Dominion Archives - Page 2 of 2 - The Automatic Earth

If the courts rule Dominion’s voting machines to be unconstitutional, then how many millions of ballots will be discarded?
Who wins the election if those millions of potentially fraudulent votes are discarded? https://t.co/fZLKY9Z14T

— Ron (@CodeMonkeyZ) November 15, 2020

The only reason to use voting machines is to allow cheating.

• 2018 NY Times Video: How Easy It Is to Hack a Dominion Voting Machine (Vaughn)

Much to their current chagrin, in April 2018, The New York Times published a video of a University of Michigan computer scientist, J. Alex Halderman, showing a group of students how easy it is to rig a Dominion Voting Machine. The name of the video is “I Hacked an Election. So Can the Russians.” A caption next to the title read, “It’s time America’s leaders got serious about voting security.” At the time, Democrats were focused on Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation and were anxiously waiting for his team to find evidence that President Trump had colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election. A colleague of mine, The Western Journal’s Jared Harris, dug up this little gem.

The video shows Homer Simpson using a touch screen to vote for Barack Obama, but it instantly turns into a vote for John McCain. Professor Halderman narrates the brief video and tells students that the Dominion Accuvote TS and TSX machines are obsolete models, but were still being used in American elections.Halderman continues his monologue:”I’m here to tell you that the electronic voting machines Americans got to solve the problem of voting integrity, they turned out to be an awful idea. That’s because people like me can hack them, all too easily.I once turned a voting machine into a video game. Imagine what the Russians and the North Koreans can do.I’ve even gone to Congress to raise the alarm. He is seen testifying at a Congressional hearing. “These machines are vulnerable to sabotage and even to cyberattacks that could change votes.”

Halderman tells viewers how to hack the Dominion voting machines. Step 1: Buy a voting machine on eBay, or if you’re the North Koreans, Hack the manufacturer and steal their software code. Step 2: Write a virus. Step 3: Email your virus to every election official responsible for programming the voting machines with new ballots. Step 4: Wait. Step 5: Hijack the programming and let the election officials copy your invisible malicious code onto the voting machines. Step 6: Watch your code silently steal votes.

How I Hacked an Election

Good overview.

• Voting Fraud Is a Real Concern. Just Look Around the World (NW)

Thirty-seven states have changed their mail-in voting procedures this year in response to the coronavirus. They have followed the lead of Democrats and the media, who claim that concerns about voter fraud and vote buying are figments of the Republican imagination. President Trump’s comments on Thursday and Friday about voter fraud with mail-in ballots have sent the media into a frenzy. One “news” article after another since then has asserted that President Trump’s warning is “baseless” (Associated Press and The Washington Post) or “without evidence” (The New York Times, Politico and NBC News). Liberals and progressives often try to model the U.S. on Western European countries, but you never hear them arguing that we should adopt their voting rules. There is a reason for that.

Banning mail-in voting or requiring people to use photo IDs to obtain a mail-in ballot is quite common in developed countries, especially in Europe. To study this, the Crime Prevention Research Center, of which I am the president, created a database on voting rules around the world. Here is what we found. Besides the United States, there are 36 member states in the OECD. Forty-seven percent ban mail-in voting unless the citizen is living abroad, and 30 percent require a photo ID to obtain a mail-in ballot. Fourteen percent of the countries ban mail-in voting even for those living abroad. In addition, some countries that allow voting by mail for some citizens living in the country don’t allow it for everyone.

For example, Japan and Poland have limited mail-in voting for those who have special certificates verifying that they are disabled. France has made an exception this year to its ban on mail-in ballots to those who are sick or at particular risk during the coronavirus pandemic. Poland will allow mail-in ballots for everyone for this year only. Brazil and Russia satisfy the economic standards of the OECD, but are excluded for various political reasons. Both countries completely ban mail-in voting and require photo IDs for in-person voting. Among the 27 countries in the European Union, 63 percent ban mail-in voting unless living abroad and another 22 percent require a photo ID to obtain a mail-in ballot. Twenty-two percent ban the practice even for those who live abroad.

There are 16 countries in the rest of Europe, and they are even more restrictive. Every single one bans mail-in voting for those living in the country or require a photo ID to obtain a mail-in ballot. Sixty-three percent don’t allow mail-in ballots even for citizens living outside of the country. Are all of these countries, socialist and non-socialist alike, Western and Eastern European, developed and undeveloped, acting “without evidence?” It is not as though people in these countries haven’t heard the same arguments about the importance of the ease of voting—or about how photo ID requirements will, as one professor in the U.K. explained, supposedly “lead to people not being able to vote.”

These countries have learned the hard way what happens when mail-in ballots aren’t secured. They have also discovered how hard it is to detect vote buying when both those buying and selling the votes have an incentive to hide the exchange. France banned mail-in voting in 1975 because of massive fraud in Corsica, where postal ballots were stolen or bought and voters cast multiple votes. Mail-in ballots were used to cast the votes of dead people.

Dominion
https://twitter.com/i/status/1327511568993701888

“Maybe ex-CIA chief John Brennan never should have messed with General Mike Flynn. Just sayin’.”

• Don’t Mess with Miz Powell (Jim Kunstler)

An eerie silence oppressed the election news-space much of last week as Mr. Trump and his people seemed to lay low, Br’er Rabbit style, and a lot of folks wondered what was going on in that-there briar patch. Towards the weekend, Rudolf Giuliani methodically described some of the evidence at hand about janky ballot reporting, but that must have been too plodding for the Big Media gang. Then another Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell, came on Lou Dobbs’s Friday evening news show and some people started paying attention to some things she said, like, “I’m going to release the kraken” — referring to the largest and most feared sea monster in Old Norse mythology. Miz Powell, she means bidness. She went on, “We have staggering statistical evidence; we have staggering personal testimony… we’re beginning to collect evidence on the financial interest of the governors and secretaries of state who bought into the Dominion [vote tabulation] systems… President Trump won this election in a landslide, it is irrefutable… we are gonna go after it, and I am going to expose every one of them.”

Well, that might have put the fear of Gawd in some people. In case anyone in the back-of-the-class wasn’t paying attention, Miz Powell went back on the air Sunday morning with Maria Bartiromo and said, “We’re fixing to overturn the results of this election in multiple states… President Trump won not by hundreds of thousands of votes but by millions of votes that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose…. We have so much evidence I feel it’s coming in like a firehose.” Is Ms. Powell bluffing? Why would she try, since the time left in this game is short and her only play is to show her cards? “I never say anything I can’t prove,” she declared.

[..] It’s a pretty rich gameboard out there and the clock is ticking. The possible outcomes are several: The state legislatures in disputed states could choose their own elector slates. In short order, the President’s lawyers will take their case to the US Supreme Court, which might invalidate the disputed states’ elections and send the contest into the House of Representatives a la the 1876 Hayes-Tilden election. The Department of Justice could level felony charges before December 8 at a long list of companies and persons involved in demonstrable ballot fraud. This could amount to decapitation of the Deep State. Would Mr. Barr dare? A lot of people doubt it. I’m sure readers can conjure up other possibilities.

In any case, a final victory for Joe Biden would hopelessly taint any administration he leads and would lead to much harsher resistance coming from the other side this time — while he is trying to govern during an economic calamity worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. Maybe ex-CIA chief John Brennan never should have messed with General Mike Flynn. Just sayin’.

“.. if the one vote doesn’t give the leading candidate 270 electoral votes, then automatically it goes to the House of Representatives, where a whole new process takes over, and a process that clearly favors President Trump..”

• Trump May Try To Deny Biden 270 Electoral Votes – Dershowitz (ET)

Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz predicted that President Donald Trump will attempt to settle the election in a way not seen since the 19th century. In an interview with Newsmax, the longtime legal expert said Trump no longer is attempting to reach 270 Electoral College votes but will instead focus on denying Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s chances of getting 270 votes. “Let’s look at the big picture: The big picture now has shifted,” Dershowitz told the website. “I do not believe that President Trump is now trying to get to 270 electoral votes. I think he thinks that’s out of the question.” Trump hasn’t signaled in public about his chances of securing 270 votes due to several legal challenges.

“What he’s trying to do is to deny Joe Biden 270 votes, by challenging in Pennsylvania, Georgia, in Nevada, in Michigan, in Arizona,” Dershowitz said, adding that not allowing Biden to reach 270 out of 538 votes would eventually force House state delegations to vote, where Republicans have an advantage over Democrats. Currently, the GOP has a 26-23-1 state delegation majority in the House of Representatives. “If he can keep the Biden count below 270, then the matter goes to the House of Representatives, where, of course, there is a Republican majority among the delegations of states, and you vote by state if it goes to the House,” Dershowitz said. “He’s trying to follow the playbook of three elections of the 19th century.”

Dershowitz noted that a number of things would have to align perfectly for Trump to win under that circumstance. “You need a perfect storm for it to work,” he said. “You need to get enough states, enough state attorneys general, or state departments, or whoever, secretaries of state or governors that are Republican that legitimately refuse to certify the results because they’re under challenge on the day the Electoral College meets by statute.” “If on that day, Biden doesn’t have 270 votes—you don’t get to vote two or three times on that; as far as the Constitution’s concerned, it’s one vote—and if the one vote doesn’t give the leading candidate 270 electoral votes, then automatically it goes to the House of Representatives, where a whole new process takes over, and a process that clearly favors President Trump,” added the former law professor.

Hmmm.

• Biden Campaign Director Arrested For Electoral Fraud (PN)

The Democrat Director of Texas state political strategy for the Joe Biden Presidential campaign has been arrested for electoral fraud. Democratic Party operative Dallas Jones was formally accused of helping to run an illegal ballot harvesting operation in the state of Texas on behalf of the Joe Biden campaign during this contested Presidential election. According to the National File, two investigators, including a former FBI agent and former police officer, testified under oath that they have Democratic Party internal documentation, as well as video evidence and witnesses, for their investigation. The following is an affidavit from private investigator and retired Houston police officer Mark A. Aguirre, which was submitted under oath.

“My name is Mark A. Aguirre. I am above the age of eighteen years and am fully competent to make this affidavit. The facts stated in this affidavit are within my personal knowledge and are true and correct. “I am a retired captain with the Houston Police Department. I am now a private investigator. “I am currently involved in an investigation related to a wide-ranging and fraudulent ballot harvesting scheme in Harris County intended to rig the elections in the Houston/Harris County area. This scheme involves voter fraud on a massive scale. “Based on interviews, review of documents, and other information, I have identified the individuals in charge of the ballot harvesting scheme. These individuals include political consultant Dallas Jones, who was recently hired by the Joe Biden for President campaign to oversee their Harris County initiative, District 13 Texas State Senator Borris Miles, who is the handler of Mr. Jones, political consultant Gerald Womack, and Precinct 1 Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis.

One of the companies these individuals are using as a front for this operation is AB Canvassing, although there are others that have been identified that we are investigating.” “I have in my possession video-taped interviews of witnesses attesting to the aforementioned people having groups of people completing thousands of absentee and mail-in ballots, including completing ballots for deceased individuals; illegally going into nursing homes, with the complicity of the nursing home staff, and filling out and forging the signatures of nursing home residents; signing up homeless individuals to vote using the ballot harvester’s address, then completing the ballot and forging the homeless individual’s signature.

Where is Durham?

• Durham’s Lame Duck Period (Turley)

Before going dark in October, U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation made headlines with the criminal plea of former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in order to continue surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser. There have been rumors for months that Durham found material not disclosed by special counsel Mueller or the Justice Department’s inspector general in their prior investigations. He also is known to have been working with a grand jury as part of his investigation. There is ample reason why a Biden administration would want to see Durham’s investigation closed.

Earlier this year, disclosures contradicted Biden’s denials that he knew of or was involved in the investigation of figures like Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn; the disclosures indicated Biden may have sought to “unmask” Flynn in surveillance reports. There also are accounts from the Oval Office that Biden was briefed on the Flynn investigation, including the fact that the FBI thought his discussions with Russian diplomats were “legit.” Earlier, FBI investigators sought to end the Flynn investigation for lack of evidence of any crime; according to one report, Biden raised the possibility of prosecuting Flynn under the Logan Act, a federal law widely viewed as unconstitutional.

The Durham investigation may not result in new indictments but could result in the release of new evidence. Indeed, the greatest risk of intervention by the Biden administration would be the withholding of any report or the use of classification rules to bar parts of its release. That report could shed light on how the Russia investigation began and was sustained, despite early intelligence refuting the collusion allegations. This includes recently released information that President Obama was briefed on intelligence suggesting that Hillary Clinton was working to falsely paint Trump as colluding with Russians. Such findings could be highly embarrassing not only to Obama administration officials but a number of congressional Democrats — including Rep. Schiff, who assured the public that, after contrary findings by the special counsel and the inspector general, his House committee had clear evidence of collusion. Schiff never produced that evidence.

A “dangerous attack on our democracy” indeed.

• The Lawless Campaign To Harass Lawyers Representing The Trump Campaign (Turley)

As in the past, there is a disturbing symbiosis of the media and activists feeding off each other. When Biden was viewed as the likely winner, theories of voting irregularities instantly became “conspiracy theories.” Groups like the Lincoln Project targeted law firms and launched a campaign to force lawyers to abandon Trump as a client. This effort resulted in Twitter blocking the Lincoln Project for targeting individual Trump lawyers in a tweet (accompanied by a skull-and-crossbones emoji) that was deemed threatening and abusive. That only seemed to thrill the Lincoln Project. It reportedly joined Democrats in targeting law firms like Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur and threatening its lawyers with professional ruin. It claimed that any firm working for Trump on election litigation was part of a “dangerous attack on our democracy.”

