response to protect against the COVID19 threat and the dire, potential public health crisis resulted in severe restrictions on the rights and liberties of both private individuals and businesses," the lawsuit states. "Michigan was no exception."

The plaintiffs also believe Michigan has succeeded in flattening the curve, a sign that so-called "elective" medical procedures can continue.

"Since early March 2020, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has taken drastic, unprecedented, unilateral executive actions in an effort to address the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19—declaring a state of emergency in the State of Michigan and justifying her restriction on rights and liberties based on the very important goal to 'flatten the curve' and avoid overwhelming Michigan’s healthcare system and hospital," the complaint states. "Thankfully, the goal of flattening the curve has been achieved, and the dire predictions of overwhelmed hospitals have not come to pass."

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No New Yorkers allowed! Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announces plans to ease ban on vacation rentals across the state - but visitors from the Big Apple won't be able to book

Florida is set to begin easing its ban on vacation rentals in the coming days but state Governor Ron DeSantis says lot owners can only start taking bookings again under a special condition: no New Yorkers allowed.

Since March 27, hotels across Florida have been allowed to operate without restrictions, but rental properties across the sunshine state have been forced to keep their doors locked to stop the spread of COVID-19.

The controversial decision sparked fierce pushbacks from property owners, management companies and some local officials, especially in the panhandle.

But on Friday, DeSantis provided a much welcomed update, announcing that vacation rentals could be able to roll out the welcome mats once more as early as Monday, pending final approval from county and state officials.

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Don Jr calls Biden a pedophile while Eric says COVID-19 will 'go away'

Donald Trump Jr posted a meme on his social media page which referred to Joe Biden as a ‘pedophile’ while his younger brother Eric suggested that the coronaviruspandemic was a ‘hoax’ perpetrated by Democrats to prevent his father from holding election rallies.

The president’s two eldest sons sparked outrage with their comments on Saturday as the nationwide death toll from COVID-19 nears 90,000 and more than 1.5 million Americans have been confirmed to be infected.

Don Jr on Saturday posted an Instagram meme showing two photos stacked on top of one another – one showed Biden and the other showed an alligator.

The caption near Biden read ‘See you later, alligator!’ while the caption next to the alligator read ‘In a while, pedophile!’

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Ivanka Trump, Gov. Hogan tour launch of USDA’s family food box program in Laurel

Billions of dollars worth of fruit, vegetables and other farm products that might have gone to waste because of the coronavirus pandemic will instead be delivered to food banks and nonprofit organizations that help the needy under a new Agriculture Department program.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and White House adviser Ivanka Trump on Friday toured a Maryland food service distributor that's participating in the Farmers to Families Food Box Program.

At a brief ceremony marking the program's launch at Coastal Sunbelt Produce in Laurel, Perdue gave credit to President Donald Trump. Trump had seen news reports about farm goods going to waste and said 'Sonny, I want you to bring me a program that will work,'"Perdue said.

Perdue announced last month that his department will spend up to $3 billion in coronavirus relief money to buy and distribute agricultural goods through regional and local distributors.

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BREAKING: Senate Judiciary To Vote On Subpoenas for 53 Obama-Era Official

The Senate Judiciary Committee announced late on Monday that it would be voting to authorize issuing subpoenas to top Obama-era officials over their investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign and other related matters.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made the announcement in a press release saying that the subpoena authorization “covers a number of documents, communications and testimony from witnesses, including James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan, Sally Yates, and others.”

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State Lockdowns Are Creating A Mental Health Disaster

Although state lockdowns have served governors well as a heavy-handed show of force, the policies are a patent neglect of the many nuances inherent in human action.

They have led to a host of unintended consequences, including the emergence of a new health crisis - a dangerously sharp rise in mental illness. Though states are gradually wading out of lockdown, the damage has already been done and is here to stay.

Distress and Disorder

The science is clear that having meaningful human interactions is an inherent, biological need that all people share. But in the name of "public health," people are prohibited from freely and peaceably congregating. There’s no church, no "nonessential" shopping, no going into work (for many), no girls’ nights out, no going to the gym, no visiting friends, no family get-togethers. Nothing. No sacrifice can be too great in the age of COVID per the “experts.” And that's taken a harsh psychological toll on the nation.

Extensive study has, for years, correlated social isolation with poor mental health. The need for connection is as real now as it’s ever been. Since the US had already long suffered from a loneliness crisis, the stark and sudden crop up of stay-at-home orders made this immediately much worse. As Drs. Betty Pfefferbaum and Carol North found,

A recent review of psychological sequelae in samples of quarantined people and of health care providers…revealed numerous emotional outcomes, including stress, depression, irritability, insomnia, fear, confusion, anger, frustration, boredom, and stigma associated with quarantine, some of which persisted after the quarantine was lifted.

