Dec 152020
 
 December 15, 2020  Posted by at 10:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,


William Merritt Chase Back Of A Nude 1888

 

Biden Lashes Out At Trump In Post-Electoral College Speech (ZH)
Republican Electors In Five Disputed States Cast Votes For Trump (JTN)
Offstage Noises (Jim Kunstler)
Barr Steps Down As AG, Decries ‘Frenzied And Baseless’ Russia Allegations (JTN)
The Case For Pardoning Edward Snowden By President Trump (Greenwald)
Left and Right Unite in Calls for Snowden Pardon (MPN)
Trump’s Last Chance to Snub the Deep State (SCF)
Democrats Make Wreck of Covid-19 Relief Negotiations (Taibbi)
Stimulus Bill Bails Out Defense Contractors, Denies Families Payments (DP)
Fauci: Masks, Social Distancing Likely Needed Until ‘Early Next Winter’ (JTN)
The Covid-19 Data is a ‘Travesty’ (OffG)
Venezuela’s Guaido-Led Opposition Holds Alternative Vote, Burns Ballots (RT)
Sunday Times Claims Navalny Was Poisoned Twice (Robinson)

 

 

Hats off to Jimmy Dore.

 

 

Me, I fear for the future of the country.

Biden Lashes Out At Trump In Post-Electoral College Speech (ZH)

Joe Biden lashed out at President Trump Monday night, saying in a 14-minute speech following his win in the electoral college that Trump’s ongoing challenges to the 2020 election are “an unprecedented assault on our democracy,” and that claims of widespread fraud are “baseless” – despite the fact that the Supreme Court elected not to review the merits of various cases. “Every single avenue was made available for President Trump to contest the results. He took full advantage of each and every one of those avenues.


“President Trump was denied no course of action he wanted to take,” Biden added – also slamming the 17 GOP Attorneys General and 126 GOP Congressmembers who challenged the results of the election as well. Biden implied Trump has both abused – and won’t let go of power, saying “In America, politicians don’t take power — the people grant it to them,” adding “The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know that nothing — not even a pandemic or an abuse of power — can extinguish that flame.”

Read more …

“It’s our duty to the people of Michigan and to the U.S. Constitution to send another slate of electors if the election is in controversy or dispute, and clearly it is..”

Republican Electors In Five Disputed States Cast Votes For Trump (JTN)

Republican electors in four states said Monday that they would cast their procedural votes for President Trump from the Nov. 3 elections, and Michigan sent two separate slates of electors to Capitol Hill, 16 electors for Trump and 16 electors for Democrat Joe Biden. “It’s our duty to the people of Michigan and to the U.S. Constitution to send another slate of electors if the election is in controversy or dispute, and clearly it is,” said Meshawn Maddock, Republican at-large national elector. Michigan state Rep. Daire Rendon said: “What it comes down to is this: have the secretary of state, director of elections, and election officials proved to you that the election had accuracy and integrity? They have not. And because of this, the election is in dispute.”

Under the Constitution, state legislatures have plenary power over their respective elections. Because there is an ongoing dispute over the Michigan 2020 general election, members of the Michigan legislature have called on Washington, D.C., to not count Michigan electors until further action from the Michigan legislature, according to a press release about the Michigan effort. Congress will count electoral votes Jan. 6. The Trump campaign embraced the alternate slate of electors’ actions, saying it preserved legal options before the Jan. 6 deadline. “We applaud the Republican electors in those states for showing up and casting the votes,” the campaign’s senior legal counsel Jenna Ellis told Just the News.

The Republican electors in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona all said they voted for Trump. It comes as their states formally appointed Democratic electors who voted for Biden and running mate Kamala Harris, according to the Epoch Times. The Pennsylvania GOP said in a news release that electors met at the state capital to “cast a conditional vote” for Trump and Pence “at the request of the Trump campaign.” Democratic electors voted in the Pennsylvania Electoral College for Biden and Harris.

Read more …

“If Dominion vote tabulation machines all over America are not allowed to be hooked up to the Internet, how can they be a network? And why would they need a server?”

Offstage Noises (Jim Kunstler)

President Trump’s 2018 Executive Order 13848 requires the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), John Ratcliffe, to report forty-five days after the election on foreign election interference. That’s this Friday. What might Mr. Ratcliffe know? Well, supposedly everything. Except both the CIA and the FBI must be considered undependable now, with RussiaGate prankster Gina Haspel in charge of the CIA, and Christopher Wray slow-walking every requested declassified FBI document for years. So, Mr. Ratcliffe must be receiving more dependable intelligence from others, most likely Defense Intelligence. Many readers may have heard about a supposed raid on the CIA cyber-warfare station in Frankfurt, Germany, and the seizure there of the Dominion computer servers by US Army special ops personnel.

Forty-five days was probably enough time for Defense Intelligence to run forensic analysis on those servers, if, in fact, they existed and the raid actually happened. Standing by on that. We just don’t know. But if so, then Mr. Ratcliffe must have some results by now. What nobody has asked is: in the first place, what on earth would the Dominion servers be doing in Frankfurt, outside the USA, in possession of the CIA? Is the CIA monitoring the vote tabulation… or assisting in it? This raises another question no one has addressed: Servers serve computer networks, which operate via the Internet. If Dominion vote tabulation machines all over America are not allowed to be hooked up to the Internet, how can they be a network? And why would they need a server? If I’m missing something there, please discuss in the comments section.

Which raises another question: Is there not sufficient evidence to see that the use of computers has completely screwed up our election process? Is this not a classic Joseph Tainter style quandary of overinvestments in complexity producing diminishing returns — which, when enough of them pile up, gets you to the collapse of civilizations? Are we going to allow further screw-ups by letting the State of Georgia conduct their January 5 senate run-off election on the same Dominion machines that they used on November 3? Apparently, that’s exactly what Georgia intends to do.

Read more …

Did Bill Barr just make room for Trump to pardon Assange and Snowden?

Barr Steps Down As AG, Decries ‘Frenzied And Baseless’ Russia Allegations (JTN)

William Barr has decided to step down as attorney general before Christmas, ending a tumultuous tenure that saw his department clear President Trump of Russia collusion and crack down on violent gangs, Chinese spies and religious liberty violations. Trump announced the departure Monday evening on Twitter shortly after meeting with Barr, ending a tense week in which the president and his allies criticized the attorney general for both failing to reveal the existence of a Hunter Biden probe before the election and taking little public action to punish those who perpetrated the false Russian collusion narrative, “Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job!” Trump tweeted. “As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family.”

“Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen, an outstanding person, will become Acting Attorney General. Highly respected Richard Donoghue will be taking over the duties of Deputy Attorney General. Thank you to all!” the president added. In his letter, Barr revealed his last day will be Dec. 23 and that the purpose of his meeting with the president Monday was to brief the president about his department’s efforts to investigate voter fraud. Barr also went out of his way in the letter to decry the “frenzied and baseless” narrative of Russia collusion that hampered the first two-plus years of the Trump presidency.

“Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance. Your 2016 victory speech in which you reached out to your opponents and called for working together for the benefit of the American people was immediately met by a partisan onslaught against you in which no tactic no matter how abusive and deceitful was out of bounds,” Barr wrote. “The nadir of this campaign was the effort to cripple, if not oust your administration, with frenzied and baseless accusations of collusion with Russia,” he added.

Read more …

Calls for pardons are getting loud.

The Case For Pardoning Edward Snowden By President Trump (Greenwald)

A U.S. appellate court in September unanimously ruled that the NSA’s program of mass domestic surveillance was illegal, as well as likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” The court, and the broader public, knew about this illegal mass surveillance program created by the NSA only because Edward Snowden, while working inside that agency, discovered its existence and concluded in 2012 that the American public has the right know about what was being secretly done to them and their privacy by their own government. Upon making the decision to blow the whistle on this security state illegality, Snowden delivered the documents relating to that program and other then-unknown systems of mass online surveillance not by dumping them indiscriminately on the internet or selling them or passing them to foreign governments, but by providing them to journalists (including myself) with The Guardian, The Washington Post and other news outlets.