Trying to strip people of their counsel, of course, is the real attack on our democracy — and it worked: The firm buckled and withdrew, saying the pressure caused internal struggles and at least one lawyer’s resignation. Other campaigns have targeted individual lawyers and what used to be called “fellow travelers” during the McCarthy period. After the election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called for liberals to assemble enemies lists of those “complicit” in the Trump administration. (Ironically, the first entry by a Bernie Sanders surrogate were the Republicans who founded the Lincoln Project). Former Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan proudly tweeted: “WH staff are starting to look for jobs. Employers considering them should know there are consequences for hiring anyone who helped Trump attack American values.”

However, the effort to intimidate lawyers representing Trump or his campaign is not about vengeance. It is about insurance. Even though the success of these challenges is small and shrinking, opponents do not want to risk any judicial scrutiny of the vote. Social media campaigns targeted the clients of firms like Jones Day, while the Lincoln Project pledged $500,000 to make the lives of these lawyers a living hell. It is the kind of tactic used by Antifa and other activists to “deplatform” speakers or harass individuals at their homes. Trump is highly unpopular with many Americans — and virtually all of the media — so it is popular to harass anyone who supports or represents him. It is mob justice targeting the justice system itself.

The Moderna vaccine appears to be far superior when it come to storage:

ZH: “Pfizer’s vaccine must be stored ultra-cold until a few days before it is used, but can be kept at refrigerator temperatures for as much as five days. Moderna, meanwhile, pointed to new data showing its vaccine is stable at refrigerator temperatures for 30 days, much longer than a previously estimated seven days.”

• Moderna COVID19 Vaccine Candidate Is 94.5% Effective – Trials (RT)

A new Covid-19 vaccine candidate is almost 95 percent effective, its American manufacturer has said, potentially giving it the edge in the race to defeat the virus. US-based biotechnology company Moderna announced on Monday that the two-dose mRNA-1273 vaccine it is developing has an efficacy of 94.5 percent, based on the results of a Phase-3 study, involving over 30,000 people. In the clinical trials, 90 cases of Covid-19 were observed in the group given the placebo, compared to five cases among those given the vaccine. It comes as a rival vaccine by US-based Pfizer and German firm BioNTech was found to have an efficacy of 90 percent, while the developers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine reported a 92 percent efficacy.

“The overall effectiveness has been remarkable…it’s a great day,” Moderna’s chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, told BBC News. The company now intends to apply for an emergency use authorization with US regulator the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks. Europe’s health regulator, the European Medicines Agency, said on Monday that it had started a real-time “rolling review” of Moderna’s vaccine candidate, following similar checks on Pfizer and AstraZeneca’s vaccines. Moderna expects to have 20 million doses of its vaccine ready to ship to the US by the end of the year and said it remains “on track” to manufacture between 500 million and a billion doses globally in 2021. It also announced on Monday that its vaccine has a better shelf life and stability than that of Pfizer’s, which must be stored at -70 degrees Celsius, or -94 Fahrenheit.

“In the real world, the difference between 1,500 deaths in a day and 1,000 is staggering, real and personal. To the endemic mindset, they are functionally identical.”

• The Endemic Mindset (Guinn)

The endemic mindset is the world of abstractions we see under the influence of learned helplessness. There are only so many days in which death or hospitalization counts may still function as information for the human mind. There are only so many descriptions, images or videos of hospitals in the early stages of being overwhelmed which will be able to change anyone’s perspective. There is a point of diminishing informational returns from another story about a lost small business, or a struggling low income family. In the real world, the difference between 1,500 deaths in a day and 1,000 is staggering, real and personal. To the endemic mindset, they are functionally identical. In the real world, the difference between a 60% drop in revenue and a 30% drop in revenue is breathtaking.

To the endemic mindset, they are functionally identical. In the real world, the difference between being out of work for 9 months and being out of work for 4 months may be nearly existential. But if we are not the one affected, to the endemic mindset, they are functionally identical. In short, the endemic mindset is one in which our default expectation is that our world has become permanently worse in a way that we are helpless to do anything about.I don’t think I miss the mark by saying that ALL of us are suffering from this just a little bit.At some point in the last several months, did it start to feel like checking in every few days with elderly neighbors wasn’t really helping? Did it feel like extraordinary support of waitstaff, servers and owners of local businesses demanded much of you and still couldn’t keep them from going under?

Did your capacity to give to local food security charities give way to a recognition that the need never went away? Are you a financial advisor or professional being asked for good advice or wisdom about how to navigate “these challenging times”, and feeling like you ran out of both months ago? Are you a parent forced into remote learning supervision, feeling like you’ve botched it and waiting out the clock to give you a reprieve?Does the choice between standing outside in the cold, six feet apart, mask obscuring any sign of warmth or human emotion, or staying at home for Thanksgiving with the same people you’ve seen day in and day out for 8 months make you want to scream?

In your heart of hearts, do all of those things make it a little bit easier to believe that there’s just maybe nothing we can do that’s really going to take this shock away? That maybe we live our lives and weather all of this as best we can? If you are feeling that a bit – I feel that pull from time to time, too, if it helps – it doesn’t make you bad. It makes you human.

Listen to the scientists.

• 65 Virus Cases, With 1 Cluster, In WHO Geneva Staff (AP)

The World Health Organization has recorded 65 cases of the coronavirus among staff based at its headquarters, including at least one cluster of infections, an internal email obtained by The Associated Press shows, despite the agency’s past assertions that there has been no transmission at the Geneva site.The revelation comes amid a surge of cases in Europe, host country Switzerland, and the city of Geneva, in particular, and the email said about half of the infections were in people who had been working from home. But 32 were in staff who had been working on premises at the headquarters building, indicating that the health agency’s strict hygiene, screening and other prevention measures were not sufficient to spare it from the pandemic.

Farah Dakhlallah, a WHO spokeswoman, confirmed the accuracy of the information about the case count in an email to the AP and that officials were still investigating.“We have not yet established whether transmission occurred on campus, but are looking into the matter,” Dakhlallah said. Raul Thomas, who heads business operations at WHO, emailed staff on Friday noting that five people — four on the same team and one who had contact with them— had tested positive for COVID-19. While the email did not use the term “cluster,” one is generally defined as two or more cases in the same area, and the five cases indicate basic infection control and social distancing procedures were likely being broken.

A previous email he sent on Oct. 16 indicated that no clusters had been found at the site. “As per standard protocols, these colleagues are receiving the necessary medical attention and are recovering at home,” the email Friday said. “These last five cases bring the total reported number of affected members of the Geneva based workforce to 65 since the beginning of the pandemic.”

Zombies.

• The Economy is Imploding from Over-Capacity and Corrupt Cartels (CHS)

Here’s the fantasy: if we stop the shutdowns, the economy will naturally bounce back to its oh-so wunnerful perfection of Q3 2019. This is a double-dose of magical thinking and denial. The U.S. economy was unraveling in 2019 from 11 long years of Fed-induced over-capacity in almost everything (except integrity, competition, transparency and social cohesion) and the bone-crushing burden of corrupt, greedy cartels that have the nation by the throat. The reality nobody dares mention is that thanks to 20 years of the Federal Reserve’s easy money, there’s rampant over-capacity everywhere you look: there’s too many cafes, bistros, restaurants, fast-food outlets, hotels, resorts, AirBnBs, unprofitable Tech Unicorns, airline flights, Tech startups, office towers, retail space, malls, absurdly overpriced apartments for rent, storage facilities, delivery services, office sublets, colleges, attorneys, unemployed workers with multiple credentials–the list of too much, too many is endless.

Thanks to the Fed, the most profitable venture was borrowing to increase capacity, then borrow some more to extract the phantom value created by the greater capacity. Nobody cared if the office tower remained mostly empty; the money was made in building it and extracting its “value” via debt, not operating a legitimate enterprise. This Fed-created house of cards was never sustainable, or healthy, as all the incentives to add capacity were perverse. The illusion that every mall, office tower, retail space, college, apartment building, etc. would be filled was only plausible as long as consumers and zombie corporations were borrowing and spending more than they earned. That was never sustainable, but rather than look at the systemic set-up of an insanely predatory, fragile debt bubble resting precariously on over-capacity, the status quo is blaming Covid and lockdowns. The problem isn’t the pin, it’s the bubble that was begging to be popped by something, anything.

A double edged sword.

• Zombification in Europe in Times of Pandemic (Vox.eu)

The COVID-19 crisis has prompted extraordinary financial support to firms by governments and central banks. This support has taken the form of public credit guarantee schemes, debt moratoria, direct support to firms via financial aid programmes, central bank lending and purchase programmes, and a loosening of micro- and macro-prudential supervisory rules. While this support is crucial to keep a cash-strapped economy afloat, it has invigorated a debate on whether such policies are promoting ‘zombie’ lending and ‘zombie’ firms. Zombie lending is generally defined as lending to non-viable (i.e. zombie) firms. The literature proposes different methods to measure zombies, which remains challenging, however.

The ‘zombification’ of the economy refers to a situation where public support programmes and bank lending actions keep unviable firms alive. This term gained widespread prominence following the Japanese crisis of the 1990s, when a collapse in real estate prices followed by a prolonged period of low growth resulted in many weak banks and firms, with weak banks preserving their lending relationships with weak firms, rolling over credits to unviable firms. Why would banks lend to alleged zombie firms? The literature has put forward two main explanations. On the dark side, banks may want to engage in the ‘evergreening’ (i.e. rolling over) of existing loans to avoid loan loss recognition. Recognising loan losses implies a deterioration of capital buffers.

It therefore follows that especially low-capitalised banks have an incentive to lend to zombies. On the bright side, banks may lend to zombies to preserve valuable relationships. To the extent that relationship lenders have an informational advantage over their customers, this may allow them provide credit to illiquid but viable firms in crisis times. Provision of such liquidity to firms in distress has the positive externality that it can avoid disruptions of supply chains.

“If the economic situation were in the announced expansion, inventories would be falling rapidly when sold.”

• Is There Really A China Economic Miracle? (Lacalle)

The year 2020 will be an extremely tough year for the European economy. Added to an unprecedented drop is a strong impact in the fourth quarter due to the new lockdowns. Morgan Stanley estimates that the eurozone’s GDP will fall by 2.2% in the fourth quarter, a 7% drop in the full year 2020. In addition, the investment bank lowers the outlook for 2021 with a rebound of only 5% in the average of the euro area, delaying the recovery of 2019 GDP to 2023. The “jobless recovery” is even more worrying. The apparently spectacular rebound data for the third quarter resulted in zero job creation. Unemployment in the eurozone in September stood at 8.3% and in Spain at 16.5%, not counting the millions of furloughed jobs in Europe.

In this environment, the United States’ recovery seems much stronger. GDP recovered in the third quarter to just 3.5% below 2019 levels. Unemployment has fallen to 6.9% in October but remains well above the record employment levels of 2019. However, the data from China is apparently spectacular. The manufacturing and services index already show an enviable expansion. GDP for the first three quarters is already growing at 0.7% after an expansion of 4.9% in the third quarter. Urban unemployment in China is 5.4% after shooting to a paltry 6%. What is behind the Chinese miracle compared to the poor eurozone?

A planned GDP. The GDP of China is dictated by production, not demand. It is not an observed GDP, but rather planned by the government together with the provinces. For this reason, many analysts scrutinize the data and deduct various factors, including the increase and valuation of inventories. It is not by chance that inventories of iron ore, automobiles and finished goods have risen to the highest level in seven months as the economy recovers. If the economic situation were in the announced expansion, inventories would be falling rapidly when sold.

Much is produced that is then not sold and remains in warehouses. Thus, it is not surprising that industrial prices fell 2.1% in September, export prices 0.9%, and the country’s debt soared 13.5% amid an apparently miraculous recovery. Industrial business profits have fallen 2.4% between January and September and, furthermore, factory door prices fell faster than expected in September and were at risk of deflation. These are signs of a slowly recovering economy, like all others, but not of a growth miracle.

People flee cities everywhere.

• Rents In British Cities Fall By Up To 15% Amid Covid ‘Exodus’ (G.)

Private rents in Britain’s cities have fallen by as much as 15% over the past year as tenants quit urban areas for a new life in the suburbs or the countryside, data shows. What has been described by some an “exodus” from the cities sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic is now pushing up rental costs in rural areas. In October, average rents in the countryside were 5.5% higher than a year earlier, while typical city rents were down by almost exactly the same amount (5.3%), according to figures for Great Britain from the estate agents Hamptons International. This gear change in demand has created a glut of properties in some areas and shortages in others. There were 29% more homes available to rent in cities than at the same time last year, while the number available in the countryside was down sharply – by 48%.