Being whisked from normal life into the repressive conditions of lockdowns is understandably damaging. The anguish people are feeling is at astronomical levels. Schoolchilden recently surveyed in Wuhan and Huangshi during stay-at-home orders reported symptoms of depression and anxiety at a rate far higher than normal.

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DARK & DIRTY FBI AGENT JOE PIENTKA & WIFE LIVING HIGH LIFE AFTER HE SET UP GEN. FLYNN FORCING FLYNN TO SELL HOUSE TO PAY LEGAL FEES

Pientka was a very key player in the Crossfire Hurricane and Mueller gang operation using fraudulent information

We reported how dirty cop Joe Pientka who is reportedly still at the FBI, and his wife, who we have uncovered is connected to the Trump Tower meeting set up by Fusion GPS, are living high on the hog with houses on both the East and West Coasts.
JOE WAS INVOLVED WITH EVERYTHING CORRUPT INVOLVING THE THE RUSSIA COLLUSION HOAX AND HIS WIFE IS AN ATTORNEY FOR A COMPANY INVOLVED WITH FUSION GPS. THE FBI IS HIDING THEM TO THIS DAY.

The FBI has done all it can to hide Joe Pientka, the corrupt cop at the FBI involved most all the criminal activities involving the coup of candidate and President Trump. This corrupt cop was involved in everything and the FBI is hiding him. We have identified multiple reasons why.

Joe Pientka was a very key player in the Crossfire Hurricane and Mueller gangs created based on fraudulent information. We have pages on Pientka in a previous post: “The Many Corrupt and Criminal Actions FBI Agent Joe Pientka Involved in – Including Setting Up General Flynn – Yet Pientka Still Protected by FBI“.

Overall Pientka was:
Supervisor of Crossfire Hurricane.
The Crossfire Hurricane team members were selected by Peter Strzok, the Intel Section Chief, and Pientka.
The agents reported to Pientka.
Pientka reported operational activities to Strzok.
Pientka and Strzok entrapped General Flynn in the White House and lied about Flynn’s lying to the FBI

Pientka was a member of the Crossfire Hurricane gang that was running the sham Trump Russia collusion investigation. He shows in charts of the Crossfire Hurricane gang in 2016:

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Idiot!

NJ home health aide charged with exposing coronavirus to elderly client who died

A New Jersey home health aide is facing criminal endangerment charges in the COVID-19 death of an 80-year-old woman under her care, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Friday the elderly Camden woman died in April after contracting the coronavirus from the aide, Josefina Brito-Hernandez, 49.

Four other members of the woman’s household also became infected, including two developmentally disabled siblings, they said.

Brito-Hernandez, of Camden, was charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of another person, prosecutors said.

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https://www.foxnews.com/us/nj-home-health-aide-coronavirus-died

Cuomo Defends Nursing Home Policy: 'Older People, Vulnerable People Are Going to Die'

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is under fire for his disastrous policy of sending elderly Wuhan coronavirus patients to nursing homes. President Trump even approved a temporary hospital at New York City's Javitz Center to house and treat coronavirus patients. The president also sent a floating hospital packed with emergency supplies to New York to make additional space. But with a fawning press behind him, Gov. Cuomo decided in all his wisdom that elderly people, sick and contagious with the Wuhan coronavirus, should be sent instead to nursing homes full of other elderly, vulnerable people. The policy went on for weeks. The press was probably too busy looking for bad news about hydroxychloroquine to question the governor's deadly directive.

"He worked it out so we always had available beds. Nobody was deprived of a bed or medical coverage in any way," Gov. Cuomo said on Sunday in defense of his nursing home policy. "And still, people died. Still, people died. Older people, vulnerable people are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen despite whatever you do. Because with all our progress as a society, we can't keep everyone alive."

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The Constitution Requires Judge Emmet Sullivan’s Lawless Amicus Order Against Michael Flynn Be Overturned

The U.S. Constitution makes clear that the judiciary has no business second-guessing prosecutorial decisions. That’s what Michael Flynn judge Emmet Sullivan decided to do.

On May 13, Judge Emmet Sullivan issued a blatantly biased and unconstitutional order in the long-lasting Michael Flynn criminal case. To preserve the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers, the Department of Justice has no choice now but to seek a writ of mandamus from the D.C. Circuit Court ordering the criminal charge against Flynn dismissed and reassigning the case to another judge.

On Tuesday, Judge Sullivan shocked court watchers when he entered an order stating that, “at the appropriate time,” he intended to enter a scheduling order permitting “amicus curiae” or friend of the court briefs to be filed in Flynn case. Flynn, who more than a year ago pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, was seeking to withdraw his guilty plea when the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn.

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Media Must Report Truth Of Anti-Trump Spy Operation Before It’s Too Late For Them

As facts about the Obama administration's spying and leaking are spilling out, media have a brief window of opportunity to salvage some credibility.

