Americans Are Slowly But Surely Ending Lockdowns Despite Officials’ Objections, Location Data Show

Americans are venturing out more to fast food restaurants, gas stations and public places even as health experts and government officials demand extending economic lockdowns, location data show.

People are back to visiting gas stations and fast food restaurants at pre-COVID-19 levels, according to location data collected by Foursquare, a local search-and-discovery app that helps users discover places near them to visit and eat. Foursquare noted the changes in how people are moving in a blog post Thursday showing that people are apparently feeling free to travel about.

Americans are changing their behavior even as governors and mayors across the country continue extending stay-at-home orders to prevent an uptick in coronavirus deaths.

Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, for one, extended her state’s lockdown until May 28 and increased her executive powers as protesters stormed Michigan’s state capitol amid a flurry of demonstrations.

Michigan has seen more than 4,000 people die from coronavirus, or COVID-19, which originated in Wuhan, China before going global, killing more than 160,000 people worldwide.

Meanwhile, people are getting used to the new situation and even bucking some guidelines, location data show. Gas stations are down only 6% nationally as of April 24, compared to 8-11% weeks prior, Foursquare noted.

Such visits to fuel stations have returned to normal in the Midwest and in rural areas, which have seen slower spread and fewer COVID-19-related deaths than coastal cities.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/03/coronavirus-michigan-gretchen-whitmer-lockdown/

Journalists mock NY Times' call for 'unbiased' DNC panel to investigate Biden: 'Is this satire?'

The New York Times editorial board faced mockery from multiple journalists Sunday, after the board suggested that a sexual assault allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden be investigated – by none other than the Democratic National Committee.

The Times editorial called for records from Biden’s time in the Senate to be reviewed by what they called “an unbiased, apolitical panel, put together by the D.N.C.,” leading Axios' Jonathan Swan to speculate whether the Times actually was serious.

“Is this satire?” Swan tweeted, quoting the above language.

Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York, also a Fox News contributor, called it “absolutely astonishing.” Fox News’ Brit Hume called it “beyond parody.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/axios-reporter-mocks-ny-times-call-for-dnc-to-investigate-biden

>>9013919

Don't be a red square!

UK elites’ Covid-19 PROJECT FEAR has worked, as NEARLY ALL Britons DEMAND lockdown continues despite falling cases

Having provoked extensive existential angst and worry through a Covid-19 Project Fear, governments are now faced with societies that are petrified of normal life and are pushing back against any easing of the lockdown.

A new poll by Opinium in the UK reveals that the vast majority of Britons remain strongly opposed to lifting the coronavirus lockdown; just one in five want schools, pubs and restaurants to be reopened.

This poll found that only 17 percent of people think the conditions have been met to consider reopening schools, as opposed to the 67 percent who say they have not been met and schools should stay closed.

Opposition to reopening restaurants and pubs – and allowing mass gatherings in sports and other stadiums to resume – is even higher. Just 11 percent of people think the time is right to consider reopening restaurants, while 78 percent are against. Only nine percent believe it would be correct to consider reopening pubs, while 81 percent are against; seven percent say it would be right to allow mass gatherings at sports events or concerts to resume, with 84 percent against.

These figures are striking. They are naturally fuelling a debate inside the government over how to strike a balance between keeping the public safe and minimising the financial catastrophe of a shutdown economy.

But they are not surprising. From the outset, most governments have adopted the Project Fear approach to dealing with the threat posed by Covid-19. We were all at risk, we were told. The virus didn’t respect borders, age, class, ethnicity or race, they said, as if the virus had a conscious plan to smite all of humanity indiscriminately. Lockdowns were necessary to flatten the curve and protect the health service.

But we now know that a lot of this was just fearmongering and exaggeration. It is clear that there are important differences in the level of threat Covid-19 represents; that it is possible to develop a strategy that can protect the vulnerable and the health service while not shutting down the economy upon which we all depend for everything in life. Flattening the curve did not require riding roughshod over basic freedoms and the critical reproduction of economic life. It required a balanced, sober strategy, with targeted support and resources for where they were really needed.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/487672-covid19-britons-demand-lockdown/

ICE, FBI Agents Took Bribes To Provide ‘Protection,’ Cook Books On Immigration Cases, Feds Say

LOS ANGELES – A Calabasas man has agreed to plead guilty to five federal offenses – one related to a credit card bust-out scheme, and the others related to more than $250,000 in bribes he paid to two federal agents for assistance that included sensitive law enforcement information.

Edgar Sargsyan, 39, an attorney with law offices in Beverly Hills, was charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, two counts of bribing a public official, and two counts of making false statements to federal investigators. In a plea agreement also filed today in U.S. District Court, Sargsyan agreed to plead guilty to the five felony counts, which cumulatively carry a statutory maximum penalty of 50 years in federal prison.

In the plea agreement, Sargsyan admitted paying tens of thousands of dollars from the beginning of 2015 through early 2017 to a special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

This matter was investigated by the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force, which includes agents from HSI, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – Office of Inspector General, the U.S. Secret Service, the Glendale Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the California Department of Health Care Services. The Los Angeles Police Department provided substantial assistance.