The documents Snowden provided were accompanied by requests to report them responsibly. He thus relinquished the power entirely to make decisions about which documents would and would not be published, leaving those decisions exclusively to news outlets. That meant that Snowden himself never made a single document publicly available; every document that was reported was the result of decisions by newsrooms around the world that their publication would be in the public interest and would not endanger innocent people. That method of whistleblowing chosen by Snowden — patterned after the one Daniel Ellsberg used in 1971 to make the public aware of years of lying to the American public by the U.S. Government about the Vietnam War, when he gave the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and asked them to report it in the public interest — enabled journalists to inform the American citizenry about illegal and unconstitutional spying by the U.S. Government in the most responsible manner possible.

Indeed, the very first program we reported — on June 6, 2013 — was the mass domestic spying program which the appellate court just ruled was illegal and likely a violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. That first article we published revealed a top secret court order under which “the National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers,” and required major telecommunications carriers “on an ‘ongoing, daily basis’ to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.”

The months of reporting that followed, all singularly enabled by Snowden’s courageous whistleblowing, triggered so much vital public debate about privacy and mass surveillance, and fostered so many legal and technological privacy reforms around the world, that the reporting earned virtually every award journalism has to give, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. For those who have not seen it, the 2014 documentary by Laura Poitras about the work Snowden did with journalists, Citizenfour, which received the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary, shows much of the Snowden story in real time and can be viewed on YouTube; the feature film “Snowden,” available on Netflix and other platforms, separately explores the trajectory which Snowden traversed from enlisted U.S. Army soldier, CIA contractor and NSA expert to one of this generation’s most consequential whistleblowers.

Read more …

“I support pardons for Snowden, Assange and especially Chelsea Manning. All exposed the criminality of the Bush-Obama/Biden period.”

Left and Right Unite in Calls for Snowden Pardon (MPN)

Amid mounting speculation that President Trump is about to announce a list of presidential pardons, calls for — and against — NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s name to be included are growing louder. In November, as is customary, Donald Trump pardoned a turkey for Thanksgiving. Now, in the lame duck session of his presidency, he appears to be making a customary list of people to pardon as well. Influential and well-connected publication Axios reported, in a scandalized tone, that he is planning to hand out pardons “like Christmas gifts” to “every person who ever talked to [him].” In August, the president was asked about Snowden specifically, responding by saying that, “I’m going to take a very good look at it. I’ve seen people that are very conservative and very liberal and they agree on the same issue…I’m going to take a look at that very strongly.”


Now, a host of figures are calling in unison for Trump to follow through on the proposal. “President Trump is listening to the many of us who are urging him to pardon Snowden. It’s the right thing to do,” Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz said yesterday. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul agreed, slamming former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in the process. “Clapper brazenly lied to Congress denying that the Deep State was spying on all Americans. Snowden simply revealed Clapper’s lies and exposed unconstitutional spying. He deserves a pardon from Donald Trump,” he wrote. Those calls were joined by a number of voices on the left, including former Green Party vice-presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka, who said, “I support pardons for Snowden, Assange and especially Chelsea Manning. All exposed the criminality of the Bush-Obama/Biden period.” The American Civil Liberties Union, who have previously described Snowden as a “patriot,” concurred, stating, “Edward Snowden blew the whistle on illegal government activity kept secret for years. Our democracy is better off because of him.”

Read more …

“Wasn’t Trump supposed to be the anti-Deep State candidate? Now’s his chance to prove it.”

Trump’s Last Chance to Snub the Deep State (SCF)

The Trump administration calls the International Criminal Court a kangaroo court. He refuses to allow any U.S. soldier to be brought before the court for purported war crimes in Afghanistan. None of the court investigators or judges will receive visas to enter U.S. territory. Any property or bank accounts they have in the U.S. will be confiscated. If any court is a disingenuous kangaroo court it is the extradition trial against Julian Assange, in London. The first magistrate who sat in judgment of possible extradition to the U.S. for alleged violations of its Espionage Act, is a subject in Wikileaks’ revelations. Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, and her husband, James Arbuthnot, who was a defense minister for procurement, have “earned” money from two companies exposed by Wikileaks.

During the August-September extradition hearings, Arbuthnot “stepped down” to be supervisor of the new magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser. During three weeks of hearings, Baraitser looked at her laptop to read decisions she had written before defense lawyers had made their arguments, or witnesses had testified. I am not the only one hoping that Donald Trump will do the right thing with Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden too. The last president, one Trump hates, first put Assange’s key whistleblower in prison, in isolation, under torture. Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years. Obama leaving office with a gesture of “goodwill”, commuted Chelsea’s sentence once she served seven years. She was later jailed for another year for not snitching on Julian.

Tulsi Gabbard, the only Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 who wasn’t a war hawk, is asking Trump for goodwill. She tweeted tagging Trump, “Since you’re giving pardons to people, please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state,” and named Assange and Snowden for him to drop charges. The proposal for Trump to pardon Assange was also endorsed at this recent webinar which included speakers Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Law Professor Marjorie Cohn, Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria. If Trump did the honorable thing of halting the persecution of Julian Assange, it would be a blow for freedom and a middle finger to the Deep State including Obama and Clinton. Wasn’t Trump supposed to be the anti-Deep State candidate? Now’s his chance to prove it.

Read more …

“They totally caved..”

Democrats Make Wreck of Covid-19 Relief Negotiations (Taibbi)

A senior Democratic congressional aide is irate tonight. “The Democrats,” the aide seethed, “have just done the worst negotiating in modern history.” At issue: a pair of new Covid-19 relief bills, just submitted by a bipartisan group of Senators. Republican Senator Susan Collins gushed that a“Christmas Miracle” allowed the two parties came together on the twin bills, which the press describes as totaling $748 billion and $160 billion, respectively. “Bipartisanship and compromise is [sic] alive and well in Washington,” clucked West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. It sure is. With the election over, the Democratic leadership in the space of a few weeks somehow negotiated against themselves, working with Republicans to push the total amount of a Covid-19 relief deal further and further downward, to the point where previous plans offered by the likes of Mitch McConnell and Steve Mnuchin now look like LBJ’s Great Society.

Democrats ultimately settled for less than a third of what they had set as a baseline for state and local aid, accepted a package without any $1,200 direct payments, and signed off on a plan that, after offsets, includes less than $350 billion in new money, well below a slew of pre-election proposals rejected by Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer as being too low. “They totally caved,” the aide says. Back in May, the Democrat-led House passed the HEROES Act, a $3.4 trillion relief package that was pitched as the bill Democrats really wanted. It contained $413 billion new dollars for $1,200 direct payments to citizens, as well as $437 billion in additional unemployment benefits, and a whopping $1.13 trillion for state and local governments.

Trump said the bill was “dead on arrival,” McConnell blasted it as a “$3 trillion left-wing wish list,” and the anti-spending group Taxpayers for Common Sense seethed that Democrats unrealistically put “everything they could think of” in the bill. Still, Democrats insisted this was the right amount, at the right time, a moral necessity. “The House has passed a major bill dealing with COVID,” Schumer said in May, blasting his Senate Republican colleagues for a “pause” in negotiations. “We have done nothing.”

Read more …

Meanwhile, what a mess.

Stimulus Bill Bails Out Defense Contractors, Denies Families Payments (DP)

Earlier this year, Republican senators slammed the idea of spending money to pay Americans not to work during the pandemic. Only a few months later, a group of GOP senators has signed onto stimulus legislation that would authorize the government to pay idle defense contractors to not work, even as those contractors’ rack up big profits during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the same bill excludes bipartisan provisions authorizing direct payments to millions of Americans struggling to survive. The stimulus legislation released by Republican and Democratic senators this afternoon includes an extension of a program to replace the wages of certain government contractors who miss work due to COVID-19.