As new details emerge about the Obama administration’s broad spying-and-leaking campaign against the incoming Trump administration, reporters have a choice to make about whether to cover this story honestly, at long last. There is a brief window of time afforded the media to get the story right. They should take advantage of it.

Journalist Lee Smith already noted the seriousness of the problem facing legacy mediaafter the implosion of the Russia collusion conspiracy theory they peddled. “Americans still want and need accurate information on which to base their decisions about their own lives and the path that the country should take. But neither the legacy media nor the expert class it sustains is likely to survive the post-dossier era in any recognizable form,” he wrote. “For them, Russiagate is an extinction level event.”

Many of our supposedly smart media elites are dinosaurs who are completely unaware of the asteroid headed right to them. Instead, they are doing their part in an all-hands-on-deck effort to continue pushing out Democratic talking points that got them into the mess. This week, that meant they regurgitated the Democratic claim that the Obama administration’s spying and leaking was “normal” and that to be concerned about it is nothing more than a “distraction.”
The Media Are in Too Deep

The less deft at pushing out the partisan talking point include MSNBC’s Brian Williams, who literally asked implicated former CIA chief John Brennan if he could “once and for all” explain to people who had heard about the scandal despite his corporation’s best efforts why it was no big deal. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo complained that a biased NBC News piece that itself attempted to wave away the scandal was not biased enough for his liking. The Daily Beast’s Sam Stein begged Axios not to cover the issuelest it help Trump, in the way that covering Hillary Clinton’s email scandal may have helped Trump.

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100,000 Businesses Have Permanently Collapsed Under Pandemic Lockdowns

More than 100,000 small businesses have permanently shuttered within just two months as pandemic lockdowns devastated the nation’s economy landing 36 million Americans out of work, according to a new survey this week.

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois, Harvard University, Harvard Business School and University of Chicago discovered at least 2 percent of the nation’s small businesses are now gone after conducting a representative survey of more than 5,800 enterprises between May 9-11.

“The broad conclusion of our research is that a lot of small businesses which make up a big share of U.S. employment have daily limited resources and are under a fair amount of financial distress,” said Illinois economist Alexander Bartik who co-authored the study.

Limited cash and limited time for conditions to change, Bartik told The Federalist, could drive up that number significantly in the days to come. The team of economists found that the median small business with expenses exceeding $10,000 a month had only enough resources to stay afloat for two weeks. About 75 percent of those surveyed, said they didn’t have the resources to last more than two months.

The researchers’ findings line largely consistent with a March poll by the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce with MetLife showing one in four small businesses were preparing for permanent closure within about eight weeks absent of reopenings or new federal relief. Even after Congress replenished the depleted small business forgivable loan fund in the Payment Protection Program (PPP), complicated and cumbersome requirements to qualify for loan forgiveness made securing federal relief impractical.

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HHS Secretary: No Coronavirus Spike in Reopened Areas, Only Closed Areas

While cautioning it was still early, Health and Human Services Sec. Alex Azar said on Sunday that so far there has been no spike in coronavirus cases in areas beginning to reopen. In fact, the secretary noted, the spikes we are seeing are happening in areas that remain closed.

"We are seeing that in places that are opening, we’re not seeing this spike in cases," Sec. Azar said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. "We still see spikes in some areas that are, in fact, closed."

Sec. Azar touted the importance of good surveillance and testing in allowing states the ability to safely reopen.

"First, we need to have good surveillance. So we need to look for influenza-like illness and other respiratory disease. We have a great surveillance system for that. We look for spikes and early indicators. We have adequate testing capacity. We need to make sure anybody who is symptomatic is tested and that we have adequate asymptomatic surveillance in areas of greatest burden," Sec. Azar said.

The secretary also described the appropriate response once a spike in cases is detected in a localized area.

"Then we use the traditional public health tools to surge in there," the secretary explained. "We would test everybody there. We would do contact tracing and isolation. That’s where places like Georgia and Colorado, as they reopen, it’s these tools that allow us to be reopened, but do so in a safe way that lets the economy function but allows us to use the traditional tools of public health to move forward as we would with any other disease."

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This Priest Squirted Holy Water At Churchgoers At A Socially-Distanced Service And He's Now A Meme

Father Tim Pelc told BuzzFeed News he's amazed at how widely the photo is being shared. "It even had two hits in the Vatican," he said, "which sort of concerned me but I haven’t heard anything yet."

Father Tim Pelc tries to stay off social media when possible, but recently, it's become unavoidable. Thanks to the photos from his socially-distanced Holy Week service in Michigan, which involved a water gun full of Holy Water, Pelc has become a meme.

The photos, which were taken by parishioner Larry Peplin, received some attention when they were first posted by St. Ambrose Parish on Facebook in April. But they have recently gone viral on Twitter, and even sparked a Reddit Photoshop Battle.