The reassessing of priorities brought on by the pandemic, with millions working from home and many wanting more space, combined with plummeting numbers of international students, is wreaking particular havoc on central London. Hamptons said rents in inner London were down by 14.9% year on year as landlords slashed costs to attract tenants – lopping almost £400 off the average monthly rent, which fell from £2,564 in October 2019 to £2,182 last month. The figures come after a series of surveys suggesting that many city dwellers have either moved out or are planning to do so after re-evaluating their lifestyle. Many are likely to have concluded that they will be able to continue working from home for at least part of the week once the crisis has subsided.

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Cars collecting food in Dallas

Thousands of cars lined up to collect food in Dallas, Texas, over the weekend, stretching as far as the eye can see. pic.twitter.com/xLFGOcBkPK

— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 16, 2020

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Debt Rattle November 16 2020

Nov 162020

November 16, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:04 am Finance Tagged with: Big Apple, blockade, Brennan, China, Covid19, Dominion, Smartmatic, Trump, vaccine, vote counting software 26 Responses »

Roy Lichtenstein Femmes d’Alger 1963

• “We’re Getting Ready To Overturn Election Results In Multiple States” (ET)

• Pro-Biden Bug Also Suspected in Georgia’s Vote-Counting Software (Sperry)

• How A Philly Mob Boss Stole The Election (Buffalo Chronicle)

• Illegitimate President (Jim Quinn)

• What is John Brennan So Worried About? (Ray McGovern)

• Geopolitical Risks of the 2020 Election (Achim Dübel)

• 6,000 UK Volunteers To Be Injected With Covid Vaccine In Phase 3 Trial (G.)

• 300,000 New Yorkers Have Fled The Big Apple Amid Coronavirus, Crime (NYP)

• Trump Plans Last-Minute China Crackdown (Axios)

• As China’s Blockade Unravels Australian Economy, Everything Is At Risk (SCMP)

• Girlfriend Keeps Referring To Herself As ‘Wife-Elect’ (Babylon Bee)

Prof Sucharit Bhakdi : Take those masks off your face

“Stop following the pied piper” Prof Sucharit Bhakdi begs people to give up masks and social distancing and read @who accepted consensus that you are not in any danger from #Covid19 Full recording>https://t.co/i0S0Z6AoNJ pic.twitter.com/dcJ0uzdLHE

— The Yeadon Campaign – LOOK | SPEAK | LIVE (@Yeadoncampaign) November 13, 2020

Smartmatic, Dominion, Hammer, Scorecard.

• “We’re Getting Ready To Overturn Election Results In Multiple States” (ET)

Former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, a Trump campaign lawyer, suggested in a Sunday interview that there is still more evidence coming out in President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud and irregularities. “We’re getting ready to overturn election results in multiple states,” Powell said, saying that she has enough evidence of election fraud to launch a widespread criminal investigation. “I don’t make comments without having the evidence to back it up,” she added, saying that elections software switched “millions of votes” from Trump to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Powell notably provided legal counsel to Gen. Michael Flynn in 2019. She was named to Trump’s legal team in the past several days.

Powell said a whistleblower came forward and said the elections software was designed to “rig elections,” saying that “he saw it happen in other countries,” referring to voting systems Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, or perhaps other software and machines. “We have so much evidence, I feel like it’s coming in through a fire hose,” Powell said, while noting that she won’t reveal the evidence that she has. “They can stick a thumb drive in the [voting] machine, they can upload software to it even from the Internet … from Germany or Venezuela even,” she said, adding that operations “can watch votes in real-time” and “can shift votes in real-time,” or alleged bad actors can “remote access anything.” “We’ve identified mathematically the exact algorithm they’ve used—and planned to use from the beginning” that allegedly switched votes to Biden, Powell remarked.

[..] “(W)e have concerns about the spread and effect of private equity investment in many sectors of the economy, including the election technology industry—an integral part of our nation’s democratic process,” wrote the lawmakers in their letters to the firms about a year ago. “These problems threaten the integrity of our elections and demonstrate the importance of election systems that are strong, durable, and not vulnerable to attack.” Later in the Sunday morning interview, Powell said that her team has “detected voting irregularities that are inexplicable” in states where officials believe they have valid systems. During the election, Republicans in the House were able to flip at least 11 seats while the GOP is poised to maintain control of the Senate. Some conservatives have questioned how such a voting pattern is possible for Biden to win the presidential election, let alone receive more votes than any other presidential candidate in American history, including President Barack Obama’s victory in 2008.

Sidney Powell
https://twitter.com/i/status/1328035735287558144

https://twitter.com/i/status/1328049953927782407

“Georgia is now Ground Zero in the battle for control of the Senate.”

• Pro-Biden Bug Also Suspected in Georgia’s Vote-Counting Software (Sperry)

A curious thing happened as Fulton County, Ga., election officials counted mail-in ballots at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena in the days after the election. In the early hours of Nov. 5, a surge of some 20,000 mail-in votes suddenly appeared for Joe Biden, while approximately 1,000 votes for President Trump mysteriously disappeared from his own totals in the critical swing state, where Biden holds a razor-thin lead. A poll watcher noticed the suspicious shift in votes while monitoring the interim election results on the Georgia secretary of state website. “I concluded from looking at these results that this was an irregularity, since there was no obvious reason for President Trump’s totals to have decreased while former Vice President Biden’s totals increased dramatically,” Voter GA co-founder Garland Favorito swore in an affidavit he filed this week with the secretary of state’s office.

Favorito suspects a variety of factors, including that votes were “artificially inflated” for Biden while using the same Dominion Voting system used by Antrim County, Mich., which erroneously transferred 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Last year, Georgia contracted with Dominion to automate vote tabulations in all 159 of its counties. “The software appears to have thrown votes from Trump to Biden here too,” he said in a RealClearInvestigations interview. “Or Biden ballots were manufactured.” The large disparity of gains between the two candidates “was something I had never witnessed before in my years of election monitoring,” said Favorito, a career IT professional who has been a leading advocate for election integrity in the state over the past two decades. He says he is not a Republican or Trump supporter.

On Nov. 10, Favorito sent his affidavit to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, recommending a full, by-hand ballot recount. The next day, his office announced it will conduct such an audit for the presidential race. Biden currently leads Trump by more than 14,000 votes in the state. “It’s a good first step,” Favorito said. “A recount will be able to determine if there was electronic vote fraud.” In addition to helping certify the presidential race, he said it’s imperative investigators identify the source of the irregularities before the state holds its two U.S. Senate run-off elections on Jan. 5 so they don’t repeat themselves. Georgia is now Ground Zero in the battle for control of the Senate. Republicans currently hold a 50-48 edge, but if they lose both Georgia seats, presumptive Vice President-elect Kamala Harris could cast tie-breaking votes to carry out the Democratic agenda.

Giuliani Says Election will Be Overturned We Have Proof

No idea what to make of this really. But I do know the song for it:

Well, they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night.
Blew up his house too.

• How A Philly Mob Boss Stole The Election (Buffalo Chronicle)

The innermost circles of the American mafia are abuzz. The Boss of the Philly mob — ‘Skinny Joey’ Merlino — is taking a victory strut, hobnobbing around the highest echelons of old-time mafia folk, mostly in Florida, describing what may have been the heist of the century: the 2020 presidential election. The feat is drawing praise from far-flung corners of the Italian American business community, which sees the thanks of a grateful administration as key to the revival of the community’s political influence. But an associate says that Merlino might just be willing to flip on Joe Biden and the Pennsylvania political operatives who ordered up some 300,000 election ballots marked for Biden. The source alleges that Merlino and a lean team of associates manufactured those ballots at a rate of $10 per ballot — a whopping $3 million for three days of work.

They were then packaged into non-descript cardboard boxes and dropped off outside the Philadelphia Convention Center. Sources who spoke to The Chronicle on the condition of anonymity say that Merlino picked up those ballots from two private households where a trusted handful of associates were busily marking ballots with Sharpie markers. They were paid more than $1,000 per hour, often producing thousands of ballots every hour for more than 60 nearly-consecutive hours. The ballots were purchased in cash. It’s thought that Democratic Party operatives working inside Philadelphia’s election office provided Merlino with crates of raw ballots just hours before polls closed on election night, which he transported to two private households in South Philadelphia.

By 10 p.m. that night Merlino’s operation was already generating more than 3,000 ballots per hour, which quickly scaled to more than 6,000 ballots per hour before midnight. But now, Merlino might just be willing to flip on Biden — in primetime Congressional testimony — if President Donald J. Trump is willing to issue the longtime mobster a full expungement of his decades-long criminal record. And, of course, Merlino wants to be pardoned for the election fraud itself and any crimes to which he may incriminate himself during his testimony. “He wants a clean record. He wants to fish and hunt on federal lands. He’d really like a job with the National Parks Service. You need a clean record to get those things,” explains one confidant. “But most of all he wants the thanks of a grateful nation for coming forward.”

Jim Quinn takes no prisoners.

• Illegitimate President (Jim Quinn)

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” – H.L. Mencken. It’s now almost two weeks since the most crooked, rigged, fraudulent election in U.S. history. The engineered elevation of a handsy, sniffy, senile, empty portal, trojan horse by billionaire oligarchs, their Silicon Valley techno-geek social media censorship police, and the corporate media propaganda mouthpieces looks like it might succeed. Republican cucks like Romney and even the pliable Fox News talking heads have acquiesced to this third attempt during this ongoing coup like obedient lapdogs positioning themselves to profit from doing the bidding of their global oligarch masters.

Make no mistake. There was a master plan implemented by dark forces to steal this election, overriding the will of the American people. The anger of 70 million Americans is perfectly captured in the above quote from Mencken. If Trump and his allies are unable to prove fraud and overturn this sham of an election, myself and millions more will treat the Kamala Harris administration as illegitimate and do everything in our power to resist and insure its failure.

The level of fake news media propaganda about the “most secure fairest election in history”, and the vociferous blatant systematic censorship by Twitter, Facebook, and Google of anyone who dares to question the approved narrative of “a mostly fraud free election” on their social media platforms is all the proof a critical thinking person needs to realize this election was stolen by left wing oligarchs. Trump was too erratic, uncontrollable and resistant to their new world order agenda of climate extremism, population control through fear, communist economics, cash elimination, and ruling through a technocratic Big Brother surveillance state.

Trump, through naivety, foolishness or carelessness, allowed enemies of his administration to wield power and influence for the last four years. He chose swamp creature after swamp creature for key cabinet positions and seemed surprised when they stabbed him in the back. He failed to purge Obama loyalists holding middle level positions in the FBI, CIA, Dept of Defense, and numerous other agencies. They actively worked to subvert everything he tried to accomplish.

The military industrial complex apparatchiks are cackling like hyenas about how they misled him about troop levels in Syria and continue to ignore his orders to bring the troops home from Afghanistan. Obama and his gang of traitorous thieves conspired to bring Trump down before he assumed office and continued for the entire four years, assisted by a feckless mainstream media of faux journalists peddling fake news and disinformation fed to them by the Deep State coup collaborators.

As I said last week: he’s afraid of being exposed.

• What is John Brennan So Worried About? (Ray McGovern)

Former CIA Director John Brennan is apparently so worried that Donald Trump might release certain classified intelligence that he suggested this week that Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet remove Trump via the 25th amendment. Brennan appeared this week on both CNN and MSNBC to spread alarm about what Trump might do as he continues to contest the election results and appoints new people at Defense, NSA (and possibly CIA) who may do his bidding. Brennan warned on CNN that it was “very, very worrisome” that Trump “is just very unpredictable now … like a cornered cat — tiger. And he’s going to lash out.” Brennan told MSNBC he was worried that Trump has called for the “wholesale declassification of intelligence in order to further his own political interests.”

Whom would he lash out at and what classified documents might Brennan be referring to? The CIA’s point man at The Washington Post, David Ignatius, has provided the answer: “President Trump’s senior military and intelligence officials have been warning him strongly against declassifying information about Russia that his advisers say would compromise sensitive collection methods and anger key allies. An intense battle over this issue has raged within the administration in the days before and after the Nov. 3 presidential election. Trump and his allies want the information public because they believe it would rebut claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin supported Trump in 2016. That may sound like ancient history, but for Trump it remains ground zero — the moment when his political problems began.”

Protecting “sources and methods” is a red herring. They can be redacted from a classified document. It’s the content of these files that has Brennan extremely nervous as they might reveal Brennan’s role in the Russiagate scandal. Of course, Brennan invoked the old trope of “national security” when it appears it’s his own security he’s worried about. As we noted at a similar juncture in March 2018 (in “Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared”), Brennan’s foremost worry — then, as now — was that Trump was about to expose him to the disgrace that befell ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for malfeasance in connection with Russiagate. The president had just fired McCabe for repeatedly lying, and Brennan had good reason to worry.

That was before the true extent of the roles McCabe, his boss, former FBI Director James Comey, and Brennan played in the WMD-style fabrication of “Russiagate” had became more fully understood. Brennan landed on his MSNBC perch as a paid commentator on Feb. 2, 2018 and was riding high with adulation from the likes of former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, who publicly warned Trump that it is “not a good idea to piss off John Brennan.” Even back then, however, storm clouds were gathering. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), who knew much more than he revealed, was warning of legal consequences for Russiagate conspirators. Referring to the weavers and tailors of Russiagate, Nunes told reporter Sharyl Attkisson on Feb. 18, 2018: “If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial. The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created.”

View from Berlin.

