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Debt Rattle April 22 2024

Apr 222024
 
 April 22, 2024  Posted by at 8:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Wassily Kandinsky Contrasting Sounds 1924

 

• Biden Asks Americans To Choose Between Freedom And Democracy (RT)
• Mobilization Law Condition For New Supplies Of Arms To Kiev By NATO (TASS)
• Ukraine Can Win – Zelensky (RT)
• French Party Leader Says US Aid to Ukraine Only Leads to New Casualties (Sp.)
• Musk Decries Lack Of ‘Exit Strategy’ In Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• Moscow Issues Dire Warning After Ukraine Aid Bill (RT)
• ‘No Consensus’ In West On Seizing Russian Assets – WaPo (RT)
• Trump Arrest Would Cause Nationwide ‘Civil Unrest’ – CNN Analyst (RT)
• $454 Million Trump Penalty Judge Set to Rule on Validity of Reduced Bond (ET)
• Michael Avenatti Flips, Willing To Testify On Trump’s Behalf (ZH)
• Judges Dismiss Disciplinary Effort by Texas State Bar vs Sidney Powell (ET)
• UN Plans Tyrannical Future for You – Alex Newman (USAW)
• US Lawmakers Scared Of Being Framed For ‘Kiddie Porn’ – Tucker Carlson (RT)

 

 

Still no internet at home. Getting it back is like a handicap race.

 

 


Llama3, king of LLMs (Large language model).Taking over from Chat GPT.

 

 

Tucker Rogan

 

 

Tucker Alex Jones

 

 

RFK

 

 

Freeman

 

 

Sheetz

 

 

 

 

“Are you ready to choose unity over division? Dignity over demolition? Truth over lies? Are you ready to choose freedom over democracy? Because that’s America..”

• Biden Asks Americans To Choose Between Freedom And Democracy (RT)

US President Joe Biden has implored his supporters to choose “freedom over democracy,” in the latest of a long series of gaffes and verbal blunders. Conservative pundits viewed the incident as more proof that the 81-year-old is unfit for office. Speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Thursday, Biden rattled off a string of buzzwords as he asked voters whether they would choose him over former President Donald Trump in November’s presidential election. “Are you ready to choose unity over division? Dignity over demolition? Truth over lies? Are you ready to choose freedom over democracy? Because that’s America,” he exclaimed. Biden’s “freedom over democracy” line drew a mix of laughs and applause from the crowd, and ridicule from conservative pundits and influencers.

“When people were concerned about Ronald Reagan having cognitive decline near the end of his second term, it was nothing like this,” the Conservative Brief wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Look in the mirror and ask yourself, truthfully, if this is the man you want in charge of our security, our economy, and our country for another four years?” Biden has a long history of similar slip-ups, and was ridiculed for a 2019 campaign speech in which he declared: “We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts.”

Republicans insist that Biden’s cognitive faculties are declining, and that this decline has accelerated over his three years in the White House. Video footage of the president shaking hands with imaginary people, getting lost when out in public, and telling reporters that he had just met with long-dead world leaders have served to bolster their case. In February, US Justice Department prosecutor Robert Hur opted not to charge Biden for mishandling classified documents, noting in a report that the president suffered extreme memory lapses and didn’t possess the “mental state of willfulness” needed to commit a crime.

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They’re drafting men who are too old, too handicapped, too unmotivated. It doesn’t seem to matter.

• Mobilization Law Condition For New Supplies Of Arms To Kiev By NATO (TASS)

Passing of a harsh bill on mobilization in Ukraine to make up for the army’s losses was a condition for new supplies of arms to Kiev by NATO countries, a diplomatic source in Brussels told TASS. “Passing of a new harsh bill on mobilization in Ukraine was a condition for new supplies of weapons by NATO countries. Arms supplies are only reasonable if a large number of military personnel able to use those weapons in defense and assault operations is available, and if losses are swiftly made up for, for doing which new soldiers should be actively drafted into the military,” the diplomat said. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed the bill into law to tighten mobilization rules on April 16. The document tightens the mobilization procedure and penalties for draft evaders, and also refines the categories of those subject to mobilization. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are expected to be drafted.

On April 19, an online meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council at the level of defense ministers was held, where Ukrainian Defense Minister reported about the situation on the ground and about plans to draft soldiers for the country’s armed forces. After the meeting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a press conference that he expected new statements by the alliance’s countries on arms supplies to Kiev, including air defense systems, cruise missiles and 155mm ammunition, in the near future. On April 20, the US House of Representatives adopted a package of bills, which includes $60 bln military aid for Kiev among other things. A joint meeting of foreign and defense ministers of EU countries in Brussels is scheduled for April 22. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has brought up the issue of urgent supplies of new air defense systems to Kiev.

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“..Maria Zakharova predicted that the US will eventually face a “loud and humiliating fiasco on par with Vietnam or Afghanistan.”

• Ukraine Can Win – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine has a chance of victory in the conflict with Russia now that the US House of Representatives has approved more weapons for Kiev, President Vladimir Zelensky claimed in an interview with NBC on Sunday. The remarks came a day after a new aid bill, which authorizes an additional $61 billion in support for Ukraine, was passed by American lawmakers. The emergency spending had been stalled in Congress since last fall over concerns from Republicans that Washington lacked a strategy either for victory or a peace settlement. “I think this support will really strengthen the armed forces, I pray, and we will have a chance at victory if Ukraine really gets the weapons systems, which we need so much,” Zelensky said. He urged the US to wrap up final adoption of the legislation as soon as possible in order to start sending more weapons. The bill has yet to be passed by the US Senate, which is scheduled to vote on it on April 23. After that, it proceeds to President Joe Biden, who has said he will sign it.

“We want to help get things as fast as possible so that we get some tangible assistance for the soldiers on the front line as soon as possible – not in another six months,” the Ukrainian leader said. He specifically requested more air defense systems and longer-range missiles, arguing that the Ukrainian army is suffering losses due to the lack of both. “We need long-range weapons to not lose people on the front line because we have, we have casualties because we cannot reach that far,” he said, adding that another delay would mean more casualties. “If we get it in half a year… we’ve had the process stalled for half a year and we’ve had losses in several directions. Losses in men, in equipment.” Zelensky admitted that victory is far from guaranteed. “Now we have the chance to stabilize the situation,” he stated. “There are so many variables, so many factors.” He continued to rule out talks with Moscow, claiming that neither President Vladimir Putin nor any high-ranking Russian officials can be trusted.

The aid package authorized by the House is not solely intended for new weapons shipments. According to Politico, the biggest chunk of the money ($23 billion) will go to replenishing US stocks already used to provide arms to Ukraine. Only about $14 billion would go to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which the Pentagon uses to buy new weapons systems for Kiev from US defense contractors, according to The Guardian. Another $10 billion in aid was designated as a repayable loan to appease some Republicans, the newspaper said. Moscow responded by reiterating that Washington is causing Ukraine to “fight to the last Ukrainian” with its weapon shipments. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova predicted that the US will eventually face a “loud and humiliating fiasco on par with Vietnam or Afghanistan.”

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Not every European is a warmonger. But those are nowhere near power.

• French Party Leader Says US Aid to Ukraine Only Leads to New Casualties (Sp.)

Another batch of US military assistance to Kiev worth nearly $61 billion will not change the course of the Ukraine conflict and will only lead to new casualties, The Patriots party leader Florian Philippot said on Sunday. On Saturday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that will unlock $60.84 billion in Ukraine-related aid. The Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act was passed in a 311-112 vote, with one abstention. “This vote will not change anything, it will only lead to more casualties! To serve the interests of the financial predators who profit from this war!” Philippot said on X.

The politician also called on the French to stop sending money and arms to Kiev, saying that they were “destroying and endangering themselves.” He also suggested that France should withdraw from NATO, engage in dialogue with Russia and seek negotiations as soon as possible. Western countries have been providing military aid to Kiev since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow has consistently warned against continued arms deliveries, saying this would lead to further escalation of the conflict.

French forces arrive in Odessa, Ukraine.

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Forever war.

• Musk Decries Lack Of ‘Exit Strategy’ In Ukraine Conflict (RT)

The parties involved in the Ukraine conflict need to work on ways to bring it to a close, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested on Saturday. Responding to an X (formerly Twitter) post by fellow billionaire David Sachs, in which the latter commented on the House of Representatives approving a long-delayed emergency spending bill that includes new funding for Kiev, Musk noted that the conflict was turning into “a forever war.” “My biggest concern is that there is no exit strategy, just a forever war where kids die in trenches from artillery or charging machine guns and snipers through minefields,” Musk wrote.

Musk did not elaborate on his position towards the aid bill itself this time, but in late March he noted that it “should be contingent on proper accounting of how [the funding] is used and a plan to resolve the conflict.” Musk has not explicitly taken sides during the Ukraine conflict. He did supply Kiev with free Starlink internet terminals and access to the satellite-based network but later refused to activate the service near the Russian port city of Sevastopol in Crimea over fear that Ukraine could use the technology to escalate the conflict by attacking Russia’s Black Sea Fleet with guided drones. In February, Musk said the US should stop aiding Ukraine altogether as there was “no way in hell” Russia would lose the war.

“This spending doesn’t help Ukraine. Prolonging the war doesn’t help Ukraine,” he stated at a forum on X Spaces. Last month, Musk also warned that the “real question” in the conflict now lies in how much territory Kiev will lose before it agrees to sit down to peace talks with Moscow.Russia has repeatedly said that it was open to peace negotiations if Ukraine accepts the “reality on the ground.” Moscow also warned that Western aid and weapons shipments to Ukraine only exacerbate and prolong the conflict. The US, meanwhile, is getting closer to approving another $61 billion for Kiev. After being passed by the House, the Ukraine aid bill is set to be voted on by the Senate later this week.

Retaliatory strike

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“..Washington no longer betting on a Ukrainian victory against Russia, but hoping to keep Kiev afloat until the US presidential election in November…”

• Moscow Issues Dire Warning After Ukraine Aid Bill (RT)

The approval of a large aid package for Ukraine by the US House of Representatives is the same as funding terrorism, according to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. In a post on her Telegram channel on Saturday, Zakharova said that the potential allocation of further military assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan would only aggravate the crisis in the world. “Military aid to the Kiev regime is direct sponsorship of terrorist activities, funds sent to Taiwan is interference in the internal affairs of China, while aid sent to Israel is a straight way to unprecedented escalation of a conflict in the region,” she said. On Saturday, the lower house of the US Congress passed a $95 billion package that includes almost $61 billion in aid to Ukraine, including funds for the purchase of weapons and military equipment.

Most of the rest is allocated to Israel and Taiwan. The Senate is poised to vote on the bill on April 23 with final passage expected by the end of the week. Washington is driving deeper into a hybrid war with Russia, Zakharova said in a separate statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry, adding that the US would end up facing a “loud and humiliating fiasco on a par with Vietnam or Afghanistan.” The spokeswoman said “the US is ready to pump Ukraine with weapons so that Kiev could fight to the last Ukrainian, and continue to terrorist acts against civil objects on Russian sovereign territory and civilians, as well as sabotage attacks and killings of journalists.” Zakharova stated that ordinary Ukrainians were being “forcibly driven to slaughter as cannon fodder” with Washington no longer betting on a Ukrainian victory against Russia, but hoping to keep Kiev afloat until the US presidential election in November.

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How to make $6 billion out of $300 billion look like a victory.

• ‘No Consensus’ In West On Seizing Russian Assets – WaPo (RT)

EU officials are reluctant to bow to US pressure and transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, fearing that Moscow’s retaliation would be aimed primarily at the bloc rather than America, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. As part of unprecedented sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, Western countries have frozen around $300 billion in Russian assets in a move denounced by Moscow as “theft,” with many Western officials suggesting the money could be used to help Ukraine. The bulk of this sum is located in European countries, while the US only holds around $6 billion. In recent months, there have been several proposals on how to use this money to help Ukraine. While the US has pushed for the more hardline option of outright seizing the funds, the EU has proposed using the profits generated by the assets to help Ukraine.

Another option under discussion is to use the assets as collateral to secure loans for Kiev. According to the Post, EU officials are reluctant to confiscate the Russian assets due to concerns that the move “could breach international law, discourage investors from trusting the euro and invite Russian retaliation.” They have also pushed back against the US proposal to seize the funds as Europe holds most of the frozen assets, and “any Russian retaliation will probably fall on Europe, not the United States.” According to an unnamed US Treasury official, both the EU and US agree that “more needs to be done for Ukraine, but there is no consensus on specifics.” He added that “we’re thinking of the Russian sovereign assets as a sustainable medium-to-long-term solution for this funding problem.”

The report comes as the US House of Representatives passed the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act (REPO) on Saturday, which could allow the administration of US President Joe Biden to seize Russian assets in US banks and transfer them to Ukraine for reconstruction. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has warned that Russia will not leave the potential seizure unanswered, adding that the move could undermine the principle of the “inviolability of private… and state property,” as well as causing “irreparable damage to the US image.”

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“The judge, Juan Merchan, will hear arguments from the prosecution on Trump’s alleged violations of the gag order on Tuesday.”

The gag order is illegal. We need the Supreme Court to confirm that.

• Trump Arrest Would Cause Nationwide ‘Civil Unrest’ – CNN Analyst (RT)

The possible arrest of former US President Donald Trump for violating his court-imposed gag order would trigger rioting and deal a potentially fatal blow to President Joe Biden’s re-election chances, CNN analyst Mark Preston warned on Friday. Trump is currently on trial in Manhattan for allegedly misreporting ‘hush-money’ payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. Since last month, he has been forbidden from making public statements about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg or the jurors working on the case, and from uttering anything that could interfere with the work of the court. Nevertheless, the former president has spoken to reporters outside the Manhattan courthouse every day this week, and Bragg’s team claims that he has already violated this gag order at least seven times.

In one instance, Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Wednesday to share a quote from Fox News host Jesse Watters, who claimed that “undercover liberal activists” were “lying to the judge in order to get on the Trump jury.” However, if the trial judge were to place Trump in a holding cell “for a few hours,” the end result would be “civil unrest across the country, certainly in some cities,” Preston said in a panel discussion with CNN host Jim Acosta. “And two, politically, if I’m the Biden campaign, I don’t want to necessarily see him in jail, because that’s just going to get people more inflamed and more fired up,” he added. The judge, Juan Merchan, will hear arguments from the prosecution on Trump’s alleged violations of the gag order on Tuesday.

“People are allowed to speak about me, and I have a gag order, just to show you how much more unfair it is,” Trump said outside the courthouse on Friday. The former president blasted the order as unconstitutional, telling reporters that it “has to come off.” Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge Biden in November’s presidential election. Despite the ongoing trial in Manhattan and three other criminal cases in the works, he is currently leading the incumbent in most polls by between one and ten points.

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Thumbscrews. “The attorney general is requesting that President Trump be required to post a replacement bond within seven days.”

• $454 Million Trump Penalty Judge Set to Rule on Validity of Reduced Bond (ET)

After weeks of trying to secure a bond and arguing to an appeals court that a $454 million bond was “impossible,” former President Donald Trump secured a $175 million bond to stay judgment only to now have to make the case all over again why this should satisfy the New York Attorney General and stop her from seizing his properties. On April 22, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, the trial court judge who set the $454 million judgment, will hear the attorney general’s challenge to the sufficiency of President Trump’s bond. The $175 million figure had been set by the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court, and President Trump has frequently criticized Justice Engoron for “ignoring” appeals court orders, such as when he allowed evidence past the statute of limitations set by the appellate division during the trial.

The attorney general has sought to cast doubt on the stability of LA-based Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC), calling it a “small insurer” and arguing it is not authorized to do business in New York. They argued that KSIC has never before written a surety bond, and has “a total policyholder surplus of just $138 million.” Amit Shah, president of the insurance company, demanded the court compel the attorney general to show cause, or prove the allegation that the insurance company is not sufficient. Mr. Shah submitted a sworn affidavit explaining that KSIC now has control over a bank account of President Trump’s that will maintain $175 million cash for the duration of the appeal. The insurance company entered into a collateral agreement with the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust. Mr. Shah submitted documents establishing that his company is in “good standing” and was approved for excess line eligibility in New York in June 2021.

“As an eligible excess line insurer in the state of New York, KSIC is, therefore, properly authorized to issue the surety on behalf of Defendants,” he stated. This authorization stands as long as the insurance company meets the Excess Line Association of New York’s requirement of maintaining a minimum $47 million policyholder surplus, and Mr. Shah stated his company is maintaining a $48 million surplus minimum. He added that as of the end of 2023, the insurance company had $539 million in assets and $138 in equity, and its parent company, Knight Insurance Company, had on a consolidated basis $1 billion in assets and $1 billion in equity. The parent company also maintains $56 million in cash and $937 million in marketable securities to support reinsurance obligations. “At my direction, KSIC also performed diligence to confirm its legal authority to act as surety before issuing the subject bond,” Mr. Shah stated. “Although KSIC had not before placed a surety bond in New York, KSIC is an excess line insurer in the state of New York.”

The attorney general also took issue with the fact that KSIC does not have “exclusive right” to the account containing $175 million in cash, and highlighted the fact that it would need “two days’ notice” to move that cash. State attorneys urged the court to “not rely on KSIC’s financial summary” because the insurance company “sends 100% of its retained insurance risk to affiliates in the Cayman Islands,” which they argued “artificially bolsters its surplus.” They argued that excess line insurers are only authorized if the management is found “trustworthy and competent,” and KSIC did not qualify because “its management has been found by federal authorities to have operated affiliated companies within KSIC’s holding company structure in violation of federal law on multiple occasions within the past several years.”

Knight is under The Hankey Group of financial companies, which includes the affiliate Westlake Financial Services LLC. The attorney general argued that Westlake was found to have “violated numerous federal laws by pressuring borrowers through the use of illegal debt collection tactics, including using phony caller ID information, falsely threatening to refer borrowers for investigation or criminal prosecution” in 2015 by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The company was fined and provided $44 million in restitution to consumers. The attorney general is requesting that President Trump be required to post a replacement bond within seven days.

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Serving a 19-year sentence. He’s in a bad spot.

• Michael Avenatti Flips, Willing To Testify On Trump’s Behalf (ZH)

Imprisoned former CNN demigod Michael Avenatti has come out in support of Donald Trump, telling the NY Post that he’s willing to testify on Trump’s behalf after being in contact with Trump’s legal defense team about his willingness to testify against his former client, Stormy Daniels. “The defense has contacted me,” Avenatti told the Post in a phone call from Terminal Island, a minimum-security federal prison in Los Angeles where he’s serving a 19-year sentence for extortion, tax evasion, fraud, embezzlement and other federal crimes.”I’d be more than happy to testify, I don’t know that I will be called to testify, but I have been in touch with Trump’s defense for the better part of year,” Avenatti continued. A person close to the former president confirmed the ongoing discussions.

While Avenatti made his name as one of Trump’s most ferocious critics — and even publicly called for Trump’s indictment in 2018 — the defense attorney sang a different tune from the clink. “There’s no question [the trial] is politically motivated because they’re concerned that he may be reelected,” Avenatti said. “If the defendant was anyone other than Donald Trump, this case would not have been brought at this time, and for the government to attempt to bring this case and convict him in an effort to prevent tens of millions of people from voting for him, I think it’s just flat out wrong, and atrocious. “I’m really bothered by the fact that Trump, in my view, has been targeted. Four cases is just over the top and I think there’s a significant chance that this is going to all backfire and is going to propel him to the White House,” he added. -NY Post.

According to Avenatti, “Depending on what happens, this could constitute pouring jet fuel on his campaign.” Avenatti captured national attention in 2018 while representing Stormy Daniels, the porn star who alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006, and was paid $130,000 by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in 2016 in order to allegedly buy her silence. In November 2018, however, Avenatti’s world began imploding after he was booked on charges of domestic violence. Less than 18 months later he was convicted of trying to extort Nike for up to $25 million. And in 2022, he was found guilty of pilfering $300,000 in book advance money from Daniels – and pleaded guilty to federal fraud and tax charges in the same month.

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Well, they did get her out of the way for years.

• Judges Dismiss Disciplinary Effort by Texas State Bar vs Sidney Powell (ET)

Sidney Powell, a lawyer who filed lawsuits after the 2020 election, got a win in Texas after an appeals court ruled that the Texas bar did not prove that she engaged in misconduct or fraud. A panel of judges on the Fifth District of Texas Court of Appeals in Dallas ruled Wednesday that the state bar’s arguments lacked merit and evidence. They found that state bar prosecutors “employed a ’scattershot’ approach to the case” that had alleged Ms. Powell did not have a reasonable basis to file lawsuits that challenged the 2020 election’s outcome in battleground states. “The Bar employed a ‘scattershot’ approach to the case, which left this court and the trial court ‘with the task of sorting through the argument to determine what issue ha[d] actually been raised,’” Justice Dennise Garcia wrote in the court’s ruling. “Having done so, the absence of competent summary judgment compels our conclusion that the Bar failed to meet its summary judgment burden.”

A separate court had sided with Ms. Powell in the case last year, finding “numerous defects” in the evidence presented by the State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline. The court also found that the bar couldn’t provide evidence that she filed frivolous lawsuits. “Under these circumstances and on this record, we conclude the trial court did not err in granting Powell’s no-evidence motion for summary judgment,” the appeals court wrote. The State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline has not yet issued a statement on the matter. A representative for the Texas State Bar told Reuters that the commission would meet to determine its next steps but declined to comment further. “The Dallas Court of Appeals has affirmed the Texas state court’s dismissal of the Texas Bar’s case against Powell. After three years of litigation, the Court of Appeals held the Bar had no evidence Powell violated any disciplinary rule in filing four federal lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2020 election,” she said in a statement this week after the court’s decision.

In court papers filed with the appeals court, Ms. Powell disputed the bar’s allegations that she provided altered evidence in her legal filings. She said the documents were provided by other attorneys involved in the case. The court appeared to agree with her arguments. “Regardless of whether the challenged conduct must be knowing, intentional, or otherwise, a question we need not resolve here, it is axiomatic that dishonesty involves some conscious perversion of truth,” the judge wrote Wednesday. Following the 2020 contest, Ms. Powell was among the most prominent attorneys to file lawsuits, alleging there was enough fraud in battleground states that swung it in favor of President Joe Biden. A federal judge in Detroit sanctioned Ms. Powell and other lawyers in 2021 over the lawsuits. The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals largely upheld those sanctions, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear Ms. Powell’s appeal.

Ms. Powell in October 2023 pleaded guilty in Georgia and took a plea deal with Fulton County prosecutors after she was charged with illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election results. President Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, has also been charged in the case. He and more than a dozen other co-defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty. President Trump has said the Fulton County case is an attempt to interfere with the 2024 election, describing the charges as baseless. Under the terms of her plea deal, Ms. Powell had to write an apology. “I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,” she wrote in the letter, made public in December. Fani Willis, the embattled Democrat district attorney of Fulton County who presented the charges to a grand jury, said that the apology letters needed to include “real contrition” but that they did not need to be long. Jenna Ellis, another lawyer who was charged and took a plea deal in Fulton County, also wrote an apology letter. However, she read hers aloud in court while pleading guilty.

In response to Ms. Powell’s apology letter, President Trump wrote on social media last year that Ms. Powell never worked for him in an official capacity. “Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged & stolen,” he wrote on Truth Social. He added that Ms. Powell “was not my attorney and never was.” If she was, “she would have been conflicted,” the former president wrote at the time. “Ms. Powell did a valiant job of representing a very unfairly treated and governmentally abused General Mike Flynn, but to no avail. His prosecution, despite the facts, was ruthless. He was an innocent man, much like many other innocent people who are being persecuted by this now Fascist government of ours, and I was honored to give him a Full Pardon,” he added.

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“We are at war, and everyone needs to put on the full armor of God.”

• UN Plans Tyrannical Future for You – Alex Newman (USAW)

Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State” and the new best-selling book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” says the UN’s quest for total tyrannical control of your life is coming sooner than you could imagine. Newman explains, “The bigger story here that people are not paying attention to is the UN is coming together in September . . . and they are having ‘The Summit of the Future.’ They are telling us they are going to bring out radical drastic reforms in the structure of the UN . . . and the power of the UN. Think of it as the biggest power grab ever at the global level. The Secretary General of the UN (António Guterres) has put out briefs where he is calling for the UN to be the one world global dictatorship with him at the helm.

In emergencies, the UN would have all power in emergencies and have all power to oversee emergency response. . . . They say the crisis could be a climate crisis, an economic crisis, environmental crisis, pandemic crisis, black swan crisis or maybe something from outer space. So, basically, anything could be a crisis, and when the Secretary General declares a crisis, all power and authority would go to the UN. This is like a blank check on the wealth and liberty on every person on the planet, and this is coming soon. It is eminent. This is coming in September at the UN, and it is a power grab of historic proportions. They know their time is short, and they are going for the big enchilada here. This is really a summit for a tyrannical future. . . . They want control of every aspect of your life.”

If you think the “depopulation” or murder program by the Deep State is some sort of conspiracy theory or myth, think again. Newman says, “One of the interesting things about going to the UN conferences is they are totally open and totally transparent about the fact that they think there are way too many of us on this planet. We are taking up their space and consuming their resources. They say this openly. They say there are way too many people having way too many babies, and we have to drastically cut back on the number of people on the planet. They have a whole agency dedicated to this called the UN Population Fund.” One sure fire way to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time is war. Newman says, “They have understood, the globalists, the Deep State, the evil doers and the sick cabal, have understood for a very long time that war was the best mechanism for bringing about their totalitarian one world government.

This is not speculation on my part. This is what they say. Their game plan is war, famine, energy crisis and economic crisis. These are all tools and catalysts for accelerating this agenda. If millions of people die in a third world war, and it does not matter if it is Iran and Israel, or China and Tiawan, or Ukraine and Russia, it really does not matter, they want millions and millions of people dead so people will give up their attachment to the nation state, self-government and individual liberty and give up anything, money or freedom, anything to make it stop.” Don’t lose hope because Newman also talks about all the things you can do to not comply with tyranny. Newman also points out what state and local governments can do and are doing to resist this UN total control of everything. Newman says, “We are at war, and everyone needs to put on the full armor of God.”

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“They’re afraid of the agencies,” he stated, adding: “That’s not compatible with democracy.”

