Nov 302020
 


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.

Read more …

“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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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 30 2020

Viewing 27 posts - 1 through 27 (of 27 total)
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  • #66183

    Jackson Pollock Greyed Rainbow 1953   • Nearly One-Third Of NY, NJ Small Businesses Reportedly Closed In 2020 (NYP) • Almost 700,000 Driven Into
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 30 2020]

    #66184

    Yes, zero, I was wondering about V. Arnold as well

    #66187
    teri
    Participant

    Oh, my, more Sidney Powell. From the article at American Thinker in today’s post [“The ‘Smartest Man In The Room’ Has Joined Sidney Powell’s Team” (AT)], we need to use some common sense here. I am NOT saying there aren’t problems with the election. I am NOT saying we don’t need some recounts. But some of these claims about fraud are just downright specious and require a tad of skepticism.

    From the American Thinker article, we get this: “Dominion used Chinese parts, and there’s reason to believe that China, Venezuela, Cuba interfered in the election.” Parts made in China proves…well, what exactly? Most of my household appliances have Chinese parts, as do pretty much everyone’s cell phones, electronics, and toys. This is meaningless. The bit about China, Venezuela and Cuba interfering is just tossed in without even an attempt to show proof. That is also meaningless.

    From article, “There was a Hammer and Scorecard cyber-attack that altered votes in the battleground states, and then forwarded the results to Scytl servers in Frankfurt, Germany, to avoid detection.” Okay, this is complete BS. Scytl does not have offices or servers in Frankfurt, Germany. Scytl does not tally or count votes in the US. Scytl products sold to the US are housed in the US at Amazon Web Services servers. The US Army has not, in fact, seized anything from Scytl in Barcelona, Frankfurt or anywhere else.

    From the article, “The systems failed to produce any auditable results.” Hmm. Georgia used Dominion because they were required by court order to have paper ballots, which Dominion provides. The paper ballots allows traceable, audit-able results.

    Dominion Systems was used in 24 states in the 2020 election. I guess that Dominion was not a problem when it was used in the states that Trump won, because they aren’t contesting those states. Nor are they suggesting there were any glitches at all one way or another in the other 18 states that used Dominion. If the software is a problem, it would be a problem in all the states that used it.

    But the most glaring problem with the article is this: “Although he had no access to the machines, Dr. Kershavarz has looked at available data about the election and the vote results.  Based on that information, he concluded 1. The counts in the disputed states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia) show electronic manipulation.” Wait, this guy has no access to the machines, the software, the ballots themselves, the smartsticks, the servers, or any of that; i.e., he has drawn his conclusions based entirely on the “available data” and the “vote results”? This is quite an admission for the Powell team to make. Their cyber-security guy did not even see the cyber or the security and is making a guess based on his gut instincts. That is appalling in what is purported to be a serious endeavor to investigate election fraud. He better have more than his best guess when they go to court.

    By the way, when you go to Powell’s website, you see a picture of her which is titled, “The Kraken Releaser”, which is so juvenile one has to cringe. Follow the instructions to donate to her Defending the Republic non-profit (which is not really a non-profit and the donations are not tax-deductible), and you find that checks are to be made out to “Sidney Powell”, not to “Defending the Republic”. So the donations do not have to be used in her court battles (or for any specific purpose at all), do not have to be accounted for by her “non-profit”, and she can claim that the money received was all gift money – which means any tax repercussions are borne by the donor.

    There is so much sketchy shit going on in every election in this benighted country. I just wish I didn’t have the feeling that every single person involved in this particular election is a grifter of some sort; from the candidates to the machines, from the primaries to the general, from the people who are sure Biden won to the people who are sure they can prove he didn’t. What a foul nest of actors across the board.

    #66188
    Polder Dweller
    Participant

    This is a fascinating article about how it can be that the French- and Italian-speaking cantons in Switzerland have a much bigger Covid problem than the German-speaking ones. The hypothesis is that it’s due to cultural differences and the nocebo effect. It’s in French so but Google translate can probably do a decent enough job on it.

    «Coronagraben»: une fausse énigme?

    I hope V. Arnold is OK – he’s part of the TAE furniture.