• Geopolitical Risks of the 2020 Election (Achim Dübel)

A drama is unfolding for Korea. President Donald Trump was a once in a generation chance for reunification on the East Asian peninsula, as President Ronald Reagan was for Germany almost half a century ago. With the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the pro-war tendency in America that goes back to President Harry Truman returns to power. The consequences for Korea and many other nations around the world will be terrible. It was Reagan himself, not the CIA man President George H.W. Bush, who followed him, who pushed for the first covert and then overt operation to bring the Berlin wall down. It was Reagan’s Jacksonian sense of independence and his personal charm that convinced a reluctant Soviet leadership and domestic administration apparatus alike to follow. Reagan did most of the job in his second term, after he had gained control – and had survived an assassination attempt.

Now the old British-American war networks that have dominated U.S. administration since the murder of President John F. Kennedy will take over again. When the debris of the wall was still lying around in Berlin, George H.W. Bush in 1991 blocked Helmut Kohl in his effort to build a joint European house together with Russia. Under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the tension with Russia led into the current New Cold War. The new de-facto President of the United States, Kamala Harris, will now stop every effort to bring regional peace and cooperation. Harris was the first candidate to drop out of the Democrat’s race due to her profound unpopularity, but she was always the war network’s preferred candidate. I predicted in May that the US military industrial complex would push Harris through regardless.

The popular contenders such as Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and President Trump were axed away with the most unfair means to clear the path for Harris to reclaim control of the US for the war network. Harris’ career is also well planned ahead. The demented and corrupt Joe Biden, who is easy to manipulate and blackmail, is for some the perfect profile of a politician. Biden will be kept as a kind of political hologram for the next four, maybe eight years, while policy will be run by Harris and the corporate networks she represents. And then she will become President herself. It is reasonable to expect Harris to run the country until 2032 or 2036. The war network appreciates continuity.

“This includes the development of “memory” immune cells, which should protect against future coronavirus infections.”

• 6,000 UK Volunteers To Be Injected With Covid Vaccine In Phase 3 Trial (G.)

Six thousand British volunteers are to be injected with an experimental Covid vaccine modelled on an Ebola jab. It is the third Covid vaccine to enter large-scale clinical trials in the UK. Pursuing multiple candidates is essential to guarantee UK supply and ensure that most effective vaccine is identified, researchers stressed. Already undergoing large clinical trials in British patients are the Oxford Covid vaccine, and one being developed by the US biotech company Novavax. A phase 3 trial of the latest vaccine, developed by global pharmaceutical company Janssen (a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson), begins on Monday.

Phase 3 trials are designed to test the safety and effectiveness of drugs or vaccines in thousands of people. It will initially involve 6,000 volunteers from 17 sites across the UK, including Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Dundee, Leicester, London, Manchester, Sheffield and Southampton. A further 24,000 volunteers are to be recruited from other countries. Like the Oxford vaccine, the Janssen candidate uses a weakened common cold virus called an adenovirus to deliver instructions for making the coronavirus’s surface spike protein to our cells. Cells infected begin making the viral protein and expressing it on their surface, triggering an immune response. This includes the development of “memory” immune cells, which should protect against future coronavirus infections.

However, whereas the Oxford vaccine is based on an adenovirus from chimpanzees, Janssen’s vaccine uses a human adenovirus, which has been modified so it can no longer multiply or cause disease. The same virus forms the backbone of a recently approved Ebola vaccine, deployed during the 2019 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Janssen’s vaccine has already undergone smaller phase 1 and 2 trials, and interim analysis of a single-dose study suggests that it induces a robust immune response and is generally well-tolerated.

Too close for comfort.

• 300,000 New Yorkers Have Fled The Big Apple Amid Coronavirus, Crime (NYP)

More than 300,000 New Yorkers have bailed from the Big Apple in the last eight months, new stats show. City residents filed 295,103 change of address requests from March 1 through Oct. 31, according to data The Post obtained from the US Postal Service under a Freedom of Information Act request. Since the data details only when 11 or more forwarding requests were made to a particular county outside NYC, the number of moves is actually higher. And a single address change could represent an entire household, which means far more than 300,000 New Yorkers fled the five boroughs. Whatever the exact number, the exodus — which began when COVID-19 hit the city in early spring — is much greater than in prior years.

From just March through July, there were 244,895 change of address requests to destinations outside of the city, more than double the 101,342 during the same period in 2019. The escape from New York is fueled not only by coronavirus concerns, but economic worries, school chaos and rising crime, experts say. Michael Hendrix, director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute, which has commissioned surveys about the state of the city, was not surprised by the data. “I think people are afraid,” Hendrix said. “They’re afraid of catching a deadly virus and they’re afraid of crime and other quality of life concerns. One thing we also hear is about trash and cleanliness of the city.”

The institute’s survey of six-figure earners in July and August found that 44% of respondents had considered moving outside the city in the prior four months. They cited cost of living as the biggest reason. More than a third, 38%, said they thought the city was heading in the wrong direction and only 38% rated the quality of life as good or excellent. More than half, 53%, said they were very concerned about sending their kids back to school. Major crimes have been on the rise this year with the number of murders in the Big Apple hitting 344 by October, surpassing the count for all of 2019. The number of shootings through Nov. 8 is up 94% over 2019.

Not sure what Axios thinks of this….

• Trump Plans Last-Minute China Crackdown (Axios)

President Trump will enact a series of hardline policies during his final 10 weeks to cement his legacy on China, senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the plans tells Axios. He’ll try to make it politically untenable for the Biden administration to change course as China acts aggressively from India to Hong Kong to Taiwan, and the pandemic triggers a second global wave of shutdowns. Watch for National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe to publicly describe in granular detail intelligence about China’s nefarious actions inside the U.S Trump officials plan to sanction or restrict trade with more Chinese companies, government entities and officials for alleged complicity in human rights violations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, or threatening U.S. national security.

The administration also will crack down on China for its labor practices beyond Xinjiang forced labor camps. But don’t expect big new moves on Taiwan or more closures of Chinese consulates in the U.S., officials say. National Security Council spokesperson John Ullyot told Axios, “Unless Beijing reverses course and becomes a responsible player on the global stage, future U.S. presidents will find it politically suicidal to reverse President Trump’s historic actions.” Senior administration officials are discussing expanding a Defense Department list of Chinese companies deemed to have ties to the Chinese military. An executive order issued last week barred U.S. investment in 31 such companies, and any additions would likely face a similar restriction.

Officials plan to target China’s growing use of forced labor in the highly competitive fishing industry. Coerced and unpaid labor isn’t just a human rights concern — it can also give Chinese fisheries an advantage over rivals in an industry with geopolitical significance. Trump officials have been looking to move more hawkish China experts into senior roles across the government, another senior official added. “Director Ratcliffe will continue playing a leading role, in coordination with other national security principals, in delivering a necessary mindset shift from the Cold War and post-9/11 counterterrorism eras to a focus on great power competition with an adversarial China,” DNI senior adviser Cliff Sims tells Axios.

…but maybe this is what Trump has in mind. “China last week left 21 tonnes of live Australian lobster to die in Shanghai warehouses awaiting customs clearance.”

• As China’s Blockade Unravels Australian Economy, Everything Is At Risk (SCMP)

The tide turning against Chinese goods in Australia did not come as a huge surprise given the shifting geopolitical winds, but I was taken aback that China fuelled this particular fire by enacting what could be interpreted as a trade embargo by blocking the imports of multiple Australian goods. If the countries stay this course, it would be a sharply negative development after they just five years ago signed the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), which had taken nearly a decade to put into place. The knock-on effect would be far more serious than just shutting down the trade agreement in a huff. The risk in relying too heavily on Chinese goods and supply chains so heavily reliant on China became apparent during the Covid-19 crisis, and is leading to a global rethink about what we buy, from where and at what price.

Untying such a trade relationship with China is tricky, though, because it is a two-way flow. Australia has become dependent on imported Chinese goods whilst China is its largest customer for raw materials and certain food products. China has the upper hand as there are many sources of the raw materials and foodstuffs it needs, while Australia can’t switch suppliers so easily and needs to find new buyers for its goods fast. In Australia the issue of reliance on China became even more raw with the realisation during the Covid-19 crisis that Australian manufactured medical equipment was being siphoned off and shipped out. Essentially, much of the country’s businesses and assets had been sold to the Chinese, presenting a potential national security issue as the Australians were no longer deciding where locally manufactured goods would be sold.

The Australian government has woken up to this and is now scrutinising foreign business acquisitions. But the recent blocking of the sale of Lion Dairy & Drinks by Japanese beverage group Kirin Holdings to China Mengniu Dairy is merely closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Australia is taking issue with China on several fronts, and no punches are being pulled by the country’s commentators or politicians. One pressure point is Australia’s demand that China clarify what happened in the early stages of the coronavirus crisis when domestic flights from Wuhan were cancelled and international flights were allowed to continue. When China pushes back at Australia for having the nerve to even ask the question, Canberra interprets that as “punishment”.

Suggesting that Canberra “reflect on its own deeds”, China last week left 21 tonnes of live Australian lobster to die in Shanghai warehouses awaiting customs clearance. Chinese importers have been “advised” to stop importing barley, sugar, red wine, timber, coal, and copper ore and concentrates –and a ban on wheat is also expected. China can get its raw materials elsewhere. But as a friend of mine in Brisbane pointed out when trying get a water filter replacement and some kitchen storage boxes, she had only Chinese options.

“At publishing time, Wendy had set January 20th as the perfect date for the two to unite…”

• Girlfriend Keeps Referring To Herself As ‘Wife-Elect’ (Babylon Bee)

Sources close to Winston Davis say he is “totally screwed” as his girlfriend Wendy Fitzpatrick keeps referring to herself as “Wife-Elect” at any and every public gathering with close family and friends. This awkward situation is happening to Winston despite no clear moment in time in which it ever entered his mind that Wendy was “the one” or that he was even getting close to asking her the question to make such an interim title even remotely appropriate. “Uh, honey—” Winston could be heard starting to interject before Wendy went ahead and dialed up local caterers and contractors to make arrangements for the wedding, which was surely going to unify their two families who haven’t always gotten along, and bring about a glorious time of family healing.

Wendy had even started delegating bridesmaids to begin getting fitted for dresses and unironically telling members of her family that she was setting up an “Office of the Wife-Elect.” “Yeah I feel bad for the guy,” said Winston’s best friend, Paul. “It’s been an unhealthy codependent relationship from the beginning, but this recent turn of events is just pure cognitive dissonance.” “I keep telling him he needs to tell her straight up that an ‘Office of Wife-Elect’ isn’t a real thing and that he never officially asked her to be his fiancé, but I think he is afraid that will just make her mad,” Paul continued. “Like, there isn’t even an engagement ring.” At publishing time, Wendy had set January 20th as the perfect date for the two to unite into one in a wonderful winter wedding for W+W.

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Trump’s presidential shield of protection expires the moment he steps down Jan 20

Trump's presidential shield of protection expires the moment he steps down on Jan. 20. Here's what happens next. pic.twitter.com/vRQQyWF5dW

— VICE News (@VICENews) November 15, 2020

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Slouching Out of the Fog Toward Pennsylvania Avenue

Nov 142020

November 14, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:33 pm Finance Tagged with: audit, constitution, courts, Dominion, election, House, Pelosi, re-election, recount, Sidney Powell, States, Trump 21 Responses »

Pierre Dumonstier II The right hand of Artemisia Gentileschi holding a brush 1625

Two Dr. D pieces in one week. That election stuff must be inspiring! I was wondering, after seeing Sidney Powell claim she has evidence of fraudulent things happening in connection with Dominion software, which would be a weird claim if she didn’t have that evidence, that we need to wonder what the next step(s) would be.

Since 29 states use the software, should they all be recounted by hand? Or perhaps only the swing states? Or should there be a nationwide recount, or even a full (hand-counted) re-election? Here’s that video again of Powell, and then Dr. D’s thoughts on it all:

Sidney Powell: “I’m going to release the Kraken”

Michael Flynn attorney Sidney Powell says she has “staggering” statistical evidence and testimony to show Dominion voting machines altered ballots and this deception stems back to Venezuela, Cuba, and China. She’s says “I’m going to release the Kraken.” pic.twitter.com/50mQdHnOuS

— Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) November 13, 2020

Dr. D: Since this was all set up on a White House supercomputer, with many possible branches on the logic tree, but still generally drifting toward some permutation of election fraud and a Legislative fix, I’m hazily seeing a further possibility materializing out there.

This is hard since you have to get wrapped around the well-defined legal Constitutional process preventing election fraud, and promoting fairness between big and small states, by having an election, set and run by sovereign states, who then affirm their process was legal and true in the State Legislatures before referring them to the Federal level via the Electoral College. So this could go strictly popular vote as it usually does, via state legislature, as has happened, or even via Congressional House of Representative at an impasse, which has also happened. Despite media sputtering, none of this is made-up, none of this is new. It is very well-written and well-defined for exactly the reasons the Framers knew well and we have seen this year. They have even just sat down in a smoky room and made it up outside of all Constitutional processes whatsoever, and as no one objected, there was nothing to prevent it. Other than the people, of course, the real masters, maintaining as they do the overwhelmingly large, real armed body.