The program, Section 3610 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, allows federal agencies to reimburse contractors who are unable to work in person due to the pandemic, and whose jobs do not allow telework, for up to 40 hours per week of lost wages. In effect, the program uses government money to reimburse defense contractors for giving paid leave to their employees. The provision was added to the last page of the 525-page bill after defense contractors sent a letter to congressional lawmakers lobbying for the language. The same bill does not authorize direct payments to millions of Americans — nor does it reimburse small businesses for providing paid leave benefits to their workers.

While the bill would fund $300-a-week in new federal unemployment benefits, that’s half as much as Congress distributed under the CARES Act — and millions of people will still see their unemployment benefits lapse on December 26, as it will likely take weeks to reprogram state unemployment systems. “This is about need and not greed,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., one of the Democratic sponsors of the bill who has called new direct payments to families “a bad idea.” Nearly 12 million U.S. renters will be behind $5,850 in rent by January, according to the Washington Post. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., have been pushing lawmakers to include language in stimulus legislation giving $1,200 stimulus checks to millions of families. That was not included in the same stimulus that includes the subsidy program for defense contractors.

In July, Senate Republicans introduced a stimulus package which included $11 billion in appropriations to reimburse defense contractors for payments made under Section 3610, following lobbying from the defense industry. “Section 3610 provides authority for agencies to cover from existing funds certain contractor costs and keep key personnel and skilled workers in a ready state,” lobbying groups and executives from representing defense contractors and other government contractors wrote on December 11.

Read more …

How is it possible that in so many countries that failed so miserably in their pandemic fights, all the same faces hold on to all their same jobs?

Fauci: Masks, Social Distancing Likely Needed Until ‘Early Next Winter’ (JTN)

As the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine gets underway, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the American public should anticipate likely needing to wear masks and socially distancing through next winter. Fauci was asked Monday when he thinks society will be able to get back to pre-coronavirus normality. “I think we will know when we see the level of infection in the country at a dramatically lower level than it is right now that we can start gradually tiptoeing towards normality,” Fauci said during a discussion hosted by the Center for Strategy and International Studies. “I don’t believe we’re going to be able to throw the masks away and forget about physical separation and congregate settings for a while, probably likely until we get into the late fall and early next winter, but I think we can do it. The numbers will guide us.”


Fauci also said that having a vaccine distributed before the end of the year was “unimaginable” at the beginning of the pandemic. He referred to Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership implemented under the Trump administration, as a “success story,” given that a “group of vaccines” for COVID-19 have been produced. “I think Operation Warp Speed, putting hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, into facilitating the technical aspects of the trial, the clinical trial, the pre-purchasing of hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine is unprecedented,” he said. “So it’s really quite a success story, I must say.”

Read more …

We should have this down by now. We don’t.

The Covid-19 Data is a ‘Travesty’ (OffG)

If we turn our attention back to the Covid death data, just because someone has tested positive for Covid-19 and died sometime after (even if we put aside for a second that some tests are known to give false positives), that does not mean that Covid-19 caused that person to die. Yet, the main figure certain countries around the world are using to express Covid-19 deaths is simply recorded, or coded, as essentially any death involving a positive Covid-19 test within 28 days of death. Because correlation does not equal causation, simply recording Covid-19 deaths as any deaths involving a positive Covid-19 test within a given period of time is an extremely poor way to measure how many people have died. For instance, in the UK, the main figure being used for Covid-19 deaths is coded, as stated on the official Coronavirus website, as the…

number of deaths of people who had had a positive test result for COVID-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test. This completely ignores the problem of causality, and thus, produces a much larger death toll than there actually is. For instance, if someone has had an underlying heart condition for 10 years, and has a heart complication and dies, their death was most likely mainly caused by the heart condition that has plagued them for a decade. However, if that person had tested positive for Covid-19 for the first time within 28 days of them dying, that person could be included as a Covid-19 death in the UK, if all is required to be categorized as a Covid-19 death is simply a positive test result.

For those who understand that the way you code deaths dramatically changes the number of deaths you get, the UK authorities kindly illustrate this for us. There is a second number recorded by UK authorities which codes deaths as… people whose death certificate mentioned COVID-19 as one of the causes. By coding deaths this way, there are thousands more Covid-19 deaths compared to when deaths are coded as… people who had had a positive test result for COVID-19 and died within 28 days of the first positive test. Despite the UK authorities having two ways to code Covid-19 deaths however, none of them are particularly accurate in my opinion. This is because the positive test figure does not deal with the issue of causality, and the death certificate figure only mentions Covid as needing to be “one of the causes” of death, rather than “the primary cause,” in addition to the death certificate figure not explicitly demanding the need for a positive Covid-19 test result.

Read more …

Right on cue, Guaido and Navalny are back in the western news, two people who play no role whatsoever in their own home countries. What’s the mechanism behind this?

Venezuela’s Guaido-Led Opposition Holds Alternative Vote, Burns Ballots (RT)

Venezuelan opposition led by US-backed ‘interim president’ Juan Guaido has held “popular consultations” to demonstrate rejection of the nation’s government after boycotting parliamentary vote but ended up burning ballots instead. The so-called “popular consultations” organized by the supporters of the self-styled “interim president” started online on Monday and concluded with an in-person participation on Saturday. The move was held after an official election held earlier this month handed control over the Venezuelan National Assembly to President Nicolas Maduro’s Socialist PSUV party. As it was during the 2018 presidential elections that handed victory to Maduro himself, most of the opposition boycotted the official vote.

After losing what was considered its last institutional stronghold, Guaido’s supporters decided to demonstrate the scale of the alleged popular rejection of the Venezuelan government they continue to call illegitimate. Although the turnout for the official election was not particularly high, Guaido’s initiative has hardly faired any better since, according to the organizers’ own estimates cited by Reuters, just under 6.5 million out of roughly 17.5 million eligible voters took part in the “consultation,” including some 845,000 people living abroad. The outcome of the “consultation” did not seem to affect the political situation in the Latin American nation hit by strict US sanctions targeting its oil sector and exacerbating a prolonged economic crisis.

Maduro himself brushed off the opposition’s initiative by saying that “no internet consultation has constitutional status” or any “legal value.” In 11 out of 24 Venezuela’s states, the law enforcement sought to disrupt the in-person participation in the “consultation” by removing the informal voting sites, the organizers complained. Still, they themselves ended up destroying all the traces of the “consultation”, at least at some of the improvised polling stations. A video published on the social media shows a pile of ballots and voting records burning on the floor at one of such sites in the northern Miranda state. The organizers claimed they did so to protect the identities of the participants.

Read more …

“..the murder of Grigory Rasputin in December 1916 proves “Russia’s penchant for poisoning”

Sunday Times Claims Navalny Was Poisoned Twice (Robinson)

This weekend’s article in the Sunday Times is probably meant to undermine the doubters. In reality, it’s likely to have the opposite result. For its claims are so outrageous that many thinking people will react with laughter, and then perhaps start questioning the poisoning story as a whole. According to the Sunday Times, Navalny wasn’t poisoned by a nerve agent smeared on his water bottle, as has previously been asserted, but rather was attacked by means of his underpants. Moreover, he wasn’t poisoned once, but twice, and despite Novichok’s reputation for extreme deadliness, both attempts failed.

When examined, though, these claims don’t amount to much. The Sunday Times story is nearly 4,000 words long, but 95 percent of it is irrelevant filler, including the comical assertion that the murder of Grigory Rasputin in December 1916 proves “Russia’s penchant for poisoning” (because, of course, nobody other than Russians ever poisoned anyone). The allegations regarding the attack on Navalny take up a mere 100 words of the 4,000-word total. As well as being brief, they are to say the least unproven. The Sunday Times says: “Vladimir Uglev, a retired Russian chemist who developed nerve agents, believes Navalny’s poisoners would have been instructed to place novichok on the elastic waistband of his pants, where it would come into contact with his skin. … A German laboratory later found traces of a nerve agent on the surface of one of the water bottles. Uglev, the retired chemist, believes that this is because Navalny touched it having got novichok on his fingers after putting on his underpants.”