• US Lawmakers Scared Of Being Framed For ‘Kiddie Porn’ – Tucker Carlson (RT)

Members of Congress consistently vote in favor of mass surveillance programs because they’re “terrified” that intelligence agencies will plant “kiddie porn” on their computers if they speak up, American journalist Tucker Carlson has claimed. Carlson appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday, hours before the US Senate voted to renew Section 702 of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Ostensibly created to allow intelligence agencies such as the FBI and CIA to surveil the communications of foreigners, Section 702 allows these agencies to access data ‘indirectly’ collected from millions of American citizens without a warrant. According to Carlson, a number of lawmakers actually opposed this renewal, but did not admit this publicly. “People don’t say that because they’re worried about being punished,” Carlson told Rogan.

“They’re worried about someone putting kiddie porn on their computer. Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I’m not guessing at that. They’ve told me that, including people on the [intelligence] committee, including people who run the intel committee.” “They’re afraid of the agencies,” he stated, adding: “That’s not compatible with democracy.” “It’s playing out in front of everyone, and no one cares and no one does anything about it,” Carlson continued. “I think the reason is because they’re threatened. And if you look at the committee chairmen who allowed this s**t to happen year after year… I know them. And they have all the things to hide. I know that for a fact.” Apart from the supposed threat of surreptitiously-planted child pornography, Carlson claimed that it’s “very common” for lawmakers to have “a drinking problem or a weird sex life,” which agencies could easily expose if these politicians refuse to do their bidding.

Carlson is not the first influential conservative to claim that elected representatives are being blackmailed. Back in December, Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett, a Republican, suggested that his colleagues opposed a motion to release the names of notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s clients because they would have been implicated in sex crimes. Unnamed forces in Washington use “the old honey pot” to blackmail politicians and force them to “vote for crazy stuff,” he told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson at the time. A year earlier, a nude video of Rep. Madison Cawthorn was leaked a month after he claimed to have been invited to drug-fueled orgies by older members of Congress. Washington, he said at the time, is rife with “sexual perversion.”

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Lion

 

 

Alligator
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782065990462775475

 

 

Collie

 

 

30 seconds

 

 

Cobra

 

 

Joey
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782098219826311633

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 15 2021

Feb 152021
 
 February 15, 2021  Posted by at 10:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  21 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Landscape with snow 1888

 

• Israeli Study Finds 94% Drop In Symptomatic COVID Cases With Pfizer Vaccine (R.)
• Covid-19: Ivermectin Victim Of Dishonest Attacks (Maudrux)
• Politicians, Doctors Keep Ignoring The Research On Vitamin D And Covid (Cook)
• Fauci: Stimulus Bill Needs To Be Passed For Schools To Reopen (Hill)
• Georgia State Bar Files Grievance Against Lin Wood (DB)
• Lin Wood Will Represent Sidney Powell In Dominion Defamation Case (F.)
• The New York Times Retracts the Sicknick Story (AmG)
• The “For The People Act” Would Make The US a Democracy (IC)
• Majority of Americans Say US Democracy Isn’t Thriving (NYP)
• A Short Guide to Long, Healthy Life (Mangan)

 

 

 

 

Promising. But a bit hasty for big conclusions, perhaps? Unless you have something you want to sell?!

And then there’s this from the second article: “..if we type Corminaty (Pfizzer vaccine) we have 65,188 declarations, against 46 for Ivermectin..”

• Israeli Study Finds 94% Drop In Symptomatic COVID Cases With Pfizer Vaccine (R.)

Israel’s largest healthcare provider on Sunday reported a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date. Health maintenance organization (HMO) Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92% less likely to develop severe illness from the virus. The comparison was against a group of the same size, with matching medical histories, who had not received the vaccine. “It shows unequivocally that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world a week after the second dose, just as it was found to be in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer.


He added that the data indicates the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, is even more effective two weeks or more after the second shot. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, who have been tabulating national data, said on Sunday that a sharp decline in hospitalisation and serious illness identified earlier among the first age group to be vaccinated – aged 60 or older – was seen for the first time in those aged 55 and older. Hospitalisations and serious illness were still rising in younger groups who began vaccinations weeks later. Israel has been conducting a rapid vaccine rollout and its database offers insights into vaccine effectiveness and at what point countries might attain herd immunity.

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From France Soir, Google translated.

“Opinion piece by Dr Gérard Maudrux , after having been president of the Autonomous Retirement Fund for Doctors of France (CARMF) for 18 years, this urologist continues to speak on his blog in Le Quotidien du médecins. Doctor engaged since he supported the request for temporary payment of use for Ivermectin before the Council of State with the assistance of Me Teissedre. He finds himself today summoned before the council of the order to explain himself on his blog. In his debriefing, he explained to us that the doctors were afraid, that they were silent. With his agreement, we reproduce this forum which better reflects his commitment and his freedom of expression. ”

• Covid-19: Ivermectin Victim Of Dishonest Attacks (Maudrux)

The latest attacks against Ivermectin dramatically demonstrate the financial issues behind the early and outpatient treatment of Covid, and the way in which the French are being manipulated. Merck opened the ball by denigrating the molecule it produces, and its press release will be put forward by all the newspapers and the authorities (we will see for the ANSM) to justify its non-use. The conflict of interest is however too big, but it will not be put forward: the laboratory is developing 2 products that could bring it big, while Ivermectin, which has fallen into the public domain, no longer brings in anything. If one day Ivermectin becomes THE drug against Sars-Cov-2, billions and billions of losses for the global pharmaceutical industry . With such sums at stake, everything will be done to prevent this from happening.

Predictably, the scenario we saw for Hydroxychloroquine happens again. There is “a worrying lack of safety data in the majority of studies” according to Merck. So I went to the WHO database, Vigibase, which collects data from pharmacovigilance centers such as ANSM in France, from more than 130 countries. In 30 years, 175,208 adverse effects for Aspirin, 159,824 for Paracetamol and 4,614 for Ivermectin. On more than 4 billion doses prescribed over this period, this makes 0.0001%. Since the beginning of the year if we type Corminaty (Pfizzer vaccine) we have 65,188 declarations, against 46 for Ivermectin . So I went to see the publication of our Medicines Safety Agency. In its report of January 11 on the side effects of drugs used for Covid, the ANSM reports 0 declarations for Ivermectin , against 271 for Hydroxychloroquine.

In the 15,143 specialties reimbursed in France, in the world pharmacopoeia, I believe that we can say that there is no drug that has so few side effects. So why deny it when there is no risk and a presumption of effectiveness, while allowing Aspirin and Paracetamol which have 30 to 50 times more side effects and without desired efficacy? If you take 10 tablets of Doliprane, recommended by authorities, you may die from liver necrosis. On the other hand, you can take 50 tablets of Ivermectin 3 days in a row and continue to go about your daily activities without any problem.

In the literature, there are several studies that have tested this toxicity. I have mentioned several times this , 10 times the normal dose, no problem. It is not the only one of this type. Several children with leukemia were treated at 3 times the dose times 15 days, and even 6 months, without side effects. 30 times the dose (10mg / kg) have been tested in dogs with no problem. In this literature, we also note that most of the side effects reported are linked to the release of degradation products from the killed parasites, and for Covid to associated drugs such as Doxycycline.

Read more …

Jonathan Cook on the study I quoted David Davis on yesterday. See a lot of people tweeting about the danger of either the study or the substance.

• Politicians, Doctors Keep Ignoring The Research On Vitamin D And Covid (Cook)

It is probably not a good idea to write while in the grip of anger. But I am struggling to suppress my emotions about a wasted year, during which politicians and many doctors have ignored a growing body of evidence suggesting that Vitamin D can play a critically important role in the prevention and treatment of Covid-19. It is time to speak out forcefully now that a new, large-scale Spanish study demonstrates not a just a correlation but a causal relationship between high-dose Vitamin D treatment of hospitalised Covid patients and significantly improved outcomes for their health. The pre-print paper in the Lancet shows there was an 80 per cent reduction in admission to intensive care units among hospitalised patients who were treated with large doses of Vitamin D, and a 64 per cent reduction in death.

The possibility of these being chance findings are infinitesimally small, note the researchers. And to boot, the study found no side-effects even when these mega-doses were given short term to the hospitalised patients. Those are astounding figures that deserve to be on front pages, especially at a time when politicians and doctors are uncertain whether they can ever find a single magic-bullet vaccine against Covid as new variants pop up like spring daffodils. If Vitamin D can approximate a cure for many of those hospitalised with Covid, one can infer that it should prove even more effective when used as a prophylactic. Most people in northern latitudes ought to be taking Vitamin D through much of the year in significant doses – well above the current, outdated 400IU recommended by governments like the UK’s.

This new study ought to finally silence the naysayers, though doubtless it won’t. So far it has attracted little media attention. What has been most troubling over the past year is that every time I and others have gently drawn attention to each new study that demonstrated the dramatic benefits of Vitamin D, we were greeted with knee-jerk dismissals that the studies showed only a correlation, not a causal link. That was a deeply irresponsible response, especially in the midst of a global pandemic for which effective treatments are urgently needed. The never-satisfied have engaged in the worst kind of blame-shifting, implicitly maligning medical researchers for the fact that they could only organise small-scale, improvised studies because governments were not supporting and funding the larger-scale research needed to prove conclusively whether Vitamin D was effective.

Read more …

The people haven’t got their checks, but schools should?

• Fauci: Stimulus Bill Needs To Be Passed For Schools To Reopen (Hill)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said on Sunday that a stimulus bill needed to be passed in order for schools to safely reopen. While appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Fauci spoke with host George Stephanopoulos about how schools could safely reopen, expanding on new guidelines that were recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “It’s the first time that it’s been put down in a document based on scientific observations and data over the last several months to a year, both in the United States and elsewhere. Part of that is to indicate and to suggest strongly that a preference be given to teachers to get vaccinated,” Fauci said, though he added it was possible to reopen schools without having all teachers vaccinated beforehand.


When asked by Stephanopoulos if schools had the resources available to abide by the new CDC guidelines, Fauci said he did not believe so. “I think that the schools really do need more resources and that’s the reason why the national relief act that we’re talking about getting passed — we need that. The schools need more resources.” House committees have begun marking up portions of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, and Democrats have vowed to pass a final bill into law by early next month. However, Fauci on Sunday appeared to be optimistic about reopening schools, a move that he has been supportive of throughout the pandemic, arguing the detriment to young students was too great. “I think it can be done. I mean, obviously it’s not a perfect situation, but it’s really important to get the children back to school in a safest way as possible. Safe for the children, but also safe for the teachers and the other educators,” Fauci said.

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I’ve maintained throughout that we should let the dice roll as they may, and this is where they landed.

• Georgia State Bar Files Grievance Against Lin Wood (DB)

MAGA lawyer Lin Wood says he received a 1,600-page grievance from the Georgia State Bar and whined that “they have thrown the kitchen sink at me.” A copy of a Telegram message sent by Wood to his followers—obtained by journalist Stephen Fowler—shows Wood then asked “an Army of Patriots” to dig into the backgrounds of the disciplinary board members so he can try to disqualify them in an effort to stave off disbarment. The grievance begins with a list of lawsuits that Wood filed in an attempt to overturn the election of President Joe Biden, and also includes a lawsuit filed by his former associates in which they allege bizarre and frightening behavior. Wood was recently hired to defend fellow MAGA lawyer Sidney Powell in a million-dollar defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems—a target of her conspiracy theories.

Read more …

They get another chance to talk about Venezuela, Cuba and China being involved.

• Lin Wood Will Represent Sidney Powell In Dominion Defamation Case (F.)

Conservative attorney L. Lin Wood will join fellow lawyer Sidney Powell’s legal team in a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, even as the pro-Trump lawyer faces the threat of litigation for spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the company’s voting machines. Dominion is suing Powell for spreading a baseless conspiracy theory alleging its voting machines fraudulently flipped votes to Joe Biden. Wood said on Telegram Friday that Powell called him Thursday night and asked him to serve as her lead counsel in the case, adding, “I quickly accepted.” Powell’s attorney Howard Kleinhendler confirmed to Forbes in an email that Wood will be joining the legal team. “Sidney and I will not be intimidated,” Wood wrote, claiming he and Powell “will not go quietly into the night.”

Wood frequently appeared alongside Powell after the election to push the Dominion fraud claims and was involved with her lawsuits aimed at overturning the results of the election. Dominion has sent a letter to Wood warning it may bring a defamation lawsuit against him, asked social media networks to preserve his posts and singled out Wood in its lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani as being particularly “determined to promote” the conspiracy theory against them (the company declined to comment on Wood’s involvement in Powell’s case). “Get ready to rumble, Dominion,” Wood wrote on Telegram. “You made a mistake suing Sidney. You are going to pay a heavy price.”

Wood is facing wide-ranging consequences for spreading conspiracy theories since the election, which included outlandish claims involving former Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. He has been removed from an unrelated Delaware case over his conduct, and attorneys for MSNBC host Joy Reid have asked him to be removed as attorney in a separate defamation case. The Georgia State Bar has also confirmed it is moving forward with an inquiry into Wood’s mental health in light of his post-election behavior, which could result in his license to practice law potentially being revoked.

Wood’s defense of Powell comes after he recently tried to distance himself from her post-election lawsuits in Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona in a court filing in the defamation case against Reid. After the MSNBC host’s attorney pointed to Wood’s appearance with Powell as co-counsel in the suits as a reason for him to be removed from her case, he noted that he was “not counsel of record” in those cases and did not try to seek privileges to argue the case in court. He did acknowledge having a larger involvement in Powell’s Georgia lawsuit.

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Just too crazy. And then they go on as if nothing happened.

• The New York Times Retracts the Sicknick Story (AmG)

In a quiet but stunning correction, the New York Times backed away from its original report that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by a Trump supporter wielding a fire extinguisher during the January 6 melee at the Capitol building. Shortly after American Greatness published my column Friday that showed how the Times gradually was backpedaling on its January 8 bombshell, the paper posted this caveat: The paper continued to revise its story within the body of the original January 8 story: “Law enforcement officials initially said Mr. Sicknick was struck with a fire extinguisher, but weeks later, police sources and investigators were at odds over whether he was hit. Medical experts have said he did not die of blunt force trauma, according to one law enforcement official.”

What’s missing, however, is how the Times first described what happened to Sicknick. “Mr. Sicknick, 42, an officer for the Capitol Police, died on Thursday from brain injuries he sustained after Trump loyalists who overtook the complex struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to two law enforcement officials.” The account of Sicknick’s death was reported as fact, not speculation or rumor. Further, it appears that the anonymous sources were not law enforcement officials but people “close” to the police department—which means they could have been anyone from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to inveterate liar U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to the Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser.

Not only was the Times’ untrue story about Sicknick’s death accepted as fact by every news media organization from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post, political pundits on the NeverTrump Right also regurgitated the narrative that Sicknick was “murdered” as did lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. In an outrageous effort to create more favorable optics before the impeachment trial, House Democrats honored Sicknick in a rare memorial at the Capitol Rotunda on February 3. Joe Biden, in a statement issued after Donald Trump was acquitted Saturday afternoon, repeated the lie about Sicknick. “It was nearly two weeks ago that Jill and I paid our respects to Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who laid in honor in the Rotunda after losing his life protecting the Capitol from a riotous, violent mob on January 6, 2021.”

The Times’ correction might be one reason why Democrats on Saturday reversed their demand to subpoena witnesses. House impeachment managers cited the original January 8 Times’ article as evidence in their impeachment memo: “The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher.” Any arrangement to compel testimony would have provided Trump’s legal team with an opportunity to expose yet another myth in the Democrats’ “incitement” case against the former president.

Read more …

Some things just sound too good.

• The “For The People Act” Would Make The US a Democracy (IC)

Since the 117th Congress was convened on January 3, over 2,000 bills have been introduced in the House and Senate. But the very first legislation proposed by the Democratic Party majorities in both chambers — making it both H.R.1 and S.1 — is the “For the People Act” of 2021. This is appropriate, because the For the People Act is plausibly the most important legislation considered by Congress in decades. It would change the basic structure of U.S. politics, making it far more small-d democratic. The bill makes illegal essentially all of the anti-enfranchisement tactics perfected by the right over the past decades. It then creates a new infrastructure to permanently bolster the influence of regular people.

The bill’s provisions largely fall into three categories: First, it makes it far easier to vote, both by eliminating barriers and enhancing basic outreach to citizens. Second, it makes everyone’s vote count more equally, especially by reducing gerrymandering. Third, it hugely amplifies the power of small political donors, allowing them to match and possibly swamp the power of big money. There’s a popular, weary American aphorism (often attributed to the anarchist Emma Goldman, although she apparently did not say it): “If voting could change anything, it would be made illegal.” The meaning is always taken to be that voting is pointless. However, the past decades of U.S. politics demonstrate that this saying is accurate — but in fact its meaning is exactly the opposite.

[..] Under the bill, candidates for congressional office could opt into a system that would provide matching funds for small donations. To qualify, the candidate would need to raise $50,000 from at least 1,000 individuals; take no more than $1,000 from any contributor; and spend no more than $50,000 of their own money. In return, all donations to the candidate up to $200 would be matched with public funds at a 6 to 1 ratio. Thus if you gave $10 to someone running for Congress, they would receive that plus another $60, totaling $70. Maryland Democratic Rep. John Sarbanes, the House sponsor of the For the People Act, has explained — based on his own experience and what he’s witnessed of his colleagues’ behavior — how this would change the core incentives for politicians.

Right now, says Sarbanes, it is only worth a candidate’s time to attend a fundraising event if they will receive at least $10,000 in contributions. There’s therefore no point in going to a house party with 30 constituents each ponying up $50 for a total of $1,500. Instead, they’ll head to events organized by D.C. lobbyists, who will each write big checks. But with 6 to 1 matching funds, the same constituent house party would generate $10,500 — $1,500 from individuals, $9,000 from the government (also known as “the people”) — suddenly making it worth a politician’s while. That’s not all, however: Sarbanes points out that from a candidate’s perspective, such an event would actually be more valuable than a K Street fundraiser, because attendees “can vote, they can donate, they can volunteer, they can rope their friends in. You’re creating an active, engaged group of people around your campaign. That can be worth 2 to 3 points, that’s the difference in a close election.”

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You don’t say.

• Majority of Americans Say US Democracy Isn’t Thriving (NYP)

Only 16 percent of Americans believe the country’s democracy is thriving, according to a poll conducted after the deadly Capitol riots on Jan. 6. But the vast majority accept that a government by the people is a critically important principle of the United States, the poll said. Fewer than 1 in 6 Americans surveyed by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said democracy is working well or extremely well. Forty-five percent said they think democracy isn’t functioning properly, and 38 percent said it’s working only somewhat well. About half of those polled think President Donald Trump should be convicted in this week’s Senate impeachment trial for “incitement of insurrection.”

Nearly two-thirds of Americans think the Republican Party is at least partly responsible for the riot by promoting baseless claims of election fraud. The AP-NORC poll also found that Republicans, in particular, have lost faith in the US’s system of government since Trump’s attack on the election results. In October, 68 percent of GOP supporters said democracy was working at least somewhat well. That figure plummeted to only 36 percent in January. Confidence in representative government soared among Democrats during that time, rising from 37 percent to 70 percent. When it came to the 2020 election, about two-thirds of Americans say President Biden was fairly elected, but only a third of Republicans agree.

Seventy percent of Americans polled believe Biden, a Democrat, respects democratic institutions at least a fair amount. However, only 42 percent of Republicans hold that view. Only 38 percent of responders believed Trump had at least fair respect for government institutions. Notably, 27 percent of Republicans said the former president had little or no respect for the government.

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I know, Mangan seems a bit of a poser. But in these times it’s a good idea to be extra healthy.

• A Short Guide to Long, Healthy Life (Mangan)

Almost 90 years ago, the scientist Clive McCay made an unusual discovery: when he fed his lab rats less food than they wanted to eat, they lived longer – a lot longer. And they lived in better health, with a more youthful appearance, more energy, and just all-around awesomeness. Since then, this procedure, known as calorie or dietary restriction, has been repeated thousands of times and on many different species of animals (including humans), and in virtually all cases, animals live longer and in better health. (In the case of humans, we obviously can’t cage them and study them for decades to see how long they live; nevertheless, humans who restrict calories have much better health and low risk of chronic disease.)

Scientists have pondered the question as to why calorie restriction extends life, and come up with many possible answers, which need not detain us here, but we do know that it works. There’s one problem though: calorie restriction is difficult. Animals kept in these conditions are hungry all the time. It seems unlikely that many humans would voluntarily adopt such an unpleasant lifestyle. But scientists noticed something else about these animals: since they were so hungry, when they were fed, they ate all their food at once. They then fasted for 24 hours until their next feeding. Maybe fasting was the key?

In the 1990s, the scientist Cynthia Kenyon (who now works in Google’s anti-aging program) made another momentous discovery in aging: by changing a single gene, her lab animals (worms) lived much longer than normal. The single gene change involved insulin, a hormone that in humans is secreted in response to food. Now we’re getting somewhere. Calorie restriction and fasting both lower levels of insulin, and this may be the key to longer life and better health.

Many people have taken up the practice of intermittent fasting, which simply means going without food for some period of time, often 16 hours. (Sleep time counts.) Fasting is a healthy practice, but, like calorie restriction, also seems unlikely to be widely adopted. Can you get the effects of fasting without actually, you know, fasting? There may be a way. Without deep diving into biochemistry and physiology, it appears that most of the benefits of fasting come from just one thing: eating fewer carbohydrates, which are the main nutrient found in foods such as bread, pastries, pasta, rice, potatoes, and sugar. So if someone eats a diet very low in carbohydrates, they may get most or all of the benefits of fasting, or even of calorie restriction.

Read more …

 

 

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Debt Rattle December 20 2020

Dec 202020
 
 December 20, 2020  Posted by at 10:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Edward Hopper Sunday 1926

 

• Sarah Palin Calls for Julian Assange to Be Pardoned (GP)
• FDA Investigating Multiple Allergic Reactions To Pfizer Vaccine (Hill)
• Netherlands Bans Air Travel From UK Till 2021 Over New Covid19 Strain (RT)
• Desperate Families Flee London Ahead Of Tier 4 Misery (DM)
• Trump Lashes Out At Media For Blaming Russia For Hacking: It ‘May Be China’ (RT)
• US Agencies’ Trust In Untested Software Opened The Door To Hackers (Pol.)
• Trump Floated Naming Sidney Powell As Special Counsel For Election Fraud (Hill)
• Pro-Trump Group to Challenge 364K Voter Registrations in Georgia (NW)
• Georgia: Election Software Updates Not Covered By Open Records Requests (JTN)
• Analyst Says Redacted Dominion Report ‘Shows Very Clearly’ Problems (JTN)
• 2020: The Year we Let Ourselves be Infantilised and Dehumanised (Slane)

 

 

While the World is on a vaccine frenzy, the Indian Government is distributing a home Covid Kit with Zinc, Doxycycline and Ivermectin. The cost: $2.65 per person.

 

 

Not sure if this would help his case.

• Sarah Palin Calls for Julian Assange to Be Pardoned (GP)

The legendary Sarah Palin has made a touching video calling for Julian Assange to be pardoned. Palin has been an unlikely supporter of the organization, as WikiLeaks published Palin’s own hacked emails during the 2008 election while she was a presidential candidate. “Hey this is Sarah Palin up in Alaska and I am the first one to admit when I make a mistake,” Palin begins in the video. “I made a mistake some years ago, not supporting Julian Assange — thinking that he was a bad guy, that he leaked material that perhaps he shouldn’t — and I’ve learned a lot since then.” “I think Julian did the right thing, and Julian did us all a favor in America… did the world a favor… by fighting for what he believed was right — and ultimately he’s been proven to be right. He deserves a pardon. He deserves all of us to understand more about what he has done in the name of real journalism, and that’s getting to the bottom of issues that the public really needs to hear about and benefit from.”


Palin says that “some years ago I publicly spoke out against Julian and I made a mistake.” “I know that it’s coming down to the wire on whether he’s going to be pardoned or not. I want more Americans to speak out on his behalf, and to understand what it is that he has done — and what has been done to him,” Palin says. “He was working on the people’s behalf to allow information to get to us so that we could make up our minds about different issues, about different people. He did the right thing. I support him, and I hope that more and more people, especially as it comes down to the wire, will speak up in support of pardoning Julian. God bless him.” Though Palin’s emails did not contain anything scandalous, the Washington Post and other news organizations called for volunteers to help their reporters dig through them and treated the publication far differently than they did when DNC emails leaked in 2016.

Sarah Palin

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Makes me wonder if nothing at all happened during Pfizer’s trials.

• FDA Investigating Multiple Allergic Reactions To Pfizer Vaccine (Hill)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating allergic reactions to the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine that were reported in multiple states after it began to be administered this week. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told reporters late Friday that the reactions had been reported in more than one state besides Alaska and that the FDA is probing five reactions. “We are working hand in hand with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we’ve actually been working closely with our United Kingdom colleagues, who of course reported the allergic reaction. I think we’ll be looking at all the data we can from each of these reactions to sort out exactly what happened, and we’ll also be looking to try to understand which component of the vaccine might be helping to produce them,” Marks said.

“I think we have at this point the right … mitigation strategy with the availability of treatment for a severe allergic reaction being at the ready, and we’ll continue to monitor it very closely,” he added. Marks said the FDA was not certain what caused the reactions but indicated a chemical called polyethylene glycol, which is present in the vaccines produced by Pfizer and BioNTech as well as by Moderna “could be the culprit.” He added that the reaction some people have experienced could be more common than once thought. “We’ll obviously be monitoring very closely what’s going on. We’re working very closely with the CDC on these, and there have been meetings between the CDC and FDA pretty much every day this week making sure we’re keeping very close track of what’s going on,” he said. The reports of allergic reactions in Alaska follow two similar cases reported last week in Britain, the first nation to approve Pfizer’s vaccine.

The FDA’s current guidance says that most Americans with allergies should be cleared to take the vaccine but that people who’ve had severe reactions to other vaccines should not get vaccinated. It also said Friday that people with a history of severe allergic reactions to any components of the Moderna shot should avoid getting that vaccine. “FDA takes very seriously the safety of the medical products that we authorize and approve, and certainly in a vaccine setting, it’s one of the reasons Dr. Marks and his team, in collaboration with the CDC, has set up a very robust surveillance system for assessing safety. One of the things that FDA does very well and uniquely is really getting to the bottom of events like allergic reactions so we can completely understand the circumstances and better inform the public and also our regulatory decisions,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn.

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Very little is known about “the much-feared new strain”, including its severity.