So let’s suppose, as seems to be happening now, that there is some election fraud. And although given more than a month, as we know the clock unwinds very quickly in legal terms — like lightning. We are already halfway through. If it were only one state, like Pennsylvania, perhaps that state’s Legislature can and should vote in their own electors. And that appears to be happening as they take the first steps of an Legislative audit, going right ‘round the Governor and Courts. Leaving their legal blocks instantly disarmed.

But Michigan is calling for a Legislative audit too, and Wisconsin looks set for a recount. Georgia is already in one, and there are several others.

This is where people lament “No matter what happens, half the nation will think the election is stolen!” Civil war, all that. Which I doubt, given that for four years half the nation ALREADY thought it was stolen by by a Russian caterer with a $10,000 loan (correct me if I’m wrong) and ALREADY are in violent insurrection to burn down, murder, and expel Federal forces from Portland for 200 days, barely making a mark on the nation nor even much impression on their very-large state.

But that’s only if we WANT it to go that way – there’s no special reason we should. America is that land that “Will always do the right thing, having exhausted every alternative” as Churchill would say.

Suppose, seeing 6 states in Legislative stop of Electors, and 29 states in question due to now widely-reported flaws in the Dominion voting system, the Republicans see an easy victory EITHER by state level voting OR by Congressional election, and in a legal, required, “continent election” it is one state, one vote – perhaps 32 v 18. This question then runs to the House of Representatives, where Nancy Pelosi can even attempt to refuse to seat anyone and refuse to hold such a vote.

But what are we really after here? With the States, the House, the Constitution, the Military on one side, and a critical mass of the people duly annoyed, can they really expect to succeed here? We have a nationwide bad election, Republican Legislature and States have all the leverage, and we have no remaining time.

So what CAN happen is that Pelosi can hold a House vote. Trump can call for one. The Courts will demand one – I fail to see how any other option could exist.

Trump, Pelosi, and Biden COULD, if they feel like it, hold it all off and call for a national recount, even a completely new re-election. Now that would not be “Legal” in a certain sense as the President must be un-seated in January, but in a certain sense the law is something we make up in our heads. And they have already “just done it” once previously. Perhaps the House, with a 2/3 vote would make Trump the acting President instead of President Pelosi for the interim months, perhaps until Election #2 + 30 days = March.

Everyone would have the chance to do this again without massive nationwide fraud, and the concession that reveals this and smooths over the “stolen election/civil war” would go towards a quid pro quo of not arresting everyone involved and hanging them down the long boulevard of Pennsylvania Avenue until the U.S. Military runs out of rope. Everyone sunsets and the nation moves on. …With some laws passed on election integrity. And Presidential power, one hopes.

Such are the level of crazy times we are in now. And that’s sensible, since in such crazy, extreme times, unthinkable things happen. Like wars. Or also unthinkable peaces and reconciliations. Which we must have and have had many times before.

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Debt Rattle November 14 2020

Nov 142020

November 14, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:47 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, Covid19, Dominion, Fauci, Kissinger, Kraken, lawsuits, Schiff, troop numbers, Trump, vaccine 8 Responses »

Eugène Delacroix Les femmes d’Alger 1834

• “Never Bet Against Me” (York)

• McEnany, Navarro Say Trump Expects To Serve Second Term (ZH)

• New Federal Lawsuit Seeks To Toss 800,000 Ballots In Wisconsin (WE)

• Trump’s Anti-ISIS Envoy Misled President About US Troop Numbers In Syria (RT)

• Joe Biden’s Agenda Is Meant For America’s Unhappy Rich Ladies (Fox)

• Biden, Media, CIA: Hunter Biden Emails “Russian Disinformation” (Greenwald)

• The Worm in the Machine (Jim Kunstler)

• The Winner Of The Most Coveted Henry Kissinger Endorsement Is… Joe Biden (RT)

• A Breakdown Of This Strange Moment In US History (SCF)

• Justice Alito Speaks Against Pandemic Restrictions, Other Controversies (Turley)

• Fauci’s New COVID19 Guidance: ‘Do What You’re Told’ (NYP)

• Elon Musk Says He Tested Positive & Negative For COVID19 In Same Day (RT)

• Coronavirus Mutation May Be Achilles Heel For Vaccines To Target (RT)

Trump is going to need something earth-shattering to turn the election around. Sidney Powell promises exactly that – “I’m going to release the Kraken” -, but let’s see it. The legal team says they have people from inside Dominion on record. Bring them on.

• “Never Bet Against Me” (York)

It was definitely an optimistic scenario and one at odds with the current state of the race. Wisconsin has already been called for Joe Biden, who has a lead of 20,546 votes. Arizona has just been called for Biden, with a lead of 11,390 votes. Georgia has not been called yet and is headed for a recount, the hand recount that Trump wanted, with Biden leading by 14,057 votes. North Carolina, on the other hand, looks good for Trump. Although it has not yet been called, the president leads Biden by 73,244 votes.

Then, there are Michigan and Pennsylvania. Both have been called for Biden, who has a 148,382-vote lead over Trump in Michigan and a 54,273-vote lead over Trump in Pennsylvania. There is no way that many votes for Trump could appear, so the president’s hope is for the protests to work — so far, they haven’t — and also, in Pennsylvania, for a judicial victory over the state Supreme Court’s unilateral decision to extend the deadline in which mail-in votes could be received. That is a case Trump should definitely win — the state court completely ignored the legislature’s constitutional authority to make such decisions — but that does not mean it will make much difference in the vote totals.

Indeed, the picture looks bleak for the president. As he spoke on Thursday, GOP strategist Karl Rove, Hugh Hewitt, and this newsletter noted that it is impossible, or all but impossible, for him to come back in enough states to win the election. At one point in the conversation, the president seemed to consider and then quickly reject the idea of losing. “I’m a guy who realizes — five days ago, I thought, ‘Maybe,'” he said, pausing for just a second. “But, now I see evidence, and we have hundreds of affidavits,” referring to the testimonials included in his lawsuits.

Democrats and their allies in the press, of course, are demanding that Trump drop his legal challenges. They are nothing more than a “temper tantrum” by the president and Republicans, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday. On the other hand, many in the GOP would prefer to let the process run its course. But one voice on the Left is also arguing that the litigation should go ahead. “Americans should not worry about these suits,” wrote Jed Shugerman, a professor at Fordham Law School, in a Washington Post op-ed. “Indeed, we should welcome them.” Shugerman said he does not believe the various Trump suits have any merit and indeed thinks they will all be thrown out of court. That, he said, would highlight their shortcomings.

But then: “It is also a bad idea, as a general matter to object to election law litigation. In two years, or four years — and possibly in two months in Georgia — the shoe may be on the other foot. It would look hypocritical to condemn the very idea of challenging an election result now, only to turn around and do so in different (albeit more legitimate) circumstances.” Whatever the case, Trump is forging ahead. When I asked him how quickly he might turn things around, he said, “I don’t know. It’s probably two weeks, three weeks.” He knows the situation. He has heard many people tell him it’s over and time to concede. But at the very least, it is important for his most devoted supporters to see him fighting to stay in office. And he closed with a good-natured warning for everyone who has told him there is no hope: “Never bet against me.”

Sidney Powell: “I’m going to release the Kraken”

Michael Flynn attorney Sidney Powell says she has “staggering” statistical evidence and testimony to show Dominion voting machines altered ballots and this deception stems back to Venezuela, Cuba, and China. She’s says “I’m going to release the Kraken.” pic.twitter.com/50mQdHnOuS

— Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) November 13, 2020

Million MAGA March in DC this weekend.

• McEnany, Navarro Say Trump Expects To Serve Second Term (ZH)

Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has earned even more scorn from her MSM reporter-adversaries over the past couple of days for sharing poll-watcher affidavits calling into question the results in Michigan and other swing states that broke away from the Dems’ “blue wall” back in 2016. Now, after Peter Navarro said earlier that he’s operating on the assumption that there will be a second term for President Trump, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed in comments to the press on Friday morning that President Trump is operating under the assumption that he’s headed for a second term. “We are moving forward here at the White House under the assumption that there will be a second Trump term…we think he won that election,” Navarro said earlier, adding that any “speculation” about what Joe Biden might do is moot at this point.

A few days ago, Secretary of State Pompeo appeared to crack a joke about a second Trump term, which infuriated the media. According to the press, contesting the vote count isn’t the only strategy for staying in the White House currently under consideration. Trump has reportedly floated the idea of Republican legislatures intervening to pick pro-Trump electors in a handful of key states to deliver him the election in the Electoral College. Still, that story, by the NYT’s Maggie Haberman, one of Trump’s most-hated journos, claimed that Trump “knows it’s over” and that “there is no grand strategy at play”. She also claimed that by sticking with the narrative of victory, Trump is trying to galvanize his supporters for “whatever comes next”.

Some have suggested that the GOP is going along with Trump to ensure that the base comes out to vote in a pair of special elections in January where two GOP senators are facing reelection in Georgia, typically a red state that has seen reams of out-of-state money flow in thanks to Stacy Abrams. Meanwhile, as a “next step”, the NYT claims that Trump plans to seriously discuss running again in 2024. We thought he was going to launch his own digital media company to compete with Fox?

Jack Murphy

This guy knows what’s up pic.twitter.com/1ijhE7rNaV

— Emily✨ (@astateofEmily) November 13, 2020

Voting without ID.

• New Federal Lawsuit Seeks To Toss 800,000 Ballots In Wisconsin (WE)

A federal lawsuit filed by three voters in Wisconsin seeks to have hundreds of thousands of ballots thrown out in three counties, including in the state’s two largest counties, which are Democratic strongholds. The lawsuit filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Green Bay contends that the absentee voting process in Milwaukee County, Dane County (where Wisconsin’s capital of Madison is located), and Menominee County included “illegal votes” and thus must have their presidential election results invalidated. If the long-shot lawsuit succeeds, it would add the state’s 10 Electoral College votes to President Trump’s ledger.

The plaintiffs focus part of their argument on “indefinitely confined voters.” State law allows those self-reporting as indefinitely confined to vote without a photo ID due to confinement to their residence because of age, physical illness, or disability for an indefinite period of time. This year, the number of indefinitely confined voters increased by a striking rate amid the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, some 72,000 voters said they were indefinitely confined. That number reportedly exploded to 243,000 voters this year.

In March, the Dane County clerk drew a flurry of controversy when he said that state’s order met the threshold for voters to list that they were indefinitely confined, thus bypassing the requirement to provide photo ID. Milwaukee County’s clerk offered similar guidance, citing the pandemic. Republicans quickly cried foul, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court later sided with the GOP and said that the “advice was legally incorrect.” Despite the state Supreme Court’s rebuke, a GOP official told the Washington Examiner earlier this week that voters who listed themselves as indefinitely confined and requested an absentee ballot during the primaries automatically received another absentee ballot for the November election without being asked again to provide photo ID.

The Thursday federal lawsuit contends that in addition to Dane and Milwaukee counties, Menominee also encouraged people to request absentee ballots. Menominee is a small, majority-Native American county that is heavily Democratic and cast 1,303 ballots in favor of President-elect Joe Biden to 278 for Trump. The lawsuit also raises issues with absentee ballot witness signatures and the addition of the ballot witness’ addresses on the ballot envelope, another point Republicans have said they are looking into. A Republican source told the Washington Examiner that observers at the polls noticed that “a lot” of the ballot envelopes had been edited by clerks.

The US Military Has Raided And Seized Servers In Germany Tied To The Dominion Election System

Craziest story of the day?!

• Trump’s Anti-ISIS Envoy Misled President About US Troop Numbers In Syria (RT)

When President Donald Trump ordered all but a few hundred US troops withdrawn from Syria, his own diplomats hid the true number of American forces from the president, envoy Jim Jeffrey has revealed in a new interview. “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey, envoy to the global coalition against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) told Defense One on Thursday. Jeffrey added that the actual number of troops in northeastern Syria is “a lot more” than the 200-400 that Trump agreed to leave behind last year. Trump’s withdrawal appeared to make good on his campaign-trail promise to extricate the US from its “forever wars” in the Middle East.

Trump, who referred to Syria in 2018 as “sand and death,” angered a host of Pentagon chiefs and diplomats when he announced the near-total pullout from the country last October. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned in protest when Trump first announced withdrawal plans in 2018, and Jeffrey said on Thursday that the decision was “the most controversial thing in my fifty years in government.” Jeffrey’s predecessor, Brett McGurk, also handed in his notice when Trump revealed the pullout. Taking over from McGurk, Jeffrey and his team routinely misled the president to ensure that “there was never a Syria withdrawal.” Even before he signed up to work for the Trump administration, Jeffrey’s opposition to the president was well known.

Shortly after Trump was named as the Republican candidate in 2016, Jeffrey signed a letter declaring that the businessman and TV host “would be the most reckless president in American history.” The letter’s other signatories included a host of Bush administration security officials, who helped shape the policies that destabilized the Middle East and gave rise to Islamic State. Despite his open and secret opposition to Trump’s policies, Jeffrey told Defense One that the president’s “modest” approach to the Middle East has yielded better results than George Bush’s military interventionism or Barack Obama’s apologetic overtures to Muslim leaders while arming extremist militias in Syria. Trump, by contrast, has managed to put together a political alliance between Israel and a number of Gulf states, while maintaining relations with Iraq and focusing pressure on Iran. Conflict in the region is frozen in a “stalemate,” Jeffrey noted. “Nobody really wants to see President Trump go, among all our allies,” he said. “The truth is President Trump and his policies are quite popular among all of our popular states in the region. Name me one that’s not happy.”