Sargsyan paid the HSI agent at least $32,000 in checks and at least $45,000 to $50,000 in cash in return for assistance that included the HSI agent searching law enforcement databases to corruptly obtain information that he passed to Sargsyan, according to the plea agreement. The HSI agent also altered a Department of Homeland Security database to make it more likely that a foreign national who was a client of Sargsyan’s law firm would be allowed to enter the United States. In another corrupt act detailed in the plea agreement, the HSI agent prepared a document on HSI letterhead in an unsuccessful attempt to have one of Sargsyan’s relatives from Armenia admitted into the United States.

Sargsyan also admitted he paid the FBI agent monthly cash bribes of up to $10,000 beginning in 2015 in exchange for the agent providing protection, which included running queries on law enforcement databases and warning Sargsyan to stay away from certain individuals who were the targets of criminal investigations. The agent, who worked out of the FBI’s San Francisco Field Office, accepted the cash payments on trips to Southern California, where he stayed at luxury hotels that were paid for by Sargsyan. The FBI agent also accepted from Sargsyan a $36,000 racing motorcycle as a bonus for running database checks on a particular person. Sargsyan also gave the FBI agent a $30,000 cashier’s check that was made to appear to be a payment to the agent’s business, according to court documents.

Sargsyan also agreed to plead guilty to two counts of making false statements to federal investigators. These charges stem from interviews in September 2017 by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, when Sargsyan falsely stated that the $30,000 check to the FBI agent was a loan, and in December 2018, when he falsely told special agents with the FBI and HSI that he did not pay bribes to the FBI agent.

In his plea agreement, Sargsyan also admitted he participated in a conspiracy that defrauded financial institutions by fraudulently obtaining credit cards in the names of aliens who had previously been in the United States on J1 visitor visas. Once the credit cards were issued by the financial institutions, Sargsyan and his co-conspirator charged purchases, including more than $941,000 that Sargsyan personally charged at two businesses he controlled, Pillar Law Group and Regdalin Group.

Sargsyan has been directed to make his initial court appearance in this case June 9.

https://breaking911.com/ice-fbi-agents-took-bribes-to-provide-protection-cook-books-on-immigration-cases-feds-say/

Pompeo announces there is 'enormous evidence' that COVID-19 leaked from infamous Wuhan lab

'There's enormous evidence that that's where this began'

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Sunday that the U.S. government has "enormous evidence" proving coronavirus originated in a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"There's enormous evidence that that's where this began," Pompeo said on ABC's "This Week."

"These are not the first times that we've had a world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab," Pompeo went on to say. "I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan."

However, Pompeo did not state what that evidence is.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a statement last week saying they were "rigorously" investigating whether the virus came from the Wuhan lab.

Intelligence sources have since said that the consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies is that COVID-19 did, in fact, come from the lab, though they believe its leak was accidental.

"I've seen what the intelligence community has said," Pompeo said Sunday. "I have no reason to believe that they've got it wrong."

President Donald Trump also stated last week that he has a "high degree of certainty" that the COVID-19 outbreak began at the Wuhan lab.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/pompeo-announces-there-is-enormous-evidence-that-covid-19-leaked-from-infamous-wuhan-lab

>>9014260

>>9014260

TYRANNY

DNC Chair Defends Joe Biden From Sexual Assault Allegations By Comparing Them to Hillary Clinton’s Emails

DNC Chair Tom Perez defended Joe Biden Sunday morning by comparing the sexual assault allegations to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.

Perez made the remarks while speaking to Martha Raddatz during an appearance on ABC’s This Week.

“Joe Biden has been very clear, Martha, that this did not happen,” Perez said. “He was forceful in that and he’s been equally clear that when women come forward with complaints of this nature, they should be taken seriously. Their complaints should be investigated, they should be treated with dignity, and he’s done exactly that… He is an open book.”

In response, Raddatz noted that Biden has said he will not release documents from his years in the Senate, which Reade maintains will contain a complaint about his behavior, and how the New York Times has called on the Democratic Party to investigate the claims.

“There’s been so many investigations of the vice president. The most comprehensive investigation of the vice president was when he was vetted by Barack Obama in 2008,” Perez said. He also claimed that the records at the University of Delaware will be policy documents, not personnel records.

Raddatz again asked why they won’t just search for Tara Reade’s name in the records, prompting him to compare the scandal to Clinton’s emails.

“This is like the Hillary emails, because there was nothing there,” Perez responded. “The reason is if I’m going — I worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1995, the ranking member was Joe Biden. I wasn’t working for Joe Biden, I was working for Senator Kennedy. If you want to see my personnel records, you don’t go to the Kennedy Institute. That’s not where they go. So when you ask the University of Delaware to take a look at something, you’re asking them to look for something that doesn’t exist.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/watch-dnc-chair-defends-joe-biden-sexual-assault-allegations-comparing-hillary-clintons-emails/

https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1256956564247908352

>>9014344