Nov 102020
 


Hedy Lamarr Born November 9, 1914. As well as acting in 30 films, during the Second World War she co-developed a frequency-hopping guidance system for American torpedoes, the principles of which are used in Bluetooth and WiFi today.

 

 

 

Trump Campaign Alleges Potential Fraud In Pennsylvania Election Lawsuit (JTN)
System ‘Glitch’ Also Uncovered In Wisconsin – Removes Lead from Joe Biden (GP)
Fore! (Jim Kunstler)
Maricopa GOP Chair Failed to Show Up to Certify Dominion Voting Machines (GP)
The Grifters, Chapter 3 – Election Prediction (Ben Hunt)
US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper Fired And Replaced, Trump Announces (RT)
COVID19 Vaccine From Pfizer and BioNTech Is Strongly Effective
China Vaccine Trial Halted After Serious Adverse Event (BBG)
Chancellor Merkel, Put an End to the COVID “Fear Machine” (German Doctors)
One In Five COVID19 Patients Develop Mental Illness Within 90 Days (R.)
Children Regressing And Struggling Mentally In Lockdown (G.)
Lockdown Named Word Of The Year By Collins Dictionary (G.)

 

 

Man of the Year (2006)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1324953850462298112

 

 

Wait until you hear about Russia Collusion

 

 

Predictably, this leads some people to call for Barr’s impeachment. Maybe because the only thing the Dems have been successful at was Trump’s one-sided impeachment. But Barr faces a conundrum: There is a longstanding tradition at the DOJ to not investigate “until after the election certification process is completed”, but that would mean an official result would be there, which would then have to be reversed in case there is serious fraud, but by then it would be much harder to execute.

Barr Authorizes DOJ Prosecutors To Investigate Election Irregularities (JTN)

Attorney General William Barr has issued a memo in which he said that he authorized federal prosecutors “to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions in certain cases, as I have already done in specific instances.” Barr noted that this did not serve to indicate the Justice Department has determined that voting irregularities affected election outcomes. “Such inquiries and reviews may be conducted if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state,” Barr wrote. “Any investigation of claims of irregularities that, if true, would clearly not impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State should normally be deferred until after the election certification process is completed.

While U.S. Attorneys maintain their inherent authority to conduct inquiries and investigations as they deem appropriate, it will likely be prudent to commence any election-related matters as a preliminary inquiry, so as to assess whether available evidence warrants further investigative steps”. Media outlets recently projected Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential contest, but President Trump has not conceded and has made allegations of voter fraud. “While it is imperative that credible allegations be addressed in a timely and effective manner, it is equally imperative that Department personnel exercise appropriate caution and maintain the Department’s absolute commitment to fairness, neutrality and non-partisanship,” Barr wrote in the memo.

“While serious allegations should be handled with great care, specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries.” “Nothing here should be taken as any indication that the Department has concluded that voting irregularities have impacted the outcome of any election,” Barr wrote. “Rather, I provide this authority and guidance to emphasize the need to timely and appropriately address allegations of voting irregularities so that all of the American people, regardless of their preferred candidate or party, can have full confidence in the results of our elections.”

Read more …

Heritage Foundation “There was an unprecedented number of lawsuits filed before election day—with one common theme: ALL tried to eliminate security protocols for absentee ballots and tried to implement vote harvesting in every state.”

Trump Campaign Alleges Potential Fraud In Pennsylvania Election Lawsuit (JTN)

The Trump campaign on Monday announced that it had filed a lawsuit against Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Kathy Boockvar and the Boards of Elections in seven counties. The election-related lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and plaintiffs include the Trump campaign and two individuals. “Voters in Pennsylvania were held to different standards simply based on how they chose to cast their ballot, and we believe this two-tiered election system resulted in potentially fraudulent votes being counted without proper verification or oversight, as well as many voters being disenfranchised simply for casting their votes in-person,” Trump 2020 campaign general counsel Matt Morgan said in a statement. “We will not stop fighting for transparency and integrity in our electoral process and ensuring all Americans can trust in the results of a free and fair election.”

Read more …

A whole series of “glitches” by now. Not worth investigating, you say?!

System ‘Glitch’ Also Uncovered In Wisconsin – Removes Lead from Joe Biden (GP)

We’ve reported on numerous events identified in the 2020 election already which are being referred to as ‘glitches’ by the Democrats. Tonight we just uncovered another ‘glitch’ in Wisconsin. When this one is confirmed it will result in a 19,500 vote gain for Trump making the Wisconsin race a total toss-up. There is now a pattern of events we have uncovered across the country where votes are being taken from Republicans at all levels and transferred to competing Democrats in offsetting amounts. These are not random because in every case votes are moved from Republicans to Democrats. This is beginning to appear like a strategy used by the Democrats to steal this election.