• Netherlands Bans Air Travel From UK Till 2021 Over New Covid19 Strain (RT)

The Dutch government has imposed a ban on commercial flights from the UK to the Netherlands after it reported a first case of the new, fast-spreading Covid-19 strain. The ban will be in effect until at least January. The travel restrictions will apply to all passenger flights from the UK bound to the Netherlands starting 6:00am Sunday local time, the government said in a statement issued several hours before the ban was due to come into force. It described the sweeping ban on air travel for the whole Christmas period as a “precautionary measure” needed to “limit” potential further exposure of the population to the new strain of the virus, which was first detected in the UK and is allegedly highly contagious.

Citing data by a local health agency, which recommended the ban, the Dutch government revealed that the strain, believed to be the same that prompted UK PM Boris Johnson’s latest lockdown, was detected in the Netherlands “at the beginning of December” as part of a case study. In light of the situation in the UK, the government said it would “further investigate” the case to determine “how the infection came about” on Dutch soil, and whether there are more cases triggered by the mutant strain. While suspending only passenger flights for the time being, Amsterdam did not rule out that the ban will be expanded to cover other means of transportation as well.

The Dutch government has also hinted that more restrictions on UK travellers may be imposed at the European Union level to stem the spread of the desease, stating that it “will look into the possibilities of further restricting import of the virus from the UK” with other members of the bloc “in the coming days.” The move comes shortly after Johnson effectively cancelled Christmas for those living in London, the Southeast, and the city of Peterborough, placing those areas under so-called Tier 4 restrictions. Those affected by the plan have been barred from “mixing with anyone outside their own household at Christmas,” with Johnson saying the much-feared new strain is to blame for the no-go rule. There’s currently no evidence it’s more lethal or more vaccine-resistant than the earlier variant of the virus, however.

UK #SARSCoV2
https://twitter.com/AliNouriPhD/status/1340505791841841152

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“..first evacuation of London since 1939..”

Someday someone will make a movie out of this.

• Desperate Families Flee London Ahead Of Tier 4 Misery (DM)

Families were last night fleeing areas of England that have been plunged into the tightest restrictions in what one leading expert described as a ‘mini exodus’. Edmund King, president of the AA, said that within 90 minutes of Boris Johnson’s bombshell announcement, there were reports of people jumping into cars and taxis and even hiring vehicles to escape London before draconian new rules were imposed at midnight. ‘There are certainly elements of an exodus of some people from tier 4,’ he told The Mail on Sunday. ‘I have heard of people actually hiring cars to get out of London to get to Liverpool because a lot of the trains are either restricted or booked. ‘We have even heard of taxi drivers taking people longer distances – people calling minicab offices and saying, “I need to get to Nottingham”.

‘It is almost like a wall is coming down around London and the South East and some people are scrambling to get away to save their Christmas before midnight.’ Last night footage emerged of a large crowd queuing on a packed platform at London’s St Pancras Station to board the last train to Leeds before restrictions were introduced at midnight. An announcement warned passengers that it would not be possible to maintain social distancing on the train. Branding it the ‘last train out of Saigon’ – a reference to the evacuation of US personnel during the Vietnam War – journalist Harriet Clugston wrote: ‘Every person on this train including myself has made what is probably a very silly and irresponsible decision to travel albeit within the law. ‘But that’s what people were always going to do to be together at Christmas.’

Travel into and out of the new tier 4 zone, which includes London and large swathes of the South East of England, has been banned in a desperate bid to contain a mutant strain of the coronavirus. International travel for the 16.4 million people who live in tier 4 is also prohibited unless it is for work purposes, while Mr Johnson urged families in the rest of the country to ‘carefully consider’ whether they needed to go abroad. The Prime Minister’s announcement shattered the plans of millions of families who were set to embark on the traditional Christmas getaway in the coming days to see friends and family. Last year around 17 million people hit Britain’s roads between December 22 and 28, but Mr King believes that number will now plummet to around two million.

Read more …

“..evidence-free..”

• Trump Lashes Out At Media For Blaming Russia For Hacking: It ‘May Be China’ (RT)

President Donald Trump has broken with the media and his own Secretary of State, brushing aside allegations that Russia was behind a massive computer hack. Trump instead claimed that the real culprit could be Beijing. “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump tweeted on Saturday, adding that “everything is well under control.” “Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).” As well as hitting out at the “Lamestream” media for blaming Russia, Trump also suggested that there may have “been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election.”


The president has often cited a series of unexplained computer“glitches” as proof that someone interfered to deny him victory in five key swing states. The “Cyber Hack” referred to by Trump, however, is a hacking operation that targeted the SolarWinds Orion Platform, a network monitoring tool used by nearly every Fortune 500 corporation and multiple US government agencies, among them the State Department, NASA, and the Pentagon. The hack was revealed earlier this month, and pinned on Russia evidence-free by none other than the Washington Post, quoting its usual anonymous sources.

Read more …

What was that connection between SolarWinds and Dominion again?

• US Agencies’ Trust In Untested Software Opened The Door To Hackers (Pol.)

The massive months-long hack of agencies across the US government succeeded, in part, because no one was looking in the right place. The federal government conducts only cursory security inspections of the software it buys from private companies for a wide range of activities, from managing databases to operating internal chat applications. That created the blind spot that suspected Russian hackers exploited to breach the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies. After embedding code in widely used network management software made by a Texas company called SolarWinds, all they had to do was wait for the agencies to download routine software updates from the trusted supplier.

As investigators race to assess the damage from the hacks, experts and lawmakers are calling for increased scrutiny of the third-party code that government agencies allow on their networks and demanding a fix for a long-known weakness. “The government desperately needs to set minimum security requirements for software and services, and refuse to buy anything that doesn’t meet those standards,” said Senator Ron Wyden. “It is incredibly self-defeating for federal agencies to spend billions on security and then give government contracts to companies with insecure products.” Over the past week, agencies rushed to scrub the malicious code from their networks while senior officials huddled in emergency meetings – all amid reports of more victims in the federal government, state governments and private industry.

As the extent of the attack became clearer, cyber experts warned that cleaning up the mess could take months or years. SolarWinds, whose 330,000 customers include key federal agencies, major telecommunications firms, every branch of the military and four-fifths of the Fortune 500, is one of the most extreme examples of the dysfunction that made this hack possible, but it is far from the only poorly guarded vendor with hooks into the most important computer networks in the world. The US government relies on private vendors of all sizes to supply its agencies with software. Some have expert security teams, such as Amazon, which provides cloud hosting services, and SAP, whose software helps agencies process large quantities of data. But others, both large and small, have less rigorous security testing procedures and are more vulnerable to this kind of compromise, cyber analysts say.

On Thursday, federal investigators said SolarWinds’ Orion software was not the only way the hackers had invaded their targets, warning of “additional initial access vectors and tactics, techniques, and procedures … that have not yet been discovered.”

Read more …

And now Michael Flynn is also back.

• Trump Floated Naming Sidney Powell As Special Counsel For Election Fraud (Hill)

President Trump on Friday discussed the idea of naming Sidney Powell, an attorney once associated with his campaign, to the position of special counsel for an investigation into alleged voter fraud and the 2020 election, The New York Times, Politico and the Wall Street Journal reported. The former Trump campaign lawyer made headlines earlier in the year when she took part in an effort to reverse election results in the state of Georgia. However, those challenges were tossed by various courts. She, along with the president and his allies, have repeatedly claimed that the election has been tainted by widespread election fraud. However, there has been no substantial evidence to support this claim.

Following the 2020 election, several election officials stated that the race was one of the most secure in U.S. history. According to two sources briefed on the discussion, most of his advisers opposed the idea of the appointment including the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, according to the Times. Powell herself was in attendance at the meeting, as well as former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to a senior administration official, Politico reported. The meeting reportedly devolved into yelling and screaming, according to the senior official, and the lawyers were accusing each other of not putting in enough effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Both Flynn and Powell reportedly claimed the administration was not working hard enough to reverse Trump’s loss. The Wall Street Journal reported that Cipollone and Meadows also opposed the idea of the appointment. The senior official also told Politico that National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien participated in the meeting via phone. It’s unclear if Trump will continue to push for Powell’s appointment.

Read more …

16 days to the runoff battle. With voting machines.

• Pro-Trump Group to Challenge 364K Voter Registrations in Georgia (NW)

Conservative political group True the Vote announced plans on Friday to preemptively file more than 360,000 electoral challenges in Georgia before the state’s special elections are expected to occur in January. Georgia’s run-off elections have garnered nationwide attention. If the Democrats who are running for office—Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock—obtain victory over Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, then Democrats would be equally represented in the U.S. Senate. However, Democrats would have a distinct advantage over Republicans in the case of a tie, as Democrat Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be the one voting to break the deadlock.

Some observers, including President Donald Trump, have baselessly alleged that Georgia’s processes during the November election were unfairly manipulated by Democrats. According to True the Vote founder and President Catherine Engelbrecht, the challenges could help validate the results of the January election by ensuring “the sanctity of every legal vote.” “Filing the challenges preemptively, before absentee ballots are opened, will help ensure only legal, eligible votes are counted in Georgia’s January 5 runoff elections,” Engelbrecht said in a Friday statement.

Georgia law allows individuals to challenge the validity of any voter in a Georgia county if there is probable cause that the person being challenged does not meet the requirements for voting legally. True the Vote plans on filing 364,541 elector challenges across all 159 Georgia counties. “It is our hope that this historic challenge marks the beginning of the great awakening of American voters to serve our democracy by getting involved in the process,” Engelbrecht said.

Read more …

Transparency is overrated.

• Georgia: Election Software Updates Not Covered By Open Records Requests (JTN)

A recently revealed memo shows a top-ranking Georgia election official informing county election workers that they are not required to provide journalists and citizens with records of software updates applied to voting machines in the state. Chris Harvey, the state elections division director, said in the Nov. 17 memo that “multiple counties have reported receiving Open Records Requests asking for data information” including, in part, “copies of any software patches performed on Dominion voting machines in the state of Georgia prior to the November 3, 2020 General Election.”


“Under the Open Records Act,” Harvey writes in the memo, “providing copies of software, software updates, or thumb drives containing software or software updates is not subject to open records requests.” Information “that could harm the security of the election equipment” is forbidden from being shared, he added. The letter was first reported on this week by the activist group VoterGA. Georgia, like numerous other states, has been the focus of intense media scrutiny following the results of the 2020 election, in which numerous irregularities and allegations have surfaced regarding the integrity of the election results.

Read more …

“It shows very clearly that races were flipped.”

• Analyst Says Redacted Dominion Report ‘Shows Very Clearly’ Problems (JTN)

An analyst whose company oversaw the audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines in Antrim County, Michigan is claiming that the redacted version of the forensic analysis of those machines obscured the allegedly conclusive revelations that the audit revealed. Russell Ramsland Jr., a member of Allied Security Operations Group, said on Newsmax on Friday that the final report “show[ed] exactly what we did and exactly the findings.” Yet redactions in the report have covered up those conclusions, he argued. The analysis, which allegedly determined a ballot error rate of 68%, was ordered released earlier this week by a Michigan judge.


“The original report had log evidence that we published in the report to show exactly what we did and exactly the findings,” Ramsland told host Greg Kelly. “Now, those did ultimately get redacted. And so now, the complaint is ‘well, but there’s no real proof,’ and Dominion says ‘no, these things can’t be done’.” “But at that point, Dominion’s argument is no longer with us,” he continued. “Dominion’s argument is with their own user’s manual and their own logs. Because the logs, had they been able to be published, show very clearly that the RCV [ranked-choice voting] algorithm was enacted. It shows very clearly that the error messages were massive. It shows very clearly that races were flipped.”

Read more …

We’ll see a lot of these pieces between now and New Year’s Day.

• 2020: The Year we Let Ourselves be Infantilised and Dehumanised (Slane)

I recently wrote a satirical speech by our Prime Minister, in which I imagined him coming up with all sorts of absurd rules for the Christmas season. It was really hard. Not because I was unable to come up with hundreds of such rules, were I minded to do so, but because the whole point of satire is to raise the absurdities up a step or two, in order to highlight the ridiculousness of what is happening. But how do you do this when the real-life absurdities have already been turned up to 11 on the amplifier? I kid you not when I tell you that my original list included a rule against playing certain board games over Christmas — which I rejected — only to see a few days later SAGE coming out and advising against the playing of board games.

We have now had nearly nine months of being treated like utter imbeciles. A once great country with a once free people has been reduced to the level of being governed by pathetic, childish slogans. And for some reason we have allowed ourselves to be infantilised. I am utterly baffled as to how people can have sat through some of these slogans being introduced without responding with howls of laughter. “Stay Alert. Control the Virus. Save Lives.” What on earth is this actually supposed to mean? Stay Alert? For what? Are we supposed to be on our guard for a virus that is approximately 120 nanometres, or around 1,000th the width of a human hair? Are we to carry an electron microscope around with us wherever we go, just in case?

One of my favourite signs is an electronic one I sometimes see on my occasional drives into the office. On one day, it says, “Stay Alert. Control the Virus.” On another, it says, “Stay Alert. Watch out for Cyclists.” It should be noted that cyclists are considerably bigger than 120nm and even often wearing the kind of hi-vis jackets that coronaviruses refuse to wear. Control the Virus? Say what? You mean they actually think we’re stupid enough to think they’re clever enough to devise schemes that can actually control those little invisible 120 nm virus particles that are in the air and on surfaces. Apparently so.

Save Lives? I am yet to hear a convincing argument as to how I and my family, not having any symptoms and thus not being infected by the virus, can possibly stop the spread of said virus that we don’t have by staying at home or wearing a piece of cloth over or respiratory passages, such that we save lives. More recently, it has been decided that the slogans were maybe a bit too high-brow and needed to be simplified further, this time into monosyllables: “Hands. Face. Space.” Although I tend to avoid watching Comrade Johnson and Co as they spout this nonsense at their regular stand-ups, on the occasions when I have had that misfortune, it has felt eerily like suddenly being thrust into the world’s largest Kindergarten with teacher talking down to his little charges as if they were really, really stupid.

But the infantilising of an entire population is by no means the worst thing they have done to us. Worse by far has been the dehumanising of millions of people, which has been done via a number of enormously destructive methods. Chief of them is the idea that we must all avoid each other. I cannot even begin to think how destructive this has become. In a normal society, if you or I have symptoms of a particularly nasty seasonal respiratory illness, which is what Covid-19 is, we would avoid one another. Obviously. But the idea of perfectly healthy people avoiding other perfectly healthy people must qualify as one of the most absurd concepts ever dreamt up.

Read more …

 

 

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Debt Rattle December 11 2020

Dec 112020
 
 December 11, 2020  Posted by at 10:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  30 Responses »


Pierre Bonnard Nude in an Interior c1935

 

• “We Hadn’t Really Thought Through the Economic Impacts” – Melinda Gates (AIER)
• Coronavirus Fact-Check #9: Is The Vaccine Safe? (OffG)
• Sidney Powell Plans to Appeal Dismissal of Arizona Election Lawsuit (ET)
• Judge Gives Benson OK To Intervene Antrim County Election Case (DN)
• AG Barr Concealed Hunter Biden Probes From Public During Election (ZH)
• Sen. Grassley Blasts MSM Over Hunter Biden Hypocrisy (ZH)
• Sen. Cotton: Circumstances Warrant Special Counsel To Probe Hunter Biden (JTN)
• Biden Taps Susan Rice For Top White House Domestic Policy Job (Pol.)
• Is the Media Burying The Swalwell Story? (Turley)
• Investigators Delve Into Suspected Chinese Spy Ties With Swalwell Staff (JTN)
• Dianne Feinstein ‘Seriously Struggling’ With Cognitive Decline (NYP)
• Sexual Misconduct Shakes FBI’s Senior Ranks (AP)
• The “Great Reset” and Plans for a Global War on Savings (Lacalle)
• Greece Is Setting Itself Up For Another Financial Crisis (Mises)
• US Hits Search & Destroy Against The New Silk Roads (Escobar)
• Australia Sabotaged Its Own Interests in China Relations (CN)

 

 

 

 

Jim Jordan

 

 

“..communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.”

• “We Hadn’t Really Thought Through the Economic Impacts” ~ Melinda Gates (AIER)

In a wide-ranging interview in the New York Times, Melinda Gates made the following remarkable statement: “What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.” A cynic might observe that one is disinclined to think much about matters than do not affect one personally. It’s a maddening statement, to be sure, as if “economics” is somehow a peripheral concern to the rest of human life and public health. The larger context of the interview reveals the statement to be even more confused. She is somehow under the impression that it is the pandemic and not the lockdowns that are the cause of the economic devastation that includes perhaps 30% of restaurants going under, among many other terrible effects.

She doesn’t say that outright but, like many articles in the mainstream press over this year, she very carefully crafts her words to avoid the crucial subject of lockdowns as the primary cause of economic disaster. It’s possible that she actually believes this virus is what tanked the world economy on its own but that is a completely unsustainable proposition. Further, her comments provide a perfect illustration of the core problem all along: most of the people who have been advocating lockdowns in fact have no actual experience in managing pandemics. To many of these, Covid-19 became their new playground to try out an unprecedented experiment in social and economic management: shutting down travel, businesses, schools, churches, and issuing stay-at-home orders that smack of totalitarian impositions. Here is what she says:

“You can project out and think about what a pandemic might be like or look like, but until you live through it, it’s pretty hard to know what the reality will be like. So I think we predicted quite well that, depending on what the disease was, it could spread very, very, very quickly. The spread did not surprise us. What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts. What happens when you have a pandemic that’s running rampant in populations all over the world? The fact that we would all be home, and working from home if we were lucky enough to do that. That was a piece that I think we hadn’t really prepared for.”

There are plenty of specialists who have lived through pandemics in the past and managed them by maintaining essential social and economic functioning. A major case in point is Donald A. Henderson, who as head of the World Health Organization is given primary credit for the eradication of smallpox. He wrote as follows in 2006: “Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

Read more …

Pfizer (and the producers of other vaccines), are immune from civil liability.

• Coronavirus Fact-Check #9: Is The Vaccine Safe? (OffG)

There are dozens of articles all over the mainstream reassuring us that the brand new Sars-Cov-2 vaccine is safe. In the UK the vaccine rolled out is being hailed as “V Day”, in a shameless attempt to draw a parallel with World War II. Matt Hancock went on Good Morning Britain and attempted to “cry”. On the other side of that coin, many experts in the field have vociferously called for all vaccine trials to be put on halt, some medical researchers are questioning the data and others counsel people to refuse the vaccine under any and all circumstances. So – is the vaccine safe? The only rational answer is “we don’t know”. It’s certainly true some people who have received it have experienced unexpected side effects.

It was recently revealed that 4 people involved in the US-based trial suffered partial facial paralysis. In the UK, two NHS staff who have received the vaccine suffered allergic anaphylactoid reactions, as a result the NHS is now not recommending the vaccine for anyone who “suffers from allergies”. They don’t know what caused the reaction, and as far as we know so far, the people involved were not allergic to anything in the vaccine. It seems it’s not about being allergic to the vaccine, so much as the vaccine potentially causing problems for anyone with a sensitive or dysfunctional immune system. It’s essentially recommended that no one who is allergic to anything, ie. other food or medication, should have the jab. We’ve already had “explainers” appearing the media, saying vaccine allergic reactions are “rare and shortlived”.

To be clear, as of December 10th, the vaccine either has never been tested on, or is not recommended for:
• People under sixteen years of age.
• Pregnant women (or women intending to become pregnant in the near future).
• People with serious co-morbidities.
• People already taking other medications.
• People who have allergies.
So the official line already cedes that the vaccine may be harmful to some or all of those people.

Even on the fully-grown and totally healthy adults it was tested on, obviously, there has not been enough time to do any kind of long term studies on possible side-effects or complications It usually takes 5-10 years to fully develop and test a vaccine, where as this has been rushed out in less than 10 months. On top of that, of course, we have the fact all the vaccine producers have campaigned for – and won – total legal immunity in the UK, US and other nations around the world. In the event the vaccine does cause harm, Pfizer (and the producers of other vaccines), are immune from civil liability. Which means that, just like us, the producers themselves are well-aware the new vaccines might not be safe, and don’t want a repeat of 2009, when a rushed-out flu vaccine resulted in children suffering life-long complications and receiving millions in damages. In the final analysis, you have to ask yourself a simple question: Do you feel safer taking an untested vaccine, or risking getting a virus with a survival rate of over 99%?

Rob Swanda

Read more …

Let the dice roll. If they come up zero, so be it. But let them roll.

• Sidney Powell Plans to Appeal Dismissal of Arizona Election Lawsuit (ET)

The legal team led by attorney Sidney Powell plans to appeal the dismissal of an Arizona election lawsuit by an Obama-appointed federal judge on Dec. 9. Powell’s Arizona co-counsel Alex Kolodin told The Epoch Times in an interview that his team plans to fast-track the case to the Supreme Court and will file a petition for appeal in the coming days. The Arizona case, filed on Dec. 2 by former federal prosecutor Powell on behalf of the state’s 11 Republican electors and others, alleged that manipulation of election software and other fraud in the state resulted in violations of the U.S. Constitution and state election laws. The lawsuit also claimed that more than 412,000 votes were cast illegally in the state’s 2020 general election.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey were named as defendants in the case, which highlighted what it said was an “especially egregious range of conduct” in Arizona’s Maricopa County, and other counties using Dominion Systems. The lawsuit alleges that Dominion Voting Systems violated election laws by having their machines connected to the internet. The case is supported by a redacted affidavit from a former electronic intelligence analyst, alleging that the voting system software was accessed by agents from China and Iran. Powell’s team also filed a temporary restraining order seeking to immediately block Ducey from delivering the certified election results to the Electoral College while the court hears the case. Arizona certified its presidential election results on Nov. 30.

Judge Diane Humetewa threw out the lawsuit on Dec. 9, saying that its allegations “are sorely wanting of relevant or reliable evidence” and that it sought extraordinary relief. “If granted, millions of Arizonans who exercised their individual right to vote in the 2020 General Election would be utterly disenfranchised,” Humetewa wrote. In dismissing Powell’s case, Humetewa said the lawsuit doesn’t contain a “plausible” allegation that Dominion Voting Systems voting machines were hacked in the state during the Nov. 3 election, however, she described the team’s allegations of fraud as “conceivable.” The proposed Trump electors “have not moved the needle for their fraud theory from conceivable to plausible,” the federal judge said. Kolodin told The Epoch Times that the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party granted his team approval to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, and that they plan to soon file a petition for a writ of certiorari asking for the case to be heard.

A petition for a writ of certiorari is a document that a losing party files with the Supreme Court asking it to review the lower court’s decision on its merits. The provision would request from the Supreme Court an emergency transfer and would allow the case to be heard without waiting for a decision from the U.S. Courts of Appeals. The Supreme Court is usually not under any obligation to hear such cases unless the case could have national significance, might harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal Circuit courts, or could have precedential value. “I thought she [Humetewa] took the case very seriously. She treated it very professionally, and she was very fair, but I disagree with her decision,” Kolodin said. “My clients disagree with her decision, and we’ve always known that this will ultimately be decided in the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Greg Kelly

Read more …

From a local perspective.

• Judge Gives Benson OK To Intervene Antrim County Election Case (DN)

A Northern Michigan judge granted Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson permission to intervene in a case questioning results in Antrim County and the security of tabulators used there on Nov. 3. Judge Kevin Elsenheimer ruled Thursday that Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office could intervene on behalf of Benson, who had argued she had supervisory control over the Antrim County clerk, had an interest in any audit discussions the case may raise and was party to the county’s contract with Dominion Voting Systems. The Secretary of State’s office is concerned particularly with forensic imaging performed on Antrim County’s 22 Dominion tabulators earlier this week by a Village of Central Lake resident and Allied Security Operations Group, said Assistant Attorney General Heather Meingast.

“We’d like to know more about what was obtained, what the intent is for the use of the images obtained,” Meingast said, noting the disclosure of some elements of the tabulators could compromise their security in future elections. Elsenheimer, a Republican former lawmaker and member of former Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration, granted Meingast’s request but warned the case would proceed in haste. “I intend to move this matter quickly, aggressively,” Elsenheimer said. Benson shouldn’t be allowed to intervene because she had missed the opportunity to do so earlier and did not have direct involvement in local elections, said Matthew DePerno, a lawyer for Antrim County resident William Bailey. In fact, a state Court of Claims judge earlier this month dismissed a case against Benson on those grounds, DePerno said.

“The court concluded there was no relief to be granted because elections are local and run by local officials,” he said. DePerno said the investigation is ongoing and data are being reviewed. But based on what had been reviewed so far, Bailey would move to decertify the Antrim County certification and push the issue to the GOP-led Legislature, he said. “We think there are serious issues, and we’re preparing right now a motion to seek relief from the court from the protective order,” DePerno said. Elsenheimer last week granted Bailey’s request to take take forensic images of 22 tabulators and review those along with flash drives, software and a “master tabulator” that the county said does not exist. Bailey and members of the Allied Securities Operation Group spent about eight hours on Sunday at county offices obtaining the material.

Read more …

Money laundering is a serious crime.

• AG Barr Concealed Hunter Biden Probes From Public During Election (ZH)

Attorney General William Barr knew about several investigations into Hunter Biden since at least this spring – and “worked to avoid their public disclosure during the heated election campaign,” according to the Wall Street Journal. According to ‘a person familiar with the matter,’ Barr “staved off pressure from Republicans in Congress for information into the investigations,” while President Trump and his allies pressured Barr into pursuing Joe and Hunter Biden. This week, Hunter Biden revealed the existence of one of the investigations after federal investigators served him with a subpoena seeking detailed financial information in connection with a criminal tax investigation by the Delaware US attorney’s office. The next day, CNN and Politico confirmed that the probe was wider than that, and covered potential money laundering and bribery in probes that date back to 2018, according to ‘people familiar with the matter.’ According to the report, none of the investigations implicate Joe Biden.

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“It shouldn’t take subpoenas and confirmation from Hunter Biden himself to get the rest of the press to pay attention.”

• Sen. Grassley Blasts MSM Over Hunter Biden Hypocrisy (ZH)

Chuck Grassley is one pissed off Senator. After the Iowa Republican and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) produced a long-awaited Senate report which concluded that Hunter Biden’s financial dealings with Ukrainian, Chinese and Russian businesses created “criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns” concerning everything from sex-trafficking to bribery – the MSM panned it as a partisan attack on a presidential candidate’s son. Now that Hunter has admitted he’s under investigation for tax fraud (and, as Politico and CNN have added, money laundering and accepting bribes), Grassley is having the last laugh. In Thursday remarks on the Senate Floor, Grassley blasted the media after months of covering for the Bidens.