Tucker.

• Joe Biden’s Agenda Is Meant For America’s Unhappy Rich Ladies (Fox)

We’re told that Joe Biden is our president-elect and he will shuffle into the White House in January with something called a “mandate.” If that’s true, what exactly is he going to do with this mandate? That’s an interesting question, but almost no one is asking it. Instead, our news media is busy swarming Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor who hasn’t held public office in decades, because he has questions about some of the voting that took place last week. Therefore, he’s an imminent threat to the republic requiring blanket coverage. But whatever you do, do not cover the guy that you claim is president. The Biden people are fine with this, by the way. They don’t want to deal with the media either, so they’re not. On Tuesday, Ryan Lizza of Politico noticed “[D]iscouraging signs about the Biden team and press access so far.

“[N]o regular transition briefings, no readout of calls with foreign leaders … no open press access to the candidate and his people,” Lizza wrote. “This is a break with tradition.” Of course, it is a break with tradition and it’s worrisome, but you’re not allowed to notice it. Biden supporters immediately screamed at Ryan Lizza to shut up. So what exactly is going on behind this news blackout veiling Joe Biden from public view? Well, pretty much exactly what you expect: They are busy rewarding the forces of repression that made these election results possible. Guess who’s first in line? You guessed it, the tech monopolies. They did their job. They shutdown one side, protected the other.

And now it’s time for the reward. In one of his first acts as president elect, Joe Biden named a man called Ron Klain to be his chief of staff. Now, Klain worked for Biden before and is a close ally. That’s the story that you’ve read about why he got the job. But that’s not why he got the job. Ron Klain is also a lobbyist for Big Tech. Four years ago, he joined the executive council of Silicon Valley’s lobbying arm in Washington. Ron Klain was not chosen for his success as a public servant. We know that because last year, he acknowledged that the Obama administration, where he was a senior official, totally mishandled the swine flu pandemic, the one that came before this one.

“Schiff, as he usually does when he moves his mouth, was lying..”

• Biden, Media, CIA, Schiff: Biden Emails “Russian Disinformation” (Greenwald)

Congressman Adam Schiff, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and, not coincidentally, the single most shameless pathological liar in the U.S. Congress by a good margin, appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer on October 16 to discuss The New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s emails. The CNN host asked him a rhetorical question embedded with baseless assumptions: “does it surprise you at all that this information Rudy Giuliani is peddling very well could be connected to some sort of Russian government disinformation campaign?” Schiff stated definitively that it is: “we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,” adding: “clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the President is only too happy to have Kremlin help in amplifying it.”

Referencing Trump’s promotion of The New York Post reporting while at his White House desk, Schiff said: “there it is in the Oval Office: another wonderful propaganda coup for Vladimir Putin, seeing the President of the United States holding up a newspaper promoting Kremlin propaganda.” Schiff, as he usually does when he moves his mouth, was lying: exploiting CNN’s notorious willingness to allow Democratic officials to spread disinformation over its airwaves without the slightest challenge. Schiff claimed certainty about something for which there was and still is no evidence: that the Russians played a role in the procurement and publication of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

As he also usually does when he publicly lies, Schiff was merely echoing the propaganda of current and former operatives of the CIA and other arms of the intelligence community who abuse their power to interfere in U.S. domestic politics: the very factions over which the Intelligence Committee run by Schiff is supposed to exercise oversight supervision, not serve as their parrot. During the same week as Schiff’s CNN appearance, as Politico reported, “more than 50 former senior intelligence officials signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’”

In that letter from intelligence operatives about The New York Post story — signed by Obama’s former CIA chief John Brennan now of MSNBC (repeatedly caught lying), Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper now of CNN (who got caught lying to the Senate about NSA domestic spying), Bush’s former NSA and CIA chief Micheal Hayden now of CNN (who served during 9/11 and the Iraq War), and dozens of other similar professional disinformation agents — the intelligence operatives announced “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue,” adding “that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

“The algorithm appears to subtract votes from one candidate and add them to the other candidate. It’s a feature, not a bug. Weird, a little bit.”

• The Worm in the Machine (Jim Kunstler)

The avatars of good government, Joe Biden, and his righteous Democrats, seem a little bit spooked by the globe-of-silence enveloping Mr. Trump and his lawyers the past few days. The Dems’ narrative at this point, mid-game, is that… “the election was the most secure in the nation’s history” (The New York Times). Anything else is a “conspiracy theory.” Here’s what the Democrats don’t tell you: theories are subject to proof, and proof brings theories into compliance with reality, including, sometimes, the part about conspiracy. Such as a conspiracy to queer the recent election with vote tabulation software and other wizardries. I guess we’ll find out what can be proven, and that is all the president is attempting to do, like anybody with faith in the scientific method. In Oakland County, Michigan, for instance, comprising the northwest suburbs and exurbs of Detroit, the graph shows a mysterious bending of votes off a trend-line at a pretty clear break-point. Each blue square is a voter precinct.

Chart by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai

The very same plotline is repeated in several other Michigan counties heavily trending for the president in early voting and then swooning mysteriously for Mr. Biden after a four-hour break in action. How to account for this strange occurrence? The worm in the machine, perhaps: a simple algorithm (i.e., set of coded instructions) embedded in the Dominion vote tabulation software — product of a company, to remind you, partially owned by Senator Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, and represented by lobbyist Nadeam Elshami, Nancy Pelosi’s former chief of staff. It was Mr. Elshami’s mission to visit state legislators around the country and persuade them to adopt (that is, purchase) the Dominion system. The algorithm appears to subtract votes from one candidate and add them to the other candidate. It’s a feature, not a bug. Weird, a little bit.

So, that’s one thing that remains to be proven. How did the algorithm work? Can it be isolated and described? Did its task leave digital footprints? Not all the software geniuses in the USA work for Silicon Valley. Some may be assisting Mr. Trump’s attorneys in figuring this out and constructing cases for the various courts. Since it takes more than a day-and-a-half to bring lawsuits, that may account for the Democrats’ rush to peremptorily discard such formal inquiries and just declare Mr. Biden the winner. Similar ballot tabulation doings show up in the Georgia vote, where a recount is underway, this time with observers and without four-hour mystery pauses. And then there is Pennsylvania.

“Kissinger has killed a lot of friends of mine, beginning in Chile in 1973. He killed a lot of children who look like my children, in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. And he is a personal role model of Tony Blair, to whose incarceration for war crimes and crimes against humanity my own life is now dedicated.”

• The Winner Of The Most Coveted Henry Kissinger Endorsement Is… Joe Biden (RT)

Nixon’s secretary of state and the arch realist of Washington has given his blessing to the former vice president. Let the bombs fall where they may… No matter what happens in the Supreme Court, Joe Biden will always have Henry KissingeThe oldest-living war criminal – Kissinger, not Biden – has made clear his preference for the oldest living senator (Biden claimed during the campaign he’d been in the Senate for 180 years) and perhaps come January the oldest ever president to take the oath. You may not share my religious beliefs, but I consider the continued sulphurous presence of Henry K proof of Satan’s existence on Earth. To my mind, no man since Hitler has more blood on his hands than Kissinger. But I must declare an interest.

Kissinger has killed a lot of friends of mine, beginning in Chile in 1973. He killed a lot of children who look like my children, in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. And he is a personal role model of Tony Blair, to whose incarceration for war crimes and crimes against humanity my own life is now dedicated. From the killing fields of Indo-China, through the years of living dangerously in Suharto’s Indonesia, to the ruins of La Moneda and corpse of Salvador Allende, and to the ghost city of Quneitra in Syria. There is, in fact, no operating theatre of bloody colonialism since the 1960s in which he hasn’t been so steeped in blood that a commemorative statue wouldn’t have been in order. And he’s backed Biden. The “vulgarity” of Donald J. Trump was just TOO much for Henry K.

To Business Insider, “the most famous Secretary of State the US has had” revealed “I like Joe Biden,” whom he described as “thoughtful and moderate.” Just like himself, in fact. When Biden bombs it will be with regret rather than relish. They will be humanitarian bombs, just like Barack O’Bomber’s were. That there will be rather more of them, and in fresh countries too, is something, dear reader, you will have to prepare yourself for. There will be no “Muslim ban,” just the continuation of Muslim-bombing. Including a resumption of Muslim-bombing in the likes of Syria. But these bombers, at least, will be adorned with Black Lives Matter paraphernalia and maybe the rainbow flag painted on their tail-fins for good measure.

“These are two radically different messages in direct opposition to each other, and the parties are no longer “two sides of the same coin..“

• A Breakdown Of This Strange Moment In US History (SCF)

The Old Russian joke that a revolution could “never happen in America because there are no U.S. Embassies in Washington” has now become obsolete. The media, including even the supposedly conservative Fox News, has completely and totally given the election to Biden despite many irregularities. Not to mention, the fact that as these words are being typed – the election is not officially over. If there is one key element to a Color Revolution that must be in place for success it is control of the media. If every TV channel and news site says candidate X is the winner, then he has won regardless of votes and regardless of how many people still use said dinosaur media. They ultimately cast the big final ballot.

The rampant tampering and falsification witnessed (and often self filmed by the perpetrators) during the election looked like something you would expect to see in a “backwards third world hellhole” type of country. The manipulation was rampant, blatant and primitive. This fact can and should be used by the nations at odds with America (Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Syria, etc.) in perpetuity as proof that the U.S. never had, nor should have, some sort of democracy-based moral authority over anyone else. America’s own Color Revolution delegitimizes any attempts to spread regime change via media elsewhere across the globe. The Dynamic between the Republicans and Democrats has changed forever. The Dynamic between the Republicans and Democrats has changed forever.

Donald Trump has changed the Republican Party, from the party of Businessmen and a defensive Upper Middleclass with a sprinkling of Social Conservatism speaking almost exclusively to a White audience into a populist party that offers a Right Wing emotional vision to the multi-ethnic America that we live in today. The shift in concept of the Republican Party is so severe that Trump’s influence has had the same or maybe even a greater effect that “The Southern Strategy” ever did. Around ten or fifteen years ago it looked like America would evolve into a one-party state due to demographics and the inability of Republicans to appeal to non-Whites. If polls can be trusted, at the very least Trump has doubled the amount of Black Americans who voted for him last time and was able to persuade 1/3 of Latinos to vote for him despite building “The Wall”.

Looking back on the 2016 election it is easy to see these huge gains, in groups that the Democrats took for granted as “theirs”. In contrast to Trump’s vision of a pro-Consitution, somewhat Libertarian populous party the Democrats have doubled down on hardcore Progressive positions. If the Dems used to represent the working man in a White vs. Blue collar America battle, they have now shifted over to being a Postmodernist circus of race, gender and sexual orientation baiting with a sprinkle of environmentalism via taxation as icing on the cake. These are two radically different messages in direct opposition to each other, and the parties are no longer “two sides of the same coin”, being two slightly different takes on the Liberalism laid down by the Founding Fathers. This is probably why things have gotten so unusually ugly, American politics may have become truly “winner take all”.

“I have great reservations over a justice speaking on issues that are likely to come before him on the Court.”

• Justice Alito Speaks Against Pandemic Restrictions, Other Controversies (Turley)

Justice Sam Alito is making headlines after his speech last night as the keynote at this year’s all-virtual Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention. Alito slammed pandemic measures and attacks on free speech in his remarks to the Convention, including the crackdown on “unfashionable views” in our society. I happen to agree with some of his points, but I have great reservations over a justice speaking on issues that are likely to come before him on the Court. Indeed, I have long been a critic of the Supreme Court justices engaging in public appearances where they hold forth on contemporary issues. I have been particularly critical of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Associated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who clearly relished appearances before ideologically supportive groups.

Justice Alito addressed attacks on religious liberty and free speech, including citing past cases and disputes before the Court. He also declared “The Covid crisis has highlighted constitutional fault lines” in attacking such rights. Pandemic limits are the subject of petitions before the Court as well as major cases working through the federal system. Alito also launched into liberals who he views as threatening religious rights, noting that “[i]n certain corners, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.” Alito attacked the Obama administration’s “ protracted campaign” and “unrelenting attack” against the Little Sisters of the Poor.” He also criticized a Washington State for requiring pharmacies to provide emergency contraception. He maintained that such emergency contraception “destroys an embryo after fertilization.”

All of those issues have been and will again be before the Court. Indeed, as Alito was making these ill-considered comments, the Catholic Church was coming before his Court in these very issues. There are a number of cases on the docket and pending review that include issues raised by Alito in his public remarks. Those litigants are entitled to justices who are not speaking publicly (directly or indirectly) on the merits of such claims. [..] It is worth noting that many liberals are objecting to Alito’s speech despite celebrating even more alarming public speeches by Justice Ginsburg during his life. Throughout her career, Justice Ginsburg triggered controversies over public comments where she joked that she would move to New Zealand if Donald Trump is elected. Ginsburg apologized for that controversy. While she expressed “regret” in that instance, it did not deter Ginsburg in continuing to speak publicly and hold forth on contemporary issues. There were speeches that electrified the left and built her persona as the “Notorious RBG.”

Newsflash: it’s not his fault.