    #66189
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    Teri thank you for your analysis above on election fraud.
    Re Turchin’s predictions: he says that government debt (inability of government to cover its financial positions) is one of 3 key factors leading to mayhem. However, my understanding is that Steve Keen says that private debt, not public debt, is the biggest problem.
    Wading thru Graeber’s book on debt over 5000 years. Here’s a link to a review:.
    http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/olivia-schwob-long-history-debt-cancellation

    Predictions are hard -especially about the future.

    #66190
    sumac.carol
    Participant

    I miss V. Arnold too.

    #66191
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    The Modern Trolley Problem

    Lockdowns can be seen as a version of the trolley problem. If the trolley continues on its’ current course it will kill four people. If it switches to another track it will kill just one.

    The modern wrinkle is that if you switch tracks and kill just the one the press will continually criticise your decision. If you simply mow down the four the press will express sympathy that it had to happen but will support the decision.

    So lockdowns cause suicides, deaths through lack of medical treatment, medical screening, mental health problems, damage to the family, permanent loss of jobs, destruction of businesses and the economy but the press will not complain about this!

    The Media has spoken : Lockdowns are the ONLY answer.

    #66192
    Noirette
    Participant

    Small biz. teri, on prev. post, a fair description of the positive aspects of France, yes.

    Countries differ, there are many paths to reach a fair or accepted outcomes (hopefully 🙂 )

    Here (Switz, one canton) for small biz. e.g. vet clinic, indy restaurant, bicycle shop, tax accountant, hairdresser, etc. the Gvmt. could not intervene directly to help because of the principle of ‘free contract’, which specifies that anyone can contract anything with anyone (many limitations exist of course..) and all is up to them. Liberty! Individual responsibility!

    So, the Gvmt. concocted the following scheme: if the tenant and the landlord come to an agreement, they can together request that the Gvmt. pay the landlord half the rent – the other half would be the landlords’s loss, the tenant paying nothing. * Note the landlord takes a big hit. In CH, and particularly in this canton, landlords are mega-property-conglomerate owners, very unpopular – roughly 80% + of households and small biz are renters.

    This seems to have been working OK till now. The end result is unknown. Many small biz are collapsing nonetheless. Some merely out of boredom.

    * until the tenant can pay / the situation is sorted / etc.

    #66193
    Dr. D
    Participant

    The Media: Not a Doctor.

    The Chinese parts can be written with total-access back doors even without anyone knowing, like the Intel chips had last year. …Not that OUR agencies asked/let them do that to enable worldwide warrantless surveillance or anything. No no. Totally an accident what they most desired just happened from blue sky, and was only revealed by Assange’s desperate Valut 7 drop, for which they seem to be unusually and illegally unforgiving. But yes, China can do this, and then THEY would run our elections. But don’t they already?

    They ARE contesting Dominion in Trump-won states, there are affidavits of people reporting major fraud. In addition, in Georgia, the Congressman who WON is protesting the results, and may lose. What was the Trolley problem again, where the media won’t report it so it didn’t happen and is therefore proof?

    Kershavarz has no access to the machines. And? The machines obviously report to the GA central database. If that data makes no sense and for example, vote tallies rise, but also vanish (which has been seen) or has 700% of voters voting (also seen) would that not be the sort of “anomalies” or other unexplained that require a follow up? If there’s nothing there, why on earth would you NOT follow up and shut up the detractors, and create confidence? For example, in the big boards, 500k votes appeared for Biden TWICE, all after a certain hour, and all in two batches. At the same time, the total tally DROPPED. Maybe that’s normal. But shouldn’t we ask and get an answer?

    So I believe he has the running second-by-second count as it rose up, which should be a direct feed from the physical machines, and the data he has makes no sense. So? This isn’t rocket science. Investigate. Why would he need the physical machines FIRST, or ONLY, if he sees things that need follow up from his data-feed? If I smell smoke, do I say, “Nope, we won’t look in the windows because I am not the official smoke detector”? No. You start with a report, and the reports of crimes are investigated. Always. If I call and say a UFO landed on Main Street, does it have to be true? Does it have to be credible? No! The police drive by anyway and see if there is anything going on, discovering it’s an REO, not a UFO.