The sudden internet popularity has come as a pleasant surprise to Pelc, 70, who's been with the parish in Detroit for 30 years and prides himself on having a "pretty wacky mind and pretty accepting congregation."

"The original idea was to do something for the kids of the parish," Pelc told BuzzFeed News. "They were about ready to have an Easter unlike any of their past, so I thought, what can we still do that would observe all the protocols of social distancing?"

Pelc came up with the idea of using a water gun to bless his parishioners' Easter baskets from a safe distance, and consulted with his friend, an emergency room doctor in Detroit, to ensure it was safe to do so.

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Baltimore Mayor Will Shut You Down

Why American life went on as normal during the killer pandemic of 1969

Patti Mulhearn Lydon, 68, doesn’t have rose-colored memories of attending Woodstock in August 1969. The rock festival, which took place over four days in Bethel, NY, mostly reminds her of being covered in mud and daydreaming about a hot shower.

She was a 17-year-old high-school student from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, when she made the trek to Max Yasgur’s farm with her boyfriend Rod. For three nights, she shared an outdoor bedroom with 300,000 other rock fans from around the country, most of whom were probably not washing their hands for the length of “Happy Birthday” — or at all.

And all of this happened during a global pandemic in which over one million people died.

H3N2 (or the “Hong Kong flu,” as it was more popularly known) was an influenza strain that the New York Times described as “one of the worst in the nation’s history.” The first case of H3N2, which evolved from the H2N2 influenza strain that caused the 1957 pandemic, was reported in mid-July 1968 in Hong Kong. By September, it had infected Marines returning to the States from the Vietnam War. By mid-December, the Hong Kong flu had arrived in all fifty states.

But schools were not shut down nationwide, other than a few dozen because of too many sick teachers. Face masks weren’t required or even common. Though Woodstock was not held during the peak months of the H3N2 pandemic (the first wave ended by early March 1969, and it didn’t flare up again until November of that year), the festival went ahead when the virus was still active and had no known cure.

“Life continued as normal,” said Jeffrey Tucker, the editorial director for the American Institute for Economic Research. “But as with now, no one knew for certain how deadly [the pandemic] would turn out to be. Regardless, people went on with their lives.”

Which, he said, isn’t all that surprising. “That generation approached viruses with calm, rationality and intelligence,” he said.

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Memo To Mitch: You Won’t Get Judges If You Don’t Hold Resistance Accountable For Russia Hoax

For Americans hoping Senate Republicans might finally engage the Russia collusion hoax seriously, last night’s interview of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by “Special Report’s” Bret Baier was a tremendous disappointment. McConnell better figure out quickly that if he doesn’t hold the Resistance accountable for the Russia hoax that harmed his party and the entire country for many years, he won’t have a majority in the next term. If it helps to motivate him, he should remember that not having the majority in the next term means he won’t get to confirm judges, an issue he hopes will be his defining legacy.

For three years, a false and dangerous narrative of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election was woven throughout the media and government. This conspiracy theory harmed international relations, domestic governance, and the lives of many individuals. It ended when a special counsel probe was finally forced to admit in 2019 that there was no evidence that any American had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election, much less anyone close to President Donald Trump.

Debunking this false narrative was for many years left to a very small band of reporters and congressional investigators. Most of the attention-getting congressional work was done on the House side, including the revelation that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had secretly paid for the false narrative and that there was serious abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in how the government secured wiretaps to spy on Trump campaign affiliates.

McConnell didn’t just whiff on the Russia collusion hoax investigation in general, he failed to investigate after the implosion of the Mueller probe, and he failed to investigate after the inspector general report showing the problems with how the Trump campaign was spied on. He appears ready to fail once again in the aftermath of the Mike Flynn case being withdrawn.

More of Mollie Hemingway's article here

OK, What's The Big Deal Here? "It's Time"

Trump Needs to Recruit a Medical ‘Red Team’ To Challenge Lockdown-Manic Governors

President Trump and governors’ coronavirus policy has remained captive to a singular, and quite possibly scientifically flawed, understanding of the epidemic.

President Trump and 50 governors now face a critical choice. Since March 16, 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment, and more than 83,000 American deaths have been attributed to the COVID-19 virus.

So what to do? How many more weeks, months, or even years should current sheltering-in-place orders continue? When can or should they be lifted?

The administration’s virus taskforce has recommended only a gradual lifting of stay-at-home orders and has established criteria for full re-opening that could take months to satisfy in many states. Yet Trump also insisted that even though “some people [will] be affected badly. . . and there will be more death,” “we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.”

Many in the media condemned this statement as “risking more death to save the economy” and a dangerous repudiation of “the science.” Blue-state governors who have refused to reopen have similarly cited “the science” to justify their decisions to extend stay-at-home orders.