In other words, the underpants story is just what a single Russian scientist, unconnected to the case, happens to think. Nothing more. Does Uglev provide any evidence to prove his assertion? No. He just “believes” it. Yet, this is sufficient for the Sunday Times to treat the story as essentially true, leading off its article with the claim that, “Navalny was exposed to a nerve agent – not, as initially believed, when he drank a cup of tea in the departure lounge but when he got dressed that morning.” This is not exactly good reporting. If the underwear story smells a little off, so too does the claim that Russian secret agents tried to murder Navalny not once, but twice.

As evidence, the Sunday Times says that, “German security sources have told their associates in the UK that the attackers struck again as Navalny lay in an induced coma before being put on a medical flight to Germany. ‘This was with a view to him being dead by the time he arrived in Berlin,’ one source said.” To put it another way, an anonymous person (probably a member of the British intelligence or security services) told a journalist that some other anonymous person believes that this is so. In other words, it’s not just hearsay, but anonymous hearsay. One can believe it if one wishes. But there’s no particular reason why one should.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle December 15 2020

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  • #66861

    William Merritt Chase Back Of A Nude 1888   • Biden Lashes Out At Trump In Post-Electoral College Speech (ZH) • Republican Electors In Five Dispu
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle December 15 2020]

    #66863
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    William Merritt Chase Back Of A Nude 1888

    Her skin; If I could touch it; I know what it would feel like…

    #66864
    John Day
    Participant

    This was adapted from a comment I made here yesterday .Buffed up. View From The Herd
    “Head em up! Move em out!” https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/12/view-from-herd.html

    Rawhide Extras,​

    ​ ​I have found a Bill Gates CNN interview video that is not Twitter here:
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bill-gates-on-the-next-few-months-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-its-bad-news-11607893787
    ​ ​I admit I had not watched it, ​when I sent it yesterday, ​but now I have. My read of Mr Bill is that he should not play high stakes poker.
    He is very pleased with himself numerous times in the interview, with a huge smile that he actually tries to suppress a few times to look appropriately serious.
    ​ Bill​ always smiles when speaking glowingly of his own prior predictions, now come true, and the efforts of his foundation and their allies, and of the failures of the Trump Administration. He is very careful in choosing his words to give them no credit at all.
    ​Bill​ speaks glowingly of Biden and Fauci and all the big vaccines, and says he will take his shot in public, only when his turn comes.
    He implies this is a massive, life-saving good, and he wants to be in the same line as the common people.
    ​Bill​ says things will not be back to normal until 2022, but implies they may be​somewhat ​ better next summer.
    Nothing about vitamin-D, though his comments seem to imply that he is taking it into account, summer, and winter​ pandemic waves,​ and all.

    ​ Bill​ Gates reads like a fairly open-faced book if you know where he has been coming from for the last 15 years. I read something by him, about 15 years ago. He was fascinated with vaccines, including vaccines as birth control. Now he does not say that.​
    Bill sees the importance of reducing global human population to what global ecosystems can sustain.
    My personal view of the population-utility of power elites is that they keep the human herd (me; you, our families) from completely destroying the means of food production, by helping us kill a lot of each other before that happens.​

    ​ ​ Nobody who is not in the God-play-group likes people who play god.
    ​They are​ a clear threat.
    Bill Gates play​s​ a very clever god, a smug and pleasant god, who deeply loves himself and invites all of us to do the same.
    It will be best for all of us.​ God knows best. God has the big data, and the science.​
    ​God-Bill’s​ obvious point would be that the least painful form of population reduction is birth-reduction.
    It’s less bad than war, pestilence, famine and death, but it does not exclude them​.
    ​Unfortunately, b​irth reduction alone might not be enough to do the whole population-reduction job.​

    ​ ​What might I suggest as a counter-offer?
    I don’t play god. I ​also ​don’t eat critters, because I practice non-violence.
    I am not a tyrant. I think that we should be past massive slaughter as a means of population control.
    We are technologically and intellectually able to leave ​genocide​ behind​. ​
    W​e have not ​exactly​ found the societal disposition to leave it behind​ yet​.

    ​ ​What I suggest is our human strong point, distributed problem solving in small groups.
    Nothing is assured, but it is what we, as a species, do best, and it is what has brought us to the point where we are about to extinct ourselves from success.
    ​ ​Going forward, we will have the severe and permanent decline in global oil, natural gas and coal, especially the cheap, easy and high quality stuff that the permanent-growth economy needs.​
    Energy and Economy have already begun their terminal decline, but ​the decline​ has been​ ​labeled ​”​COVID Pandemic​”​.
    COVID has destroyed “demand” for the fuel and products that are now in decline, but we do not have to​ know that​ they are in permanent decline. “Back-to-normal” just keep​s​ getting put off until later, while our owners work things out in THEIR smallish groups.

    ​ ​The Davos-crowd​/​World Economic Forum clan may be as smug and self-satisfied as Mr Gates looks in the video​, though they are not all doing as well as the prescient Mr Gates today​. At least they ​can look forward to the imminent​ destruction of their nationalist rivals​.​
    ​That will free them up​ ​to​ work out one, big, good solution for all of humanity, and put it into action.
    ​The Global Reset is​ a work in progress, but they and their best experts are on it​. They are​ all over it.

    ​ ​I must disclose that what I advocate is not laid out at all, but the potential strength of it lies in customizing adaptation​s to​ specific locations and cultures and groups, like towns and churches and employee-owned-enterprises, for instance.
    Just everybody does ​their ​homework in small groups for 30 years.
    That’s my suggestion.​ It’s just what people always did to survive. ​
    I’m doing my homework. My health remains good at 62.

    ​ ​The supply lines are breaking globally. Merry Christmas.
    More and more things are out of stock. Noticed that?
    It’s time to invest, not to consume.
    Invest in what you need to survive, not in New York (if I may be so bold) ​n​or Phoenix, not in an isolated bunker.​ We need each other.​
    Risks involve a lot of uncertainty, and an ideal situation in 2-3 years might be terrible in 12-13 years.
    We are renting a little half duplex from my Mom, in Austin, where we both work. The weather here won’t kill you, even without utilities.
    We have paid off the gardening “homestead” in Yoakum, population 6000, with a rail line, and ​a ​mixed economy. ​Cattle ranching and farming persist.
    Eagle​ ​Ford shale fracking went black. That’s ok for the moment. What’s next?​ ​
    It’s a 2 hour drive each way. We spend weekends working ​in Yoakum​, and weekdays working our paid jobs.
    When will we have to choose one or the other?​ When will we have to stop driving four hours each weekend?​
    The country used a lot less gasoline in the 1970s, but there were long gas lines, and alternate-day filling laws.​​
    When will supply-destruction become apparent? ​
    Charles Hugh Smith assesses that going forward into volatility:​ https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec20/gasoline12-20.html

    With supply destruction as a limiter, you can’t buy what you need, and prices shoot up into hyperinflation. They sure will this time.
    ​We will experience s​tagflation again; hyper-stag-flation…​ We will be insecure and frustrated.​
    ​ Can you learn to grow some of your food​?
    ​Mainly, it gives you a comprehension of how difficult and uncertain it is, but you also develop skills and expertise.
    Perspective. Working-knowledge.​ Actual experience.

    ​ ​Look to how you might survive for a month if the utilities go out. Grocery store utilities will be out, too.
    Gas pumps need electricity. Utilities need electricity. Phone systems need electricity.
    I’m not being extreme.

    ​ ​The God-play-group will have to sacrifice billions of us, somewhat arbitrarily, ​at some time​.
    The birth-control-surprise cannot work fast enough to deal with the absolute decline that factory farming ​will ​go though in 10-20 years.
    You may think my timeline is wrong. It might be. Some failures are bound to come sooner​; some later​.​ ​

    ​ ​Physically preparing as much as you can, not just thinking, is better than not preparing.
    Do have a sensible, multi-purpose bike, and some spare tu​b​es, tires,​ parts,​ grease and tools.
    Ride it at least every other day.

    ​Wheeled Bovine​

    #66865
    Dr. D
    Participant

    From yesterday, suppose you were in charge of the deep information stream. You’re the KNOWERS, you’re the state agency of three-letter secrets. Could you run leaders around like idiots the way Kennedy was for Missiles and the Bay of Pigs? Just before he got mad at them and had an accident? So if deep leaders believe to their core that there is an imminent sun/comet/weather collapse, WHY do they feel that way? Who told them?