“For over a year, Senator Johnson and I investigated the Biden financial family dealings,” said Grassley, adding “We found that they engaged in potential criminal financial deals across the globe, including China, which created counterintelligence concerns.” Grassley then turned his attention to the MSM, saying “Those same liberal outlets that disparaged our investigation now report that Hunter Biden’s financial deals in China raise counterintelligence concerns.” He went on to say that the media should have been covering concerns raised by Republicans instead of covering them up. “So you can understand why I think it’s very outrageous that the fourth estate would choose to ignore facts when they are uncovered by Republicans,” Grassley continued. “It shouldn’t take subpoenas and confirmation from Hunter Biden himself to get the rest of the press to pay attention.”

Read more …

Would have to happen within 5 weeks or so. Just like the Special Counsel for election irregularities. Not sure I can see Barr comply.

• Sen. Cotton: Circumstances Warrant Special Counsel To Probe Hunter Biden (JTN)

Sen. Tom Cotton indicated during an interview Thursday on Fox News that he believes circumstances warrant a special counsel to investigate issues pertaining to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Hunter Biden issued a statement Wednesday which noted that the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware is looking into his “tax affairs.” “I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” the statement said. “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”

“I know the Biden campaign released details of a tax fraud investigation in Wilmington,” said Cotton during the Fox News interview. “I think that was just to show maybe the least damaging part of the investigation.” “There’s allegations of securities fraud and money laundering related to Hunter Biden’s Chinese businesses, a crooked hospital deal with Jim Biden, Joe Biden’s brother, out in western Pennsylvania. These investigations span multiple jurisdictions,” Cotton said, remarking that in the event that Joe Biden becomes the nation’s next president, “those prosecutors are in line to be fired next month. If there were ever circumstances that create a conflict of interest and called for a special counsel, I think those circumstances are present here.”

The Arkansas Republican said that the Biden family has leveraged Joe Biden’s government posts for their benefit in the past and would continue to do so if Biden serves as president. “Look, the Biden family has been trading on Joe Biden’s public office for 50 years. Valerie Biden Owens, his sister, and Jim Biden, his brother, and Hunter Biden his son,” he said. “Do we really think that that will change if Joe Biden becomes president, the highest office in the land?”

Read more …

Predictable and terrible. She should be under investigation for Russiagate, not occupy some top job.

• Biden Taps Susan Rice For Top White House Domestic Policy Job (Pol.)

President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Barack Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice to run the White House Domestic Policy Council, according to people familiar with the decision.Rice, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was vetted to serve as Biden’s vice president and was a contender to be secretary of State, a position that went to Antony Blinken. Democrats had concerns about Rice’s ability to get confirmed in a Republican-controlled Senate, and the director of the Domestic Policy Council is not a Senate-confirmed position. The Biden team had been looking to find a high-profile role for Rice, but the top domestic policy job comes as a surprise given her expertise and experience in foreign policy.

[..] In her position, Rice, 56, will play a large role in implementing Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, a wide-ranging set of policy proposals that would invest trillions of dollars in American infrastructure and manufacturing, clean energy, caregiving, education and racial equity.A person familiar with Biden’s thinking said he chose Rice for the role because of her deep experience in crisis management and interagency processes. The person said Biden does not see foreign, economic and diplomatic realms as separate and discrete and her deep knowledge of how the federal government works will be an asset to implementing his domestic policy agenda.

Biden officially announced Rice’s appointment Thursday morning, along with his nominations of Marcia Fudge to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Tom Vilsack as Agriculture secretary, Katherine Tai as U.S. trade representative and Denis McDonough as secretary of Veterans Affairs. “The roles they will take on are where the rubber meets the road — where competent and crisis-tested governance can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives, enhancing the dignity, equity, security, and prosperity of the day-to-day lives of Americans,” Biden said in a statement. Rice’s decision to take the domestic policy job also signals that she still harbors political ambitions. She floated the possibility of running for Senate in Maine against Susan Collins and was a finalist to serve as Biden’s running mate.

The top domestic policy job will fill out her foreign policy-heavy resume. Though Rice’s job does not require Senate confirmation, the Biden administration will need the support of Republicans to implement its far-reaching domestic policy agenda. Rice, however, has long been the target of the GOP because of he comments after the attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi and unmasking requests related to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and foreign interference. Rice has never been charged with doing anything improper, but she has been the subject of withering criticism from Republicans, which could complicate the administration’s efforts to pass policies in Congress.

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The media has buried so many stories this year, who would notice another one?

• Is the Media Burying The Swalwell Story? (Turley)

We often discuss media coverage and accuracy on developing legal and political controversies. Much of this discussion recently has focused on the bias shown by the media in the last four years. I have worked for the media as a legal analyst and columnist for years, but I have never before seen this raw and open bias in major media. At the same time, academics are rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. This morning, Fox News called out all of the networks for zero coverage of the bombshell story from Axios that Rep. Eric Swalwell may have had a close relationship with a suspected Chinese spy who fled to China a few years ago. Many of us were struck by the lack of coverage, particularly given the position of Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee and his former bid for the presidency.

It was particularly striking when the media is now reluctantly covering the Hunter Biden story after a long blackout before the election. Yet, the most stark comparison is with the exhaustive coverage given the highly analogous story involving an alleged spy, Maria Butina, who had an affair with a high-ranking figure in the National Rifle Association. Swalwell is alleged to have had a close relationship with Chinese national, Fang Fang or Christine Fang, who not only raised money for him but placed at least one intern in Swalwell’s congressional office, according to Axios. Bizarrely, Swalwell has refused to confirm or deny that he had an intimate relationship with his office claiming that such an answer could compromise classified information. Even that ridiculous comment did not prompt ABC, NBC, or CBS to cover the story.

Obviously, Fang and the Chinese already know if she had a sexual relationship with Swalwell. The only people in the dark are the voters. Swalwell himself explained why this is news. The congressman was one of the most vocal voices calling out a June 2016 meeting that President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., with Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was accused of being an asset for the Russian government. Swalwell declared on MSNBC in January 2019: “Stated plainly, the President’s son met with a Russian spy. We now have the best evidence of that in our minority report the Democrats put out that Ms. Veselnitskaya was going all over the world and bumping into Dana Rohrabacher, which is a sign of a spy, someone who tries to create a coincidence encounter, and now we know that she was working at the behest of the Russian government.”

Not even the utter hypocrisy of Swalwell’s position or the lunacy of his classification claim was enough to generate minimal coverage. There is also no interest in Swalwell remaining on the intelligence committee given his ill-considered relationship.

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He’s still on the House Intelligence Committee.

• Investigators Delve Into Suspected Chinese Spy Ties With Swalwell Staff (JTN)

The investigation into suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang’s relationship with Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell included monitoring her activities with others in the California congressman’s office, according to security authorities. “There were concerns about who else in his office she was close to,” one intelligence official told Just the News. “Who could give her information or help her achieve her goals?” These concerns applied overall to people who worked for Fang’s suspected targets, the official said. “These were deeply cast nets,” the official said. The woman, also known as Fang Fang, reportedly infiltrated the inner circles of several U.S. politicians, mainly targeting those based in California. She is believed to have worked for years under a Communist Chinese spy boss in California, and also to have managed her own line of sub-agents, the official confirmed.


“There was considerable interest in learning who those agents were, and where they worked,” the official said. Swalwell would be a prime target for foreign spies because he sits on the House Intelligence Committee — where he remains so far — despite the recent revelations about his dealings with Fang. According to a report from Axios, Fang began her relationship with Swalwell early in his political career, while he was a city council member in Dublin, California. She helped raise funds for him, and came to know his family members in some capacity. In 2015, Fang fled the U.S. while the FBI was investigating her overall activities. Although Fang has not been charged with espionage, her behavior fits a suspicious pattern, according to one expert. “Christine Fang has left the U.S.,” said author Gordon Chang, who has studied China extensively. “She apparently left abruptly, which is an indication that she was working with Chinese intelligence.”

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Set term limit, set age-limit. Easy.

• Dianne Feinstein ‘Seriously Struggling’ With Cognitive Decline (NYP)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the Senate at age 87 and the most senior Democrat on its powerful Judiciary Committee, is “seriously struggling” with cognitive decline, a new report says. People familiar with the California lawmaker’s situation told the New Yorker on Wednesday that Feinstein’s short-term memory has grown so poor that she “often forgets she has been briefed on a topic, accusing her staff of failing to do so just after they have.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has had several “painful” discussions with Feinstein about stepping aside, but the octogenarian reportedly soon forgets about their talks, forcing Schumer to confront her again, one source said. “It was like Groundhog Day, but with the pain fresh each time,” the source said.


Overtures were also reportedly made to Feinstein’s billionaire husband, Richard C. Blum. Grumblings over Feinstein’s performance have grown increasingly loud, leading to her decision to step down last month as ranking member of the elite Judiciary Committee. Pundits were unhappy with Feinstein’s handling of the confirmation of President Trump’s most recent Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. The lawmaker bungled several questions and then caused a furor when she concluded Barrett’s hearings by hugging Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and praising him for “one of the best set of hearings that I have participated in.” Schumer was reportedly so concerned about Feinstein’s performance that he “installed a trusted former aide, Max Young, to ’embed’ in the Judiciary Committee to make sure the hearings didn’t go off the rails,” the New Yorker reported.

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Inevitable when no-one can investigate the investigators.

• Sexual Misconduct Shakes FBI’s Senior Ranks (AP)

An assistant FBI director retired after he was accused of drunkenly groping a female subordinate in a stairwell. Another senior FBI official left after he was found to have sexually harassed eight employees. Yet another high-ranking FBI agent retired after he was accused of blackmailing a young employee into sexual encounters. An Associated Press investigation has identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the past five years, including two new claims brought this week by women who say they were sexually assaulted by ranking agents. Each of the accused FBI officials appears to have avoided discipline, the AP found, and several were quietly transferred or retired, keeping their full pensions and benefits even when probes substantiated the sexual misconduct claims against them.

Beyond that, federal law enforcement officials are afforded anonymity even after the disciplinary process runs its course, allowing them to land on their feet in the private sector or even remain in law enforcement. “They’re sweeping it under the rug,” said a former FBI analyst who alleges in a new federal lawsuit that a supervisory special agent licked her face and groped her at a colleague’s farewell party in 2017. She ended up leaving the FBI and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “As the premier law enforcement organization that the FBI holds itself out to be, it’s very disheartening when they allow people they know are criminals to retire and pursue careers in law enforcement-related fields,” said the woman, who asked to be identified in this story only by her first name, Becky.

The AP’s count does not include the growing number of high-level FBI supervisors who have failed to report romantic relationships with subordinates in recent years — a pattern that has alarmed investigators with the Office of Inspector General and raised questions about bureau policy. The recurring sexual misconduct has drawn the attention of Congress and advocacy groups, which have called for whistleblower protections for rank-and-file FBI employees and for an outside entity to review the bureau’s disciplinary cases. “They need a #MeToo moment,” said U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who has been critical of the treatment of women in the male-dominated FBI. “It’s repugnant, and it underscores the fact that the FBI and many of our institutions are still good ol’-boy networks,” Speier said. “It doesn’t surprise me that, in terms of sexual assault and sexual harassment, they are still in the Dark Ages.”

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“Only three words spoil the entire positive message: “directing the market.”

• The “Great Reset” and Plans for a Global War on Savings (Lacalle)

Global debt is expected to soar to a record $277 trillion by the end of the year, according to the Institute of International Finance. Developed markets’ total debt—government, corporate, and households—jumped to 432 percent of GDP in the third quarter. Emerging market debt-to-GDP hit nearly 250 percent in the third quarter, with China reaching 335 percent, and for the year the ratio is expected to reach about 365 percent of global GDP. Most of this massive increase of $15 trillion in one year comes from government and corporates’ response to the pandemic. However, we must remember that the total debt figure had already reached record highs in 2019, before any pandemic and in a period of growth. The main problem is that most of this debt is unproductive debt.

Governments are using the unprecedented fiscal space to perpetuate bloated current spending, which generates no real economic return, so the likely outcome is that debt will continue to rise after the pandemic crisis is ended and that the level of growth and productivity achieved will not be enough to reduce the financial burden on public accounts. In this context, the World Economic Forum has presented a roadmap for what has been called “the Great Reset.” It is a plan that aims to take the current opportunity to “to shape an economic recovery and the future direction of global relations, economies, and priorities.” According to the World Economic Forum, the world must also adapt to the current reality by “directing the market to fairer results, ensur[ing] investments are aimed at mutual progress including accelerating ecologically friendly investments, and [starting] a fourth industrial revolution, creating digital economic and public infrastructure.”

These objectives are obviously shared by all of us, and the reality shows that the private sector is already implementing these ideas, as we see technology, renewable investments, and sustainability plans thriving all over the world. We are witnessing in real time the proof that businesses adapt rapidly and provide better goods and services at affordable prices for everyone achieving a level of progress in environmental targets and welfare that would be unthinkable if governments were in charge. This crisis shows that the world has escaped the risk of scarcity and hyperinflation thanks to a private sector that has surpassed all expectations in a seemingly unsurmountable crisis.

The overall message of the World Economic Forum sounds promising. Only three words spoil the entire positive message: “directing the market.” The risk of governments taking these ideas to promote massive interventionism is not small. The idea of the Great Reset has been quickly embraced by the most bureaucratic and government-intervened economies as a validation of rising government implication in the economy. However, this is incorrect.

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“The OECD has estimated that the unemployment rate will reach roughly 20 percent by the end of the year.”

• Greece Is Setting Itself Up For Another Financial Crisis (Mises)

The Greek economy shrunk by a record 14 percent in the second quarter of 2020 while at the same time government efforts to ‘’cure’’ the economy have set the country on the road to cross the 200 percent debt-to-GDP ratio as the IMF forecasts. In the meantime, government budget deficits have reached new heights (around 7 percent). The Greek government tried to combat the economic downturn with a loose fiscal and monetary policy (through the European Central Bank). The initial aim was to support pretty much everyone from the public and private sector for the bad months of the covid-19 lockdown and hope for economic recovery when the summer arrived, with the tourist industry saving the day. It soon became evident, however, that this was wishful thinking.


People from the tourist industry admitted that it could take years for the industry to recover its past numbers. The situation looked even worse once people realized how dependent the whole economy is on tourism: it accounts for 20 percent of GDP and provides 22 percent of all employment in Greece. Furthermore, the Greek government’s solutions, like those of most of the other governments in Europe, were primarily demand-side policies. As I predicted in one of my past articles, these measures could only provide short-run relief, only postponing the pain until later. The unemployment rate saw a 1.2 percent increase from March to April, of 1.3 percent from April to May, and it saw a minor decrease during the summer tourist period. The OECD has estimated that the unemployment rate will reach roughly 20 percent by the end of the year.

The ECB’s balance sheet had a massive increase from 39 percent of the GDP to 54 percent during the summer. In comparison the Fed’s balance sheet is around 32 percent of GDP. The injections of liquidity via the ECB have effectively zombified a considerable number of companies in the EU, with corporate debts reaching new highs. In the case of Greece, the government has exploited its new, EU-sanctioned fiscal leeway, which has allowed it to perpetuate structural problems in its economy along with large deficits. During the tourist season, the costs were so high that a considerable segment of the tourist industry decided to not even work this summer since they would lose less money this way.


[..] People need to understand that when you have an economy with weak productivity that’s highly indebted, shutting down the economy two times in one year has repercussions that will be here to stay for years depending on the recovery policies. The economy needs major structural reforms. Labor laws need to be liberalized. Budget surpluses are indeed the correct goal, especially now, to avoid another debt crisis, but the surpluses need to come from cuts made in the public sector. Tax cuts need to become permanent and even bigger for the economy to grow and expand. Last but not least, making foreign and domestic investments easier, less expensive, and minimizing the potential risk is a matter of utmost urgency, since Greece is being outcompeted by neighboring countries.

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Isn’t China merely replacing predatory IMF behavior with predatory Beijing behavior?

• US Hits Search & Destroy Against The New Silk Roads (Escobar)

Seven years after being launched by President Xi Jinping, first in Astana and then in Jakarta, the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increasingly drive the American plutocratic oligarchy completely nuts. The relentless paranoia about the Chinese “threat” has much to do with the exit ramp offered by Beijing to a Global South permanently indebted to IMF/World Bank exploitation. In the old order, politico-military elites were routinely bribed in exchange for unfettered corporate access to their nations’ resources, coupled with go-go privatization schemes and outright austerity (“structural adjustment”). This went on for decades until BRI became the new game in town in terms of infrastructure building – offering an alternative to the imperial footprint.

The Chinese model allows all manner of parallel taxes, sales, rents, leases – and profits. This means extra sources of income for host governments – with an important corollary: freedom from the hardcore neoliberal diktats of IMF/World Bank. This is what is at the heart of the notorious Chinese “win-win”. Moreover, BRI’s overall strategic focus on infrastructure development not only across Eurasia but also Africa encompasses a major geopolitical game-changer. BRI is positioning vast swathes of the Global South to become completely independent from the Western-imposed debt trap. For scores of nations, this is a matter of national interest. In this sense BRI should be regarded as the ultimate post-colonialist mechanism.

BRI in fact bristles with Sun Tzu simplicity applied to geoeconomics. Never interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake – in this case enslaving the Global South via perpetual debt. Then use his own weapons – in this case financial “help” – to destabilize his preeminence.

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Five Eyes only?

• Australia Sabotaged Its Own Interests in China Relations (CN)

The address to Federal Parliament by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Nov. 17, 2014, marked a highwater mark in bilateral relations. Xi was in Australia for the G-20 summit in Brisbane hosted by Prime Minister Tony Abbott. His theme was that China was committed to peace but ready to protect its interests. Since then, the relationship has gone downhill — first slowly and haltingly, but over the past two years with sickening acceleration. Now the relationship seems irretrievable. For educated Chinese, Australia is now an object lesson in Western arrogance, hypocrisy and betrayal of friendship. The dinner party has ended in upended chairs, shouts and bitter accusations as both sides angrily walk away. After the high symbolism of the Xi speech, all seemed well. In 2015 the Darwin Port was leased to a Chinese company for 99 years.

Growing numbers of Chinese students and tourist visitors to Australia were becoming mainstays of Australia’s thriving higher education, tourism and property sectors. China as an Australian export market grew steadily in significance: last year it represented nearly 50 percent of Australian commodity export earnings. Victoria in 2018 signed a memorandum of understanding with China to work with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. From the beginning, there were signs that powerful forces were determined to cripple Australian-Chinese engagement: and they have now seemingly won. The present breakdown is tragic for Australian economic and political interests. Many innocent Australians’ livelihoods are being harmed by our own government’s and political class’ stupidity. It is hard to see now how the damage done to Australia-China relations may be healed anytime soon.

Controversially, I contend that Australia has over the past six years lived through a textbook experiment of covert foreign policy interference by powerful Anglo-American influences, subtly working through local sympathizers in public life here. Australian political elites — already culturally predisposed to trust Anglo-American friends, and naive as to their power and guile — have been persuaded to adopt increasingly adversarial positions against China across a broad front. This essay can only hint at the breadth and skill of this classic Five Eyes information warfare operation: it would take a book to expose it fully.


“Five Eyes” intelligence network including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand. (@GDJ, Openclipart)

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Debt Rattle December 5 2020

Dec 052020
 
 December 5, 2020  Posted by at 10:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  16 Responses »


Paul Cézanne Young Italian Woman at a Table c1900

 

• Jerusalem Hospital Orders 1.5 Million Doses of Russian COVID Vaccine (Haaretz)
• Moderna Says Its Vaccine Provides COVID19 Immunity For At Least 3 Months (NYP)
• Intent to Get a COVID19 Vaccine Rises to 60% (Pew)
• Nursing Homes Create ‘Perfect Storm’ For COVID Outbreaks (CNBC)
• The Jobs Report is a Mess, December Will Be Messier (WS)
• The Beltway Left Is Normalizing Corruption And Corporatism (DP)
• Joe Biden’s Cabinet Is a Lost Cause for the Left (TNR)
• Barr’s Appointment Of Special Counsel Leaves Biden, Dems In A Muddle (Turley)
• A Hall of Smoke and Mirrors (Kunstler)
• Sidney Powell: Plenty of Time for Trump to Overturn Election Results (NM)
• Judge Emmet Sullivan Still Refusing To Dismiss Michael Flynn Case (JTN)
• AZ Senate, House Call For Audit Of Dominion Machines In Maricopa County (JTN)
• Dutch Taxi Company Is Taking Tesla To Court Over “Defective” Cars (Sifted)
• Oliver Stone, America Firster (AC)

 

 

 

 

“There’s a good probability that the vaccine is safe. And there’s a reasonable probability … that it’s also effective.”

• Jerusalem Hospital Orders 1.5 Million Doses of Russian COVID Vaccine (Haaretz)

Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center has ordered 1.5 million doses of a Russian vaccine against the coronavirus, hospital director Zeev Rotstein said Tuesday. First reported on Army Radio, Rotstein added that the hospital will give the Health Ministry all necessary data about the vaccine this week, with the goal of obtaining a permit to administer it to Israelis. Rotstein, who has clashed repeatedly with the ministry in recent months, is convinced that the fears voiced in the media about the vaccine aren’t well-founded, and that they have more to do with the global struggle between Russia and the United States than with the scientific data. But even if the ministry refuses to approve the vaccine, he said in an interview with Haaretz, “We’ll have something do with it,” because Hadassah also operates overseas.

The Russian vaccine has been in phase three clinical trials since August and has already been given to tens of thousands of people. Hadassah’s branch in Moscow has both given the vaccine to people and monitored them afterward, “and the results and safety we’ve seen have been very good,” Rotstein said. Hadassah’s activities in Moscow are what led the Russian authorities to propose that the hospital seek Israeli approval for the vaccine, he added. If the phase three trials show that the vaccine is both safe and effective, and if the Health Ministry approves its use, the vaccine could be available in Israel in two to three months.

Rotstein stressed that until the phase three trial ends and the data has been analyzed, it’s impossible to know if the vaccine will be effective in preventing the virus. But based on the data so far, he said, “There’s a good probability that the vaccine is safe. And there’s a reasonable probability … that it’s also effective.” Both the development of the Russian vaccine and Russia’s unusual decision to administer it to its own citizens, even before the phase three trials ended, have been widely criticized worldwide. But Rotstein insisted that much of this criticism stems from the American-Russian battle over who will develop a vaccine first.

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Yeah, very convincing.

• Moderna Says Its Vaccine Provides COVID19 Immunity For At Least 3 Months (NYP)

Moderna’s vaccine against COVID-19 has been shown to create immunity against the bug for at least three months, the biotech company said. Thirty-four healthy adults who received two doses of Moderna’s vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, were shown to have antibodies for 90 days, according to new findings published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The first dose “produced high levels of binding and neutralizing antibodies that declined slightly over time, as expected, but they remained elevated in all participants 3 months after the booster vaccination,” the study said. The two doses were administered 28 days apart.


The report did not make clear what level of risk people would have after 90 days and whether another shot would be needed. Earlier this week, Moderna asked the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization, saying data shows its vaccine is more than 94 percent effective against coronavirus. On Friday, the Massachusetts-based company said it would be able to produce 500 million doses of the vaccine in 2021. “For 500 million, I am very comfortable we are gonna get there,” chief executive officer Stéphane Bancel said at the Nasdaq Investor Conference.

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More confidence? Based on what? Just news stories?

• Intent to Get a COVID19 Vaccine Rises to 60% (Pew)

As vaccines for the coronavirus enter review for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the share of Americans who say they plan to get vaccinated has increased as the public has grown more confident that the development process will deliver a safe and effective vaccine. Still, the U.S. public is far from uniform in views about a vaccine. A majority says they would be uncomfortable being among the first to take it, and a sizable minority appear certain to pass on getting vaccinated. Overall, 60% of Americans say they would definitely or probably get a vaccine for the coronavirus, if one were available today, up from 51% who said this in September.

39% say they definitely or probably would not get a coronavirus vaccine, though about half of this group – or 18% of U.S. adults – says it’s possible they would decide to get vaccinated once people start getting a vaccine and more information becomes available. Yet, 21% of U.S. adults do not intend to get vaccinated and are “pretty certain” more information will not change their mind. Public confidence has grown that the research and development process will yield a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19: 75% have at least a fair amount of confidence in the development process today, compared with 65% who said this in September.

These findings come on the heels of preliminary analysis from two separate clinical trials that have produced vaccines that are over 90% effective; the FDA is expected to issue decisions about the emergency authorization of these vaccines in the coming weeks. While public intent to get a vaccine and confidence in the vaccine development process are up, there’s considerable wariness about being among the first to get a vaccine: 62% of the public says they would be uncomfortable doing this. Just 37% would be comfortable.


The toll of the pandemic is starkly illustrated by the 54% of Americans who say they know someone personally who has been hospitalized or died due to the coronavirus. Among Black Americans, 71% know someone who has been hospitalized or died because of COVID-19.

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What is being done about this? Why do we never read about that?

• Nursing Homes Create ‘Perfect Storm’ For COVID Outbreaks (CNBC)

The coronavirus death toll at U.S. nursing homes at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic was brutal and unrelenting. The Life Care Center nursing home outside Seattle made international headlines in March after the coronavirus infected residents and staff, resulting in at least 123 cases and dozens of deaths. In New Jersey, public officials discovered 17 bodies piled into a makeshift morgue in a nursing home in April when Covid-19 fatalities overwhelmed the facility. Nursing homes, which house the most vulnerable of society, quickly became ground zero for countless coronavirus outbreaks across the U.S. in the early months of the pandemic. While the outbreak subsided somewhat this fall, long-term care facilities are now seeing their most intense surge in Covid cases since at least the summer.

As new cases break record after record most days, infections at long-term care facilities reached a new weekly high in late November, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project, an organization launched by The Atlantic magazine. More than 46,000 infections at those facilities were recorded in what was the worst week in six months; reliable data only goes back that far. Despite making up just 5.7% of all U.S. Covid cases, nursing home and assisted living facilities residents and staff accounted for 39.3% of the deaths, according to tracking project data. That number is generally considered low since many nursing home deaths tend to get reported without an underlying cause, physicians have said.