We reported first on a system glitch, as it was labeled, in Michigan which switched 6,000 votes back to President Trump. Then another example was uncovered in Oakland County Michigan where again a Republican won his race as a result [of] this glitch. Then in Pennsylvania a ‘glitch’ was uncovered where nearly 20,000 votes were moved from President Trump to Biden. When this is confirmed it will result Biden’s lead being cut by 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania bringing this race back to even. Then we found approximately 6,000 votes which were taken from Trump and moved to Biden in Georgia due to a ‘glitch’. Now tonight we have identified approximately 10,000 votes that were moved from President Trump to Biden in just one Wisconsin County.

This information came from an individual who saw this happen in Rock County Wisconsin. On election night the results of the county were presented during the evening and showed that President Trump won Wisconsin in 2016. At 10:59 the votes came in and the race was close with both candidates at around 29,000 ballots. Then by 11:12 President Trump had taken a nearly 1,000 vote lead on Biden with 31,000 votes to Biden’s 30,000. At 11:21 these results had not changed much. Then at 11:43 more votes came in and they showed Trump had taken a commanding lead at 46,649 to Biden’s 37,133. This was a 9,516 vote lead for Trump.

But then suddenly at 11:57 these votes had swapped. Biden was reported with 46,649 and Trump was reduced to Biden’s former total of 37,133. These votes had swapped from the President Trump to Biden – again a swap from a Republican to a Democrat. The net impact was 19,032 votes. We checked these numbers again tonight from a different source and the final numbers are still showing Biden ahead of President Trump by the same 9,516 votes. Currently the race in Wisconsin is showing Biden with a lead of 1,630,570 votes to President Trump’s 1,610,030 votes. When this adjustment is confirmed Biden will only hold a 1,508 vote lead. This of course is before any of the hundreds of thousands of questionable votes showing up for Biden in Milwaukee early in the morning after the election are validated.

Read more …

“..the software’s development was funded by the Clinton Global Initiative in 2014..”

Fore! (Jim Kunstler)

The Democrats… the Resistance… “progressives,” the Left — whatever you want to call them — are much less afraid of being caught for committing election fraud than for getting nailed on a long list of previous and quite serious crimes dating back a decade, including SpyGate, MuellerGate (Russian Collusion), Ukraine-WhistleblowerGate, Uranium One, the Skolkovo technology transfer, the Clinton Foundation’s pay-to-play doings, and the recently disclosed influence-peddling and money-laundering schemes of the Biden Family. A little election fraud ain’t nuthin to that massive, reeking landfill of perfidy and sedition, and folks apparently forget that the election happened just on the eve of whatever investigative results John Durham & Company may be ready to drop on the nation — including the afore-alluded-to Biden Family hijinks, of which there is a live case at the DOJ. Boy are they afraid of all that.

Just sayin… in case you put it out of mind in all the excitement. So, now we will discover whether they committed targeted election fraud, and then, perhaps, we’ll find out how those other matters turn. As for the election fraud itself, you can be sure that a holy host of computer nerd statisticians on Mr. Trump’s end have been working backstage, out of the limelight, to sift those kwazy numbers coming out of places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada where the race was pretty darn tight. From a strictly procedural point-of-view, Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes look like an open-and-shut case of official misfeasance — insofar as that state’s Supreme Court exceeded its authority in changing the election law to allow ballots received after 8p.m. election day to be counted for days afterward (election law being the sole prerogative of the state legislature).

And that’s a lot of ballots. That will likely be adjudicated in the US supreme court, and pretty pronto, given the exigent circumstances. Then there are the janky numbers in all those other states where the Dominion vote tabulation software was used: 130,000 here… 27,000 there… et cetera. By the way, the company that puts out this Dominion product is partly owned by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum; one of its top executives is Nancy Pelosi’s former chief-of-staff; and the software’s development was funded by the Clinton Global Initiative in 2014. I guess they know a good thing when it jumps up and bites them on the lips.

Read more …

“..the company “uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a glitch.” “That is something that they don’t ever do. I’ve never seen them update anything the day before the election..”

Maricopa GOP Chair Failed to Show Up to Certify Dominion Voting Machines (GP)

Republican Arizona State Rep. Kelly Townsend is calling on Maricopa County GOP Chairman Rae Chornenky to step down, along with her first Vice Chair, for failing to show up to certify the Dominion Voting Machines. There has been major controversy over their machines due to the company’s ties to Democrats and the Clinton Foundation. “I just found our that Maricopa County GOP Chairman Rae Chornenky failed to show up to certify the Dominion / Machines. For this reason, I call for her resignation, along with her 1st Vice Chair,” Rep. Townsend tweeted.


The machines were used in 33 states, including Arizona, Michigan and Georgia. Mark Malloch Brown, Chairman of the Board of Smartmantics, which makes the machines, also serves on George Soros’ Open Societies Foundation Board. In Georgia, voting was halted for two hours after the company sent an “update” to their machines. Marcia Ridley, elections supervisor at Spalding County Board of Elections, told Politico that the company “uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a glitch.” “That is something that they don’t ever do. I’ve never seen them update anything the day before the election,” Ridley said. Ridley said she did not know what the upload contained.

Read more …

“Polls create the plays. Election models create the score. Fivey Fox and “Nate Silver” announce the game. All to create engagement with a giant media corp.