    When the police say “We’re not going to look because we already know,” then I already know they’re in on it. Which they are, which is why the nation has no confidence.

    “Almost 700,000 Driven into Poverty by COVID Crisis in UK (G.)”

    Anyone? 700k x increased death rate from poverty? Maybe 25K murdered? #Winning

    “UK Shops to Be Allowed to Open 24 Hours a Day in December and January (G.)”

    Huh? Lockdown so you can open? So are we shutting pubs at 10pm so we can have a week-long house party? Ah, but we trust the science.

    And then, as said, are they going to lockdown, reopen, lockdown, reopen for the rest of our lives? Apparently. Because we follow the Science that said this, and said NOT to do it. But they did what the Science said not to do, because we follow the Science. Got it!

    BTW, where are the death numbers? How can we have a pandemic with zero deaths. That is, the mysteriously vanishing John Hopkins study. Not only do we have no overall deaths, WE HAVE NO ADDITIONAL ELDERLY DEATHS. Now that I didn’t expect.

    Removed because the literal scientific truth “would give us the wrong idea” and misinform us. Information = misinformation, got it. Naturally it just shows they don’t have an explanation, or they would just give one. Removing it is proof the data is correct and accurate, because otherwise they’d say “Aw Melvin, you just carried the seven wrong.”

    PS how are you going to credit those R0’s when your PCR test is 90% wrong? This is Taleb’s problem: made-up garbage input data.

    despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation against traveling”

    Huh. With all the governors and their families ARE traveling and going to hair salons, restaurants, islands. AND the WHO says we can’t lock down. Follow the Science!!! Where we don’t lock down when we lock down, and we travel but also don’t travel. I’ve got it! What we need to do is let the super-special important people NOT lockdown, like the WHO says, and have all the people on the edge of poverty and small business owners (but I repeat myself) be locked down until 2099. That’s the only way to obey Science! And coincidentally exactly what we’re doing. “Some animals are more important than others.”

    “Buy why would you wipe election machines to begin with, especially before the election has been decided?”

    Because the election is pure as the driven snow and they have nothing to hide, of course. I always destroy evidence in an active court case when I’m innocent.

    One of America’s Great Wildernesses Being Destroyed in a Silent Massacre (LAT)”

    Like I was saying about how it’s fine to pave New Jersey from coast to coast, but don’t you cut an acre of the Amazon! Okay, so you want to save it now AFTER a) printing $4T in stimulus, b) lowering interest rates c) creating wild tax incentives for real estate d) handing that money, rates, and incentives to multi-billion structures like BlackRock then e) completely devastating, unemploying, and ravaging everyone from Atlanta to Miami. Hoodaknood? You notice we didn’t cut down, pave, develop, and destroy this BEFORE you at the top – that’s you 1% environmentalers – created this city-structure that makes you rich and rural Mississippi dirt-poor.
    So why don’t you go back to Brooklyn and the THEM to stop paving Mississippi. I mean, now that you’ve utterly and irreversibly destroyed Brooklyn and all Long Island. Because that’s where the economic directives are coming from.

    Oh and if you cut off those illogical, immoral, and mostly illegal directives, I bet you solve Tainter’s problem too.

    But we’ll never know because they’ll never try it.

    #66194
    straightwalker
    Participant

    @DR_D
    Well done. Long may you rant!

    #66195
    straightwalker
    Participant

    @teri
    Here is a link to the full contents of Sydney Powell’s suit in Georgia:

    You might want to read through the 104 pages and reconsider your opinions. I am not pro Trump, but I am pro fair elections.

    https://defendingtherepublic.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/COMPLAINT-CJ-PEARSON-V.-KEMP-11.25.2020.pdf

    #66196
    Bill7
    Participant

    > straightwalker @ DR_D Well done. Long may you rant!

    Hear, hear! So many playing dumb™ these days..