Deaths at U.S. nursing homes for the week ended last Thursday topped 3,000 — the highest weekly death toll since June, pushing cumulative fatalities over 100,000, according to the tracking project. “I’ve likened nursing homes to being like a tinderbox. It takes one person, one person, to unknowingly bring the virus into a facility and it could kill several people, make a lot of people sick,” said Dr. Joseph Ouslander, a geriatrician at Florida Atlantic University who works as a clinician in nursing homes. No matter what precautions staff take, it’s going to be difficult to prevent outbreaks in nursing homes, said Ouslander, who is also a professor of integrated medical science. “All those elements of the perfect storm are in place.”

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The Households Survey showed an actual decline of 74,000 working people. 100s of 1000s no longer count as in the labor force.

• The Jobs Report is a Mess, December Will Be Messier (WS)

Everyone seems to be baking the highly anticipated potential future vaccines into the economic cake, but what has been happening for weeks is a spike in Covid cases across the US that has already triggered economic restrictions, including various versions of stay-at-home orders in Los Angeles County, San Francisco, and some other Bay Area counties, with restaurants closed for outdoor dining, strict capacity restrictions in retail stores, and many other restrictions. These moves are ahead of the State of California’s new framework for dealing with the spiking infections. Other states and cities have similar programs, either on the front burner or on the back burner. The Covid spike has already crimped economic activity and jobs over the past few weeks and is going to do more severely going forward.

But the jobs report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was based on surveys of “establishments” for the pay period through November 12; and on surveys of households for the week through November 14. So the data we got today largely missed the labor market consequences of the spike in Covid cases. Those consequence are coming in the next employment reports, starting with the report for December. Despite the cut-off dates having kept much of the Covid-impacted jobs data out of the results, the data have actually deteriorated in several aspects, including the number of people with jobs as reported by households, the employment-population rate, and the labor force.

The headline number of 245,000 jobs created came from surveys of establishments (companies, governments, nonprofits, educational institutions, etc.). That survey doesn’t track gig workers. It depicted a lousy recovery. But lousy as it was, it was the more benign part. The survey of households, on the other hand, tracks people who are working full or part time, including gig workers. And households reported that the number of people with jobs ticked down to 149.7 million. This wasn’t a slowdown in growth, but an actual decline of 74,000 working people – the first month-to-month decline since April.

The chart shows both results, from establishments (green) and from households (red) – the biggest part of the difference being gig workers. It’s obvious that even by November 12, before the real impact of the Covid surge, this was no good, in terms of catching up with population growth, or in terms of anything else:

The employment-population ratio, which tracks the number of employed workers against the working-age population (16 years or older) also dipped in November, to 57.3%, a level first seen since in 1972:

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From Bernie campaigner Sirota. He’ll never be left near a Dem campaign again.

• The Beltway Left Is Normalizing Corruption And Corporatism (DP)

Last night, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a straightforward question: “Who would you point to now as a leading progressive voice in the cabinet?” Harris had no answer, saying only that “we’re not even halfway there” on nominations. Biden touted only his Homeland Security nominee, who previously helped run Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The spectacle was revelatory and honest: A month after the election, Biden’s nominations make clear that the president-elect is most focused on trying to fulfill his promise to donors that nothing fundamentally changes. And yet, that tacit admission may have stunned those who keep hearing from liberal and progressive groups in Washington that, in fact, the left has been notching monumental victories in Biden’s cabinet appointments.

This disconnect between Biden nominating business-friendly corporatists and Beltway liberals effusively celebrating those nominees spotlights the latter groups’ decision to genuflect for access and influence — rather than being brutally honest about the situation. That strategy of appeasement has almost never worked in an America where change has typically come only through opposition, struggle and sacrifice. And yet somehow, prostration remains the dominant strategy among the professional left. Why? In some cases, liberal groups are naively trying to curry favor with an incoming Democratic administration. Others are probably just trying to demonstrate to their supporters and future donors they won’t be completely irrelevant in Biden’s Washington.

Some are just too chickenshit to ever stand up and have any real fight with Democrats — and still others are just auctioning off their principles because the establishment counterrevolution offers better, stable career prospects. The result, though, is the same: What little organized left political infrastructure exists in Washington is largely valorizing or publicly defending swamp creatures who at minimum deserve a loyal opposition. The good work being done by a small handful of under-resourced groups to mount a real opposition is getting trampled by a culture of obsequiousness. This culture of acquiescence gives swamp creatures a free pass — and it may not just deliver an incrementalist Biden administration that takes progressives for granted and consequently fails to address national emergencies. It could also help permanently change what is even considered politically possible in the future.

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Seems the left has little to no spine.

• Joe Biden’s Cabinet Is a Lost Cause for the Left (TNR)

Few portions of political discourse are as predictably shallow as presidential Cabinet discourse. Who should run the Department of Transportation? An affable also-ran in the Democratic primary who once said something about trains? A moderate politician or a businessman who might bring the country together from their perch at the agency that handles civil aviation and our highways? “No,” a sage voice somewhere in Washington, or Delaware, says. “It should be Rahm Emanuel.” As Chicagoans know, Emanuel’s most ambitious step into transportation policy as mayor was his endorsement of a high-speed tunnel project from Elon Musk that has yet to materialize. Chicagoans also know that Emanuel’s efforts to cover up video of a black teen’s murder by a Chicago policeman probably better qualify him for a post at the CIA.

That agency, we’ve been told this week, might finally be headed by a Black man; we also know a woman has been chosen to run the Department of Defense. Overall, Democratic policy professionals of all identities and stripes have been given plenty of reasons to rejoice at Biden’s choices so far. Civilians in Yemen have not. It’s been noted elsewhere that the left has responded much more quickly and aggressively to Biden’s selections than it did to Obama’s as he put together his first presidential Cabinet. If so, it doesn’t seem like the flurries of statements, social media posts, and articles that have been written to counter every stray rumor and announcement have mattered very much at all—the process is chugging along, and Biden’s nominees are just a couple of notches left of the Obama team; activists might take a small victory in torpedoing an Emanuel nomination.

There was never good reason to expect more. This is partially because a Republican Senate, should Democrats lose in Georgia’s runoff elections next month, will be an obstacle to the confirmation of even moderate nominees. But it’s more substantially because the moderates in the Democratic Party don’t share the left’s policy goals and would oppose giving them a meaningful presence in the Biden administration even if they could. The conventional wisdom about the left’s relationship with the Democratic Party has fully reversed itself in the space of six to eight months. As the Democratic primary ended, it was often argued that Sanders and the left lost because they had marginalized themselves—anti-establishment rhetoric, refusals to accept compromise, and the toxicity of prominent voices had alienated not only most of the Democratic electorate but also Democratic elites who might have otherwise been won over.

“Twitter isn’t real life,” it was said. But naturally, after Election Day, Democratic underperformance down-ballot from Biden was blamed mostly on the left’s influence. Democratic elites, it’s said now, were persuaded by the left to take on or accept unpopular messaging about socialism and policing—thanks in part, evidently, to the awesome and terrible power of tweets from left activists, writers, and podcasters.

Read more …

Turley points out that the timing indicates Durham now focuses on members of the perspective Biden administration.

“From a political perspective, the move is so elegantly lethal that it would make Machiavelli green with envy.”

• Barr’s Appointment Of Special Counsel Leaves Biden, Dems In A Muddle (Turley)

Attorney General Bill Barr made two important evidentiary decisions yesterday that delivered body blows to both President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden. First, Barr declared that the Justice Department has not found evidence of systemic fraud in the election. Second, he declared that there was sufficient evidence to appoint United States Attorney John Durham as a Special Counsel on the origins of the Russia probe. The move confirmed that, in a chaotic and spinning political galaxy, Bill Barr remains the one fixed and immovable object. By appointing Durham as a Special Counsel, Barr contradicted news reports before the election that Durham was frustrated and found nothing of significance despite Barr’s pressure.

Some of us expressed doubts over those reports since Durham asked for this investigation to be upgraded to a criminal matter, secured the criminal plea of former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, and asked recently for over a thousand pages of classified intelligence material. Under the Justice Department regulations, Barr had to find (and Durham apparently agreed) that there is need for additional criminal investigation and “[t]hat investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances.” He must also find the appointment in the public interest. Notably, the investigation of Clinesmith is effectively completed. So, what is the criminal investigation and what is the conflict?

Presumably, the conflict is not in the current administration since it would have required an earlier appointment. The conflict would seem to be found in the upcoming Biden administration. Some conflicts developing seem obvious as Biden turns to a host of former Obama officials for positions, including the possible selection of Sally Yates as Attorney General. Yates was directly involved in the Russian investigation and signed off on the controversial surveillance of Trump associate Carter Page. She now says that she would never have signed the application if she knew what she knows today.

Durham is now authorized to investigate anyone who may have “violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.” The list of the names of people falling within that mandate is a who’s who of Washington from Hillary Clinton to James Comey to . . . yes . . . Joe Biden. Bizarrely, reports have claimed that Trump was irate at the move as a “smokescreen” to delay the release of the report. That ignores not just the legal but political significance of the action. From a political perspective, the move is so elegantly lethal that it would make Machiavelli green with envy.

Read more …

“Is it outlandish to wonder if Joe Biden is a national security risk?”

• A Hall of Smoke and Mirrors (Kunstler)

Is it outlandish to wonder if Joe Biden is a national security risk? Is it, at least, worth looking into, considering the evidence trail? Many people on the Left, who read and view only the captive Left news media, may know nothing about Hunter B’s laptop and the tales it told because social media blacked out all the news about it and the mainstream media went along with the blackout. Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave $350-million to a “safe elections” project run by the non-profit Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), that was chiefly active in setting up Democratic vote-harvesting operations. Could he be liable for prosecution in enabling ballot fraud? Has the FBI asked him any questions?

Another story ‘out there’ says that behind the election hijinks a war is underway between the DOD and the CIA. On Wednesday, acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller announced that all special operations run by the CIA would henceforward report to the SecDef. In effect, the President has ordered the dismantling of the CIA’s troublemaking capabilities, reducing the agency to the task of intel analysis. This means, for instance, ending the CIA’s ability to foment “color revolutions” (coups d’état) in foreign lands — with the implication that irregularities around the Dominion System may have amounted to an attempted color revolution in the USA. Is it worth wondering whether former CIA Director John Brennan, a leftist activist and probably an architect of RussiaGate, was involved in any of the election ops? If the FBI won’t question him about it, who will? (Answer: The Department of Defense.) Ditto Gina Haspel, current CIA Director. After all, what were the Dominion servers doing at the CIA’s server farm in Germany?

Events are moving quickly under the plodding surface of the ongoing swing state hearings, which are largely concerned with on-site mail-in ballot fraud shenanigans. Will the Supreme Court take a case in the few days left before the state vote certification deadline next Tuesday? Will Mr. Trump intervene with some extraordinary measure — martial law, the Insurrection Act? — to actually abort the election and bring about some kind of do-over? Will the country survive its own feckless inability to hold a credible vote? Stand by with me on all that.

Read more …

Let the dice roll where they may. Still, Dec 14 doesn’t sound like “plenty of time”.

• Sidney Powell: Plenty of Time for Trump to Overturn Election Results (NM)

Attorney Sidney Powell says there’s plenty of time for President Donald Trump’s legal team to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. ‘With the fraud case, the Dec. 8 deadline doesn’t apply,” Powell said Friday during an appearance on Newsmax TV’s ”Stinchfield” in reference to the ”safe harbor” deadline that frees a state from further challenge if it resolves all disputes and certifies its voting results. ”We have at least until Dec. 14,” she said. ”We might file more suits. The court in Michigan or Wisconsin today just gave us a great order recognizing that. These are not pure election contests we are filing. These are massive fraud suits that can set aside the results of the election due to this fraud at any time. The states should not be certifying election results in the face of it.”


Powell, a former member of Trump’s legal team, has been a part of multiple lawsuits in a crusade to overturn results from the 2020 election. Several states have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the election. Newsmax has yet to project a winner as Trump continues to contest the results in court. The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday said it wouldn’t accept a lawsuit by Trump’s legal team, sidestepping a decision on the merits of the claims and instead ruling that the case must first wind its way through the lower courts. The president asked the court to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots in the state’s two biggest Democrat counties, alleging irregularities in the way absentee ballots were administered.

Read more …

It doesn’t shut up Flynn anymore.

• Judge Emmet Sullivan Still Refusing To Dismiss Michael Flynn Case (JTN)

In a Freedom of Information case related to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, District Judge Reggie Walton said on Friday that Judge Emmet Sullivan doesn’t have a lot of options in dealing with the fact that President Trump granted Flynn a full pardon, “unless he takes the position that the wording of the pardon is too broad, in that it provides protections beyond the date of the pardon.” “I don’t know what impact that would have, what decision he would make, if he makes that determination that the pardon of Mr. Flynn is for a period that the law does not permit,” said Walton, according to the National Law Journal. “I don’t know if that’s correct or not,” the judge continued. “Theoretically, the decision could be reached because the wording in the pardon seems to be very, very broad. It could be construed, I think, as extending protections against criminal prosecutions after the date the pardon was issued. I don’t know if Judge Sullivan will make that determination or not,” Walton added.


[..] Emmet Sullivan, who was presiding over the case, refused to dismiss the charges even though there was no one attempting to prosecute the case. The legal process has dragged on through the appeals process, and finally President Trump issued a full pardon on November 25. On November 30, the DOJ notified Sullivan of the pardon, but he has still refused to drop the case. Judge Walton appears to have hinted at what Sullivan is thinking as he refuses to dismiss the case. Solomon Wisenberg, former deputy independent counsel, told Just the News that “It is disappointing but not surprising that Sullivan has yet to dismiss the case.”

Read more …

Shouldn’t all these machines be audited? And then be retired?

• AZ Senate, House Call For Audit Of Dominion Machines In Maricopa County (JTN)

Leaders in the Arizona state legislature on Friday called for an audit of Dominion Voting Systems software and equipment in Maricopa County, a request of which county leaders appear “supportive.” The Arizona Senate Republican Caucus announced it intent to seek such an audit via Twitter on Friday afternoon. “As a longtime advocate for improving and modernizing our election system,” incoming Senate Government Chairperson Michelle Ugenti-Rita said in the news release, “I am pleased to learn that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is supportive of conducting an independent audit of their voting software and equipment.” House Majority Leader Warren Petersen said: “A significant number of voters believe that fraud occurred. And with the number of irregularities it is easy to see why.” Petersen also called it “imperative” that officials conduct a forensic audit on Dominion’s setup in the county. Democrat Joe Biden currently has a lead of about 0.3% in Arizona in the Nov. 3 presidential balloting.

Read more …

“Tesla owners reported 250 problems per 100 vehicles..”

• Dutch Taxi Company Is Taking Tesla To Court Over “Defective” Cars (Sifted)

The Netherlands was one of Europe’s most prolific buyers of Teslas but now the Dutch honeymoon seems to be over, with Tesla facing a lawsuit from a large taxi company, and a group of disgruntled car owners considering a class action suit. Bios Group, a taxi firm that operates a fleet of more than 70 Teslas out of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is taking Elon Musk’s company to court over €1.3m in damages, citing a high number of defects in the vehicles and difficulties in getting them repaired. There are defects with some 20 of the 70 taxis, ranging from broken power steering to broken drive shafts and broken power steering, according to the Hella Hueck’s story in Dutch financial newspaper Financieele Dagblad.

Bios had to have 75 defects repaired in 2018 and another 60 in 2019. Even more problematically Bios says there have been problems with odometer readings in the cars being inaccurate, registering journeys from the wrong location or for the wrong distance, something which could land the taxi company in legal difficulties. Though the European car industry may feel like it has been outcompeted by Tesla in electric vehicles — Tesla has a bigger share of the electric vehicle market than all the European carmakers combined — these types of service quality problems may yet give the incumbent automakers an opportunity to win back customers. Bios says it has recently bought 5 Audi E-trons, in part because it expects better after-sales service from Audi.

There have been many recent reports about problems with Tesla vehicles. In June, JD Power, a consumer intelligence company whose car reliability report is considered the industry standard found that Tesla owners reported more problems in their first 90 days of ownership than the other 31 US auto brands included in the study. Tesla owners reported 250 problems per 100 vehicles, compared with an industry average of 166 problems per 100 vehicles. Bios bought the fleet of 72 Model S Teslas in 2014 for €5.7m, one of Europe’s biggest fleets at the time, creating a splash of publicity for the young car company as the fleet paraded around the streets surrounding Schiphol, proclaiming the airport’s commitment to going 100% electric.

But in the last few years, Bios says, it has grown steadily more difficult to get the faulty cars repaired, finally leaving them with no option but to launch a court case to get a resolution. In October, meanwhile, a group of disgruntled Dutch Tesla owners have started the Tesla Claims Foundation, bringing together owners who want Tesla to do more to repair faults in their cars. Some 200 people have so far joined the foundation, with complaints ranging from relatively simple things like rattling noises and poorly working windscreen wipers to broken computers and charging problems.

Read more …

Stoen in the conservative press.

• Oliver Stone, America Firster (AC)

Ah, a left-wing America Firster! Not quite, as his subsequent work and his entertaining new memoir, Chasing the Light, illumine, but Oliver Stone, our most political major filmmaker, evinces a rowdily heterodox vision shaped by the unusual quartet of Jim Morrison, Sam Peckinpah, Frank Capra, and Jean-Luc Godard. What do you call a man who joins the Merchant Marine on a whim, runs up big pro football gambling debts, and takes the Old Right view of FDR’s foreknowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? I’d call him an American. Stone was a rich kid, the son of an FDR-hating Jewish Republican who had served on Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force staff and a French Catholic party girl. He attended the Hill School, played on the tennis team, was devastated by his parents’ divorce, and then went seriously off script.


Avid for experiences, Stone dropped out of Yale, taught in a Catholic school in Taiwan, and volunteered to fight in Vietnam. He came home with a Bronze Star, shrapnel in his ass, and a taste for “powerful Vietnamese weed.” Stone’s politics hadn’t changed all that much, though. He had supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 and would vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980. In later years he became more explicitly libertarian, expressing support for Ron Paul and making a film about Edward Snowden. At root, Oliver Stone is a patriot who despises the American Empire for corrupting his country. JFK, his fantasia on the Deep State, echoes Dwight Eisenhower’s warning that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by “the military-industrial complex.” Platoon and Salvador bespeak an old-fangled American anti-interventionism in an age when that tendency, once the default position of ordinary Americans, is a virtual thoughtcrime.

Read more …

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 30 2020

Nov 302020
 
 November 30, 2020  Posted by at 9:59 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  26 Responses »


Jackson Pollock Greyed Rainbow 1953

 

• Nearly One-Third Of NY, NJ Small Businesses Reportedly Closed In 2020 (NYP)
• Almost 700,000 Driven Into Poverty By COVID Crisis In UK (G.)
• UK Shops To Be Allowed To Open 24 Hours A Day In December And January (G.)
• Covid Infections In England Fall By 30% Over Lockdown (BBC)
• Over 100,000 US Nursing Home Residents, Staff Killed by Pandemic (CD)
• The ‘Smartest Man In The Room’ Has Joined Sidney Powell’s Team (AT)
• Republicans Plan to Occupy Georgia State House (GP)
• The 2020 Presidential Election Is Deeply Puzzling (Basham)
• Biden To Tap Career Russiagater For Top Budgeting Post (RT)
• One Of America’s Great Wildernesses Being Destroyed In A Silent Massacre (LAT)
• The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse (Wood)

 

 

 

 

 

• Nearly One-Third Of NY, NJ Small Businesses Reportedly Closed In 2020 (NYP)

It has been a bad year for ma and pa. Nearly one-third of small businesses in New York and New Jersey remain closed since January amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a watchdog. In the Empire State, 27.8 percent of small businesses have not reopened their doors, while Jersey has lost 31.2 percent as of Nov. 16, according to TrackTheRecovery.org, a Harvard-run database that keeps tabs on the economic impact of the virus. The figures are in line with estimates from the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, which says 28 percent of the Garden State’s small businesses had shut up shop by the end of October, according to the Star Ledger newspaper. And with the region now seeing a resurgence of the virus, business leaders are worried the number could go even higher.


“It’s really bad,” Eileen Kean, New Jersey state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses told the Star-Ledger. “And without federal dollars coming into New Jersey, the Main Street stores and other establishments are not gonna make it through the winter.” More than half of small businesses in both states were forced to shut their doors in the spring at the height of the pandemic, with both hitting highs in mid-April — 52.5 percent of New York businesses and 53.9 percent in the Garden States, the stats show. “It’s devastating how many restaurants have shuttered and jobs have been lost,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of NYC Hospitality Alliances, which represents bars, restaurants, and clubs in the Big Apple.

Read more …

And it happens everywhere. So much of this will never come back. Are we prepared for that?

• Almost 700,000 Driven Into Poverty By COVID Crisis In UK (G.)

Almost 700,000 people in the UK, including 120,000 children, have been plunged into poverty as a result of the Covid economic crisis, according to a thinktank analysis. The Legatum Institute also said an additional 700,000 people had been prevented from falling below the breadline by the chancellor’s temporary £20-a-week boost to universal credit, introduced in April to help claimants cope with the extra costs of the pandemic. Overall, the pandemic has pushed the total number of people in the UK living in poverty to more than 15 million – 23% of the population – according to the institute, which uses poverty measures developed by the independent Social Metrics Commission. The Conservative peer Philippa Stroud, the institute’s chief executive, said the findings showed a “clear need for a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy to be placed at the heart of the UK’s Covid recovery response”.


Lady Stroud, in common with many other anti-poverty campaigners, has called for the government to retain the 12-month uplift to universal credit after it is due to end in April 2021. Ministers last week said they would decide in January. The new analysis relies on “nowcasting” techniques using employment, earnings data and the impact of government policy to enable up-to-date and robust poverty estimates, because official figures for the first year of Covid are not due until 2022. Those hardest hit by the economic crisis were young workers, those in relatively low-paying employment and those working in sectors such as hospitality and retail. Elderly people were financially least badly hit, the analysis found. Of the 700,000 people newly in poverty, just over half had incomes up to 25% below the poverty line, 160,000 were between 35% and 50% below, and 270,000 had slipped more than 50% below, known as “deep poverty”.

Read more …

Oh wait, there’s our comeback. Shop till you drop at 4 am.

• UK Shops To Be Allowed To Open 24 Hours A Day In December And January (G.)

Shops will be given permission to trade around the clock as the high street tries to recoup some of the losses it has suffered during the pandemic, a cabinet minister has said. Retailers normally have to go through a lengthy process to apply to local authorities under the Town and Country Planning Act if they wish to extend hours outside the window of 9am to 7pm. But the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, said he wanted to remove the bureaucracy to encourage greater trade – allowing shops to open for up to 24 hours a day in December and January. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said: “With these changes local shops can open longer, ensuring more pleasant and safer shopping with less pressure on public transport.


How long will be a matter of choice for the shopkeepers and at the discretion of the council, but I suggest we offer these hard-pressed entrepreneurs and businesses the greatest possible flexibility this festive season. “As local government secretary I am relaxing planning restrictions and issuing an unambiguous request to councils to allow businesses to welcome us into their glowing stores late into the evening and beyond.” It comes after Jenrick suggested some areas could be moved into a lower tier when the first 14-day review of the latest system of tiered local controls takes place in mid-December. A record number of shops closed during the first half of 2020 due to the coronavirus lockdown, according to research from the Local Data Company and PwC.

Read more …

Sounds nice, but if the virus is endemic, and it sure looks that way, what will happen when those stores open 24/7?

• Covid Infections In England Fall By 30% Over Lockdown (BBC)

Coronavirus infections in England have fallen by about a third over lockdown, according to a major study. Some of the worst-hit areas saw the biggest improvements – but, despite this progress, cases remained high across England. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the data showed the country could not “take our foot off the pedal just yet”. The findings by Imperial College London were based on swabbing more than 100,000 people between 13-24 November. The React-1 study is highly respected and gives us the most up-to-date picture of Covid-19 in the country. Its researchers estimated the virus’s reproduction (R) rate had fallen to 0.88. That means on average every infection translated to less than one other new infection, so the epidemic is shrinking.


Run alongside pollster Ipsos MORI, the Imperial study involved testing a random sample of people for coronavirus, whether or not they had symptoms. The results of these tests suggested a 30% fall in infections between the last study and the period of 13-24 November. Before that, cases were accelerating – doubling every nine days when the study last reported at the end of October. Now cases are coming down, but more slowly than they shot up – halving roughly every 37 days. In the North West and North East, though – regions with some of the highest numbers of cases – infections fell by more than half. The findings suggest cases are now highest in the East Midlands and West Midlands.

Read more …

11 months into the mess, “Testing is a struggle, PPE and staff are daily challenges.” Sweet lord.

Kaiser says 40% of US COVID deaths are in long term care homes. I was corrected recently about a Canada graph I posted which said it 98% in Ontario, but even then it was two-thirds of all deaths there.

With such concentrations, anything you can do to decrease the numbers in these homes can change the entire picture of the disease countrywide. Why is that not happening?

NOTE: the graph may be a little misleading; not oly do the numbers of deaths rise, the numbers of states reporting also do.

• Over 100,000 US Nursing Home Residents, Staff Killed by Pandemic (CD)

As of the last week of November, Covid-19 has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people who live and work in long-term care facilities in the United States, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest analysis of state-reported data. The following chart depicts the growth in Covid-19 deaths among nursing home residents and staff in the U.S. since April. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), 40% of the nation’s Covid-19 deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities. “While early action to prevent the spread of coronavirus in long-term care facilities led to strict protocols related to testing, personal protective equipment, and visitor restrictions,” KFF pointed out that “several of these measures have been reversed in recent months, and some long-term care facilities continue to report shortages of PPE and staff.”

According to physician and public health expert Michael Barnett, 7.7% of the nation’s nursing home residents, or one in 13, have now died as a result of Covid-19. “Things have never really gotten better,” he tweeted. “Testing is a struggle, PPE and staff are daily challenges.” Soon after reaching the “bleak milestone” of 100,000 pandemic deaths in long-term care facilities, which happened on Tuesday, the U.S. on Thursday experienced a new record-high number of coronavirus-related hospitalizations, as Common Dreams reported earlier Friday.