• Fauci’s New COVID19 Guidance: ‘Do What You’re Told’ (NYP)

Dr. Anthony Fauci has some new coronavirus guidance: “Do what you’re told.” In an interview Thursday, the coronavirus task force member and infectious disease expert pushed back on the notion that scientists were “authoritarian” for promoting strict lockdowns and social distancing measures. But the 79-year-old suggested the American spirit of independence had gotten in the way and the nation needed to follow their orders, whether they liked it or not. “I was talking with my UK colleagues who are saying the UK is similar to where we are now, because each of our countries have that independent spirit,” Fauci said during a panel with other experts in Washington, DC.

“I can understand that, but now is the time to do what you’re told,” he said, as first reported by CNBC. The longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has repeatedly clashed with President Trump and his administration, who have dismissed him as “a bit of an alarmist” amid the pandemic. Fauci said Thursday it was unfortunate that America’s scientists had been “lumped into politics” and that people were unwilling to follow their guidance because society was so “divisive.” “All of a sudden, science gets caught in a lot of this divisiveness,” he told the audience.

It comes as public health officials and the Trump administration grapple with how to combat new record numbers of daily coronavirus infections. Daily US cases topped 150,000 for the first time Wednesday, while hospitalizations have also hit another all-time high. Fauci said the nation could avoid another round of economically devastating lockdowns if people simply washed their hands, wore a mask and remained socially distant. “It sounds simple in the context of this ominous outbreak, but in fact we can turn it around,” he said.

“..revenues from tests are likely not bogus & very consistent.“

• Elon Musk Says He Tested Positive & Negative For COVID19 In Same Day (RT)

Futurist entrepreneur Elon Musk has expressed doubts about the accuracy of coronavirus tests, after claiming to have been both diagnosed and cleared of the disease on the same day. The SpaceX and Tesla founder wrote on Twitter that he had been administered four tests for the virus over a 24-hour period, leading to contradictory results. “Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD,” Musk said. The tweet sparked a heated debate on social media, with some accusing the billionaire businessman of being “irresponsible” by suggesting that Covid-19 tests are unreliable.

However, Musk paid no attention to the criticism and expressed further skepticism about the testing process in follow-messages. One Twitter user speculated that Musk’s apparent false-positive illustrates why countries are seeing “spikes” of the disease, to which the Tesla CEO responded: “If it’s happening to me, it’s happening to others.” The billionaire also agreed with a comment that noted that “revenues from tests are likely not bogus & very consistent.” Musk said he was taking polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests from separate labs and that the results would be ready in about a day. He explained that he had symptoms of a “typical cold” but was otherwise not exhibiting any health problems purportedly linked to Covid-19.

The 49-year-old has been an outspoken critic of government response to the spread of the virus. Previously, he denounced lockdown policies adopted in countries around the world, arguing that only at-risk people should quarantine “until the storm passes.” He also said that neither he nor his family will likely take future coronavirus vaccines once they become available, saying that the response to the pandemic has “diminished [his] faith in humanity.”

D614G

• Coronavirus Mutation May Be Achilles Heel For Vaccines To Target (RT)

A new study has found that the very mutation which allowed SARS-CoV-2 to spread so far and wide among the human population may also be an Achilles heel for future vaccines to target. One of the latest strains of coronavirus, and currently the most common in the world, is called D614G. Through tests on hamsters, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that this particular strain replicates faster and spreads more easily than the original variant, which emerged in China at the beginning of the pandemic. D614G outcompetes and outgrows its Chinese ancestral strain by about 10-fold, courtesy of its spike protein’s enhanced infiltration ability, which allows the virus easy access to human cells.

According to a recent study published on November 12, the disease caused by D614G was found to spread faster but didn’t result in more severe cases, while also being slightly more sensitive to medication including antibody treatments. Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, ran a series of experiments using the original and mutated variants of the coronavirus on hamsters, to study both the severity of resulting symptoms after infection and the infectiousness of individual strains. Two groups of hamsters were inoculated with each strain of the virus, and then uninfected animals were placed in nearby cages, with shared air supply. The mutant virus spread to six of the eight newly introduced hamsters within two days, while the original virus strain hadn’t transmitted to any hamsters by day two but spread to the entire group by day four, highlighting the different pace of infection.

Now, however, researchers suspect that this increased infectiousness may in fact be a double-edged sword which could prove to be coronavirus’ undoing. The D614G mutation opens a small access port on the tip of one of the coronavirus crown’s spikes, increasing the rate of infection but leaving the virus core exposed – easy pickings for antibodies, such as the ones contained in the current generation of vaccines. Ralph Baric, professor of epidemiology at the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, who was previously involved in the development of the remdesivir antiviral drug, says that the unpredictability of coronavirus mutations necessitates ongoing study. He warned that, especially in light of the newly discovered mink SARS-CoV-2 cluster 5 variant in Denmark, studies into the exact mechanics of each mutation are necessary to maximize public health.

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Debt Rattle November 10 2020

Nov 102020

November 10, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:30 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, Covid19, Dominion, fear machine, grifters, lawsuits, lockdown, mental health, Pfizer, software, system glitches, Trump, vaccine 25 Responses »

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

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

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

• Fore! (Jim Kunstler)

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

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

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

• COVID19 Vaccine From Pfizer and BioNTech Is Strongly Effective

• China Vaccine Trial Halted After Serious Adverse Event (BBG)

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

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

• Children Regressing And Struggling Mentally In Lockdown (G.)

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

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

Wait until you hear about Russia Collusion

Wait until you hear about Russia Collusion. https://t.co/k23xgkd0w6

— The Red-Headed libertarian ™ (@TRHLofficial) November 9, 2020

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

• Barr Authorizes DOJ Prosecutors To Investigate Election Irregularities (JTN)

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

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

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

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

There was an unprecedented number of lawsuits filed before election day—with one common theme: ALL tried to eliminate security protocols for absentee ballots and tried to implement vote harvesting in every state. pic.twitter.com/1CrbKDydxr

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) November 9, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Fore! (Jim Kunstler)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark who?

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

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

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

• COVID19 Vaccine From Pfizer and BioNTech Is Strongly Effective

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

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

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

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

• China Vaccine Trial Halted After Serious Adverse Event (BBG)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Children Regressing And Struggling Mentally In Lockdown (G.)

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

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

But not facemask?!

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

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

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

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Very much worth watching.

Tucker: We heard you. It’s hard to trust anything. Here’s what we know.

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Anomalies and Deviations

Nov 092020

November 9, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 5:27 pm Finance Tagged with: Biden, breadcrumbs, courts, Dems, Dominion, Hammer, logs, math, media, Scorecard, software, voter fraud 15 Responses »

Jasper Johns Map 1961

I’m sure we all would want to know if anything fraudulent has happened in the November 3 election. Right? Which makes it a little odd that the same media who’ve hounded the candidate for one of the two parties for four years, and then declared his opponent the winner before the votes were even counted, now solemnly claims, before anything has been investigated, that there was no fraud.

Chill, if there wasn’t any, we will know soon enough. Maybe not soon enough for you, but hey, get in line. There have been enough suspicious things going on to at least take a closer look at some of them. Moreover, it appears as if some of these things will even be -relatively- easy to prove, because of the particular settings they occurred in.

This is an introduction to something regular Automatic Earth contributor Dr. D pointed out yesterday, but let me start with, first, 30-year NSA veteran Bill Binney referring to simple arithmetic, …

(29)if what our President said about 100,000 late votes (all for Biden)is true,(Eg. DNA evidence)if for every 1000 votes only one voted for Trump means the random chance of that all being for Biden is 1 in 1 followed by 200 zeros.
two hundred zeros. DNA is 1 in a billion.

— Bill Binney, Constitutional Patriot (@Bill_Binney) November 8, 2020

(30)follow-on to my 29. This is 1 chance in 1billion times 1billion times 1billion times etc for at least 20 times.
This is direct evidence of ballot stuffing. This should certainly be evidence for courts to require a recount with validation or else through them all out.

— Bill Binney, Constitutional Patriot (@Bill_Binney) November 8, 2020

… and then to Twitter user CulturalHusbandry, who delves into more refined math in a Twitter thread:

The initial reporting represents in-person voting. These vote reports have such large variation bc in-person voting happens across different geographic areas that have different political alignments. We can see this same pattern of noisy in-person voting, followed by homogeneous mail-in reporting in almost all cases. What we see in almost all examples across the country is that the ratio of mail-in Dem to Rep ballots is very consistent across time, but with the notable drift from Dem to slightly more Rep. This slight drift from D to R mail-ins occurs again and again, and is likely due to outlying rural areas having more R votes. These outlying areas take longer to ship.

Now we’re getting into the really good stuff. When we see mail-in ballot counting where there isn’t relatively stable ratios of D and R ballots that slightly drift R, we have an anomaly! Anomalies themselves are not necessarily fraud, but they can help us spot fraud more easily. Now let’s look at some anomalies: This is the Wisconsin vote counting history log. Again, on the Y axis we have the ratio of D to R ballots in reporting batch, and on the X axis we have reporting time. Around 4am there, there is a marked shift in the ratio of D to R mail-in ballots. Based on other posts in this thread, this should not happen. This is an anomaly, and while anomalies are not always fraud, often they may point to fraud.

If you don’t recognize the methodology used, this may seem confusing or of little impact, but this deviation from the norm is huge. There are many more examples of other states -swing states only- in the thread.

Know what that jump is there at 4am? It’s the same as this one, which many people noticed on Election night. From one moment to the next, Biden numbers jumped. There is no reasonable explanation for that.

CulturalHusbandry close his/her thread with:

Lets wrap this up: It appears Dems shot themselves in the foot bc making everyone do mail-in ballots actually makes it easier to catch mail-in ballot fraud. Bc all of the ballots go through the postal system, they get shuffled like a deck of cards, so we expect reported… ballot return to be extremely UNIFORM in terms of D vs R ratio, but to drift slightly towards R over time bc some of those ballots travel farther. This pattern proves fraud and is a verifiable timestamp of when each fraudulent action occurred.

See? Now it’s getting interesting. My thoughts at first were that it would be very hard to prove any fraud, because of the sheer numbers of voted involved, and also because of the use of software systems (Dominion, Hammer, Scorecard) and voting machines, but if Binney and CulturalHusbandry are right, an entire trail of breadcrumbs have been left behind. Which is an argument that Dr. D also makes in the following.

Dr. D: It is most true that Americans don’t have or are unaware of the legal process for elections. In some blinding ways as just seen. So the media calls them, much to their embarrassment.

I don’t expect them to know, as it’s archaic and little-used but how quickly we forget. Was it only Bush v Gore that kicked off this new age? And what happened then?

And when some ELSE paid to have the votes counted ’cause Al got bored, who actually won? That’s right.

So the media does this, which Podesta said they would months back, and present it in this way, as arranged months back. Trump accepts this particular approach, this improv line, rather than opposing or diverting it months back. And therefore has something planned. Oh heavens what? Like the 200 court cases and several recounts already filed? I mean really, people. That doesn’t mean they have merit or he’ll win, but there is no winner. Buzzfeed is not the legal source for election results. They, AP, and NYT generally print the opposite of truth, so stand ready.

Media COULD, if they felt like it, take the opposite view just as readily, saying “it’s not over yet, there are many options, recounts, etc”, just as a few did back with Gore. It’s equally true and equally viable. They just don’t feel like it. Is that for civil war? Yeah, sort of. Podesta promised secession and civil war in the next few months as planned steps further up. It’s a pleasant synergy to get the long-planned civil war going, but like their race war, it’s not really getting off the ground much, and they have the immediate concern right now.

The GOP won everything. State houses, House races, held the Senate, which was pretty strongly in DNC favor with which races were up and the pressure on them. The DNC was crying on the phone and want to depose Pelosi over it. Even so, we’re now in a position where enough states are all 3-branches GOP that the STATES are the counterweight to Federal as it should be. So I’m tempted not to call this election and let Cheeto lose here as a better option for the country. But I can’t: one because that’s not legal process, but second President Harris would start another 5 wars and open another few slave markets. That would almost certainly be a hypersonic nuclear one and we need to buy time. So the dumb, obvious route it is.

Aside from that national tidal shift away from total crazy and back to anything sane, does anyone find it a wee odd that all races nationwide went firmly Republican EXCEPT one and only one man? In the swing states and ONLY the swing states?

Okay, why? If you’re forging ballots, why not swing for your whole DNC ticket, it makes no sense. Well if anyone bothered to look at the thousands of on camera improprieties, you’d know. Look at it this way: Trump, by doubling black and latino vote, has added 8 MILLION people over his 2016 tally. That’s unheard of. But let’s assume for a moment that we’re all not morons and can watch film of the Presidential rallies, the lack of enthusiasm for Joe. Let’s assume for fun that because OMB, he still got the vote HRC got. Sure, why not? But in this plausible scenario THEY STILL NEED TO FORGE 8 MILLION VOTES.