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Trump Administration Tells States To Yank Benefits From Those Who Won't Return To Work

Congress created special unemployment benefits so that laid-off workers could stay home while the coronavirus pandemic rages outside, but the Trump administration wants states to make sure that nobody’s getting benefits if they could be at work.

The U.S. Department of Labor has told states, which implement unemployment insurance programs according to federal rules, that they should ask employers to notify the state if someone turns down an offer to come back to work.

In a guidance memo on Monday evening, the Labor Department said “states are strongly encouraged to request employers to provide information when workers refuse to return to their jobs for reasons that do not support their continued eligibility for benefits.”

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So far, no spike in coronavirus in places reopening, U.S. health secretary says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. authorities are not yet seeing spikes in coronavirus cases in places that are reopening but it was still too early to determine such trends, health secretary Alex Azar said on Sunday.

“We are seeing that in places that are opening, we’re not seeing this spike in cases,” Azar said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “We still see spikes in some areas that are, in fact, closed.”

However, Azar said identifying and reporting new cases takes time. A critical part of reopening will be surveillance of flu-like symptoms in the population and other hospital admissions data, as well as testing of asymptomatic individuals, he said.

“It’s still early days,” Azar cautioned in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He said data will take some time to come in from states that reopened early such as Georgia and Florida.

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MR. TRASH WHEEL SETS GUINNESS WORLD RECORD

The Baltimore Harbor’s solar-powered trash interceptor, better known as Mr. Trash Wheel, now holds a Guinness World Record.

The trash wheel, which collects garbage and debris that dumps into the harbor at the Jones Falls outfall, moves it onto a conveyor belt and into dumpsters that a barge later carries away. Those dumpsters full of trash never make it into the Inner Harbor and the Bay.

In the Guinness World Records 2020 Edition, Mr. Trash Wheel (popular for its big, googly eyes) set the record for “Most Floating Debris Removed by a Trash Interceptor in One Month.” The trash wheel accomplished the feat by pulling 63.3 tons of debris from the mouth of the Jones Falls during the month of April in 2017.

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There is a team of doctors dedicated to keeping Nancy from falling apart

U.S. Special Forces Test Laser Gunship For Covert Strikes

The prospect of laser fire from above moved closer with an announcement from the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) that they will test fire a high-energy laser weapon from an AC-130J aircraft in 2022. The plan was disclosed at the at the Virtual Special Operations Forces Industry Conference this week.

The AC-130J Ghostrider is a fearsome flying arsenal. Like its Vietnam-era gunship predecessors, it carries a radar-guided 105mm howitzer and 30mm rapid fire cannon. The modern version also has precision strike capability, dropping 250-pound GPS-guided GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs and 34-pound laser-guided AGM-176 Griffin missiles.

The gunship laser is an offensive weapon intended to take out targets on the ground. The question is: what targets?

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WHITAKER: Activist Judge Who Accepted Flynn Case Was Peter Strzok's Neighbor

‘Without the rule of law, without respect for the Constitution, without honest administration in the Justice Department, we don’t have a republic…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In a forthcoming book, former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker piles on to the condemnations of Obama-era officials who politicized some of the nation’s most trusted law-enforcement institutions, according to the Washington Times.

“Without the rule of law, without respect for the Constitution, without honest administration in the Justice Department, we don’t have a republic,” Whitaker writes inAbove the Law, due for release on May 19.

The high-profile case against Michael Flynn is among the examples he cites of the incestuous blurring of lines within the Justice Department, the intelligence community, the judiciary and other democratic pillars around which the Left sought to wrap its deep-state tentacles.

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, was accused of lying to the FBI about his contact with a Russian diplomat prior to Trump’s inauguration.

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‘Impeach King Cuomo’

You can’t keep New Yorkers down for long.

While millions in the city have willingly locked down for the past two months to stem the spread of the coronavirus, the mood is quickly changing.

On Saturday, several hundred people, mostly small business owners, gathered on Staten Island to protest Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s closure of businesses deemed “non-essential.”

“Stand up to them! Do not lay down for them!” Staten Island business owner Steve Margarella yelled to a cheering crowd, The New York Post reported.

“Who is going to stand with me, who is going to swing their doors open on Monday and say, ‘I’m going in? You want me? Come and get me. I’m feeding my men, I’m feeding my family. I’m paying my bills and I’m not gonna’ let you stop me.'”

He said de Blasio “has had his boots on our throats” for the past four years.

And he called Cuomo “Il Duce,” which was Mussolini’s nickname.

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Horowitz: Bombshell report: Dr. Birx believes the CDC is inflating death numbers by as much as 25%

Why is it that long past the peak of the virus, the number of deaths continues to skyrocket beyond what the revised government models predicted?