    Quote of the day, “The Lie is different at every level.” That is, at the bottom it’s something like, CNN “Beavis is a stupidhead and should be shot for using the wrong Dr. Title/pronoun/euphemism. He’s so dumb!” Next level it’s NPR “Sir Butthead Esquire should be imprisoned because their policy lacks robust logic, old chum.” Next level it’s Bloomberg “Everyone knows we’re just running that idiot policy as a bone to the rubes as a direct attack on propane and propane accessories industry in order to consolidate power in SE Asia.” Next level it’s Google “Dr. Evil doesn’t care about governments – we only use governments, politicians, and idiot voters to get the REAL power in corporations and interpersonal blackmail.” Above that it’s Sachs “I don’t care WHO does WHAT power, I have people posted in all governments I’m the guy brokering the secrets and power because I arm all sides and wait for them to kill each other for my profit.” And above that, perhaps something else.

    Are they all true? Probably a little. All lies work best when they’re true. But clearly the big is the father to the small. For instance, gutting the U.S. and selling all military secrets and manufacturing to China so Xi would think we’re equal sizes and he could possibly win WWIII and therefore prompt/demand he take a swing at it. On Dec 7th, a day that FDR overruled all admirals and demanded the whole U.S. Navy be blocked into one port within striking distance of the enemy. While we had already cracked their Pacific code. Hypothetically, of course. Murdering every gun-toting, law-and-bible-quoting deplorable is just a happy bonus for the real motive of the action, almost too large to be opposed, coming as it is from arcane WTO and OSHA/ACA laws while tied to a fake, too-high currency.

    So WHY do the insiders think, believe, and act as they do? Who sets facts and reality for them? When they think they’re so smart and on the inside?

    Speaking of inside info, year-end deaths are in. No deaths. So weird how we have these mass pandemics with NO ADDITIONAL DEATHS at all. It’s almost like it’s a scam to create worldwide martial law, let insiders hold and consolidate their power, during a debt/currency collapse, and transfer $10T of middle class assets to 20 guys at the top. …But that’s just me. I’m just a stickler for you know, people dying, or in this case NOT dying. At all.

    But I gotta have a vaccine that gives facial paralysis to 3 on the first day and is immediately reversed for old, allergy-owners, and the immunocompromised. So, basically not recommended to anyone who would be at risk for the disease, only healthy people who are at no risk. …Who will still have to wear a mask. Forever.

    Jimmy Dore is on these Democrats and faux-Progressives like a spider monkey. Like, you have power now, why not have a vote? …murmurmurmur…deflect…OMB…RussiaRussia. Since Biden has Bush II cabinet, and just told black voters to go screw themselves, Oh say what can you see? By the dawn’s early light? We got a woman Rumsfeld and a Black Cheney, congratulations, I’m sure the 10 new wars and 5 open slave markets will be much more gentle and caring now.

    This also goes after his main point: even pot-smoking 2nd rate nightclub comedians know you don’t give away your vote BEFORE you get anything for it. And therefore, if they do nothing, over and over and over, you need a People’s Party. Wake up, he’s said for 5 years.

    Barr, Bush-family deep state flunky, does nothing and steps down. Ding! After creating great cases he thinks will never be brought to docket. Ding! He is replaced by the Army Airborne. Ding!
    Suddenly “Hacking” appears. Trump fired security insider who said, “Safest election ever” – a thing no NetSec admin would ever say, as one can barely keep the crooks out even when you’re not under direct attack. Turns out, they had complete “God-mode” access to huge swaths of U.S. government since June. As a State actor. A State actor like China, perhaps? Including – gasp! – Dominion! Shocked! Who coulda seen the timing? And Hunter’s case resurfacing. Meanwhile FBI investigates a totally different company and prints it to NYT, ‘cuz RussiaRussiaRussia.

    See the field? If you were about to release DNI Election tampering report, where you show all KINDS of fun stuff, sit on the throne, refuse to leave until the cases are finally heard and recounts actually run, to insure the worst election ever, what would you release? Biden actual payoffs with Chinese money-launderers? Chinese officials bragging they own the U.S. government? Leaks that the whole government was being monitored by China? And that went down to the voting systems, too? Nah. He’s just a midget IQ with tiny hands who eats ding-dongs all day.

    Moving to Assange, don’t forget he’s the guy they need to testify under oath before Congress to pop all the fabricated Russian hysteria and vindicate Trump. Pardon, sure, but it’s much more than that. And they need to get him out of the U.K. alive, the nation that set up the whole fake Russian story, Steele, Haskell, Harper, the Skripals, and just about every other actual election-tampering worldwide. …You tell me how to do that, cause I’m not smart enough to figure it out. I’d guess they’d trade Andrew and the whole Royals – including St. Harry’s – dossier as well-known-and-run by Ms. Maxwell, whose father was Mossad/MI6.

    Democrats Make Wreck of Covid-19 Relief Negotiations (Taibbi)”

    No they didn’t: if you hadn’t noticed, they’re trying to kill and monetize every poor and middle class person in every state they control. If you bail the people out, how can you utterly ruin and destroy them? They need to desperate, begging for the reset, UBI and Socialism. Just another “accident.” 500th in a row. All the same direction.

    “Stimulus Bill Bails Out Defense Contractors, Denies Families Payments (DP)”

    “How is it possible that in so many countries that failed so miserably in their pandemic fights, all the same faces hold on to all their same jobs?”

    All the failures are approved and applauded. No one’s mad. They keep their jobs and are promoted. I rest my case.

    “Guaido and Navalny are back in the western news, two people who play no role whatsoever in their own home countries.”

    Just another amazing coincidence. No one’s behind it. Nothing to see here.

    “Sunday Times Claims Navalny Was Poisoned Twice (Robinson)”

    Wow, twice. With the world’s most deadly poison. With the world’s most deadly hit-squads. And still missed, Navalny is fine, completely unharmed. Who not only missed, but then allowed, helped, and encouraged him to seek special treatment in Germany so he could recover. RussiaPhrenia, where they’re both masing deadly masterminds and totally laughable, incompetent boobs at the same time. Like TrumpoPhrenia. Both dangerous masterminding dictator and idiot man-boy with too short an attention to get anything done. So be afraid! Be very afraid! …Of how he’s too dim-witted to do anything.

    #Logic! …Or what passes for #Logic when you’re a dedicated zealot of #AntiLogos.

    #66866
    Kimo
    Participant

    This year we watch Hong Kong swallowed whole by the CCP. Viable democratic loving people, POOF, disappeared as their extradition border got wiped!
    Now our democratic traditions were thrown out when observers were forced from the counting rooms.. voting machine misbehavior was observer abuse on steroids. I noticed very few tears shed, in a move that would have made Stalin proud.
    Today, we are watching is an attempt to restore the democratic features of our Republic. Very few politicians are mentioning voting reform, I suspect they are happy with the system that landed their seat.
    I note that alternate electors cast their votes in PA, GA, MI, WI, AZ, NV, and NM. The Texas suit aside, suits initiated by the Trump remain viable. Interesting to me, Georgia and Michigan has opened up machines and signatures for more scrutiny. I expect more events and evidence are still ahead of us. Given a SCOTUS victory, is there still any chance of an overturned election? I have trouble assessing the odds.
    January 6th… POOF?

    #66867
    zerosum
    Participant

    TAE has a winner selection today
    Lyrics
    Hang down your head Tom Dooley
    Hang down your head and cry
    Hang Down Your head Tom Dooley
    Poor boy your bound to die

    #66868
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Dr. D: “So weird how we have these mass pandemics with NO ADDITIONAL DEATHS at all.”

    That’s quite a claim. In the US, the CDC has been counting the number of deaths from all causes, and total deaths in 2020 are roughly 10% more than previous years.

    I like this multi-year graph format because the y-axis goes all the way down to zero, allowing for any increases to be put in perspective relative to the total.