    ‘We Have Immune Systems, New York Times Dares To Admit’:

    “..We panic about “cases” even when they say nothing about severe consequences. Avoidance and finally suppression are the watchwords of the day, for a virus that is relatively mild by any historical standard, as Holman Jenkins just explained:

    U.S. government scientists now estimate that 40% of cases are asymptomatic and 80% of symptomatic cases are mild—in short, 88% of subjects don’t know they are infected or have no great incentive to find out if they are suffering from Covid or some more familiar bug.

    We could also mention the 99.9% survival rate, and that doesn’t consider the wildly disproportionate risk between the sick and healthy.

    Is this an experiment? Yes, and likely a deadly one.

    What precisely are we doing to ourselves? What are we doing to children?

    Early in the pandemic, doctors went on the national stage to frame it up clearly: we are wrecking our immune systems and making ourselves vulnerable to more serious pathogens later..”

    We Have Immune Systems, New York Times Reveals

    #66198
    Bill7
    Participant

    Mike Whitney- ‘Here’s Why You Should Skip the Covid Vaccine’: https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/heres-why-you-should-skip-the-covid-vaccine/

    Forbes- ‘Covid-19 Vaccine Protocols Reveal That Trials Are Designed To Succeed’:
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/covid-19-vaccine-protocols-reveal-that-trials-are-designed-to-succeed/?sh=348653a65247

    No thank you, please.. in my region you’d never know there is a “pandemic” except for all the maskies.

    #66199
    John Day
    Participant

    I’ve spent today catching up on my internet-firehose-information-drinking.
    It will sure take me some time to get a blog post together, but here are a few useful stories before bedtime in Europe and Asia.
    “It’s the vitamin-D, stupid”
    Conclusions The previous studies, reporting a vitamin D blood level impact, compared COVID-19 severity between different patients populations and so can hardly discriminate whether the vitamin D blood level is a real factor of covid-19 severity or only a marker of another weakness being the primary severity factor. In contrary, the date of the boost is an intrapopulation observation and can thus only be triggered by a parameter globally affecting the population, i.e. the sun UV daily dose decreases. This result evidences that low vitamin blood D level is a contributing factor of COVID-19 severity.
    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.28.20221176v4

    Poor people working “casually” in nursing homes had to work sick, and work part time in multiple nursing homes, because that’s business. There is, unfortunately no way to solve this. Move along…
    https://theconversation.com/why-nursing-home-aides-exposed-to-covid-19-arent-taking-sick-leave-150138

    This paper looks at the common long-term persistence of loss of smell after SARS-CoV-2 infection, and finds a golden-hamster animal model, where persistent loss of smell appears to be caused by persistent viral infection of cells in that area. This again raises the question I keep having about the possibility of low level viral infection causing persistent symptoms like fatigue, shortness of breath, and loss of smell.
    https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.18.388819v1.full#ref-12

    These are the people. Note that these people in the study were selected for having long term persistence of symptoms. This does not say what percentage of their population cohort they might comprise. It is not rare…
    Young, low risk patients with ongoing symptoms of covid-19 had signs of damage to multiple organs four months after initially being infected, a preprint study has suggested.1
    Initial data from 201 patients suggest that almost 70% had impairments in one or more organs four months after their initial symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
    https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4470

    One potentially good thing about the Oxford-Astra-Zeneca vaccine is that it is not a messenger RNA, genetic engineering “vaccine”, but a more traditional adenovirus-vector based vaccine, as is Russian Sputnik-V. It will also be freely shared technology, which makes it a threat to profits, so a media target.
    https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/28/health/oxford-astrazeneca-vaccines-developing-countries-intl/index.html

    #66200
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Recently read (elsewhere) how Israel just offed another Iranian nuclear bomb “scientist” , by means of a remote controlled machine gun. Nice.

    At first I thought, meh , they could have saved time and money using one Tesla and a hand grenade.

    And then I thought Oh My Frigging Gawd. That’s right. It would be as cheap and easy as a US politician .

    Self driving vehicles make door-to-door delivery of the “nasty item of your choice” way too cheap and easy .

    Too-High Tech has only just begun to deliver its manifold gifts. The coming century should be exciting.