On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force response administrator, is accusing the CDC of using an antiquated model to track coronavirus deaths that could be responsible for inflating the death numbers by as much as 25 percent. The Post cites four unnamed sources who reported a dispute between Birx and Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last Wednesday over the modeling.

“There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust,” Birx reportedly said, according to two of the Post’s sources.

If the 25% inflation number is true, that would place the total deaths closer to the 66,000 death figure that the government predicted in April.

We need not rely on an off-the-record citation from the Washington Post to know that where there is smoke, there is fire. Birx already publicly admitted last month that CDC is telling states to code any death of an individual who tests positive for COVID-19 as a coronavirus death, even if it is not proven that the death was caused by COVID-19. The problem is now that we know the virus is so much more widespread than previously thought, and therefore so much less deadly, how can we assume that anyone who merely tests positive for the virus died because of the virus? This is especially true now that we know that the majority of those who test positive for coronavirus in areas where everyone is tested (ships, meatpacking plants, and prisons, for example) are asymptomatic?

This was always the vexing question concerning the death count, but it has become even more troubling now that deaths continue to surge long past the peak of the virus and with hospitalizations way down. We got the answer to this question last week when it became apparent that the overwhelming majority of deaths in recent days have been in nursing homes. In some states, more than 100% of reported deaths on a given day are in nursing homes, because they are now retroactively adding previously undeclared deaths as nursing home deaths.

The fact that states are just backfilling so many deaths of nursing home patients makes the numbers even more suspicious. There certainly is a terrible tragedy unfolding in senior facilities, partiality due to states demanding that these facilities take in coronavirus patients. It wasn’t until yesterday that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo rescinded the order forcing nursing homes into this suicidal policy.

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Trump demands jail for 'corrupt' Obama and Biden over Flynn case

Donald Trump demanded Sunday morning that former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden face jail time for involvement in the Michael Flynn case.

'It was the greatest political crime in the history of our country,' Trump said of his predecessor and Biden, the presumed Democratic nominee.

'If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everybody would have been in jail a long time ago, and I'm talking with 50 year sentences,' the president continued in an interview with Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo that aired Sunday. 'It is a disgrace what's happened this is the greatest political scam, hoax in the history of our country. And people should be going to jail for this stuff and hopefully, a lot of people are going to have to pay.'

Biden and Obama reportedly knew about the FBI seeking an investigation into the incoming National Security adviser, and then-administration purportedly requested to 'unmask' the identity of Flynn.

Trump lauded the case being dropped against General Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty under oath, and the president called him a 'hero' for dealing with the charges.

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Antibody Testing: Proves We've Been Had!

There is simply no other way to state this.

Nearly everything we’ve been told about models, rates of infection, deaths, and recoveries was inaccurate.

I’m not here to argue that it was malfeasance or ignorance — both are unacceptable. But the one thing that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s stunning announcement made clear on Thursday is that there are some pretty shocking — and what should be — reassuring truths.

Cuomo announced that antibody testing in New York state, which only began four days previous, was already demonstrating that at minimum 13.9% of New Yorkers, had COVID-19 late stage antibodies.

The implication of this is a shockwave to the system.

With a population of 19,540,500 the findings point out that over 2,500,000 New Yorkers had the virus and have recovered. Keep in mind that as of this writing that only 263,000 New Yorkers have currently confirmed cases. Also as of this writing New York has reported 19,543 fatalities.

We’ve been told that the true death rate is 7.4% in New York. We were told there would be hundreds of thousands dead. We were told that this was worse than the flu, which has still recorded more deaths to date in this past flu season—even though the CDC instructed medical personnel to start counting influenza, heart disease, pulmonary, respiratory, drug overdose, and possibly even car crash deaths as COVID-19 deaths.

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Scalise: House Proxy Voting Rules ‘Unconstitutional,’ They ‘Will Be Challenged’

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) stated that the House of Representatives’ new proxy voting rules are “unconstitutional,” and that any significant pieces of legislation that are passed under the rules “will be challenged.” He also criticized Democrats who voted for the rules by stating that they’ve surrendered their voting cards to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Scalise said that Democrats who voted for the proxy voting measure “just voted to give [their] voting card in Congress to Nancy Pelosi. … It’s unconstitutional, first of all. Because a quorum under this — just — this resolution they just passed, 20 people on the floor, 20 Democrats can constitute a quorum of the House of Representatives, 435 people. That goes against Article I of the Constitution.”