Millions of Americans have passed through airports in the past week, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation against traveling for Thanksgiving. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, does not expect conditions to improve by Christmas and the New Year. As KFF explained, the predicted “surge in cases after holiday gatherings and increased time indoors due to winter weather… will have ripple effects on hospitals and nursing homes, given the close relationship between community spread and cases in congregate care settings.”

Read more …

It’s still not done yet.

• The ‘Smartest Man In The Room’ Has Joined Sidney Powell’s Team (AT)

In her Georgia complaint, Sidney Powell included the declaration of Navid Keshavarz-Nia, an expert witness who stated under oath that there was massive computer fraud in the 2020 election, all of it intended to secure a victory for Joe Biden. Dr. Kershavarz-Nia’s name may not mean a lot to you, but it’s one of the weightiest names in the world when it comes to sniffing out cyber-security problems. We know how important Dr. Kershavarz-Nia is because, just two and a half months ago, the New York Times ran one of its Sunday long-form articles about a massive, multi-million-dollar fraud that a talented grifter ran against the American intelligence and military communities. Dr. Kershavarz-Nia is one of the few people who comes off looking good:

“Navid Keshavarz-Nia, those who worked with him said, “was always the smartest person in the room.” In doing cybersecurity and technical counterintelligence work for the C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I., he had spent decades connecting top-secret dots. After several months of working with Mr. Courtney, he began connecting those dots too. He did not like where they led.” Not only does Dr. Kershavarz-Nia have an innate intelligence, but he’s also got extraordinary academic and practical skills in cyber-fraud detection and analysis. The reason we know about his qualifications is that it takes seven paragraphs for him to list them in the declaration he signed to support the Georgia complaint.

His qualifications include a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in various areas of electrical and computer engineering. In addition, “I have advanced trained from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), DHS office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) and Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT).” Professionally, Dr. Kershavarz-Nia has spent his career as a cyber-security engineer. “My experience,” he attests,” spans 35 years performing technical assessment, mathematical modeling, cyber-attack pattern analysis, and security intelligence[.]” I will not belabor the point. Take it as given that Dr. Kershavarz-Nia may know more about cyber-security than anyone else in America.

So what does the brilliant Dr. Kershavarz-Nia have to say? This: 1. Hammer and Scorecard is real, not a hoax (as Democrats allege), and both are used to manipulate election outcomes. 2. Dominion, ES&S, Scytl, and Smartmatic are all vulnerable to fraud and vote manipulation — and the mainstream media reported on these vulnerabilities in the past. 3. Dominion has been used in other countries to “forge election results.” 4. Dominion’s corporate structure is deliberately confusing to hide relationships with Venezuela, China, and Cuba. 5. Dominion machines are easily hackable. 6. Dominion memory cards with cryptographic key access to the systems were stolen in 2019.

Read more …

The strangest case of all so far?! People protest in court against Dominion machines being wiped clean on order of Sec of State, judge orders wiping stopped (it was already in progress), then reverses order because plaintiffs don’t have the machines, then reverses that order again. Buy why would you wipe election machines to begin with, especially before the election has been decided?

• Republicans Plan to Occupy Georgia State House (GP)

A coalition of Republican groups are calling for an occupation of the Georgia State House in response to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordering the Dominion voting machines in the state to be wiped. The groups are also calling for a protest at Raffensperger’s home on Monday evening. Raffensperger claims that he was ordering them to be reset ahead of the senate runoff election, but a reset would wipe all votes from the general election — the results of which are still being hotly contested by the Trump campaign. The deletion had been temporarily stopped on Sunday, when Judge Timothy C. Batten, Sr. issued an order to freeze ALL Dominion voting machines in the state of Georgia, but he reversed course within hours.


Currently, there is a major fight going on and it appears that a short time later, a federal judge ordered officials not to reset the machines. The volatile and unknown situation has lead to Republican activists and organizers to call for a full on occupation of the Georgia State House on Monday — as well as protest at the Secretary of State’s house. “After the Secretary of State ordered the voting machines to be wiped in a blatant destruction of evidence, coalition groups plan to OCCUPY THE STATE CAPITOL in Georgia on Monday November 30 at 12pm. They also plan to protest outside the Sec. of States house at 6pm,” Republican activist, influencer, and entrepreneur Mike Coudrey tweeted.


“Defendants are hereby ENJOINED & RESTRAINED from altering, destroying, or erasing, or allowing the alteration, destruction, or erasure of, any software or data on any DOMINION VOTING MACHINE…”

Read more …

When you look at these numbers, yes, it’s strange.

• The 2020 Presidential Election Is Deeply Puzzling (Basham)

I am a pollster and I find this election to be deeply puzzling. I also think that the Trump campaign is still well within its rights to contest the tabulations. Something very strange happened in America’s democracy in the early hours of Wednesday November 4 and the days that followed. It’s reasonable for a lot of Americans to want to find out exactly what. First, consider some facts. President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking reelection. He got 11 million more votes than in 2016, the third largest rise in support ever for an incumbent. By way of comparison, President Obama was comfortably reelected in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he received in 2008. Trump’s vote increased so much because, according to exit polls, he performed far better with many key demographic groups.

Ninety-five percent of Republicans voted for him. He did extraordinarily well with rural male working-class whites. He earned the highest share of all minority votes for a Republican since 1960. Trump grew his support among black voters by 50 percent over 2016. Nationally, Joe Biden’s black support fell well below 90 percent, the level below which Democratic presidential candidates usually lose. Trump increased his share of the national Hispanic vote to 35 percent. With 60 percent or less of the national Hispanic vote, it is arithmetically impossible for a Democratic presidential candidate to win Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Bellwether states swung further in Trump’s direction than in 2016. Florida, Ohio and Iowa each defied America’s media polls with huge wins for Trump.

Since 1852, only Richard Nixon has lost the electoral college after winning this trio, and that 1960 defeat to John F. Kennedy is still the subject of great suspicion. Midwestern states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin always swing in the same direction as Ohio and Iowa, their regional peers. Ohio likewise swings with Florida. Current tallies show that, outside of a few cities, the Rust Belt swung in Trump’s direction. Yet, Biden leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because of an apparent avalanche of black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Biden’s ‘winning’ margin was derived almost entirely from such voters in these cities, as coincidentally his black vote spiked only in exactly the locations necessary to secure victory. He did not receive comparable levels of support among comparable demographic groups in comparable states, which is highly unusual for the presidential victor.

We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes. Victorious presidential candidates, especially challengers, usually have down-ballot coattails; Biden did not. The Republicans held the Senate and enjoyed a ‘red wave’ in the House, where they gained a large number of seats while winning all 27 toss-up contests. Trump’s party did not lose a single state legislature and actually made gains at the state level. Another anomaly is found in the comparison between the polls and non-polling metrics.

The latter include: party registrations trends; the candidates’ respective primary votes; candidate enthusiasm; social media followings; broadcast and digital media ratings; online searches; the number of (especially small) donors; and the number of individuals betting on each candidate. Despite poor recent performances, media and academic polls have an impressive 80 percent record predicting the winner during the modern era. But, when the polls err, non-polling metrics do not; the latter have a 100 percent record. Every non-polling metric forecast Trump’s reelection. For Trump to lose this election, the mainstream polls needed to be correct, which they were not. Furthermore, for Trump to lose, not only did one or more of these metrics have to be wrong for the first time ever, but every single one had to be wrong, and at the very same time; not an impossible outcome, but extremely unlikely nonetheless.

Read more …

@KateAronoff: “Historic times, ladies: a woman is going to collect surveillance data leading to a targeted drone strikes. Another woman will tell the press that 14 dead civilians is the price of freedom, and yet another woman will say there’s no money left for healthcare”

• Biden To Tap Career Russiagater For Top Budgeting Post (RT)

An Obamacare architect, former Hillary Clinton adviser and career Russiagater, Neera Tanden, has been tapped as potential budget office director under Biden, setting Twitter on fire with recollections of her toxic track record. Tanden was a healthcare adviser under the Barack Obama administration and helped draft his brainchild the Affordable Care Act. A close ally of Hillary Clinton during her unsuccessful 2016 presidential run, she currently heads the pro-Clinton think tank Center for American Progress. Although born and raised in the United States, Tanden’s parents are immigrants from India. The mainstream media have praised her potentially becoming “the first woman of color and the first South Asian American to lead the Office of Management and Budget.”

Known for her combative tweeting, Tanden seems to have a habit of clashing with anyone who questions the wisdom of the Democratic Party’s political machine. Journalist Vincent Bevins joked that her potential nomination should be seen as an inspiration which “shows that a lifetime of posting cringe is not a barrier to higher office.” Grayzone writer and assistant editor Ben Norton labelled Tanden a “neoliberal troll” who “hates the left with a burning passion and spends all her time on here attacking leftists.” In fact, Tanden was openly hostile towards supporters of Vermont senator and two-time presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. The left-leaning lawmaker accused Tanden last year of “maligning my staff & supporters and belittling progressive ideas.”

Her hostility towards those critical of Clinton reportedly even led to physical scuffles. In 2008, Tanden is said to have assaulted a staffer after he asked Clinton a critical question about the Iraq war. Conservative pundit Mike Cernovich described Tanden as a “garden variety resistance troll,” although this description arguably doesn’t do justice to her impressive output of Russiagate-related outbursts. She was a militant disciple of the debunked theory that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was in cahoots with Moscow, floating countless bizarre allegations, including, but certainly not limited to, the proposition that Russian hackers had infiltrated Florida’s voting system with Trump’s full knowledge during the 2016 election.

Tanden provocatively alleged that WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange engaged in “fascist behavior” by publishing leaked State Department emails and other US documents. Her foreign policy views have also raised eyebrows. She (in)famously suggested Libya should provide compensation, in the form of oil, to the US as a means of repayment for its “liberation.” A US-led NATO intervention in 2011 turned the North African nation into a safe haven for warlords, terrorists and human traffickers. “Given tonight’s news, I hope oil-rich countries around the world are increasing the security on their rigs and drilling sites,” journalist Glenn Greenwald quipped, citing an email of Tanden’s that was leaked to the Intercept.

Read more …

A decades-long development.

• One Of America’s Great Wildernesses Being Destroyed In A Silent Massacre (LAT)

Hidden away in the heart of the Deep South, one of the nation’s greatest wildernesses is being destroyed, bit by bit, in a silent massacre. You won’t find people chaining themselves to trees to protect this place, or national environmental groups using pictures of it to sign up new members, because few know it exists. And yet, here it is — the Mobile River Basin, one of the richest in the world in terms of the sheer number of species and types of habitat. The major rivers and thousands of creeks feeding into this basin together form the largest inland delta system in the United States, second only to the Mississippi in how much water it dumps into the Gulf of Mexico.

The river system, the fourth-largest in the country in terms of water flow, stretches from the northern edge of Alabama to the Gulf, draining parts of four states, and encompassing hundreds of thousands of acres of forest, from Appalachian hardwood stands to haunted cypress swamps. A dedicated band of locals know it for the incredible hunting and fishing it affords. But few know it for its greatest distinction. That’s a shame, for this is America’s Amazon, far and away the most biodiverse river network in North America. There are more species of oaks on a single hillside on the banks of the Alabama River than you can find anywhere else in the world. The Mobile River Basin makes Alabama home to more species of freshwater fish, mussels, snails, turtles and crawfish than any other state. The contest isn’t even close.

For instance, Alabama is home to 97 crawfish species, while California, three times the size of Alabama, has but nine. There are 450 species of freshwater fish in the state, or about one-third of all species known in the entire nation. The system’s turtle population is even more singular. The Mobile-Tensaw Delta estuary system has 18 turtle species, more than any other river delta system in the world — more than the Amazon and more than the Mekong, both extraordinarily biodiverse ecosystems. Unlike most of the nation’s great river systems, the Mobile Basin — along with its wetlands, floodplain forests and estuary — has survived with its biological community mostly intact. That is due in large measure to an odd combination of benign neglect and the mixed blessing of being located in the heart of Alabama.

Tragically, it now sits on the cusp of decline, facing death by a thousand cuts, just as the scientific community has begun to appreciate its riches. Habitat destruction, development and lax enforcement of environmental regulations conspire to take an increasing toll, making the area a global hot spot for extinctions, particularly of aquatic creatures. In fact, nearly half of all extinctions in the continental United States since the 1800s have occurred among creatures that lived in the Mobile River Basin, according to records maintained by Endangered Species International and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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“The problems are deep and structural – not the type that the tedious process of democratic change can fix in time to forestall mayhem.”

• The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse (Wood)

Peter Turchin, one of the world’s experts on pine beetles and possibly also on human beings, met me reluctantly this summer on the campus of the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he teaches. Like many people during the pandemic, he preferred to limit his human contact. He also doubted whether human contact would have much value anyway, when his mathematical models could already tell me everything I needed to know. [..] The year 2020 has been kind to Turchin, for many of the same reasons it has been hell for the rest of us. Cities on fire, elected leaders endorsing violence, homicides surging – to a normal American, these are apocalyptic signs. To Turchin, they indicate that his models, which incorporate thousands of years of data about human history, are working. (“Not all of human history,” he corrected me once. “Just the last 10,000 years.”)

He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an “age of discord,” civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced. In 2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s and early ’70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst. The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions. His models, which track these factors in other societies across history, are too complicated to explain in a nontechnical publication.

But they’ve succeeded in impressing writers for nontechnical publications, and have won him comparisons to other authors of “megahistories,” such as Jared Diamond and Yuval Noah Harari. [..] The fate of our own society, he says, is not going to be pretty, at least in the near term. “It’s too late,” he told me as we passed Mirror Lake, which UConn’s website describes as a favorite place for students to “read, relax, or ride on the wooden swing.” The problems are deep and structural – not the type that the tedious process of democratic change can fix in time to forestall mayhem. Turchin likens America to a huge ship headed directly for an iceberg: “If you have a discussion among the crew about which way to turn, you will not turn in time, and you hit the iceberg directly.”

Read more …

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 27 2020

Nov 272020
 
 November 27, 2020  Posted by at 10:08 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Max Ernst Santa Conversazione 1921

 

• Total COVID19 Cases In US May Be Eight Times Higher Than Reported (F.)
• New Study Highlights Alleged Accounting Error Regarding COVID Deaths (AIER)
• Want To Make Your Vax More Effective? Add A Shot Of Sputnik V (RT)
• 5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms (Fed.)
• The Most Predictable Election Fraud Backlash Ever (Tracey)
• Sidney Powell: Poll Workers Altered Large Numbers Of Michigan Ballots (JTN)
• DC’s Corrupted Legislative Process (sundance)
• Yanis Varoufakis Calls For Black Friday Boycott Of Amazon (G.)
• Poland, Hungary Moving Deeper Into Isolation In EU – Senior EU Diplomat (R.)
• Trump Must Pardon Snowden & Assange – Tulsi Gabbard (RT)
• Assange Partner In Twitter Appeal For Trump To Issue Pardon (ES)

 

 

Close the schools?

 

 

Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch on Cuomo closing churches

 

 

“..nearly 53 million people in the U.S. had been infected with Covid-19 by the end of September.”

• Total COVID19 Cases In US May Be Eight Times Higher Than Reported (F.)

The actual number of Covid-19 infections in the U.S. could be about eight times as much as the total reported cases, a model created by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated. The model published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases suggests that nearly 53 million people in the U.S. had been infected with Covid-19 by the end of September. The estimate is around eight times higher than the 7.1 million confirmed cases that had been reported back then. The model tries to account for the fact that most cases of Covid-19 are mild and therefore go unreported. The scientists, however, warned that by the end of September, 84% of the U.S. population had not been infected and was still at risk of catching the disease.


If the trend of unreported cases still holds true as of Thursday, the U.S. — which has 12.5 million confirmed cases — could be approaching 100 million total infections across the country. In October, the World Health Organisation had said that nearly 10% of the world population or nearly 760 million people may have already been infected with Covid-19, despite the fact that only 35 million confirmed cases had been recorded as of that time. “When you count anything, you can’t count it perfectly,” Mike Ryan, the executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, had said back then adding, “But I can assure you that the current numbers are likely an underestimate of the true toll of Covid.” Scientists have also suggested that deaths due to the pandemic have also been severely undercounted, with the CDC stating that the U.S. had recorded nearly 300,000 excess deaths during the pandemic as of October 3. This number was nearly 100,000 deaths more than what had been officially recorded by the states.

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“These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

• New Study Highlights Alleged Accounting Error Regarding Covid Deaths (AIER)

It is already well established that Covid-19 is a disease that is most dangerous to those over the age of 65 and who have preexisting conditions. In the United States, there has been an observed 2.1% mortality rate, with elderly individuals making up over half that number. Young and healthy people are not by any significant capacity threatened by Covid-19. One of the most important factors when it comes to Covid-19 is preventing excess death. According to the CDC, “Estimates of excess deaths can provide information about the burden of mortality potentially related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including deaths that are directly or indirectly attributed to COVID-19. Excess deaths are typically defined as the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods.”

Essentially, there is an average number of deaths every year due to a variety of causes that for the most part have remained constant through the years. This includes morbidities such as heart disease, which has long been the leading cause of death, and cancer, which has long plagued our existence. For Covid-19 to be a serious cause of alarm, it would need to significantly increase the number of average deaths. However, according to the study, “These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.” Total deaths in the United States show no significant change and even mirror past trends of seasonal illness.

[..] What is even more interesting if not more alarming is that the spike in recorded Covid-19 deaths seen in 2020 has coincided with a proportional decrease in death from other diseases. Yanni Gu writes “This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19.” Deaths have remained relatively constant, yet reported deaths due to deadly conditions such as heart disease have fallen while reported Covid deaths have risen. This suggests that the current Covid death count is in some capacity relabeled deaths due to other ailments. According to the graph, reported Covid deaths even overtook heart disease as the main cause of death at one point, which should raise suspicion.

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And why not?

• Want To Make Your Vax More Effective? Add A Shot Of Sputnik V (RT)

Responding to the news of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab facing a new set of trials, the developers of the pioneering Russian Sputnik V vaccine have suggested combining the two vaccines to drastically improve AstraZeneca’s efficacy. The idea appeared on the official Twitter page of the Sputnik V vaccine, which is financed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), on Thursday. “We suggest trying a regimen of combining the AZ shot with the #SputnikV human adenoviral vector shot to boost efficacy,” said the message, referring to AstraZeneca’s published trial results.

The offer follows comments from AstraZeneca’s CEO Pascal Soriot to Bloomberg on Thursday, who admitted the company will have to “do an additional study” before its vaccine is ready, given that its trials have resulted in varying efficacy, depending on the dose. Despite a number of unexplained inconsistencies during the trials, on Monday AstraZeneca said it would seek emergency authorization for its coronavirus vaccine. With the British-Swedish developer rushing to roll out an inoculation, RT on Wednesday compiled a list of seven questions for AstraZeneca, asking the company to dispel doubts about the safety and efficacy of its jab.

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“Joe Biden achieved the impossible. It’s interesting that many more journalists aren’t pointing that out.”

• 5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms (Fed.)

In all the excitement among objective journalists for Joe Biden’s declared victory, reporters are missing how extraordinary the Democrat’s performance was in the 2020 election. It’s not just that the former vice president is on track to become the oldest president in American history, it’s what he managed to accomplish at the polls this year. Candidate Joe Biden was so effective at animating voters in 2020 that he received a record number of votes, more than 15 million more than Barack Obama received in his re-election of 2012. Amazingly, he managed to secure victory while also losing in almost every bellwether county across the country. No presidential candidate has been capable of such electoral jujitsu until now. While Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 totals in every urban county in the United States, he outperformed her in the metropolitan areas of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Even more surprising, the former VP put up a record haul of votes, despite Democrats’ general failures in local House and state legislative seats across the nation. He accomplished all this after receiving a record low share of the primary vote compared to his Republican opponent heading into the general election. Clearly, these are tremendous and unexpected achievements that would normally receive sophisticated analysis from the journalist class but have somehow gone mostly unmentioned during the celebrations at news studios in New York City and Washington, D.C. The massive national political realignment now taking place may be one source of these surprising upsets. Yet still, to have pulled so many rabbits out of his hat like this, nobody can deny that Biden is a first-rate campaigner and politician, the likes of which America has never before seen.

[..] 5. Biden Overcame Trump’s Commanding Primary Vote
In the past, primary vote totals have been remarkably accurate in predicting general election winners. Political analyst David Chapman highlighted three historical facts before the election. First, no incumbent who has received 75 percent of the total primary vote has lost re-election. Second, President Trump received 94 percent of the primary vote, which is the fourth highest of all time (higher than Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon, Clinton, or Obama). In fact, Trump is only one of five incumbents since 1912 to receive more than 90 percent of the primary vote. Third, Trump set a record for most primary votes received by an incumbent when more than 18 million people turned out for him in 2020 (the previous record, held by Bill Clinton, was half that number). For Biden to prevail in the general election, despite Trump’s historic support in the primaries, turns a century’s worth of prior election data on its head. Joe Biden achieved the impossible. It’s interesting that many more journalists aren’t pointing that out.

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“..a desperate woman screaming from a balcony at the top of her lungs, “You just gave us Hitler,” before being escorted out by police.”

• The Most Predictable Election Fraud Backlash Ever (Tracey)

Anyone who was remotely sentient during the aftermath of the 2016 election should be the furthest thing from surprised that the frenzy of that period has now been replicated in the aftermath of the 2020 election, albeit with a different partisan and temperamental hue. I attended the official meeting of the Electoral College in Harrisburg, PA — December 2016 — and it was quite a mind-melting experience. Once an uneventful formality that hardly anyone except hardcore obsessives even knew was happening, the actual convening of the Electoral College had become an object of national fascination.

Protesters, egged on by Democratic-affiliated advocacy groups and frenetic social media campaigns, had shown up at the State Capitol to berate Pennsylvania’s Republican electors and demand that they not vote to certify the state’s popular vote outcome for Donald Trump — on the ground that Trump had committed “treason,” and therefore posed such a dire national security threat that centuries of precedent should be summarily thrown out the window in order to block his assumption of office. The precise nature of this alleged “treason” was seldom clarified. It sufficed that they’d been given the impression of some nebulously treasonous activity through a series of Intelligence Community leaks, dutifully laundered as always through the corporate media, which by then was in a hair-on-fire tailspin over Trump’s victory.

The bid to interfere in the Electoral College process that year, and deprive Trump of the presidency through extra-legal means, obviously failed. But it gained enough elite support along the way to be highly notable, especially given how extreme the proposed remedy was (simply ignore popular vote outcomes in various states and block Trump on the basis of CIA rumors.) Top media figures, academics, and activists like Peter Beinart, Larry Lessig, Michael Moore, Paul Krugman, and DeRay McKesson joined the haphazard putsch effort. TV stars like Martin Sheen and Bob Odenkirk recorded impassioned video pleas arguing for electors to subvert the expressed will of voters.

John Podesta, the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman whose Gmail account was reputed to have been successfully “phished” by fearsome Russian “hackers,” issued a statement demanding that electors be granted an unheard-of “intelligence briefing” — with the implication for what should be done with that “briefing” information too obvious to need stating outright. The meeting in Harrisburg concluded with the expected affirmation of Trump’s win — followed by a desperate woman screaming from a balcony at the top of her lungs, “You just gave us Hitler,” before being escorted out by police.

Read more …

Wonder what the courts are going to say. The spelling errors don’t make the cases more compelling. But this is not a spelling bee.

• Sidney Powell: Poll Workers Altered Large Numbers Of Michigan Ballots (JTN)

Prominent defense attorney Sidney Powell is asking a federal court to block the certification of Michigan’s election results or void the entire election, alleging there was widespread efforts by poll workers in Detroit and elsewhere to falsify, double-count or discard ballots. “Election workers illegally forged, added, removed or otherwise altered information on ballots, the Qualified Voter File and Other Voting Records,” Powell’s lawsuit filed late Wednesday and made public on Thanksgiving Day alleged. The suit named Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the state board of canvassers as defendants, alleging they created an election system on Nov. 3 that enabled widespread fraud and violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

“Defendants’ egregious misconduct has included ignoring legislative mandates concerning mail-in ballots– including the mandate that mail-in ballots be post-marked on or before Election Day — and critically, preventing Plaintiff’s poll watchers from observing the receipt, review, opening, and tabulation of mail-in ballots,” the suit said. “It is necessary to order appropriate relief, including, but not limited to, enjoining the certification of the election results pending a full investigation and court hearing, ordering a recount of the election results, or voiding the election and ordering a new election, to remedy the fraud,” Powell wrote in a lawsuit filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit and made public on Thanksgiving.

Powell’s lawsuit in Michigan carried some similar claims as one she filed at the same time in Atlanta to challenge Georgia’s results. But in the Michigan case, she offered evidence from a large number of witnesses who alleged in Wayne County and the city of Detroit tens of thousands of voting irregularities were witnessed. She charged that Detroit and Wayne County officials took actions “permitting illegal double voting by persons that had voted by absentee ballot and in person; counting ineligible ballots – and in many cases – multiple times; counting ballots without signatures, or without attempting to match signatures, and ballots without postmarks, pursuant to direct instructions from Defendants.”

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Hardly anybody knows.

• DC’s Corrupted Legislative Process (sundance)

CTH often describes the background DC motives with the phrase: “There are Trillions at Stake.” Here we take a look at what that really means, and how DC politics is not quite based on the ideas that frame many reference points. With people taking notice of DC politics for the first time; and with people not as familiar with the purpose of DC politics; we end up within two different references. Perhaps it is valuable to reset the larger frames of reference and provide clarity. Most people think when they vote for a federal politician -a House or Senate representative- they are voting for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact legislation. This is the old-fashioned “schoolhouse rock” perspective based on decades past. There is not a single person in congress writing legislation or laws.


In modern politics not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law, or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct. This simply doesn’t happen. Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body. Understand this dynamic and you understand how politicians become multi-millionaires on much lesser salaries; and why ‘We The People’ are insignificant and annoying gnats to their business model. Here’s how it works right now. Outside groups, often called “special interest groups”, are entities that represent their interests in legislative constructs.

These groups are often representing foreign governments, Wall Street multinational corporations, banks, financial groups or businesses; or smaller groups of people with a similar connection who come together and form a larger group under an umbrella of interest specific to their affiliation. Sometimes the groups are social interest groups; activists, climate groups, environmental interests etc. The social interest groups are usually non-profit constructs who depend on the expenditures of government to sustain their cause or need. The for-profit groups (mostly business) have a purpose in Washington DC to shape policy, legislation and laws favorable to their interests. They have fully staffed offices just like any business would – only their ‘business‘ is getting legislation for their unique interests. These groups are filled with highly-paid lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write laws and legislation briefs.