    #66201
    John Day
    Participant

    I’ve got the blog post up, and there’s a lot in it today. (But what is reality?)
    10 micrograms of vitamin-D is 400 units. 1000 micrograms equals 1 milligram, equals 40.000 units.
    Figure out the difference between mcg and mg before trying LSD, folks. (Oops, did I say that?)
    It’s supposed to freeze here tonight. That will kill the tomato plants…
    I hope V.Arnold is OK.
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/11/simple-complex-and-esoteric.html

    #66202
    Geppetto
    Participant

    @ John Day

    hahahahahaha! you a funny man!

    @ D Benton Smith

    Check this: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/508000-turkey-drone-swarms-war/

    #66203
    WES
    Participant

    Teri:

    In the past we never used computers to count votes.

    So why do we need computers to count votes now?

    To add a new non-transparent layer between people voting and counting votes!

    There can only be one reason for doing this!

    To make rigging elections much easier!

    #66204
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Dr D is on fire today. One of his best ever, IMHO. Thank you.

    #66205
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Also, I tried to drill down and finds stats of how many seniors die annually in US nursing homes (long-term care facilities, whichever terminology one chooses). Is 100,000 a lot more than typically die? I don’t know. I grew frustrated and decided it wasn’t worth the investment of time.

    #66206
    Bill7
    Participant

    Great comment on Da Covid™ at Off-G:

    >Brianborou
    Nov 30, 2020 8:06 PM

    It’s following the usual pattern by the puppets of the masters of this Scamdemic, the Transnational Financiers.

    Suppress all alternative views to the official tale, threaten the livelihoods of those who dare expose a different view to the official tale, censor anyone or anyone who dares to shed light on the official tale.

    Next uses the police, judiciary, secret services, dedicated propaganda groups such as brigade 77 or the Integrity Initiative groups to threaten, fine, use violence and try to smear or discredit anyone or organisation which has the courage to reveal the truth about the fairy tales revolving around :face nappies, all the psychological props such as social distancing and interacting with family and friends plus the right to peaceful protests.

    Lastly, ignore any and all data which demonstrates that lockdowns don’t work, the economy is in free fall and the PCR tests are about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.

    Oh yes, very last point become mutton Jeff about questions from Independent medical specialists who continually ask has anyone, any medical organisation anywhere on the face of the Earth isolated this grim reaper which is causing so many to become frozen with fear like its the apocalypse appearing at any moment!!! <

    From this piece:
    WATCH: Covid-19 Deaths – A Look at US Data Johns Hopkins webinar became controversial after it was the subject of a retracted article. :

    WATCH: Covid-19 Deaths – A Look at US Data

    #66207
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ Dr. D

    “So I believe he has the running second-by-second count as it rose up, which should be a direct feed from the physical machines, and the data he has makes no sense. So? This isn’t rocket science. Investigate. Why would he need the physical machines FIRST, or ONLY, if he sees things that need follow up from his data-feed?”

    Quite. If I see the internet slowing down or acting strangely on my home computer screen, I don’t need to access all possibly relevant server-farms or whatever runs the internet these days. (Morlocks who can count real fast?) I know something’s wrong when pages download unusually slow or not at all, or I click on Best Turkey Stuffing Ever and enter a pornado. I don’t need to examine the machines to know there are data error issues.

    @ John Day

    I first thought that “golden hamster” was some corollary to black swan. How fun to learn they really exist!

    Golden Hamster

    #66208
    Curlene48
    Participant

    Teri,
    Regarding your last paragraph in yesterday’s comments section:
    “Congress knew in 2016 (hell, they’ve known for decades) that there were issues with elections. They all vowed to “do something”. Trump vowed to “do something”. So the House passed some bills regarding election security and McConnell refused to bring any of the bills to the Senate floor. Trump had an Elections Security Commission, or whatever he called it, look into the 2016 results and when they found no proof that he had actually won the popular vote, they simply disbanded without doing anything about security going forward. I can only surmise that everyone in Washington is fairly happy with all this shit being screwed up. They for sure aren’t interested in doing a damn thing about gerrymandering, voter suppression, irregularities during the primaries, or demanding provable paper ballots (i.e., paper trail) country-wide.”