    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

    Number of deaths reported on this page are the total number of deaths received and coded as of the date of analysis and do not represent all deaths that occurred in that period. Data are incomplete because of the lag in time between when the death occurred and when the death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS and processed for reporting purposes. This delay can range from 1 week to 8 weeks or more, depending on the jurisdiction and cause of death…

    Finally, the estimates of excess deaths reported here may not be due to COVID-19, either directly or indirectly. The pandemic may have changed mortality patterns for other causes of death. Upward trends in other causes of death (e.g., suicide, drug overdose, heart disease) may contribute to excess deaths in some jurisdictions.

    #66869
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    What can one say, Doc Robinson? Dr. D. is both an extremely informed and insightful sociopolitical analyst, and someone who seems to delight in making bold bullshit pronouncements. He is anything but someone to dismiss out of hand yet also no one to take at face value.

    He’s not Uncle Walter but he’s no Gil-Scott Heron either.

    I learn something new from him quite often, and delight in certain phrase-turnings he uses, but it doesn’t take much Dr. D to set off the smoke alarms in my head.

    #66870
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    @ madamski, I believe that BS pronouncements tend to erode credibility, despite the truths also being presented. Like shooting oneself in the foot.

    Still, if someone is against “fake news” and propaganda, then proclaims something like “no additional deaths at all,” I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are misinformed and not hypocritical.

    #66872
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    I have no clue, Doc. I acknowledge patterns but avoid motive inference. Smoke is not itself evidence of arson. People are known to be careless with matches.

    #66873
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ John Day’s post from yesterday:

    “I have given this considerable though and consideration for a long time.
    I think we should shoot for 1970, as an economic model, not 1840, then work it out from there going forward in a different direction.
    What are you thinking about a path forward?”

    As in a path forward for ‘us all’? I think that thinking in such terms is a collective joke that few people get but when they do, do not feel it’s funny. People enter a theater fairly orderly, even a death metal lunge festival. But if the place catches on fire, the exodus is generally a mess.

    But I’ll provide some specifics: we’ve forgotten most of how we lived in 1840. That was still in the age of techne, i.e., craft. Knowledge handed down orally and manually from generation to generation. Meanwhile, we have a population whose under-30s can hardly give street directions without shsowing you colored lines on a cellphone view of some shitty map app.

    “Follow the purple line, see?” (verbatim from actual personal experience a few years ago).

    We seem to assume that 1970, or 1840, have been patiently waiting for us to come back to our senses and retrieve them from the past. It will take a decade or three just to raise enough livestock to make 1840 look plausible. How long it will take to rediscover lost techniques or devise new one is anyone’s guess, but I thionk it will take awhile.

    In the interim between the post-modern neo-industrial paradigm crash, and the emergence of something new, stable, and tolerably liveable, I foresee extremely primitive conditions and accompanying behavior, the latter probably being the primary cause of the former.

    As for a personal path: those who can should do something like you do. Most people can’t. My prescription, overall, is: be nice. Be kind and fair and decent to people. Even if it doesn’t save your tushie, it will help you die with a relatively clean conscience.

    This ain’t no party and, thank god, no disco. It is, I regret to say, mostly us just fooling around. Why, look at Bill7. He wants to fight and I don’t even have a bucket of fried chicken for him to steal.

    Collective Action for the Common Good

    #66875
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Madamski @ DocR
    The US may indeed have an excess death count this year, but many (most?) other countries don’t. That implies to me that the US is the outlier, rather than Covid. Why might that be? Perhaps the correlation between an unhealthy population, a ludicrously ineffective healthcare regime, and a polity in the process of collapse that couldn’t manage it’s way past a closed door.

    I lay my vote for more hyperbole from Dr D.. I personally don’t it difficult to distinguish meaning/intent from the rhetoric, and it’s a welcome relief from the pseudo-analysis in the media. As others have observed – if you ain’t angry already, you just don;t understand what’s going down.

    #66876
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Utah Mink First Wild Animal In US To Test Positive For Mutated Coronavirus”

    When a can of oil and a papaya can test positive on the PCR test, no surprise…

    #66877
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Still, if someone is against “fake news” and propaganda, then proclaims something like “no additional deaths at all,” I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are misinformed and not hypocritical.”

    All i know is that for the past four years i’ve been forced to listen to a fake story about Russian collusion, a supreme court justice who may have raped a women 40 years ago, and now how a disease is going to kill us all unless we do what we’re told……….and then censors anyone who questions them.

    hypocritical?

    #66878
    Mr. House
    Participant

    The real question Doc is why you still believe anything they say? If we go back the past 20 years their track record gets even worse. They know no one but the most “devout” believe them anymore, thats why they’re resorting to censorship, can you get what the next step will be?

    #66879
    Dr. D
    Participant

    When I was just about to instantly concede my deaths rate (and go look instead at the source I used) I started into the CDC page posted. Look for yourself:

    “Methods”

    Counts of deaths in the most recent weeks were compared with historical trends (from 2013 to present) to determine whether the number of deaths in recent weeks was significantly higher than expected, using Farrington surveillance algorithms (1). The ‘surveillance’ package in R (2) was used to implement the Farrington algorithms, which use overdispersed Poisson generalized linear models with spline terms to model trends in counts, accounting for seasonality. For each jurisdiction, a model is used to generate a set of expected counts, and an upper bound threshold based on a one-sided 95% prediction interval of these expected counts…etc”

    The chart says not “deaths” but consistently “Predicted deaths”. Okay, mostly the same? Wait: how is your “Threshold of extra deaths” always above the actual? Wouldn’t it be similar to your 200dma? Hold on: now I’m hovering over and getting week-by-week and the excess in 2020 is very similar to the weeks of 2018, like 50k. The mid-high weeks in 2020 are also in the 50k-range. What? They’re Visibly higher, but not actually higher? Or so “Weighted” as they say that a 2k increase reads like a 10k increase? 6k extra people isn’t nothing, but it’s also only 100 per state. Next door to nothing. This is going to take some time.

    Trying .csv or alternatives, click “Number of excess deaths without weighting” + “Excluding Covid”. Wait: NYC has 7k extra deaths that are NOT Covid? And Michigan too? Texas has 10k and CA 12k? What are those? Deaths exclusively from the lockdown murder/suicide/healthcare halt? That’s like more than COVID itself. But it can’t be. But it is?

    So you don’t have a number, you have a “predicted number.” You don’t have a death, you have a “weighted death.” Why? I mean like laymen look at the vaccine math and assume 95% means 95%, not 0.54% If you’re adding very, very complex adjustments, scientists say “Why?” “Where’s your raw data set?”

    I JUST WANT THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO DIED GOING BACK TO 2010. And I have looked myself, but still can’t find it. (or forgot to link it.) Anyone? Like the number of missing children, why is this number not clearly tracked and easy to find?

    #66880
    zerosum
    Participant

    Level of competence
    Backyard chickens owner or Chief Operating Officer (COO) of a global company
    Mastering the Management Steps
    1. process
    2. planning
    3. resource
    4. product
    5. inventory
    6. supply line

    #66881
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    I guess I should have written “…according to the CDC (for what it’s worth).”

    Somebody used the CDC data for 2015-2018 total death numbers here, but they reportedly used misleading numbers for 2019 and 2020:

    null
    https://static.politifact.com/politifact/photos/US_Death_toll_meme.jpg

    Firstly, the numbers listed from 2015 through 2018 are official, having been released by the CDC ( here , here , here , here ). However, the final numbers for 2019 have not yet been released, and it is unclear where the image creator took the 2,900,689 figure from. This is the same for the 2020 projection.

    Meanwhile, the 2020 figure leading up to Nov. 16 is also an official figure released by the CDC (pdf here ) – but it is not yet an accurate representation of how many people have died in 2020. The table doesn’t begin until the week ending Feb. 1, 2020 and still has six weeks to report between Nov. 16 and the end of the year. The latest weekly data in the Nov. 16 chart also appears to have a much lower death count than previous weeks, which the CDC has said is due to a lag in reporting. This lag can be anywhere between one and eight weeks, or more...

    https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-chart-us-death-figures-2020-idUSKBN2872MV

    The CDC data is not very user-friendly in my experience, and more than once I’ve thought “This doesn’t add up.”