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Bezos just grins.

• Yanis Varoufakis Calls For Black Friday Boycott Of Amazon (G.)

The economist Yanis Varoufakis has called for a one-day boycott of Amazon on Black Friday as trade unionists, environmental activists, privacy campaigners and tax justice advocates plan coordinated actions against the company’s sites and supply chain. Amazon’s success during the coronavirus pandemic – at one point the company was reported to be making sales of $11,000 (£8,200) a second – has vastly inflated its share price, increasing the personal wealth of its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, already the world’s richest man, by $70bn. Bloomberg estimates his current wealth to be $187bn. In an online video, Varoufakis asks viewers “not even to visit” Amazon’s website on Black Friday – the retail industry’s most profitable day of the year – which falls on 27 November this year.


“By boycotting Amazon you will be adding your strength to an international coalition of workers and activists,” he said. “Amazon is not a mere company. It is not merely a monopolistic mega-firm. It is far more, and far worse, than that. It is the pillar of a new techno-feudalism.” Under a banner of “make Amazon pay”, Friday’s actions are intended as the start of a campaign against the retailer’s record on workers’ rights, environmental impact, tax avoidance, work with police and immigration authorities, and what activists say are invasions of privacy via its growing range of internet-connected devices. The campaign is co-convened by Progressive International, a global initiative bringing together progressive leftwing groups, politicians and intellectuals, including Varoufakis, Prof Noam Chomsky and Bernie Sanders, and UNI Global, a trade union federation representing 20 million workers including the UK’s GMB union.

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Their voices don’t count.

• Poland, Hungary Moving Deeper Into Isolation In EU – Senior EU Diplomat (R.)

Poland and Hungary are moving deeper into isolation in the 27-nation European Union by blocking the EU’s 2021-2027 budget and recovery fund needed to pull the EU out of a recession caused by the COVIOD-19 pandemic, a senior EU diplomat said on Thursday. Warsaw and Budapest have vetoed the bloc’s 1.8 trillion euro financial package for 2021-2027 because it links access to the money with an obligation to respect the rule of law. Both capitals are under EU investigation for not respecting it. Earlier on Thursday, Polish and Hungarian prime ministers jointly repeated their objection to the rule of law condition, digging in their heels as the bloc seeks to unwind the deadlock. “It is clear that there is absolutely no support for reopening the conditionality mechanism in the European Parliament or in the Council,” the senior diplomat said. “With their statement Poland and Hungary are moving deeper and deeper into isolation,” the diplomat said.

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“..please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state..”

• Trump Must Pardon Snowden & Assange – Tulsi Gabbard (RT)

Outgoing Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has urged President Donald Trump to issue pardons for Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, echoing growing calls to absolve whistleblowers who helped to “expose” the US “deep state.” “Since you’re giving pardons to people, please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state,” Gabbard said in a tweet addressed to the president on Thursday, referring to Snowden and Assange. The request comes less than a day after Trump granted a pardon for former national security adviser Michael Flynn. His case became a central plank in the Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative after he was accused of misleading investigators about contacts with a Russian diplomat following Trump’s election win in 2016.

While the Justice Department moved to have the case thrown out, citing misconduct in the FBI’s probe, a federal judge resisted that effort, prompting the president to intervene on Wednesday. Gabbard, who’s set to leave office at the end of her congressional term, previously introduced a resolution alongside GOP lawmaker Matt Gaetz (Florida) urging the government to drop its charges against Snowden – who was indicted under the World War I-era Espionage Act for his role in leaking classified material revealing illegal mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA). Though the antiquated law was originally intended to prosecute foreign spies, it has been repeatedly wielded against journalists and whistleblowers.

Snowden himself weighed in later on Thursday, saying he had “seen more calls for pardon this year than in all others combined.” No other issue in our time unites left, right, and center like the struggle to end governments’ abuse of mass surveillance and secrecy. The Libertarian Party echoed the message, noting that Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie has publicly backed the pardons as well, while journalist Glenn Greenwald argued that nothing would “shape Trump’s legacy” better than a reprieve for the two whistleblowers. Snowden approached Greenwald after making off with a massive trove of classified documents in 2013 while working as an NSA subcontractor under Booz Allen Hamilton. Fearing prosecution, he fled the US, hoping to secure asylum in Latin America, but was stranded in Russia after his passport was revoked by US authorities. He has remained there since, where he has been granted permanent residency status after seven years in legal limbo.

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A cousin of Assange was just freed in Iran. What Australia did for her, they should also do for Juliann.

• Assange Partner In Twitter Appeal For Trump To Issue Pardon (ES)

Julian Assange’s partner has appealed to US President Donald Trump to pardon him. Stella Moris used Thanksgiving Day to issue a plea to the president after he pardoned ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn. Ms Moris made a personal plea to Mr Trump through Twitter, saying it was the only channel he seems to value. Including a picture of her and Mr Assange’s two children, she tweeted: “These are Julian’s sons Max and Gabriel. They need their father. Our family needs to be whole again. I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas.” She also said that Mr Assange was a cousin of Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a lecturer at Melbourne University who was reportedly released from an Iranian jail yesterday following two years in detention.


On Dr Moore-Gilbert’s release, she said: “Like Julian, Kylie was charged in a bogus espionage case. She was tried in secret and convicted to 10 years. She spent two years in Iran’s most notorious prisons. There has barely been news about her case, other than letters smuggled from prison. “Julian has petitioned Iran’s leaders to release her earlier this year. I told Julian the news over the phone. He wants to express his gratitude to Australian and UK diplomats for securing her freedom.” She that said that 49 inmates and 15 staff on his wing at Belmarsh prison in London had now tested positive for coronavirus, while he has tested negative. Mr Assange is reportedly been let out of quarantine since the outbreak, along with others who have tested negative. A Prison Service spokesman said: “We’ve introduced further safety measures following a number of positive cases.”

Read more …

 

 

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JFK

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 26 2020

Nov 262020
 
 November 26, 2020  Posted by at 10:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  17 Responses »


JMW Turner Lake Llanberis and Snowdon Color Study c.1800

 

• Pa. Commonwealth Court Orders Halt To Certification Process (PG)
• Sidney Powell Sues Georgia Officials: ‘Massive Scheme To Rig Election’ (JTN)
• Giuliani, Trump Pull Off ‘One Hell Of A Hearing’ On PA Election Fraud (ZH)
• Trump Pardons Ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (JTN)
• Supreme Court Strikes Down Cuomo’s COVID Restrictions On Religious Services
• Should COVID19 Vaccines Be Mandatory? (Conv.)
• Cuba Could be on the Brink of a Revolutionary COVID Vaccine (MPN)
• WHO Names Line-up For International Team Looking Into Coronavirus Origins (SCMP)
• EU Parliament Votes Against Referring to Julian Assange in Rights Report (Sp.)

 

 


If the same percentage of votes were rejected as in 2016, Trump would win

 

 

A man does not yield when the mere universe has turned against him; he yields when his own heart has turned against him. We surrender, not when circumstances are miserable, but when we are miserable.

– G. K. Chesterton

 

 

Let the chips fall where they may.

• Pa. Commonwealth Court Orders Halt To Certification Process (PG)

Pennsylvania is prohibited from certifying the rest of its election results in down ballot races — and from taking any further action in regards to yesterday’s certification of the presidential race — pending a hearing on Friday in an appellate court, or intervention by the state Supreme Court. The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, in an order signed by Judge Patricia McCullough, issued an injunction Wednesday that stops the state from continuing its certification, and intends to hear evidence in a case filed by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly and GOP congressional candidate Sean Parnell about the constitutionality of mail-in ballots. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, Gov. Tom Wolf and the state — named as defendants in the suit — appealed the Commonwealth Court order to the state Supreme Court.

As it stands now, the hearing in Commonwealth Court is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Friday. The state certified the results in the race for president on Tuesday, giving its 20 electoral votes to Democrat Joe Biden and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris. The court order said the state is prohibited from acting “to the extent that there remains any further action to perfect the certification of the results” of the races for president and vice president. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro wrote on Twitter that the order “does not impact yesterday’s appointment of electors.” In their suit, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Parnell are arguing that state lawmakers violated Pennsylvania’s Constitution by adopting Act 77 last year, which expanded the mail-in balloting option to let all qualified voters to vote by mail without an excuse.

They allege that absentee voting — which required an excuse from a set of allowed reasons — was rebranded as no-excuse mail-in voting “absent any constitutional authority.” The Republican-controlled state Legislature responded, in legal filings, that the case should be dismissed because Act 77 didn’t alter the requirements of who constitutes a qualified voter, and that the Legislature is constitutionally authorized to prescribe the method by which those electors may cast their votes.

Read more …

And now you need evidence.

• Sidney Powell Sues Georgia Officials: ‘Massive Scheme To Rig Election’ (JTN)

Prominent defense attorney Sidney Powell sued Georgia’s top officials late Wednesday, alleging in federal court that the GOP-run state government permitted a massive voter fraud scheme that rigged the Nov. 3 election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta on behalf of several Georgia residents, electors and Republican Party officials and named Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and state election board members as defendants. The 104-page complaint asked the court to issue an injunction “prohibiting the Governor and Secretary of State from transmitting the currently certified results to the Electoral College based on the overwhelming evidence of election tampering.”

“The fraud was executed by many means, but the most fundamentally troubling, insidious, and egregious is the systemic adaptation of old-fashioned ‘ballot-stuffing,'” Powell’s suit alleged. “It has now been amplified and rendered virtually invisible by computer software created and run by domestic and foreign actors for that very purpose. Mathematical and statistical anomalies rising to the level of impossibilities, as shown by affidavits of multiple witnesses, documentation, and expert testimony evince this scheme across the state of Georgia. “This scheme and artifice to defraud affected tens of thousands of votes in Georgia alone and ‘rigged’ the election in Georgia for Joe Biden,” the suit added.

Powell’s suit made a variety of allegations, including that:

• At least 96,600 absentee ballots were requested and counted but were never recorded as being returned to county election boards by the voter. “Thus, at a minimum, 96,600 votes must be disregarded,” the suit said.
• Kemp and Raffensperger “rushed through the purchase of Dominion voting machines and software in 2019 for the 2020 Presidential Election” without due diligence and disregarded safety concerns.
• “There is incontrovertible physical evidence that the standards of physical security of the voting machines and the software were breached, and machines were connected to the internet in violation of professional standards and state and federal laws.”
• Fulton County election workers used a claim of a water leak to evacuate poll watchers and workers for several hours on Election night, even as “several election workers remained unsupervised and unchallenged working at the computers for the voting tabulation machines until after 1:00 AM.
• State officials in a settlement with Democratic parties made changes to election procedures that violated both state law and the U.S. Constitution.

Strenstrom Missing USB cards
https://twitter.com/i/status/1331678008210464768

Read more …

Quite the video footage.

• Giuliani, Trump Pull Off ‘One Hell Of A Hearing’ On PA Election Fraud (ZH)

Upon the request of Pennsylvania Senator Doug Mastriano (R), the state’s Senate Majority Policy Committee is holding a public hearing to discuss election issues and irregularities at 12:30 ET. Former NYC Mayor and current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani will appear. President Trump was slated to join him, only to cancel following adviser Boris Epshteyn’s Covid-19 diagnosis.

[..] President Trump joined the PA hearing by phone and was immediately on the offense, saying that “this is an election we won easily. We won it by a lot. This election has to be turned around.” “What we saw on November 3rd was not the United States of America. Democrats cheated. It was a fraudulent election. It would be very easy for me to wait 4 years and try again. We can’t wait for 4 years. Don’t be intimidated by these people. They don’t love our country!” “They kept poll watchers in pens in Philadelphia and then they threw them out of the building. You couldn’t see a thing on those cameras. They could have been playing a baseball game.”

“It’s a disgrace this is happening to our country. We got 11 million more votes than we did 4 years ago. At 10pm in the evening we were way ahead. Everybody knows we won it. The whole world is watching us. We can’t let them get away with this. We have more votes than voters!” Trump ends his remarks by telling Giuliani over speakerphone: “This is going to be your crowning achievement because you’re saving our country.”

Read more …

Pardoned against his will. But the court case would never have finished, so he’s relieved all the same.

• Trump Pardons Ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (JTN)

President Trump on Wednesday fully pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, bringing to end a tumultuous four-year criminal case that felled the three-star general before prosecutors reversed course and declared they had improperly pursued his prosecution. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about talking with a Russian diplomat during the 2016 Trump administration transition period. Attorney General William Barr earlier this year asked a federal court in Washington, D.C., to allow the Justice Department to drop the case. However, the matter has since been tied up in legal proceedings.

Trump informed the general and his lawyer Sidney Powell of the decision Wednesday afternoon, ahead of Thanksgiving Day. Flynn was elated by the news and the two men talked “like they had never missed a day since the campaign or early White House days,” an eyewitness told Just the News. Trump announced the news on his Twitter page. “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn, and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!” he tweeted. Sidney Powell, the defense lawyer who doggedly sought to prove Flynn’s innocence post conviction, applauded the decision, suggesting it was necessary because the U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan had refused to dismiss the lying charge, even after DOJ pleaded it be done.

“The pardon of Michael Flynn is solely up to the President, but given the corruption we have witnessed in the judiciary and multiple agencies of government executed against General Flynn, this persecution should end,” she said. “The FBI and DOJ have been a national embarrassment for more than 15 years. It was my fervent hope to make our judicial system work to exonerate an innocent man–as all the Left would want were he anyone but Trump or Michael Flynn, but enough is enough. This is sick. It’s painfully obvious Judge Sullivan is playing an evil political game with a good man’s life and family. The entire country deserves better.”

Read more …

“But even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten.”

• Supreme Court Strikes Down Cuomo’s COVID Restrictions On Religious Services

The Supreme Court late Wednesday struck down New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new COVID-19 restrictions on religious gatherings, as new Justice Amy Coney Barrett cast one of her first high-impact votes and Chief Justice John Roberts sided in dissent with the court’s liberal bloc. In a 5-4 decision, the court said Cuomo’s restrictions violated the Constitution’s First Amendment right to freedom of worship and granted an injunction barring the rules from being enforced. “Members of this Court are not public health experts, and we should respect the judgment of those with special expertise and responsibility in this area,” the majority opinion said. “But even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”


Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a separate opinion siding with the conservative majority, saying churches and synagogues were treated differently than commercial institutions by the state. “It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques,” Gorsuch argued. Roberts’ dissenting opinion accused the court of acting irrationally and disregarding the public health expertise of the state. “It is a significant matter to override determinations made by public health officials concerning what is necessary for public safety in the midst of a deadly pandemic,” he wrote.

Read more …

A for vs against discussion. Here’s the against part.

• Should COVID19 Vaccines Be Mandatory? (Conv.)

Mandatory vaccination does not automatically increase vaccine uptake. An EU-funded project on epidemics and pandemics, which took place several years before COVID-19, found no evidence to support this notion. Looking at Baltic and Scandinavian countries, the project’s report noted that countries “where a vaccination is mandatory do not usually reach better coverage than neighbour or similar countries where there is no legal obligation”. According to the Nuffield Council of Bioethics, mandatory vaccination may be justified for highly contagious and serious diseases. But although contagious, Public Health England does not classify COVID-19 as a high-consequence infectious disease due to its relatively low case fatality rate.

COVID-19 severity is strongly linked with age, dividing individual perceptions of vulnerability within populations. The death rate is estimated at 7.8% in people aged over 80, but at just 0.0016% in children aged nine and under. In a liberal democracy, forcing the vaccination of millions of young and healthy citizens who perceive themselves to be at an acceptably low risk from COVID-19 will be ethically disputed and is politically risky. Public apprehensions for a novel vaccine produced at breakneck speed are wholly legitimate. A UK survey of 70,000 people found 49% were “very likely” to get a COVID-19 vaccine once available. US surveys are similar. This is not because the majority are anti-vaxxers.

Despite promising headlines, the trials and pharmaceutical processes surrounding them have not yet been scrutinised. With the first trials only beginning in April, there is limited data on long-term safety and efficacy. We don’t know how long immunity lasts for. None of the trials were designed to tell us if the vaccine prevents serious disease or virus transmission. To disregard these ubiquitous concerns would be counterproductive. As a tool for combating anti-vaxxers – estimated at around 58 million globally and making up a small minority of those not getting vaccinated – mandatory vaccines are also problematic. The forces driving scientific and political populism are the same. Anti-vaxxers do not trust experts, industry and especially not the government. A government mandate will not just be met with unshakeable defiance, but will also be weaponised to recruit others to the anti-vaxxer cause.

Read more …

“Cuban immunization developments are being seriously hamstrung by the actions of the U.S. government, primarily due to the decades-long blockade on the island..”

• Cuba Could be on the Brink of a Revolutionary COVID Vaccine (MPN)

Cuba has announced positive and promising results for a number of separate COVID-19 vaccines it is currently developing, but U.S. sanctions against the small island nation are hampering the development and rollout of the potentially life-saving treatments. Two candidates, named Sovereign 1 and Sovereign 2, have generated antibodies blocking infection in animals and are showing similarly encouraging signs on tests on human subjects. Meanwhile, a separate vaccine, based on a protein from the hepatitis B virus, is unique in that it is delivered through the nasal tract and does not require a needle to administer.

Should any of these efforts ultimately succeed, the Caribbean nation — already a medical powerhouse that has developed a lung cancer vaccine and methods to stop mother-to-baby HIV and syphilis transmission— will likely become an important supplier to other Latin American and developing countries who have been effectively shut out from purchasing COVID vaccines from Western companies, as rich nations have already begun hoarding coronavirus medicines. Dr. Helen Yaffe of Glasgow University, author of “We Are Cuba!: How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World,” was impressed and heartened by the news, telling MintPress:

“Cuba now has four COVID-specific vaccine candidates under clinical trial. The fact that a small Caribbean island can achieve such a remarkable feat is testimony to its state-owned biotech sector, which is directed towards public health demands and integrated into its healthcare and education systems. After years of being told that only the market can lead to efficiency and innovation, Cuba’s socialist planned economy demonstrates what is possible when there is political will, good coordination, organization and the priority of social welfare.”

However, Cuban immunization developments are being seriously hamstrung by the actions of the U.S. government, primarily due to the decades-long blockade on the island, something which the Cuban government estimates has cost it over 750 billion U.S. dollars. As Reuters reported, cash-strapped Cuba cannot afford to buy the raw materials necessary to upscale its vaccine development to help other countries. Hospitals face huge obstacles importing lifesaving equipment from abroad due to the blockade, while the sanctions force the country, which imports the large majority of its staples, to spend far more on food than other nations. As a result, almost one third of young children suffer from anemia due to the monotonous and sub-par nutrition available, according to the World Food Program.

Read more …

The WHO continues to play a debatable role.

• WHO Names Line-up For International Team Looking Into Coronavirus Origins (SCMP)

The World Health Organization has named the scientists on an international team tracing the origins of the new coronavirus, as their mission gathers steam some 11 months after the virus was identified. The 10-person team includes public health experts, animal health specialists and virus hunters from Japan, Qatar, Germany, Vietnam, Russia, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States. They will work alongside Chinese scientists on a set of investigations into how the virus that causes Covid-19 emerged and spilled over into humans, triggering a pandemic that has now claimed over 1.4 million lives.

The WHO on Monday said the names of the international team members had been shared with member states and released online, despite concerns about harassment given that the virus origins have become a highly contentious subject. “There has been a level of attack and abuse to people involved in international science. It is not an easy space to be in right now and let me be plain about that,” said Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. He pointed to hate mail and threats within a climate of “anti-science movements” and “ideologic politics”. “We would like to thank them for their openness and transparency and for allowing us to release their names. That’s not an easy choice,” he said at a news briefing.

[..] One hanging question is when the international team will join field studies on the ground in China, considered a critical part of the mission, which was called for by over 130 nations at a May meeting of the WHO’s governing body.
Ryan on Monday said they “fully expect” the international team will be on the ground for this work, and they would like the scientists to be “deployed as soon as possible”. “We have reassurances from our Chinese government colleagues that … a field part of the mission will be facilitated as soon as possible, in order that the international community can be reassured of the quality of the science,” he said.

Read more …

Cowards.

• EU Parliament Votes Against Referring to Julian Assange in Rights Report (Sp.)

Any mention of the prosecution of Julian Assange has been removed from the EU’s latest report on fundamental rights, despite the best efforts of MEPs such as Ireland’s Clare Daly. The European Parliament passed the final version of the fundamental rights report for 2018 – 2019 on 25 November, excluding any mention of imprisoned publisher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. An amendment to include reference to Mr Assange lost with 408 votes against its inclusion, 191 votes in favour and 93 abstentions. Chris Williamson, a former Labour MP and long-time supporter of Mr Assange, lamented the final vote, saying:

“This is a sad day for European democracy, freedom of speech and human rights. The European Parliament has failed to live up to its rhetoric about standing for fundamental rights. It has shown itself to be nothing more than a paper tiger that is content with being the US administration’s poodle”. The original draft of the fundamental rights report contained a passage saying that “the detention and criminal prosecution of Julian Assange sets a dangerous precedent for journalists as affirmed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe” But, according to Irish MEP Clare Daly, a committee of European parliamentarians made up of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the Renew Europe party voted to remove the passage from the report, on 23 November.

The Left group of MEPs (European United Left/Nordic Green Left) and Ms Daly, who was actually in charge of preparing the original draft report, lobbied heavily for the passage to be returned into the final draft. In a video published on 23 November, Ms Daly called upon EU citizens to contact their MEPs and push them to reinsert the paragraph mentioning Mr Assange, via Amendment 44, in their final vote. “I believe that no report on the situation of fundamental rights in the European Union could possibly be taken seriously if it fails to mention the Trump administration’s radical and dangerous prosecution of a journalist for important journalism that was carried out in the European Union”, Ms Daley said in her message.

Read more …

 

 

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Maradona

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 23 2020

Nov 232020
 
 November 23, 2020  Posted by at 10:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  20 Responses »


Egon Schiele Port of Trieste 1907

 

 

Don’t miss the update on our support for the Monastiraki social kitchen in Athens.. And please consider donating to our efforts for this Christmas season.

 

 

 

• US, Germany, UK Could Start COVID Vaccinations As Early As December (G.)
• AstraZeneca’s COVID19 Vaccine Shows Average Efficiency Of 70% (RT)
• Most Coronavirus Cases Are Spread By People Without Symptoms – CDC (CNN)
• WHO Envoy Predicts Third Wave Of COVID19 In Europe Next Year (RT)
• Portuguese Court: PCR Tests “Unreliable” & Quarantines “Unlawful” (OffG)
• Rudy Giuliani: Sidney Powell Not Part Of Trump Legal Team (JTN)
• Michael Flynn Jr. on Trump Team’s Sidney Powell Statement (GP)
• Nunes Claims Obama Is Joe Biden’s ‘Overlord’, Calls For Special Counsel (DM)
• Taxpayers Face $435 Billion in Student-Loan Losses Already Baked In (WS)
• China Daily Paid US Newspapers Millions To Publish Propaganda This Year (DC)
• The US Has Withdrawn From The Treaty On Open Skies (JTN)

 

 

Save a puppy

 

 

But will it all take a whole year?

• US, Germany, UK Could Start COVID Vaccinations As Early As December (G.)

As G20 leaders pledged to ensure the equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, drugs and tests so that poorer countries are not left out, the US, UK and Germany each announced plans to begin vaccinations in their countries in December, while Spain said it would start administering the vaccine to its citizens in January. Britain could give regulatory approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine as early as this week, even before the US authorises it, the UK’s Telegraph newspaper reported on Sunday. Pfizer and BioNTech could secure emergency US and European authorisation for their Covid-19 vaccine next month after final trial results showed a 95% success rate and no serious side effects. Moderna last week released preliminary data for its vaccine showing 94.5% effectiveness.


The better-than-expected results from the two vaccines, both developed with new messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, have raised hopes of an easing of a pandemic that has killed more than 1.3 million people. In the US, the head of the US vaccine program, Moncef Slaoui, said the first Americans to receive a vaccine could get it as soon as 11 December, CNN reported on Sunday. “Our plan is to be able to ship vaccines to the immunisation sites within 24 hours from the approval, so I expect maybe on day two after approval on the 11th or the 12th of December,” he said in an interview to CNN. Citing government sources, the Telegraph also said the UK’s National Health Service had been told to be ready to administer it by 1 December. Britain formally asked its medical regulator, the MHRA, last week to assess the suitability of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Read more …

That’s not very high. How about the Russian vaccine?

• AstraZeneca’s COVID19 Vaccine Shows Average Efficiency Of 70% (RT)

The coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and drug maker AstraZeneca has shown an average efficiency of 70 percent, depending on dosage, the partners said as they announced clinical trial results. The developers revealed the preliminary results on Monday, following trials conducted in the UK and Brazil. Depending on the dosage, the vaccine showed varying efficiency of up to 90 percent, while the Pfizer vaccine is 95 percent effective and Russia’s Sputnik V is 92 percent effective. “One dosing regimen showed vaccine efficacy of 90 percent when AZD1222 was given as a half dose, followed by a full dose at least one month apart, and another dosing regimen showed 62 percent efficacy when given as two full doses at least one month apart,” the AstraZeneca developers said in a statement, adding, “analysis from both dosing regimens resulted in an average efficacy of 70 percent.”


AstraZeneca’s CEO Pascal Soriot said the vaccine’s “efficacy and safety” showed it will be highly effective against the coronavirus and it will have an “immediate impact” on the Covid-19 crisis. The announcement was welcomed by UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock who said the preliminary trial results were “fantastic news.” “These figures … shows that the vaccine in the right dosage can be up to 90 percent effective,” he told Sky News. “We’ve got 100 million doses on order and should all that go well, the bulk of the rollout will be in the new year.”

Read more …

Confusion over droplets vs arerosols.

Most COVID transmission by people without symptoms
– Ppl w/o symptoms don’t cough and sneeze much
– When talking, aerosols dominate over droplets by x100-2000
– Surfaces transmit inefficiently (per CDC)

• Most Coronavirus Cases Are Spread By People Without Symptoms – CDC (CNN)

Most coronavirus infections are spread by people who have no symptoms, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in newly updated guidance. It’s one of the main reasons mask use is so important, the CDC said. “Most SARS-CoV-2 infections are spread by people without symptoms,” the agency said in a section of its website devoted to explaining the science of how to use masks to control the spread of the virus. “CDC and others estimate that more than 50% of all infections are transmitted from people who are not exhibiting symptoms,” it added in the guidance posted Friday. “This means at least half of new infections come from people likely unaware they are infectious to others.”