    Add to that the fact that the Democratic Party is more interested in knocking the Greens and any other nascent third parties off of state ballots than in presenting a program of progressive policies in the interests of people’s welfare. In addition, the media, the League of Women Voters (who sponsor the debates), and all other establishment organizations are totally complicit in preventing any alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties from gaining any kind of a foothold in the population. The Dems were much more interested in keeping Sanders and Tulsi off the ticket than they were in defeating Trump, I don’t care what they say.

    #66209
    WES
    Participant

    Curlene48:

    State legislators are spending millions to buy these voting machines to ensure this mess continues for the foreseeable future!

    I pity the dead in cemeteries as now they are no longer needed on election night.

    #66211
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    upstateNYer: “I tried to drill down and finds stats of how many seniors die annually in US nursing homes (long-term care facilities, whichever terminology one chooses). Is 100,000 a lot more than typically die?”

    A quick look gave this indication:

    “According to previous studies, 20% to 24% of deaths in the United States occur in nursing homes. This number is increasing. [2008]
    https://www.jamda.com/article/S1525-8610(08)00172-2/pdf

    “The total number of deaths in the United States increased from 2.4 million in 2009 to 2.8 million in 2018.”
    https://www.prb.org/usdata/indicator/deaths/snapshot/

    Thus, 20% of 2.8 million = 560,000 deaths (or more) occur in nursing homes during a normal year in the United States (as a ballpark estimate on the low side).

    #66212
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    I miss V.A. too.

    The NY Times had an article on how Boeing was subverted by its managers to dismiss safety to increase their bonuses and shareholder value. They wrote that this now likely would change the corporation’s focus back to engineering after killing 346 passengers and crew and the loss of billions of dollars.

    This is not isolated incident. The current system that took power forty years ago places profit above human lives. No CEO has been on trial for their crimes since the Obama/Biden Administration including the Sackler Family of Purdue Pharma for the over hundred thousand Americans who died from prescription opioids that they pushed.

    There is no better example than Donald J Trump. He could have changed the system. If he closed the two US borders and stopped all international flights as late as the middle of February 2020, and implemented a workable national public health of testing, tracing and isolation, like Thailand. He would have swept into a second term to cut more taxes and regulations. Instead, the second worst Presidential candidate won with 80 million votes.

    The tragedy is that Joe Biden is just as incapable of controlling the coronavirus pandemic as his opponent. He is not going to restore a free public health system. He too is betting everything on for-profit vaccines.

    Health officer Dr. Sara Cody said the outbreak in Santa Clara County “is like a high-speed train. Our projections tell us that we are on target to derail by around the third week of December if we don’t apply the brakes right now”. The horror is that on January 21, 2021, the day after inauguration, a national public health program to control the virus by copying what works in East Asia and the South Pacific nations is not going to happen.

    More Americans will die to so the wealthy can accumulate more money; 274,332 to date from coronavirus pandemic alone.

    #66233
    HerrWerner
    Participant

    I go back and forth on whether the shitty election system in the USA is an unintended “bug” or a desired “feature”. And by “System” I mean the whole apparatus – the machines, the processes, the rules for having observers and running the show on the big day. Something as simple as tabulating ballots – done for 10,000+ years, even before the invention of the stylus or (clay) tablet – just ain’t that difficult. USA system originally ran in the days of horseback and quill pens.

    On the one hand many among The Powers That Be (TPTB) would prefer an opaque, easily compromised system that could obscure results or tip a close race to their preferred outcome. (this is the “Feature” category)

    On the other hand there’s the “Bug” category. Many among the TPTB simply want to use money to make a sticky problem go away. In the first 10,000 years of tabulating votes you had to rely on people – with pencils and math skills and stuff. And they want food and bathroom and smoke breaks. Let’s give money to the slick salescritter from [Diebold, Dominion, fill in the blank.] Automation and millions of lines of code? Problem solved.

    Ask any Secretary of State – “how does all this tech work? how do you prevent fraud? how do you make sure Every Vote Counts(tm) but preferably only once?” It IS their f*ing job, after all. Blank stare or a sales pitch, I guarantee. Which supports both “bug” and “feature” theories

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