No one understands how to create and sell a spectator sport better than Disney.”

The Grifters, Chapter 3 – Election Prediction (Ben Hunt)

How do you get more engagement with your news programming? How do you trigger more neurotransmitter brain chemicals in your ABC News audience? By creating “news” that can be transformed into an entertaining/enraging game. By transforming a singular Election Day event into a months-long spectator sport, complete with plays and scores and announcers and cheering/anxious fans. That’s what election modeling does. That’s why public polling and election modeling exist. Polls to create the “news”, election models to create the score, Fivey Fox and “Nate Silver” to announce the game. All to create engagement with a diversified media corporation.

That’s why Disney acquired FiveThirtyEight. That’s why they originally had it within ESPN and then transferred it to ABC News. That’s why they created the cartoon characters of Fivey Fox and “Nate Silver”. No one understands how to create and sell a spectator sport better than Disney. Here’s the kicker. This spectator sport that Disney/ABC News/FiveThirtyEight has created around Election Day has very little connection with the election itself. The “scores” and the “announcing” and the game itself are a totally distinct thing from the process and dynamic and the outcome of our most important political institution. And they know it. And yet they sell their game over and over again as if it were the real thing. That’s what makes it a grift.

In a nutshell, the FiveThirtyEight prediction model is designed around thousands of simulations of statewide results (based on statewide polls and a hypothesized probability distribution on state level results) that are then mapped against the Electoral College. These thousands of simulations of possible statewide results create a probabilistic distribution on the Electoral College outcome, and whatever percentage of outcomes are on the good side of 269 Electoral College votes for a candidate is the answer for the point-in-time odds of that candidate winning. FiveThirtyEight went into Election Day 2020 assigning Joe Biden a 90% chance of winning, which was even more divorced from election reality than their 2016 “prediction” that Hillary Clinton had a 72% chance of winning.

There is zero alpha … zero useful information … in a model that predicts an election outcome with near certainty when in truth that outcome hinges on a few tens of thousands of votes out of 150 million votes cast. To use a spectator sports analogy, FiveThirtyEight set the 2020 betting odds for this “football game” with Joe Biden as a massive favorite, say 20 points. He won by 1 point. In 2016, FiveThirtyEight had Hillary Clinton as a somewhat less massive favorite, say 15 points. She lost by 1 point. There’s nothing “robust” about these predictions, as “Nate Silver” is currently claiming. These predictions are disasters. FiveThirtyEight would be laughed out of Vegas for setting odds like this.

Read more …

Mark who?

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper Fired And Replaced, Trump Announces (RT)

President Donald Trump has announced via Twitter that US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has been removed from his position, and has already been replaced. Christopher C. Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will take on the defense secretary role “effective immediately,” Trump tweeted. “Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service,” he added. Rumors have circulated for months that Esper would either be fired or resign. In June, he publicly disagreed with the president floating the idea of deploying active-duty military to cities dealing with riots stemming from Black Lives Matter protests. The two have disagreed on other issues too, and Trump even suggested in August that Esper was on his way out. Asked if he had confidence in Esper’s leadership, Trump referred to him as “Mark Yesper” and said he “considers” firing everybody. “At some point, that’s what happens,” he said. Esper had served as secretary of defense since June 2019.

Read more …

Twitter comment: “Wait, the vaccine was known to be successful weeks ago?? Fauci, Biden, media mocked Trump at this time for saying vaccine was close. The Oct announcement just happened to be delayed AFTER the election?”

COVID19 Vaccine From Pfizer and BioNTech Is Strongly Effective

Pfizer and partner BioNTech said Monday that their vaccine against Covid-19 was strongly effective, exceeding expectations with results that are likely to be met with cautious excitement — and relief — in the face of the global pandemic. The vaccine is the first to be tested in the United States to generate late-stage data. The companies said an early analysis of the results showed that individuals who received two injections of the vaccine three weeks apart experienced more than 90% fewer cases of symptomatic Covid-19 than those who received a placebo. For months, researchers have cautioned that a vaccine that might only be 60% or 70% effective.

The Phase 3 study is ongoing and additional data could affect results. In keeping with guidance from the Food and Drug Administration, the companies will not file for an emergency use authorization to distribute the vaccine until they reach another milestone: when half of the patients in their study have been observed for any safety issues for at least two months following their second dose. Pfizer expects to cross that threshold in the third week of November.

In their announcement of the results, Pfizer and BioNTech revealed a surprise. The companies said they had decided not to conduct the 32-case analysis “after a discussion with the FDA.” Instead, they planned to conduct the analysis after 62 cases. But by the time the plan had been formalized, there had been 94 cases of Covid-19 in the study. It’s not known how many were in the vaccine arm, but it would have to be nine or fewer. Gruber said that Pfizer and BioNTech had decided in late October that they wanted to drop the 32-case interim analysis. At that time, the companies decided to stop having their lab confirm cases of Covid-19 in the study, instead leaving samples in storage. The FDA was aware of this decision.

Read more …

“Serious adverse events that occur in drug trials include death, immediate risk of death, long term or serious incapacitation, and hospitalization.”