    Dr. D: “I JUST WANT THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO DIED GOING BACK TO 2010.”

    You’d think the CDC would have this type of overview easily accessible, but the closest I found was a summary from USA Today (based on CDC data):

    2010

    • Age-adjusted death rate: 747 deaths per 100,000 people
    • Avg. life expectancy: 78.7 years
    • Deaths: 2,468,435
    • Population: 309,346,863
    • Leading cause of death: Heart disease (597,689 deaths, 24.2% of all deaths)
    • Second leading cause of death: Cancer (574,743 deaths, 23.3% of all deaths)
    • Third leading cause of death: Chronic lower respiratory diseases (138,080 deaths, 5.6% of all deaths)

    2011

    • Age-adjusted death rate: 741 deaths per 100,000 people
    • Avg. life expectancy: 78.7 years
    • Deaths: 2,515,458
    • Population: 311,718,857
    • Leading cause of death: Heart disease (596,577 deaths, 23.7% of all deaths)
    • Second leading cause of death: Cancer (576,691 deaths, 22.9% of all deaths)
    • Third leading cause of death: Chronic lower respiratory diseases (142,943 deaths, 5.7% of all deaths)

    2012

    • Age-adjusted death rate: 733 deaths per 100,000 people
    • Avg. life expectancy: 78.8 years
    • Deaths: 2,543,279
    • Population: 314,102,623
    • Leading cause of death: Heart disease (599,711 deaths, 23.6% of all deaths)
    • Second leading cause of death: Cancer (582,623 deaths, 22.9% of all deaths)
    • Third leading cause of death: Chronic lower respiratory diseases (143,489 deaths, 5.6% of all deaths)

    2013

    • Age-adjusted death rate: 732 deaths per 100,000 people
    • Avg. life expectancy: 78.8 years
    • Deaths: 2,596,993
    • Population: 316,427,395
    • Leading cause of death: Heart disease (611,105 deaths, 23.5% of all deaths)
    • Second leading cause of death: Cancer (584,881 deaths, 22.5% of all deaths)
    • Third leading cause of death: Chronic lower respiratory diseases (149,205 deaths, 5.7% of all deaths)

    2014

    • Age-adjusted death rate: 725 deaths per 100,000 people
    • Avg. life expectancy: 78.9 years
    • Deaths: 2,626,418
    • Population: 318,907,401
    • Leading cause of death: Heart disease (614,348 deaths, 23.4% of all deaths)
    • Second leading cause of death: Cancer (591,700 deaths, 22.5% of all deaths)
    • Third leading cause of death: Chronic lower respiratory diseases (147,101 deaths, 5.6% of all deaths)

    2015

    • Age-adjusted death rate: 733 deaths per 100,000 people
    • Avg. life expectancy: 78.7 years
    • Deaths: 2,712,630
    • Population: 321,418,820
    • Leading cause of death: Heart disease (633,842 deaths, 23.4% of all deaths)
    • Second leading cause of death: Cancer (595,930 deaths, 22.0% of all deaths)
    • Third leading cause of death: Chronic lower respiratory diseases (155,041 deaths, 5.7% of all deaths)

    2016

    • Age-adjusted death rate: 729 deaths per 100,000 people
    • Avg. life expectancy: 78.7 years
    • Deaths: 2,744,248
    • Population: 323,071,342
    • Leading cause of death: Heart disease (635,260 deaths, 23.1% of all deaths)
    • Second leading cause of death: Cancer (598,038 deaths, 21.8% of all deaths)
    • Third leading cause of death: Accidents (unintentional injuries) (161,374 deaths, 5.9% of all deaths)

    2017

    • Age-adjusted death rate: 732 deaths per 100,000 people
    • Avg. life expectancy: 78.6 years
    • Deaths: 2,813,503
    • Population: 325,147,121
    • Leading cause of death: Heart disease (647,457 deaths, 23.0% of all deaths)
    • Second leading cause of death: Cancer (599,108 deaths, 21.3% of all deaths)
    • Third leading cause of death: Accidents (unintentional injuries) (169,936 deaths, 6.0% of all deaths)

    2018

    • Age-adjusted death rate: 724 deaths per 100,000 people
    • Avg. life expectancy: 78.7 years
    • Deaths: 2,839,205
    • Population: 327,167,439
    • Leading cause of death: Heart disease (655,381 deaths, 23.1% of all deaths)
    • Second leading cause of death: Cancer (599,274 deaths, 21.1% of all deaths)
    • Third leading cause of death: Accidents (unintentional injuries) (167,127 deaths, 5.9% of all deaths)

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/06/11/how-many-people-died-the-year-you-were-born/111928450/

    #66882
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    @zerosum, why are you always posting non-sequiturs? Seriously.

    #66883
    Mr. House
    Participant

    DNC cheated in the 2016 primary, DNC cheated in 2020 primary (or at least thats the gist i get when seeing reports that just came out on Iowa) but they would never ever ever cheat in the general election.

    #66884
    Mr. House
    Participant

    #66885
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    Many here have many times commented that the measures being taken against covid might prove more damaging and lethal than covid itself. I agree with this in general. Such a concept implies higher death tolls, period, whether they are caused directly by covid infection or indirectly by the insanity of the past year.

    %^&

    We all know the CDC is mostly shit. Personally, I don’t think they’re worth mentioning except in dismissal. The following says all one needs to know on the matter:

    “As of 2013, the CDC’s Biosafety Level 4 laboratories are among the few that exist in the world,[21] and serve as one of only two official repositories of smallpox in the world. The second smallpox store resides at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in the Russian Federation. In 2014, the CDC revealed they discovered several misplaced smallpox samples while their lab workers were ‘potentially infected’ with anthrax.” wiki

    “Thousands of years ago, variola virus (smallpox virus) emerged and began causing illness and deaths in human populations, with smallpox outbreaks occurring from time to time. Thanks to the success of vaccination, the last natural outbreak of smallpox in the United States occurred in 1949. In 1980, the World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated (eliminated), and no cases of naturally occurring smallpox have happened since.

    “Smallpox research in the United States continues and focuses on the development of vaccines, drugs, and diagnostic tests to protect people against smallpox in the event that it is used as an agent of bioterrorism.” (cdc)

    So it doesn’t exist in the wild anymore. It is a useless bioweapon. Infect a nation/people you don’t like and they can drown you in smallpox cadavers in a month, infecting your nation/epeople. There is no single good reason for them to keep smallpox around. Yet the two dominant global powers in real muscle terms, USA and Russia, keep it around:

    Blast sparks fire at Russian laboratory housing smallpox virus (article dated sept 2019)

    ^&*

    @ Doc Robinson

    Regarding the Mark Twain quote in your death count .jpeg: cognitive scientists have done research indicating it is easier to believe something than disbelieve something. Belief is easier than doubt. Cognitive harmony is more satisfying than cognitive dissonance.

    #66886
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ Rototillerman
    re. non-sequiturs

    We don’t think alike
    My comments, observations and conclusions are irrelevant

    #66887
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “You’d think the CDC would have this type of overview easily accessible, but the closest I found was a summary from USA Today (based on CDC data):”

    Not if you’ve got something to hide……………..

    #66888
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Someone posted this in the comments at johndays blog, i’m not the biggest KD fan but submit it to hear others thoughts

    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=240934

    #66889
    straightwalker
    Participant

    @Mr House
    Thank you so much for this link. I’ve been trying to understand the suppression of info about HCQ and Ivermectin without success. I couldn’t account for it out of hatred for Trump or editorial/advertiser collusion or talking heads group think. It didn’t make sense. This link nails it perfectly! Clear as can be.
    Now what?
    Thanks again. Made my night.

    #66890
    Geppetto
    Participant

    @Rototillerman


    @zerosum
    wrote:

    “We don’t think alike
    My comments, observations and conclusions are irrelevant”

    In other words, THINK for yourself.