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Maryland COVID-19 Data 5-18-2020

COVID-19 Statistics in Maryland

Number of confirmed cases : 39,762
Number of negative test results : 161,744
Number of confirmed deaths : 1,903
Number of probable deaths : 120
Currently hospitalized : 1,447
Acute care : 892
Intensive care : 555
Ever hospitalized : 7,086
Released from isolation : 2,817

Cases and Deaths Data Breakdown:
Parenthesis = Confirmed death, laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 test result 
Asterisk = Probable death, death certificate lists COVID-19 as the cause of death but not yet confirmed by a laboratory test
NH = Non-Hispanic

By County

County	Cases	Deaths
Allegany	164	(14)
Anne Arundel	2,893	(134)	8*
Baltimore City	3,830	(200)	8*
Baltimore County	4,749	(237)	18*
Calvert	245	(12)	1*
Caroline	200
Carroll	703	(68)
Cecil	318	(17)
Charles	867	(60)	2*
Dorchester	122	(2)
Frederick	1,460	(83)	7*
Garrett	7
Harford	695	(31)	3*
Howard	1,416	(42)	3*
Kent	140	(14)
Montgomery	8,417	(442)	38*
Prince George's	11,608	(415)	21*
Queen Anne's	129	(10)
St. Mary's	326	(11)
Somerset	61
Talbot	68	(1)
Washington	343	(8)
Wicomico	837	(21)
Worcester	164	(5)	1*
Data not available		(76)	10*

By Age Range and Gender

Age/Gender	Cases	Deaths
0-9	811
10-19	1,549
20-29	5,279	(10)	1*
30-39	7,266	(23)	3*
40-49	7,135	(51)	4*
50-59	6,605	(126)	10*
60-69	4,834	(302)	12*
70-79	3,244	(465)	15*
80+	3,039	(852)	65*
Data not available		(74)	10*
Female	20,706	(940)	66*
Male	19,056	(963)	54*

By Race and Ethnicity

Race/Ethnicity	Cases	Deaths
African-American (NH)	12,220	(792)	39*
Asian (NH)	770	(68)	6*
White (NH)	8,180	(785)	56*
Hispanic	9,196	(156)	7*
Other (NH)	1,888	(24)	2*
Data not available	7,508	(78)	10*

NYS Deliberately Covered-Up Coronavirus Nursing Home Deaths

On March 25, New York state ordered nursing homes to accept patients regardless of their coronavirus status. That order proved to be a deadly mistake. It was well known that the elderly were more vulnerable to the virus, so having patients who tested positive for the coronavirus in nursing homes allowed the virus to spread, as Governor Andrew Cuomo put it, “like fire through dry grass.”

Despite this, Cuomo defended the policy. Nursing homes “don’t have a right to object. That is the rule and that is the regulation and they have to comply with that,” Cuomo said during a daily briefing last month. He finally rescinded the order on May 11, but the damage had been done.

But New York state was covering up just how deadly this policy was. By not counting the deaths of nursing home residents who died in hospitals in their tallies of nursing home resident deaths, New York was vastly undercounting nursing home deaths. In fact, it was the only state with a large outbreak to do this, and they finally admitted to this in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The NYSDOH confirmed to the DCNF that until around April 28, it was disclosing coronavirus deaths for all nursing home and adult care facility residents, regardless of whether the patient died at their long-term care facility or at a hospital,” The Daily Caller reported. “But the department made a subtle change to its disclosures beginning around May 3, according to web archives. The NYSDOH told the DCNF its disclosure now only reports coronavirus deaths for long-term care patients that died while physically present at their facility.” Deaths of nursing home patients who died in hospitals were still included in the overall count.

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Democrat-imposed coronavirus orders face lawsuits across the nation

Stay-at-home orders aimed at reducing the spread of coronavirus are now facing legal challenges from residents and state officials alike, alleging that some measures – mostly put in place by Democrats -- go too far while the country gradually moves toward reopening.

California alone is facing at least a dozen lawsuits that include claims that the state has unjustly closed down gun shops and religious services, infringed on freedoms of speech and assembly by restricting protests, and one case where a resident alleges that being forced to remain at home constitutes forced detention without due process.

“We’re being challenged,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “All across this country, every single day, governors are being challenged, local health officials are being challenged, and it’s a spirit of collaboration. Those that continue to pursue things that put people in harm’s risk, you have to have stepped up efforts and enforcement and sanctions.”

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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-imposed-pandemic-orders-face-lawsuits-across-the-nation

Australian Study: COVID-19 'Exquisitely Adapted' for Human Cells

A major new Australian study of COVID-19 has found that it seems specially adapted to infect human cells, casting some doubt on whether it emerged in bats or pangolins when it first erupted in China.

As a consequence, the scientists behind the study say, a “possibility which still cannot be excluded is that SARSCoV-2 was created by a recombination event that occurred inadvertently or consciously in a laboratory handling coronaviruses, with the new virus then accidentally released into the local human population"

"The results clearly show that the COVID-19 virus is exquisitely adapted to infect humans," says Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, lead author of a new paper just published online in arXiv, a leading US preprint server for researchers.

"The virus's ability to bind protein on human cells was far greater than its ability to bind the same protein in bats, which argues against bats being a direct source of the human virus."