China Vaccine Trial Halted After Serious Adverse Event (BBG)

The final-stage trial of a Chinese frontrunner vaccine candidate has been halted in Brazil due to a serious adverse event, the first time that any of the Asian nation’s rapidly developed Covid-19 shots have met with such a setback. Testing of Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s vaccine, called Coronavac, has been halted in Brazil after an event that occurred on Oct. 29, said the Brazil Health Agency on Tuesday, without any further detail on the illness. The study is interrupted in accordance with regulations while the agency analyzes if the study should continue, it said. Serious adverse events that occur in drug trials include death, immediate risk of death, long term or serious incapacitation, and hospitalization.


Such pauses are not uncommon in large-scale drug trials and two western developers – AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson – have paused their vaccine trials in recent months due to serious adverse events, only to re-start them after investigation. But China has already started administering its vaccines, including Coronavac, to hundreds of thousands of people under an expansive emergency use approval, making the prospect of a safety issue being detected at this stage more concerning. Last month, China’s science ministry said its companies have inoculated about 60,000 volunteers in final-stage trials, but there have been no reports of serious adverse events.

Read more …

You can’t listen only to virologists and epidemiologists. It’s bad science.

Chancellor Merkel, Put an End to the COVID “Fear Machine” (German Doctors)

Dear Chancellor Dr. Merkel, We, the signatories, are doctors from all areas of healthcare, who have been serving people in practices and clinics for decades. During this time, we have witnessed more than one seasonal infection in Germany, most of them with far more severe conditions and significantly more deaths than since January 2020 from COVID infectious diseases. Together we serve approx. 70.000 people. The circumstances of the coronavirus wave in the FRG have been perceived differently than the media and the ongoing warnings of politics, which were unjustified in fact, presented to the public for months. Predictions of individual advisory virologists with millions of seriously ill and hundreds of thousands of deaths in Germany have not been true in any way.

In the practices, hardly any infected patients were infected and if, then with normal, mostly mild progressions of virus flu. The hospitals have been more empty than ever before. There was no overload of ICU. Doctors, doctors and nurses were skillful in short-term work. Initially, we found the wave of the virus running towards us to be threatening and were able to understand the infection protection measures. However, there are months of secured evidence and facts that this wave of the virus is only slightly more intense than an ordinary seasonal flu and must be considered much more harmless than, for example, influenza infection in 2017/2018 with 27.000 deaths in Germany. According to the data situation, there hasn’t been a threat to the German population from Covid-19 for months. This must be the reason to return to normal life in Germany a life without restrictions, fear and infection hysteria.

We’re increasingly seeing older people with depression, young children and adolescents with severe anxiety and behavioral disorders, people with severe conditions who could have been cured in timely treatment. We notice disruptions in interpersonal cooperation, hysteria and aggression caused by fear of infection, there are more and more vigilations and denunciations of “positive swab victims” – all this leads to an unprecedented tension and division of the population. The development of additional severe chronic diseases is foreseeable. These diseases with their severe consequences are expected to far outweigh the possible Covid-19 damage in the FRG.The signatories therefore call on those responsible for health care and politics to discharge their responsibilities for the people of our country and immediately avert this threatening development.

We demand an immediate revision of the available data by an independent panel of experts from all relevant specialized groups and a prompt implementation of the resulting consequences for the people of our country.We demand that ineffective and possibly even harmful anti-infection measures be stopped immediately and that mass testing is meaningful (e.g. Currently, 1,1 million tests / week, of which 99,3 % negative, cost per week: EUR 82,5 million) to be audited by a panel of independent experts. We demand to intensify the protection of risk patients and only from them, where every viral infection can take a dramatic course – the healthy, immune competent population does not need protection beyond the general hygiene and health measures that have been known and proven for generations.

Read more …

“Anxiety, depression and insomnia were most common among recovered COVID-19 patients…and the researchers also found significantly higher risks of dementia…”

One In Five COVID19 Patients Develop Mental Illness Within 90 Days (R.)

Many COVID-19 survivors are likely to be at greater risk of developing mental illness, psychiatrists said on Monday, after a large study found 20% of those infected with the coronavirus are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within 90 days. Anxiety, depression and insomnia were most common among recovered COVID-19 patients in the study who developed mental health problems, and the researchers also found significantly higher risks of dementia, a brain impairment condition. “People have been worried that COVID-19 survivors will be at greater risk of mental health problems, and our findings … show this to be likely,” said Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at Britain’s Oxford University.

Doctors and scientists around the world urgently need to investigate the causes and identify new treatments for mental illness after COVID-19, Harrison said. “(Health) services need to be ready to provide care, especially since our results are likely to be underestimates (of the number of psychiatric patients),” he added. The study, published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal, analysed electronic health records of 69 million people in the United States, including more than 62,000 cases of COVID-19. In the three months following testing positive for COVID-19, 1 in 5 survivors were recorded as having a first time diagnosis of anxiety, depression or insomnia. This was about twice as likely as for other groups of patients in the same period, the researchers said.