    Thanks Zero. Reading “Breath” by James Nestor. Breathing is something that everyone can do for *themselves*. Somehow relevant to myself….hmmmmmm. Probably a simple additional defense against the ‘rona’ as well. Just sayin’.

    🙂

    #66891
    WES
    Participant

    Just in case you hadn’t notice, yesterday marked the eradication of the election fraud virus!

    #66892
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    From that market-ticker article linked above:

    “Because under the law an EUA can only be issued if there are no safe and effective treatments. If there are safe and effective treatments [like Ivermectin] then under the law an EUA cannot issue; you must instead go through the entire procedure to get regular approval.”

    Like Huskynut said, if you ain’t angry, you don’t understand what’s going down. The official briefing documents linked below (for the advisory committee that voted in favor of approving the Pfizer vaccine) have no mention of Ivermectin, and the claim that there is currently “no broadly effective treatment or prevention available is used to justify the approval of the vaccine.”

    8. RISK/BENEFIT ASSESSMENT

    The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on public health, and currently there is no broadly effective treatment or prevention available. An effective vaccine can impact the pandemic at this critical time. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, there will be >55,000 deaths per month in the US over the next few months.25 A COVID-19 vaccination program implemented soon can likely prevent many deaths.26 A vaccine must be introduced before the peak of reported cases to have a significant impact on the pandemic course.26,27 A highly effective vaccine, with sufficient uptake as supplies become available, may be able to induce population herd immunity to bring the pandemic under control.

    https://www.fda.gov/media/144246/download

    https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download

    #66893
    WES
    Participant

    Madamski:

    As for going back to 1840, I wouldn’t want to do that!

    First of all, my training is in electricity which really hadn’t become a thing by 1840 so I would be totally irrelevant!

    Second, they hadn’t invented central heating back in1840!

    Third, back then they used real money, so we wouldn’t be able to just print wealth, but would have to actually work!

    So you see, the good olde days weren’t so good!

    Your honor, I rest my case!

    #66894
    WES
    Participant

    Doc Robinson:

    It may come as a shock to you, or maybe not, to be a liberal requires one to not know certain truths that conflict with your beliefs!

    #66895
    John Day
    Participant

    @MrHouse: Thanks for keeping up with comments on my blog while I was at work today. That was a good one. You can’t have an emergency use authorization for a COVID vaccine if ivermectin works to prevent COVID and is safe, unless you pretend otherwise.


    @Madamski
    , who said: “We seem to assume that 1970, or 1840, have been patiently waiting for us to come back to our senses and retrieve them from the past. It will take a decade or three just to raise enough livestock to make 1840 look plausible. How long it will take to rediscover lost techniques or devise new one is anyone’s guess, but I think it will take awhile.
    In the interim between the post-modern neo-industrial paradigm crash, and the emergence of something new, stable, and tolerably liveable, I foresee extremely primitive conditions and accompanying behavior, the latter probably being the primary cause of the former.
    As for a personal path: those who can should do something like you do. Most people can’t. My prescription, overall, is: be nice. Be kind and fair and decent to people. Even if it doesn’t save your tushie, it will help you die with a relatively clean conscience.
    This ain’t no party and, thank god, no disco. It is, I regret to say, mostly us just fooling around.”

    I caught the talking Heads doing this at The Armadillo World Headquarters before the mayor got rid of it to make room for developers. Uh, I forgot what I was going to say because I’m still listening to the song. It’ll play in my head for days now. Good choice, Sister!

    The not being able to figure out a path for-all-of-us is the inherent problem, because it can’t be done. We, all together, are the distributed computing network that works this problem. Each of us has to practice novel problem solving, which might start pretty simply. Growing vegetables is way more work and complexity that one might assume. People bow out all the time. “I killed a cactus”, being the latest one I heard. I have come to the conclusion that all we can ALL do is start working on novel problems in the direction of using less stuff, using cash instead of cards, figuring out processes and products that can be reliable and last a long time, offering to help somebody, and so on. When we become a massive parallel processor, stuff happens differently. I think there is a different mind. It creates the unforeseeable, … as I foresee it.

    Maybe you were feeling more like this song when you started writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU

    #66896
    straightwalker
    Participant

    Talking Heads, Jackson Browne, wow.
    Take a bow, y’all.

    #66897
    John Day
    Participant

    Bowing towards bedtime now, Straightwalking John 🙂

    #66898
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    If history rhymes, the USA today is replaying the 1918/19 Spanish Flu Pandemic and the 1932 Great Depression with the economics and politics of the Gilded Age. The New Deal over the last 40 years was deregulated and privatized out of existence with Social Security the only vestige left.

    Money talks. Facebook didn’t give 300 million dollars to state election offices this year for nothing. Congress didn’t give hundreds of millions of dollars to the states for electronic vote counting machines for no reason. Cash buys power. If anybody knows that the election is rigged, it is the Republicans. They depend on discouraging the opposition’s vote. Except, this year, in a pandemic, the turnout at 66.2% is the highest in over a century.

    311,068 Americans have died because the two borders were not closed to international flights in February 2020. Testing is a debacle. The public health response was dumped onto 50 state governments that resulted in a haphazard incomplete lockdowns when for-profit local hospitals were overrun with COVID-19 patients. Copying the public health procedures that are working in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are ignored as too expensive and contrary to the Elite’s imperative of eliminating government by ending taxes and regulation.

    The sole thing that matters is corporate profits. But industry has gone to Asia. All that left in the USA is the scam of increasing shareholder value. It creates crap. Boeing has stopped delivery of 787 Dreamliner because of problems with assembly of the composite aircraft fuselage. Maybe they can restart the 737 Max line now that it is cleared to fly in the USA and Brazil; once the 400 in storage are delivered.

    The Democrats simply do not acknowledge that they are Ivy League, Brahmin Caste, Insiders totally out of touch with reality. The Republicans are trying to secede. If politicians don’t try to get workers’ votes by allowing them to have shelter, food and a purpose in life, they will shortly be gone. Yellow shirted Proud Boys are picking for a fight.

    #66899
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @VietnamVet
    Love your comments and we’re still ultimately on the same side, but once again going to disagree with you..
    Unless you can find a way to tow your country out into the remote ocean, and believe it’s realistic to close you borders for the forseeable future and/or rely on insufficiently tested vaccines, underpinned by corporate immunity (plus today’s recurrent observation that vaccine approval wouldn’t have even been possible without the marginalisation of effective protocols using long-standing medications (Ivermectin, HCQ etc) then DON”T FOLLOW NEW ZEALAND. Our leaders don;t know sh*t.

    And interestingly, it’s been interesting in post-election NZ where Jacinda et al were elected in the first (and perhaps only) post-MMP non-coalition government off the back of their Covid “success” that finally criticism is emerging in a variety of media. House prices are through the roof (off the back of post-covid stimulus amongst other things), there is negligible accountability (somehow the report into the Christchurch shootings found no-one to blame – even the GCSB/SIS, where hundreds of millions of dollars goes to die each year without preventing a major terrorist shooting…

    Biden is faced with exactly the same issue.. he’s about to be holding the baby. And it’s ticking..

    #66907
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    “…he’s about to be holding the baby. And it’s ticking..”

    A delightfully Looneyu Tunes moment, that.

    “the turnout at 66.2% is the highest in over a century.”

    If it were a referendum for, say, a Constitutional amendment to make or preserve the USA as a democratic republic, the amendment would fail due to lack of interest alone.

    @ John Day

    Having been a happy idiot for more years than I wish to admit, struggling like us all for the legal tender, I submit that true love is the only contender. The rest are hollow stand-ins. And Tina Weymouth was having too much fun that night with the Talking Heads.

    #66921
    John Day
    Participant

    “I’m going to be a happy idiot
    And struggle for the legal tender
    Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
    To the heart and the soul of the spender
    And believe in whatever may lie
    In those things that money can buy
    Though true love could have been a contender
    Are you there?
    Say a prayer for the Pretender
    Who started out so young and strong
    Only to surrender”

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