According to the CDC, 24% of people who transmit the virus to others never develop symptoms and another 35% were pre-symptomatic. It also said 41% infected others while experiencing symptoms. Peak infectiousness comes five days after infection, the agency said on the website. “With these assumptions, 59% of infections would be transmitted when no symptoms are present but could range (from) 51%-70% if the fraction of asymptomatic infections were 24%-30% and peak infectiousness ranged 4-6 days.” It cited a study published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and as-yet unpublished CDC data. Previously, the health organization has not characterized what percentage of infections are spread by symptomless people. “Infection is spread primarily through exposure to respiratory droplets exhaled by infected people when they breathe, talk, cough, sneeze, or sing,” the agency added.

Read more …

WHO still not in favor of lockdowns. But that falls on deaf ears.

• WHO Envoy Predicts Third Wave Of COVID19 In Europe Next Year (RT)

With Europe already suffering a second wave of coronavirus infections, World Health Organization envoy David Nabarro has warned that the region could see another spike in infections next year In an interview on Saturday with Swiss newspaper Solothurner Zeitung, Nabarro said that European governments failed to build up the “necessary infrastructure” to keep the virus under control after the first wave of infections this spring. Now we have the second wave. If they don’t build the necessary infrastructure, we’ll have a third wave early next year. Infections are once again surging throughout Europe, after a lull this summer.


France and Germany recorded some 33,000 new cases combined on Saturday, while the UK reported nearly 20,000 cases on the same day, and Spain announced more than 15,000 on Friday. Deaths remain proportionally lower throughout Europe than during the first wave, however. Despite Nabarro’s stark prediction, the WHO has cautioned against responding too heavy-handedly to the pandemic. In a briefing on Thursday, the organization’s European director, Hans Kluge, called for “systematic and general mask-wearing” and “strict controls on social gatherings,” but described national lockdowns as a “last resort” policy.

Read more …

“The reddit Covid19 board actually removed the post, because it was “not a reliable source”, despite relying on the official court documents.”

• Portuguese Court: PCR Tests “Unreliable” & Quarantines “Unlawful” (OffG)

An appeals court in Portugal has ruled that the PCR process is not a reliable test for Sars-Cov-2, and therefore any enforced quarantine based on those test results is unlawful. Further, the ruling suggested that any forced quarantine applied to healthy people could be a violation of their fundamental right to liberty. Most importantly, the judges ruled that a single positive PCR test cannot be used as an effective diagnosis of infection. The specifics of the case concern four tourists entering the country from Germany – all of whom are anonymous in the transcript of the case – who were quarantined by the regional health authority. Of the four, only one had tested positive for the virus, whilst the other three were deemed simply of “high infection risk” based on proximity to the positive individual.

All four had, in the previous 72 hours, tested negative for the virus before departing from Germany. In their ruling, judges Margarida Ramos de Almeida and Ana Paramés referred to several scientific studies. Most notably this study by Jaafar et al., which found that – when running PCR tests with 35 cycles or more – the accuracy dropped to 3%, meaning up to 97% of positive results could be false positives. The ruling goes on to conclude that, based on the science they read, any PCR test using over 25 cycles is totally unreliable. Governments and private labs have been very tight-lipped about the exact number of cycles they run when PCR testing, but it is known to sometimes be as high as 45. Even fearmonger-in-chief Anthony Fauci has publicly stated anything over 35 is totally unusable.

[..] The media reaction to this case has been entirely predictable – they have not mentioned it. At all. Anywhere. Ever. The ruling was published on November 11th, and has been referenced by many alt-news sites since…but the mainstream outlets are maintaining a complete blackout on it. The reddit Covid19 board actually removed the post, because it was “not a reliable source”, despite relying on the official court documents.

Read more …

Looks a bit sloppy.

• Rudy Giuliani: Sidney Powell Not Part Of Trump Legal Team (JTN)

Rudy Giuliani, the lead attorney for President Trump’s election challenges, and Trump Campaign Senior Legal Adviser Jenna Ellis said Sunday that high-profile attorney Sidney Powell does not work for the president personally or for his campaign. “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own,” the statement from Giuliani and Ellis said. “She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team. She is also not a lawyer for the President in his personal capacity.” Powell on Thursday spoke during a press conference where Giuliani and Ellis also spoke. “I look forward to Mayor Giuliani spearheading the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS!” President Trump tweeted on November 14. “Rudy Giuliani, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis, a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives!”

Powell, who has alleged that massive corruption occurred during the 2020 election, said during an interview on Newsmax that a “biblical” filing is forthcoming regarding the state of Georgia. “Georgia is extremely bad,” Powell said. “We’ve got ballots being shredded, ballots being thrown out in trash bags…the votes being switched, the algorithms being run: You name the manner of fraud and it occurred in Georgia,” she said. While media outlets have projected Joe Biden to be the winner of the 2020 presidential contest, President Trump has not conceded and has made allegations of election fraud.

The Peach State is “probably gonna be the first state I’m gonna blow up,” Powell said, remarking that “Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state need to go with it because they’re in on the Dominon scam with their last minute purchase or award of a contract to Dominon of $100 million dollars. The state bureau of investigation for Georgia oughta be looking into the financial benefits received by Mr. Kemp and the secretary of state’s family about that time.”

Read more …

She was suspended by Twitter too.

• Michael Flynn Jr. on Trump Team’s Sidney Powell Statement (GP)

As we suspected, the news this evening about Sidney Powell not being on the Trump team is an act to protect Sidney and the Trump team and not a message of disappointment in her latest interviews and actions at all. The Trump campaign issued a statement Sunday night announcing Sidney Powell is not a member of President Trump’s legal team. The statement was posted online by campaign attorney Jenna Ellis on behalf of lead campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani. Powell had appeared at a campaign legal team press conference earlier this week alongside Giuliani and Ellis. Statement:

Attorney Sidney Powell was not able to respond tonight. Sidney was censored and suspended by Twitter earlier today. Mike Flynn, Jr. released a statement tonight.

Sidney released a statement to CBS News. She signed off — #KrakenOnSteroids

General Michael Flynn’s son, Mike Jr., followed up with a message tonight on Parler noting that the earlier message from the President’s team is not a reflection of any misstatements on Sidney’s part:

Read more …

‘President Obama is the only president that I know that only moved about a mile from the White House – set up shop, has all his people there..’

• Nunes Claims Obama Is Joe Biden’s ‘Overlord’, Calls For Special Counsel (DM)

Rep. Devin Nunes has claimed former President Barack Obama is President-elect Joe Biden’s ‘overlord’ and called for a special counsel to take over the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. Nunes, a California Republican and staunch ally of President Donald Trump, appeared on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures in an interview with host Maria Bartiromo. ‘President Obama is the only president that I know that only moved about a mile from the White House – set up shop, has all his people there,’ Nunes said, referring to the Obama family’s rented mansion in Washington DC. ‘Most of his people were promoting Kamala Harris to run before she bombed out, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, and then they propped up Joe Biden,’ Nunes claimed.

Later in the interview, Nunes referred to Obama as Biden’s ‘overlord.’ Nunes also called on Attorney General Bill Barr to appoint a special counsel to take over U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into potential malfeasance in the Russian collusion investigation. ‘Now we’re sitting waiting for Durham to complete this investigation. I think people are getting not only very frustrated but also, there’s a growing concern that Durham is not going to come out with anything and then Biden and Obama are going to be back in, and they’re going to shut this investigation off,’ Nunes said. Durham was appointed by Barr more than a year and a half ago to investigate any misconduct by the FBI and others others related to the inquiry into links between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

So far, Durham’s investigation has secured one guilty plea from a former FBI lawyer, who admitted to doctoring a document used to obtain surveillance warrants on a Trump campaign aide. Trump has raged that the Russian collusion probe, which cast a shadow over much of his presidency, was a ‘failed coup,’ and expressed fury that Durham did not issue more indictments prior to the November election. Nunes said that he feared Biden’s administration would shut down the Durham probe before it could be concluded. ‘I’ve been very clear about this,’ the congressman said. ‘Every day that ticks by, it’s going to become an absolute necessity that a special counsel is appointed on the way out.’

‘Now that doesn’t mean that Biden wouldn’t fire the special counsel, but at least you’d have a special counsel office set up, with money, so that this investigation can continue, because I’m not seeing the indictments that I should be seeing when you take into the account that I’ve made 14 criminal referrals involving dozens and dozens of people,’ he continued.

Read more …

“Most of the losses would come from the already established income-based repayment programs and the debt forgiveness at the end of their term.”

• Taxpayers Face $435 Billion in Student-Loan Losses Already Baked In (WS)

In 2009, the US government entered the business of reckless, no-matter-what lending to students, even to older students with subprime credit ratings and to students at iffy for-profit colleges with dubious degree programs. And then tuition soared, and student housing went upscale and became a global asset class with its own commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) that are now experiencing record delinquency rates. And Apple and textbook publishers and everyone began feeding at the big trough, with students just being the conduit for this money. Student-loan balances on the government’s financial statement skyrocketed from $147 billion in 2009 to $1.37 trillion at the beginning of 2020, despite the 11% decline in student enrollment since 2011.


Taxpayers face a loss of $435 billion on the $1.37 trillion in student loans on the government’s financial statement at the beginning of this year, even if no additional loans are issued going forward, according to an internal study by the Department of Education, reported by the Wall Street Journal which reviewed the documents. Most of the losses would come from the already established income-based repayment programs and the debt forgiveness at the end of their term. The expected loss of $435 billion is far larger than the rosy estimates released previously, including the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate in May 2019 of a loss of $31 billion, including administrative costs. The student loan balances in the chart above do not include student loans carried by private lenders that are guaranteed by the US government and that will produce additional losses for taxpayers.

Read more …

Is this legal?

• China Daily Paid US Newspapers Millions To Publish Propaganda This Year (DC)

An English-language newspaper controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department paid U.S. media companies nearly $2 million for printing and advertising expenses over the past six months, even amid heightened scrutiny over Beijing’s disinformation efforts in the West. China Daily paid The Wall Street Journal more than $85,000 and the Los Angeles Times $340,000 for advertising campaigns between May and October 2020, according to a disclosure that the propaganda mill filed this week with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). China Daily also paid Foreign Policy magazine $100,000, The Financial Times, a U.K.-based newspaper, $223,710, and $132,046 to the Canadian outlet Globe & Mail for advertising campaigns, according to the filing.


The Beijing-based outlet paid several newspaper companies a total of $1,154,666 for printing costs, including $110,000 to the Los Angeles Times, $92,000 to The Houston Chronicle and $76,000 to The Boston Globe. Overall, China Daily spent more than $4.4 million on printing, distribution, advertising and administration expenses over the past six months, according to the FARA filing. China Daily, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s State Council Information Office, its propaganda agency, has for years paid newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and other Western countries to publish advertorials designed to look like legitimate news articles. China Daily paid The Washington Post more than $4.6 million from late 2016 through October 2019, according to a FARA disclosure China Daily filed in June. The Journal received $6 million for advertorials from 2016 through April 2020, according to the disclosure.

Read more …

RussiaRussia.

• The US Has Withdrawn From The Treaty On Open Skies (JTN)

The U.S. departed the Treaty on Open Skies on Sunday, following an announcement earlier this year that the nation planned to withdraw from the treaty. “On May 22, 2020, the United States exercised its right pursuant to paragraph 2 of Article XV of the Treaty on Open Skies by providing notice to the Treaty Depositaries and to all States Parties of its decision to withdraw from the Treaty, effective six months from the notification date,” a press statement from the State Department’s Cale Brown notes. “Six months having elapsed, the U.S. withdrawal took effect on November 22, 2020, and the United States is no longer a State Party to the Treaty on Open Skies.”


In a statement earlier this year, Secretary of State Mike Pompo accused Russia of violating the treaty. “While the United States along with our Allies and partners that are States Parties to the Treaty have lived up to our commitments and obligations under the Treaty, Russia has flagrantly and continuously violated the Treaty in various ways for years,” Pompeo said. “This is not a story exclusive to just the Treaty on Open Skies, unfortunately, for Russia has been a serial violator of many of its arms control obligations and commitments.”

Read more …

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 22 2020

Nov 222020
 
 November 22, 2020  Posted by at 10:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  24 Responses »


William Blake Europe Supported by Africa and America 1796

 

 

 

Don’t miss the update on our support for the Monastiraki social kitchen in Athens.. And please consider donating to our efforts for this Christmas season.

 

 

• Pennsylvania Judge Throws Out Trump Campaign Lawsuit (ZH)
• Chicago Election Board Gave Dominion Complete Access for 2020 Election (NF)
• Dominion Transferring Vote Ratios between Precincts in PA (Rumble)
• Request To Declare Mail-In Voting Unconstitutional In PA (CBS)
• Do Trump Supporters Live in an Alternate Universe? (Bryce Buchanan)
• Biden’s Deep State (Brown)
• Biden Advisors Promise Smarter, More Secretive Permanent War Policy (GZ)
• FDA Emergency Approval For COVID19 Antibody Serum Used To Treat Trump (JTN)

 

 

Glenn Beck Sidney Powell

 

 

 

 

Steve Cortes

 

 

Going through the motions?!

• Pennsylvania Judge Throws Out Trump Campaign Lawsuit (ZH)

A federal judge on Saturday dismissed the Trump campaign’s lawsuit in Pennsylvania seeking to invalidate millions of votes, rejecting the “startling” request due to a lack of evidence and ruling that the state can move forward with certifying its election results. U.S. Middle District Judge Matthew Brann, an Obama appointee, ruled that the campaign presented “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” that were “unsupported by evidence.” The ruling is a major blow to the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn election results, with Biden leading Trump by more than 81,000 votes in Pennsylvania.

“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more,” the judge wrote. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani personally argued against the state’s motion to dismiss before Brann on Tuesday, arguing that the commonwealth should not certify its results and making claims of a vast Democratic conspiracy to steal the election. In reaching his conclusion, Brann said the campaign was not “formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption” needed to win such a case.

“This court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence,” the judge wrote. The suit’s core claim was that certain Democratic-led counties had more lenient rules in accepting “defective” ballots or letting voters “cure” such ballots than Republican-led ones, which the campaign claimed violated the Constitution’s due process and equal protection guarantees. The state denied those claims and also said the campaign’s proposed remedy of disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters was implausible.

Read more …

Votes: very clever young man
https://twitter.com/i/status/1329935870691069955

• Chicago Election Board Gave Dominion Complete Access for 2020 Election (NF)

As the nation is focused on the lack of system security in the 2020 General Election, now comes news that not only did Dominion Voting Systems have access to the entirety of the Chicago voting system and database, they had that access for over half a year. In a March 2020 video of an emergency meeting of the Chicago Election Board (CEB), that body approved a motion to provide Dominion Voting Systems the right and capability to remotely access their machines in an administrative role during the 2020 election. Eric Coomer, the Director of Product Strategy & Security for Dominion Voting Systems, was a full participant on the call suggesting that, from the start, Dominion was the one running the elections in Chicago, the thirds-largest city in the United States and one that glows cobalt blue in its politics.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the votes in Chicago went lopsided toward Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden. Biden received 74.34 percent of the vote with 1,714,792 ballots cast in his name, to President Trump’s 24.06 percent with 555,001 ballots cast in his name. The video, titled “Chicago Election Board – Emergency Meeting – 2020-03-19” and available on YouTube, finds Dominion Voting executives Coomer and Nicole Nollette, Executive Vice President of Dominion Voting Systems on the call. In the meeting the CEB approves allowing election personnel, including Dominion Voting System contractors, to telework and “work from home” – or work remotely – due to the COVID emergency. This move by the CEB allowed Dominion Voting Systems contractor personnel, including election systems administrators and technicians from Dominion, full remote access to Chicago’s election systems, files, and databases from anywhere at any time.

Dominion Voting Systems administrators had free, open, and unfettered access to Chicago’s election systems, files, and data for 7-1/2 months prior to the election. They had full access to all voter registration information poll books, requests for absentee ballots, voter mailout lists, and virtually everything related to elections. If Chicago’s election results were invalidated because of vote fraud and ballot manipulation, Biden’s total of 3,450,333 votes in Illinois would be reduced to 1,735,541 while President Trump’s total of 2,434,252 votes in that state would be reduced to 1,879,251. President Trump would win Illinois’ 20 Electoral College votes by 143,710 votes, a comfortable margin.

Now This voting machines hacked
https://twitter.com/i/status/1330303845096951810

Read more …

If it can be done, it will be done.

• Dominion Transferring Vote Ratios between Precincts in PA (Rumble)

In this video you will see data from the NYT feed from PA on November fourth. In this data, particular vote ratios are transferred between random sets of seized precincts throughout the day. A total of nine exhibits are presented in this video, but there are in fact several hundred of these precincts seizures and ratio transfers on the day of November 4th alone, and the same ratios continue to be transferred for several more days within the overall dataset spanning an entire week. Original data sets: https://gofile.io/d/qZcQl6. “The Dominion System isolated a “Flip Set” from the expected vote count and the expected percentage.


It then splices the Flip Set into multiple “ratio sets” and assigns them to precincts throughout the day. Once a particular “ratio set” receives the votes it needed, it releases that set, and then Dominion injects it into the city wide count. To hide it’s trail, Dominion reassigns the same “ratio set” to different (random) precincts throughout the day, so that the same precinct doesn’t keep getting the exact same ratio (or the same set of precincts). During a particular period of time while a precinct is selected, it gives Trumps an EXACT NUMBER of votes, it gives Biden a MINIMUM number of votes, and splits the small remainder to a third party or to Biden (via random assignment).

Read more …

Would also need the Supreme Court.

• Request To Declare Mail-In Voting Unconstitutional In PA (CBS)

Congressman Mike Kelly and congressional candidate Sean Parnell are requesting the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to declare universal mail-in voting unconstitutional in the state and deny the votes of the majority of Pennsylvanians who voted by mail in the Nov. 3 election. In the official request, the plaintiffs specifically cite issue with Act 77 and its “universal mail-in ballot provisions.” They allege that the provisions that allow all qualified electors to vote by mail in Pennsylvania are unconstitutional. As such, they are calling for mail-in ballots that they allege do not meet “Constitutional requirements” to not be certified and for only “legal votes” to be certified or for the Pennsylvania General Assembly to choose the electors and compensate the legal costs of the plaintiffs. Both Kelly and Parnell are registered Republicans.

Read more …

How the media splits the nation.

• Do Trump Supporters Live in an Alternate Universe? (Bryce Buchanan)


It is instructive to make a list of ‘Things That Are True’, as asserted by the leftist media and contrast it with the ‘Delusions’ that are commonly held by the foolish Trump supporters. In the list below, “T” indicates the certainly ‘True Things’, as reported by the very wise people in leftist media. “D” indicates the ‘Delusions’ held by the Trump supporters, who “are not able to differentiate between fantasy and reality.”

The List:
T: This was a very clean and honest election. There is no evidence of fraud. Claims to the contrary are baseless conspiracy theories.
D: There is massive evidence of election fraud of every type, including programmed computer cheating, dead people voting, and massive dumps of Biden votes in the middle of the night. There is also extremely strong statistical evidence of vote total manipulation.

T: Biden is “President Elect” because the news media have declared that to be the case. He will be the next President, and there is no room at all for dispute about that fact.
D: The media do not determine who is President. The next President will be determined when he has enough certified and unchallenged votes. We are nowhere near that point.

T: The story about Hunter Biden’s laptop is “Russian disinformation”. It’s designed to make you think Joe Biden did something wrong, but Joe doesn’t do things that are wrong. Joe will bring integrity back to the White House.
D: The laptop belongs to Hunter Biden. Russia has nothing at all to do with it. There is a massive amount of information on the laptop demonstrating schemes to enrich the Biden family by selling influence. Tony Bobulinski, worked closely with the Bidens to set up some of the questionable transactions. Tony met with Joe and said Joe was fully onboard with these business plans. Joe got a percentage of the foreign money. Hunter made deals with high ranking Chinese communists, plus lucrative deals with several other countries. Joe is thoroughly compromised. The way that the MSM and all of social media worked to hide this story is shocking.

T: President Obama set a good example of peaceful transition of power. He did everything he could to help President Trump.
D: President Obama, and ‘dirty cops’ at the head of his intelligence and law enforcement agencies planned and orchestrated a plan to damage the incoming President. “The Resistance” has continued to this day. Trump has never had a single day when he was not under attack by these forces.

T: Trump and his supporters are white supremacists. Trump said the white supremacists in Charlottesville were “good people”. He seems unwilling to condemn them. Trumps desire to protect our southern border proves that he is racist. His desire to ban all Muslims from the country proves that he is a bigot.
D: Biden started his campaign with the Charlottesville lie and he repeated it often. He once told a black audience that Republicans wanted “to put y’all back in chains”. He works hard to keep blacks on the Democrat Voting Plantation, even going so far as to telling a black person, “you ain’t black” if you don’t vote for Joe. Trump condemned white supremacists in Charlottesville and has done so many times since then. Borders are not racist. Countries have borders. Trump did not ban Muslims. He wanted to restrict entry from a few pro-Jihadist countries.

Read more …

Victoria Nuland!

• Biden’s Deep State (Brown)

Philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote about the banality of evil, and there’s never been a more banal bunch than the foreign policy and security state crew Barak Obama surrounded himself with for eight years beside the possible exception of Bush’s own Neocons. Now after three years screaming about “Russian collusion” it appears the Evil Empire is about to regain its lost ground, championing new wars and more interventionist expansionism with a much greater role for the US military in the world. Let’s name names.

Pentagon For the defense chief post, the Washington Post has portrayed the banal face of Michele Flournoy as the pick to ‘restore stability’ to the Pentagon, an entirely false assertion. Recall that Fluornoy promotes unilateral global US military intervention, and advocated the destruction of Libya in 2011. By the military-industrial revolving door, Flournoy enabled many Corporate weaponry contracts amounting to tens of millions. Likewise Fluornoy is on the Booz-Hamilton board, where the swamp cannot get any deeper. As if this wretched example of an agent-provocateur for war and destruction were not bad enough, Biden is reportedly considering Lockheed-Martin banal kingpin Jeh Johnson for the DoD position, too.

Lockheed director Johnson was employed by Rob Reiner and Atlantic editor arch-Neocon David Frum to run the Committee to Investigate Russia which mysteriously blew up as soon as the Mueller Report was released. Jeh Johnson has continued to warn of “Russian interference” in the US presidential election until now. Biden’s anointing as president-elect has ended that. As Homeland Security head, Johnson authorized cages for holding immigrant children. He also supported the assassination of General Suleimani, and has voiced support for US wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

State From Libya to Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and beyond, the banality of evil is perhaps best personified by Susan Rice – apparently Biden’s premiere pick for Secretary. Rice was an abject failure at the United Nations, but all seems forgiven, probably at the behest of Biden’s donors. After her failure at the UN, Obama kicked Rice upstairs to be his National Security Advisor, a position that does not require Senate approval. An obvious war hawk in the mold of the Democrat’s donor class, a Rice appointment could reinforce the liberal mantra that women can be just as good at interventionism as men, and ensure full re-establishment of the Neoliberal agenda in Washington. John Kerry has been flagged as a potential for State (again) too, but at age 77 and subsequent to the failure of the JCPOA Kerry is an unlikely pick.

Another potential pick among the banal Daughters of Darkness is Victoria Kagan-Nuland, architect of the 2014 debacle in Ukraine (among other things). Outed at State in an embarrassing act of what she called impressive statecraft and other embarrassing incidents, Nuland seems an unlikely choice. But Kagan-Nuland is as banal as banal can be, and Biden may somehow wish to reinforce his solidarity with the JTF and his donor class, on Israel.

Read more …

More Deep State.

• Biden Advisors Promise Smarter, More Secretive Permanent War Policy (GZ)

Throughout his campaign, Joe Biden railed against Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy, claiming it weakened the United States and left the world in disarray. “Donald Trump’s brand of ‘America First has too often led to America alone,” Biden proclaimed. He pledged to reverse this decline and recover the damage Trump did to America’s reputation. While Donald Trump called to make America Great Again, Biden seeks to Make the American Empire Great Again. Joe Biden: “Tonight, the whole world is watching America. And I believe at our best, America is a beacon for the globe. We will lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”

Among the president-elect’s pledges is to end the so-called forever wars – the decades-long imperial projects in Afghanistan and Iraq that began under the Bush administration. “It’s long past time we end the forever wars which have cost us untold blood and treasure,” Biden has said. Yet Biden – a fervent supporter of those wars – will delegate that duty to the most neoconservative elements of the Democratic Party and ideologues of permanent war. Michele Flournoy and Tony Blinken sit atop Biden’s thousands-strong foreign policy brain trust and have played central roles in every U.S. war dating back to the Bill Clinton administration. During the Trump era, they’ve cashed in through WestExec Advisors – a corporate consulting firm that has become home for Obama administration officials awaiting a return to government.

Flournoy is Biden’s leading pick for Secretary of Defense and Blinken is expected to be the president’s National Security Advisor. Since the 1990s, Flournoy and Blinken have steadily risen through the ranks of the military-industrial complex, shuffling back and forth between the Pentagon and hawkish think-tanks funded by the U.S. government, weapons companies, and oil giants. Under Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the 1996 Quadrinellial Defense Review, the document that outlined the U.S. military’s doctrine of permanent war – what it called “full spectrum dominance.” Flournoy called for “unilateral use of military power” to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.”

As Bush administration officials lied to the world about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD’s, Flournoy remarked that “In some cases, preemptive strikes against an adversary’s [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities may be the best or only option we have to avert a catastrophic attack against the United States.”

Read more …

What’s the cost?

• FDA Emergency Approval For COVID19 Antibody Serum Used To Treat Trump (JTN)

The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday evening gave emergency approval for a COVID-19 antibody treatment used to treat President Trump. Regeron’s antibody serum was authorized for treating mild to moderate coronavirus in adults, as well as children 12 years or older who have a high risk of progressing to severe disease. Regeron applied for emergency FDA approval in October after Trump praised the treatment in a Twitter video.
The FDA earlier this month also issued an emergency use authorization for another COVID-19 antibody treatment made by Eli Lilly.

Read more …

 

 

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Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

 

 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

– Emily Dickinson

 

 

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