The study also found that people with a pre-existing mental illness were 65% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without. Mental health specialists not directly involved with the study said its findings add to growing evidence that COVID-19 can affect the brain and mind, increasing the risk of a range of psychiatric illnesses. “This is likely due to a combination of the psychological stressors associated with this particular pandemic and the physical effects of the illness,” said Michael Bloomfield, a consultant psychiatrist at University College London.

Read more …

Just lovely! If you catch COVID, you get mental health issues. And if you go into lockdown so you don’t catch COVID….you also get mental health issues.

Children Regressing And Struggling Mentally In Lockdown (G.)

Children hardest hit by Covid-19 measures have regressed during the pandemic, with some who were potty-trained pre-lockdown reverting to nappies and dummies, and others forgetting basic numbers or how to use a knife and fork, according to the schools watchdog Ofsted. Older children have lost physical fitness as well as reading and writing skills, and some are showing signs of mental distress, which can be seen in an increase in eating disorders and self-harm, according to Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman. More children are being taken out of school to be home-educated, particularly among families from minority ethnic communities, who are at greater risk from Covid and may be more fearful of catching it. Meanwhile, school leaders are “fire-fighting” as concerns grow about budget pressures.


The findings, based on 900 visits to schools and social care settings by Ofsted inspectors since schools fully reopened in September, paint a worrying picture of the impact of the pandemic on children at every stage of the education system in England. While children with good support structures have coped well, those whose parents were unable to work flexibly and have therefore been less available to help have lost out most. Children with special educational needs and disabilities have been “seriously affected” across all age groups, both in their care and education, losing vital support including speech and language services. Ofsted remains worried about children at risk of neglect, exploitation and abuse. Child protection referrals fell while schools were closed to most pupils and have not yet returned to normal levels.

Read more …

But not facemask?!

Lockdown Named Word Of The Year By Collins Dictionary (G.)

Lockdown, the noun that has come to define so many lives across the world in 2020, has been named word of the year by Collins Dictionary. Lockdown is defined by Collins as “the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction, and access to public spaces”, and its usage has boomed over the last year. The 4.5bn-word Collins Corpus, which contains written material from websites, books and newspapers, as well as spoken material from radio, television and conversations, registered a 6,000% increase in its usage. In 2019, there were 4,000 recorded instances of lockdown being used. In 2020, this had soared to more than a quarter of a million.


“Language is a reflection of the world around us and 2020 has been dominated by the global pandemic,” says Collins language content consultant Helen Newstead. “We have chosen lockdown as our word of the year because it encapsulates the shared experience of billions of people who have had to restrict their daily lives in order to contain the virus. Lockdown has affected the way we work, study, shop, and socialise. With many countries entering a second lockdown, it is not a word of the year to celebrate but it is, perhaps, one that sums up the year for most of the world.” Other pandemic-related words such as coronavirus, social distancing, self-isolate and furlough were on the dictionary’s list of the top 10 words. So was the term key worker.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 10 2020

Viewing 26 posts - 1 through 26 (of 26 total)
  • Author
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  • #65364

    Hedy Lamarr Born November 9, 1914. As well as acting in 30 films, during the Second World War she co-developed a frequency-hopping guidance system for
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 10 2020]

    #65365
    John Day
    Participant

    https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/11/do-what-you-can.html

    We get a long time to think about things, or something like a month, anyway, so I’m arguing that we do so.
    The main thing upon which our society is based is the means-of-production, that which makes our food and stuff and supplies our utilities, building materials, and so on.
    Many of us have come to take the means of production as a given, assuming that it will remain always present and always adequate.
    The US got a century of oil powered economy pasted onto a previous century of progressively coal-driven economy, and vast virgin forests, aquifers and mineral wealth. That was always enough to grow into until 1971 or so when US oil production peaked out. That same moment, the US ran low on gold, and defaulted on the dollar. The dollar and global oil were more intertwined than ever by 1985, and the seemingly endless economic growth resumed. Glad that’s over. Thank you Mr Reagan!
    I commented yesterday that Americans are to oil, as a fish is to water. We can use less gas, and we use less this year, but everything we have comes through gasoline, diesel and natural gas power to industry, transportation, mining, and synthesis of special substances that everything comes wrapped in.
    We are in way over our heads and can’t really think our way out of this box. We will have to do this step by step.
    No top-down fix will work. It has to be each of us and all of us finding adaptations over this decade. Will our society change direction under totalitarianism, or will we do so with more local and personal autonomy? Each approach has strengths, totalitarianism might work better at first, but it might not, because we are starting in such a zombie-economy mess. In the medium to longer term, everybody at all e=levels of society working things out to self-reorganize our system of political economy is clearly the best way for our species to adapt to a world of declining fossil fuel and resources.

    ​ ​Peak oil – including from fracking and tar sands – finally occurred in 2018. Hardly anyone noticed because – as happened in the USA in 1970 – everyone assumed that it would be a temporary blip. Oil extraction in 2019 was not substantially lower than 2018; but there was no month in 2019 when extraction was higher than it had been in November 2018. And, of course, in 2020 the world discovered more urgent issues to worry about. Nevertheless, oil extraction – and oil demand – plummeted as a result of the various state responses to the pandemic. Some wells will be shut permanently as the cost of reopening them is too high. Others will reopen, but only if the price of oil rises considerably. Pipelines and refineries will also have to be repaired.