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PBS Stations Partnered With Chinese Foreign Agent on Pro-Beijing Film

PBS affiliates that receive millions of dollars in federal funding each year are airing a pro-Beijing documentary produced in conjunction with CGTN, a Chinese government-controlled media outlet that is registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department.

The film “Voices from the Frontline: China’s War on Poverty” did not disclose CGTN’s links to the Chinese government, nor did it detail the ties that the film’s producer, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, has to Chinese officials and the government’s State Council Information Office, which specializes in foreign propaganda.

The one-hour documentary touts Chinese President Xi Jinping’s initiative to alleviate poverty in China by this year.

PBS and other publicly-funded news outlets like NPR have come under fire in recent years, with conservatives pushing to de-fund the organizations over a perceived liberal bias. Other news outlets have come under scrutiny for publishing propaganda promoted by the Chinese government.

KCET received $5.6 million in funding from CPB in 2019, according to CPB records.

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Hundreds Rally for Trump in Florida Boat Parade

Hundreds showed support for President Trump in a massive boat parade along the Intracoastal Waterway in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday.

Trump supporters flocked to the Intracoastal Waterway — venturing from the Jacksonville inlet to the Palm Valley Bridge — to express support for the president:

One of the attendees told Breitbart News that as many as 400 boats participated in the event, which kicked off with the national anthem. Others were standing on banks to demonstrate their support. Photos show participants waving American flags, as well as Trump 2020 flags.

“You can’t ignore the support for Trump,” a Jacksonville resident who participated in the event told Breitbart News, adding that the turnout gives her faith.

“Great family event with social distancing,” she added.

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FDA Halts Bill Gates-Backed COVID-19 Testing Program

About a month after Bill Gates criticized President Trump's decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), the federal government has just halted a Seattle-based COVID-19 testing program backed by Gates. 

What are the odds, right?

"Please discontinue patient testing and return of diagnostic results to patients until proper authorization is obtained," the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) wrote in a memo, addressed to the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN), according to The New York Times.

SCAN posted an update on its website on Thursday (May 14) describing how the FDA had asked it to "pause" testing while it receives further guidance on new procedures for its COVID-19 test kits that collect samples at home. 

The FDA "recently clarified its guidance for home-based, self-collected samples to test for COVID-19. We have been notified that a separate federal emergency use authorization (EUA) is required to return results for self-collected tests," the post read.

"The FDA has not raised any concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of SCAN's test, but we have been asked to pause testing until we receive that additional authorization." 

An FDA spokesperson told The Times, the home collection test kits raised some concerns about "safety and accuracy that required the agency's review." 

The issue in the Seattle case appears to be that the test results are being used not only by researchers for surveillance of the virus in the community but that the results are also being returned to patients to inform them.

The two kinds of testing — surveillance and diagnostic — fall under different F.D.A. standards. In a pure surveillance study, the researchers may keep the results just for themselves. But coronavirus testing has largely revolved around getting results returned to doctors who can share the results with patients.

"We had previously understood that SCAN was being conducted as a surveillance study," the spokesperson said.

SCAN is backed by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the University of Washington Medicine. The testing program was sending free test kits to participants' homes in the Seattle Metropolitan Area, with the goal of testing people in the region to get a sense of how the virus was spreading through the community. 

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Trump approval at Gallup ‘highest,’ better than Obama, Bush

Despite a wave of critical news coverage and Democratic catcalls, President Trump sits at his “highest” approval in the latest Gallup survey, and above where four of the last six presidents, including Barack Obama and George W. Bush, were at this point of the first term.

After two weeks of bad news on the coronavirus and economic front, Trump maintained his 49% approval rating, and his disapproval crept up just 1 point, to 48% in the Gallup survey of adults, a broad test.

Gallup said that Trump’s approval is “tied for the best of his presidency.”

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Gov. Gavin Newsom to give illegal immigrants $75 million in stimulus money despite cutting $19 billion from schools

California is projected to have a budget deficit of $54.3 billion

Last month, New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said that he was open to the idea of providing illegal immigrants with $600 a week, despite the state "quite clearly running out of money." Starting on Monday, California will provide up to $75 million to illegal immigrants. The money will be available to the illegal immigrants despite Gov. Gavin Newsom slashing $19 billion in funding for California schools this week.

Newsom's Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants Project will provide $125 million to illegal immigrants, $75 million will be paid by the state of California and $50 million from private philanthropic groups.

Each adult will be eligible for a one-time payment of $500, and caps out at $1,000 per household, according to the Mercury News.

In order to qualify for the stimulus check, recipients must be at least 18-years-old, an undocumented immigrant who experienced financial hardship due to the coronavirus pandemic, and did not receive payments from federal COVID-19 support programs such as the CARES Act.

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