    The narrative problem after peak oil

    The elites who own us and own the means of production and own the property and the politicians and the deep state had a plan that got a wench thrown in the works when some smart-asses un-fixed the 2016 election and we ended up with Donald Trump in the White House failing to go along with that plan. Can a plan work after a 4 year delay?
    Do we human beings get to play a part in this massive economic reset?
    Whoever the courts and electoral college decide is president, we will get something drastically less than what is being promised.
    The tension is only beginning. Secure basic needs going forward.

    Jim Kunstler: One other thing: whoever occupies that office beginning in 2021 is going to face an overwhelming economic crisis. Oil production, which stood just under 13 million barrels-a-day at its peak November, 2019, is down over 2 million barrels a day now, and will be sinking to about 7 million barrels-a-day in 2021, which is far short of what we use. Shale oil is a bust. It costs too much to get out of the ground and the companies that put their mojo into shale can’t make any money at it, and can’t pay off their loans, and won’t get new loans to continue operations. So, the whole industry is going to shit. Oil is what has supported the US economy for a hundred years, and it’s over. Our attempt to compensate for that quandary by borrowing more and more money at every level is also drawing to a close. It will break the bond markets, the dollar, and the banks. This is the essence of the long emergency and we’re entering the heart of the storm now.
    It will require a pretty thorough rearrangement of life in our country, mainly in downscaling everything we do and re-localizing productive activity as much as possible. This has absolutely nothing to do with race-and-gender issues or any of the other ideological horse-shit that has preoccupied the Left for more than a decade.

    With or Without

    #65370
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Man of the Year”, not us, Ukraine. This is exactly what the present leader is, who was following exactly his own Ukrainian TV show of the same premise.

    “…the company “uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a glitch.” “That is something that they don’t ever do. I’ve never seen them update anything the day before the election..”

    I am a coincidence theorist, and that is not suspicious at all.

    “Maricopa GOP Chair Failed to Show Up to Certify Dominion Voting Machines (GP)”

    GA’s head shut off all the passwords on the machines. Also totally great and not suspicious.

    Mona

    “US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper Fired And Replaced, Trump Announces (RT)”

    I’m not suspicious at all that Goodman Esper was going to tell the Army to stand down and “drag him out of the White House” when AntiFa bum-rushes the fences. Nope. That totally wasn’t going to happen with CFR Esper and his actions so far.

    “COVID19 Vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech Is Strongly Effective”

    So…in 6 months they found the cure to the common cold? Wow, who knew? Should have asked before. At 90% I bet it’s still safer to get COVID than the vaccine. That’s been true of the flu shot as well.

    One In Five COVID19 Patients Develop Mental Illness Within 90 Days (R.)”

    Duh. You told them “YOU’RE a-GONNA DIE!!!!” to a disease that is 99.97% safe, so yes, they’re now going to have to digest their own mortality issues. But that’s YOUR malpractice. Widespread, criminal, unscientific malpractice. Against children.

    “Children Regressing and Struggling Mentally In Lockdown (G.)”

    Yes, children that are 100% functionally immune. Must. Kill. Children.

    Must. Not. Protect. Grandma. From contamination in nursing home. No nay never. Nursing homes still wide open, no new procedures.

    So science: Attack the immune: expose the vulnerable. #Winning! It’s almost like the government is running it.

    Can we fire Fauci yet? I mean, clearly everything went totally wrong. He stopped nothing. We’re in wave two, he’s been unable and unprepared for that too. He’s also killed all the poor people and now the children: complete, provable, double-cross-checked failure of a failure. So…fire him? Bring in new ideas? No! “Failure is Success”, Comrade. NY is the best state in the world, a model to all.

    “Lockdown Named Word of the Year by Collins Dictionary (G.)”

    “Lockdown: /ˈläkdoun/ Universal house arrest, enacted without any rule of law, oversight, procedure, or end, which is collaterally killing all the poor and working, as a measure of forced austerity to delay the economic reset by pushing money to billionaires, and keep the people under violent, oppressive military rule when the shortages and riots come.” Got it.

    That’s why it’s now. At $3T a half-year, the compounding is vertical. They ran out of time. They must have a re-set and they must have a scapegoat. Voluntary lockdown for a nearly-safe virus, the common cold. And people bought it hahahahaha! “No human rights for you!” Shortly, no pension, no property, no job. “You will own nothing and like it” — Klaus. On universal basic income. While we own your house and job. And we’re not letting you do your job. And you can’t speak, walk, play, visit, laugh, sing, criticize: NOTHING. That’s Pure, total Stalinist Soviet Socialism, just as we aaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllll said back in Day 1 of the EU unelected, unaccountable bureaucratic system, staffed primarily by ex-Soviets.

    #65372
    Dr. D
    Participant

    And they are constantly using the words and warning “Dark Winter”. Biden says total lockdown forever. As everyone but Wuhan, which is open. Funny.

    Here’s the link to “Dark Winter” deadly pandemic war-game by these same people:
    https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/events-archive/2001_dark-winter/index.html

    #65373
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    Well, as for this glitch in Wisconsin, I’m going to have a hard to time giving the notion any credence as long as the places on the Internet I find talking about such a thing are right-wing cultist sites and “news” sources. Given the current political climate, it really sound as though “stolen election” claims are as much a bunch of sour grapes as the “RussiaRussiaRussia” gambit of Hillary Clinton’s partisans.

    But even if the Democrats did steal the election this time, I really have to wonder why when Republicans steal national elections (2000 and 2004), it’s “You lost, get over it”, but when Democrats supposedly steal elections, it’s suddenly the apocalypse for constitutional representative government.

    That said, I’ve thought for quite some time now that the USA really needs a nation-wide system of hand-counted paper-ballots. Because whether it’s actual election fraud or just allegations of fraud meant to undermine the legitimacy of the incoming administration, it ends up being a very unhealthy and corrosive thing to our body politic. Hand-counted paper ballots would do so much to forestall either situation.

    #65374
    zerosum
    Participant


    No one understands how to create and sell a spectator sport better than Disney.

    I’m just a poor, powerless, uneducated, bystander reading/watching the circus put on by the elites.

    Powerful men have failed to change the systems and been dragged out of their holes and culverts.
    Just being able to read the web does not confer any power to me.
    I’ve read, that there is a woman, wearing an ankle bracelet, who own 3 multi-million houses in Vancouver, fighting extradition to the USA because she is CFO, of a subsidiairy company that facilitated banking for Iran.

    #65375
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “The Presidential Election Was Legitimate. Conspiracies Are Not. “
    https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/the-presidential-election-was-legitimate?utm_source=pocket-newtab

    We know because we haven’t looked. And we’re not going to start now.

    All things I haven’t looked into are true, obviously. An Authority Appealed and told me so. So I believed them ’cause that’s what I wished was true.

    #65376
    zerosum
    Participant

    Look!!!
    Will this move the needle?

    “If indeed Biden is speaking off the record with foreign leaders, it adds to the charges stemming from the Hunter Biden laptop case, which allegedly proves that Joe Biden was involved in dodgy foreign business deals with Chinese and Russian government agents.”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/obama-security-adviser-admits-biden-already-talking-foreign-leaders-breach-logan-act

    #65377
    zerosum
    Participant

    Echo
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela
    Maduro won the 2018 election with 67.8% of the vote. The result was challenged by countries including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, France and the United States who deemed it fraudulent and moved to recognize Juan Guaidó as president.[134][135][136][137] Other countries including Cuba, China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran have continued to recognize Maduro as president,[138][139] although China, facing financial pressure over its position, has reportedly begun hedging its position by decreasing loans given, cancelling joint ventures, and signaling willingness to work with all parties.[140] A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman denied the reports, describing them as “false information”.[141]

    #65378
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    I did find this news story about electronic voting-machine vote-flipping at a mainstream television-channel news site. Regardless of the parties involved in the actual event, I can very easily believe an account of electronic voting shadiness. This kind of voting has always seemed to me to be made-to-order for election fraud and rigging.

    #65379
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    One In Five COVID19 Patients Develop Mental Illness Within 90 Days (R.)

    I dug deeper into this, because they were including insomnia as a mental illness, when I thought it was a potential symptom of a mental illness, not the illness itself.

    The actual study published in the Lancet reveals that “one in five” is really 18.3% (not 20%). For comparison, it would be nice to see how many flu patients similarly develop mental illness within 90 days. The answer appears in Table 3:

    Table 3
    Estimated incidence of all (first and recurrent) psychiatric diagnoses during the first 14 to 90 days after a diagnosis of COVID-19 compared with other health events

    COVID-19: 18.1%
    Influenza: 13.3%

    Not so fear-inducing to hear that 13 out of 100 of flu patients develop mental illness (as measured by the study), compared to 18 out of 100 Covid-19 patients.

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30462-4/fulltext

    #65380
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    @Doc Robinson: If insomnia were mental illness, they would have thrown me into the booby hatch by now. 🙂

    #65381
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Typo: 18.3% should be 18.1%.

    And those 18% were mostly, by a large margin, people who had a previous psychiatric diagnosis.

    “The incidence of any psychiatric diagnosis in the 14 to 90 days after COVID-19 diagnosis was 18.1% including 5.8% that were a first diagnosis.”

    #65382
    Geppetto
    Participant

    Just to inject a little levity into the convo:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/knot_agency/status/1325950080629821443

    #65385
    zerosum
    Participant

    They live in an altered reality, an untruth, a lie.
    Correction”
    We all live in an altered reality, an untruth, a lie.

    #65386
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    “Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is. And you must bend to its power or live a lie.” – Miyamoto Musashi

    Words to live by. Why? Because our desires are like a lens through which we see reality. The stronger the desire, the greater our perception is warped. That is one reason to avoid the Trump-hatred phenomenon, even though the man is a lightning rod for such feelings. The effect is also the same on the other side of the coin, which is why it’s often said that “love is blind” – referring specifically to the attractive/craving aspect of what we erroneously call love.

    Where have we seen this? Why in Russiagate, of course. Note that those who had the deepest loathing for Trump were also the greatest enthusiasts of the media’s Trump-hating campaign, waiting expectantly by their televisions for the next Trump-bashing broadcast. They are also the same ones who are now crying tears of joy, dancing in celebration over his defeat and humiliation. They will not see any voter fraud, and in fact will turn on you like a wild animal if you even suggest it. They live in an altered reality, an untruth, a lie.

    #65387
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ Maxwell Quest

    I see my post/answer before your question/post.

    #65388
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    A lovely news and commentary harvest today.

    We wail about the mental/physical health consequences of inept lockdowns. Rightly so. But our mental/physical health was a hole with a paper sack in it in the first place. I see a tendency to treat covid and responses to it as events larger than the reality they impact. Covid isn’t as bad as the fear-mongers claim. Likewise, inept/corrupt/malign responses to covid aren’t as bad as the fear-mongers claim.

    Covid and responses thereto just provided a nifty focal lens to show how functionally bereft our civilization has become. Mostly, the underlying issue is the same as that on which TAE was founded: peak oil/insane economics.

    The Consciousness of Sheep article shared by John Day sums the big picture up just fine while only mentioning “pandemic” twice, properly (imo) citing them as minor but inevitable catalysts to “help” the Titanic to properly line up on a vertical float or sink narrative line.

    converging downward trends

    #65390
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    @zerosum

    Yeah, sorry about that. Sometimes after posting I notice something I want to edit. Every so often after a quick edit, everything disappears after hitting ‘Submit’. Last time that occurred I waited for hours for my post to show up, but it never did. This time I just reposted immediately, but not before you had commented on the earlier post which vanished. In this case, behavior that portends an actual software “glitch”. 🙂

    #65391
    a kullervo
    Participant

    Greetings,

    Hedy Lamarr
    The most dangerous thing in the world: a beautiful woman with brains; fortunately the LEW* (League of Envidious Women) are there to keep her ilk in line.

    “One In Five COVID19 Patients Develop Mental Illness Within 90 Days (R.)”
    Nah. The madness was always there, just waiting to be panic-triggered.

    Glitches, malfeasance and stuff
    The “Democratic” Party, with the MSM onboard, is a runaway train: it went out of control in 2016 and is now reaching the end of the line at full throttle, where it will smash against Democracy itself. Perhaps Democracy – though seriously injured – may survive, but rejoice will spread across the land as the “Democratic” train and all its heinous passengers gets blown to smithereens.

    * Lew: (British dialect) tepid or lukewarm.

    #65392
    zerosum
    Participant

    Name the names
    https://buildbackbetter.com/the-transition/agency-review-teams/
    AGENCY REVIEW TEAMS
    Meet the Biden-Harris agency review teams

    #65393
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    Sometimes I feel like I’m in an episode of “The Simpsons” that just won’t end. And not one of the good episodes from the nineties.

    From WaPo: Postal worker admits fabricating allegations of ballot tampering, officials say. I understand if one is reluctant to trust WaPo as a source, as they have allowed their objectivity to be compromised since 2016 especially, but I would believe them before I would believe some of the sources that seem to be trusted around here.

    #65394
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    The U.S. in the 21st century: The Age of Mental Illness…

    #65395
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    Yeah, sorry about that. Sometimes after posting I notice something I want to edit. Every so often after a quick edit, everything disappears after hitting ‘Submit’.

    The same thing has happened to me. It happened to me only a couple days ago. This is part of the reason I do not comment very often — my posts disappear and it is a really aggravating experience.

    It is usually my fault. I usually do not proofread what I have written until after I click submit. Then I see my post and I reread it again, and usually find at least a couple typos that I want to change — things that actually affect the meaning. This often happens with little words that are easy to overlook — the last time I wanted to change a “to” to a “do”. So even after the message successfully posted, it was completely deleted once I tried to make a correction. I did not have the energy to draft everything again from scratch.

    #65396
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    Curiouser and curiouser. The postal worker in Pennsylvania is “recanting his recanting”, but an investigation into his allegations have found very little to nothing to substantiate them.

    #65397
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    @Boogaloo

    Yeah, it really sucks when your work goes POOF, and then you want to pull your hair out. That is why I always craft comments in Word first, copy and paste to the TAE comment field, and make sure to keep a copy until it actually gets posted. Usually within the hour. Any text entry tool will do the job if you don’t have MS Office.

    @Mister Roboto

    Recants don’t surprise me at this point, although as a rule I don’t believe anything from the WaPo. Just remind yourself what is at stake, and how much work and high-level coordination that has gone into fixing this election for Biden. I would guess that there is a great deal of pressure coming down on anyone who is coming forward. Remember Seth Rich? You just know that the death threats are flying fast and furious right now.

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