This is why the swing states and only swing states refused to start counting mail-ins until the day of. Because they needed to know how many to shred and how many to fabricate. And in some districts 100% of voters voted — impossible — and in others 150% of registered voters voted — um, impossible? Yet they report no fraud, so thank God we don’t report fraud to oligarch corporations like Facebook and Buzzfeed, but to the U.S. Court System, officially, with evidence. Now you see why they needed a blowout election even to win over the levels of voter fraud. What are the tally machines right now? 6,000 per district x 47 districts in one state MI, = 282,000 votes? Just one STYLE of fraud, on top of the others? You can’t hide that. You can’t even keep up. As we’ll find out shortly, in court. And thus the reporting that Joe was up 20 points, because that’s the level of stuffing they had planned. Don’t think that wasn’t a message to Cheeto’s planning team, either. Unlike CNN, they can read.

Anyway, the point is, as from Camera 7, a ballot worker feverishly trying to fill the needed 500,000 (!!!) fake ballots — in my scenario — in just 12 hours, with coolers, trucks, forklifts, ambulances running in and out because that’s like a box-truck of paper. They didn’t have TIME to squiggle, with a pen, all names down the page even if they wanted. Only time for one circle only, then scan.

But seriously? We have hundreds of these examples, publicly, on camera. Counting boarded up, inaccessible. Large containers rushing in and out. More people voting than exist, like Jill Stein’s Detroit count in 2016. All the usual, boring things. And you think given the DNI on “Russian interference” 2 years ago — apparently no Russians this time? Only when crappy DNC candidates who refuse health care and a minimum wage lose are there Russians interfering? — that the executive branch wouldn’t have agents placed in the voting stream, reporting to the Federal Police and election boards? It’s 2021. No cameras like Veritas seems to have? They tried nothing? Collected no evidence whatsoever for the courts?

If so, I guess they deserve to lose. But I’m guessing they did. Feds cannot act until 10 days = 11/13, and the media won’t report it. Just as Podesta promised. And they will lose several levels, just as Podesta promised. And in his scenario, the only thing they had left was succession of CA, WA, and OR, which I’m certain they will do.

But that’s still not a civil war as they don’t have the people of those states, only their government heads and a small disliked fringe. You can’t have Robin Hood without the active support of the people. You can’t have Manassas without people happily conscripted into the trenches. I don’t see that, so it will be a short stand off indeed.

So yes, let them do this, get those ballots in boxes and sealed. Have the media report idiotically wrong headlines — again, forever, since people will trust them with their dead, clenched fingers wrapped, feverishly still trusting RussiaRussia, then discredited again, the ten-hundred-thousandth time, maybe it will sink in. Then take it to the courts as is what legal, official, government people must legally do.

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Debt Rattle November 7 2020

Nov 072020

November 7, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:28 am Finance Tagged with: Alito, ballots, Biden, color revolution, coup, Covid19, Dominion, Erdogan, Gottlieb, Hammer, Scorecard, software glitch, Trump 11 Responses »

David Hockney The Big Tree in Autumn 30 October 2020

• Gottlieb: Number Of New Daily US Covid Cases ‘At Least Half A Million’ (CNBC)

• Human Recombinant Soluble ACE2 Shows Promise For Treating Severe COVID19 (Nat.)

• Counties With Worst Virus Surges Overwhelmingly Voted Trump (AP)

• Game-On for the Coup? (Anton)

• Banana Follies: The Mother Of All Color Revolutions (Escobar)

• Justice Alito Orders Late PA ballots Be Kept Separate (JTN)

• Michigan County Flips Back To Trump After Repair Of Software Glitch (JTN)

• Rate Of Rejected Mail-In Ballots 30 Times Lower In PA Than In 2016 (JTN)

• ‘The Hammer’ And ‘Scorecard’: Weapons Of Mass (Vote) Manipulation?

• With or Without (Kunstler)

• Erdogan Fires Turkish Central Bank Governor (ZH)

Good find: Trump concession speech

pic.twitter.com/hbSaIbRt5y

— Michael Berry (@MichaelBerrySho) November 6, 2020

Keep in mind, these “cases” are really “positive PCR tests”. The virus is endemic.

• Gottlieb: Number Of New Daily US Covid Cases ‘At Least Half A Million’ (CNBC)

Dr. Scott Gottlieb on Friday offered a dismal assessment of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, suggesting the real number of new infections per day is more than 500,000 — more than four times the current record of daily new diagnosed Covid-19 cases. That record came Thursday, when 121,888 new infections were reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. A day earlier, the country saw its daily case count top 100,000 for the first time ever, part of a trend of record-high daily infections as the country’s epidemic ascends further into its third peak ahead of the holiday season.

“Remember 120,000 cases aren’t 120,000 cases. We’re probably, at best, diagnosing 1 in 5 cases right now, maybe a little bit less than that, so this is at least half a million cases a day, probably more in terms of actual numbers of infection,” Gottlieb said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” The situation also is unlikely to improve without targeted interventions to reduce transmission in the hardest-hit states, according to Gottlieb, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner under President Donald Trump. “But we’re not doing that right now,” he said. “We’re building up a lot of trouble for the future, and I think that this is going to explode in several weeks.”

“You have to be really worried what January is going to look like, what December is going to look like right now given the way this is rising,” added Gottlieb. The worrisome indicators extend beyond just case counts, Gottlieb said. Hospitalization data is troubling, he said. The average number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 is up by at least 5% in 36 states, according to a CNBC analysis of data from the Covid Tracking Project, which is run by journalists at The Atlantic. [..] In the U.S. overall, more than 53,000 people are currently hospitalized with Covid-19, according to the Covid Tracking Project. More than 10,000 people are in intensive care units, Gottlieb said. “That’s a lot, and it’s growing very quickly.”

Not sure I follow the entire thing.

• Human Recombinant Soluble ACE2 Shows Promise For Treating Severe COVID19 (Nat.)

ACE2 is a crucial receptor target of SARS-CoV-2, which plays a vital role in the pathogenesis of COVID-19, as it enables viral entry into target cells (Fig. 1). The binding affinity between ACE2 and the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein is 10- to 20-fold higher compared to that with the RBD of SARS-CoV, which likely underpins the higher pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 infections. ACE2 is a transmembrane protein typically known for its carboxypeptidase activity and its physiological role in the renin-angiotensin system. ACE2 hydrolyzes angiotensin II to its metabolite, angiotensin 1–7 and angiotensin I to angiotensin 1–9 to protect diverse tissues from injury (Fig. 1). ACE2 is expressed in several human organs at varying levels. It is highly expressed in the lungs (on the surface of type II alveolar epithelial cells), heart (on myocardial cells, coronary vascular endothelial cells, and vascular smooth muscle), kidney (on proximal tubule cells), and small intestine (on the enterocytes).

While membrane-bound ACE2 may mediate cell entry of SARS-CoV-2, a genetically modified soluble form of ACE2, called hrsACE2, may decrease cell entry of SARS-CoV-2 competing for membrane-bound ACE2. APN001 is a hrsACE2 designed by Apeiron Biologics to imitate the human enzyme ACE2. As such, it may decrease cell entry of SARS-CoV-2 to minimize lung injury, and multiple organ dysfunction (Fig. 1). Experimental support for this theoretical idea has come from in vitro studies showing that hrsACE2 reduces viral growth of SARS-CoV-2 by a factor of 1000–5000 in cell-culture, engineered human blood vessels and kidney organoids.4 To date, hrsACE2 has been documented to be safe and tolerable in 89 healthy volunteers in phase-I studies and patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome in phase-II clinical studies. APN01 as a promising therapeutic against COVID-19 has appealing potential and sound underlying scientific rationale.

Not surprising.

• Counties With Worst Virus Surges Overwhelmingly Voted Trump (AP)

U.S. voters went to the polls starkly divided on how they see President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. But in places where the virus is most rampant now, Trump enjoyed enormous support. An Associated Press analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority — 93% of those counties — went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas. Most were rural counties in Montana, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin — the kinds of areas that often have lower rates of adherence to social distancing, mask-wearing and other public health measures, and have been a focal point for much of the latest surge in cases.

Taking note of the contrast, state health officials are pausing for a moment of introspection. Even as they worry about rising numbers of hospitalizations and deaths, they hope to reframe their messages and aim for a reset on public sentiment now that the election is over. “Public health officials need to step back, listen to and understand the people who aren’t taking the same stance” on mask-wearing and other control measures, said Dr. Marcus Plescia of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “I think there’s the potential for things to get less charged and divisive,” he said, adding that there’s a chance a retooled public health message might unify Americans around lowering case counts so hospitals won’t get swamped during the winter months.

The electoral divide comes amid an explosion in cases and hospitalizations in the U.S. and globally. The U.S. broke another record in the 7-day rolling average for daily new cases, hitting nearly 90,000. The tally for new cases Thursday was on track for another day above 100,000, with massive numbers reported all around the country, including a combined nearly 25,000 in Texas, Illinois and Florida. Iowa and Indiana each reported more than 4,000 cases as well.

Weird turnout rates.

• Game-On for the Coup? (Anton)

[..] throughout election day, the president consistently outperformed the polls. He crushed his 2016 performance in Florida. He also outperformed in Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas. Senators he was supposed to drag down with him, including Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell, won handily. Even Susan Collins, who was supposed to be sure goner and lose by at least three, won by nine. A party that was “certain” to lose the Senate has kept it and gained (so far) six seats in the House. Looking at states no one expected Trump to lose, his overperformance is even more stark. The polling average for West Virginia was Trump +17; he won it by 39. Kansas was estimated at +9; the result was +15.

Throughout the day the president was also outperforming his expected result in key states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He even, for a time, looked like he was within striking distance in Virginia, a state Hillary Clinton won by five points in 2016. At one point the New York Times’s “meter” had Trump’s chances in North Carolina at 92%. The needle was also sliding in the president’s direction in Arizona and Georgia, among others. And then, suddenly, the counting stopped in at least five states (or parts of states): Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; all but one with a Democratic governor (coincidence, surely!).

When has that ever happened? Well, it happened in Broward County, Florida, in 2018, when a dodgy Democratic election official appeared to be intervening, illicitly, on her party’s behalf. The process only got back underway when the state’s (Republican) governor intervened and had her removed from the process. But getting back to election night, some time in the wee hours, additional ballots were “found” and added to early totals which had Trump ahead. To no one’s surprise, those votes were overwhelmingly—literally as much as 100% in some batches—for Biden. According to Nate Silver, no one’s idea of a Trumpist, one tranche of 23,277 votes that turned up in Philadelphia were “all for Biden.” Absent some kind of harvesting or fraud (or both), that’s a logical and statistical impossibility.

Through the night, all such ballots came from heavily Democratic areas posting unusually, improbably high turnout. 85% in Milwaukee? A city that turned out at only 61% in 2016, and even with Obama on the ballot in 2012, at 71%? But 85% for Sleepy Joe? According to one report, seven Milwaukee precincts returned more presidential votes than they have registered voters. Turnout in Wisconsin overall is alleged to have been 89.25%, more than five standard deviations for the state’s mean turnout since 1960—another statistical impossibility. [..] Why stop the count? Because that’s the only way to know how many votes you need to “win.” Sure, you can just brute force things by backing up a truck full of ballots. But that looks bad. You might even end up counting more votes than there are registered voters in the state. Better to eke out a narrow win. As Joseph Kennedy, Sr. allegedly said to his second son, “I’m not paying for a landslide.”

It was all gamed?

• Banana Follies: The Mother Of All Color Revolutions (Escobar)

A gaming exercise of the perfect, indigenous color revolution, code-named Blue, was leaked from a major think tank established in the imperial lands that first designed the color revolution concept. Not all the information disclosed here about the gaming of Blue has been declassified. That may well elicit a harsh response from the Deep State, even as a similar scenario was gamed by an outfit called Transition Integrity Project. Both scenarios should qualify as predictive programming – with the Deep State preparing the general public, in advance, for exactly how things will play out. The standard color revolution playbook rules usually start in the capital city of nation-state X, during an election cycle, with freedom fighting “rebels” enjoying full national and international media support.

Blue concerns a presidential election in the Hegemon. In the gaming exercise, the incumbent president, codenamed Buffoon, was painted Red. The challenger, codenamed Corpse, was painted Blue. Blue – the exercise – went up a notch because, compared to its predecessors, the starting point was not a mere insurgency, but a pandemic. Not any pandemic, but a really serious, bad to the bone global pandemic with an explosive infection fatality rate of less than 1%. By a fortunate coincidence, the lethal pandemic allowed Blue operators to promote mail-in ballots as the safest, socially distant voting procedure. That connected with a rash of polls predicting an all but inevitable Blue win in the election – even a Blue Wave.

The premise is simple: take down the economy and deflate a sitting president whose stated mission is to drive a booming economy. In tandem, convince public opinion that actually getting to the polls is a health hazard. The Blue production committee takes no chances, publicly announcing they would contest any result that contradicts the prepackaged outcome: Blue’s final victory in a quirky, anachronistic, anti-direct democracy body called the “electoral college”. If Red somehow wins, Blue would wait until every vote is counted and duly litigated to every jurisdiction level. Relying on massive media support and social media marketing propelled to saturation levels, Blue proclaims that “under no scenario” Red would be allowed to declare victory.

Election Day comes. Vote counting is running smoothly – mail-in count, election day count, up to the minute tallies – but mostly favoring Red, especially in three states always essential for capturing the presidency. Red is also leading in what is characterized as “swing states”. But then, just as a TV network prematurely calls a supposedly assured Red state for Blue, all vote counting stops before midnight in major urban areas in key swing states under Blue governors, with Red in the lead. Blue operators stop counting to check whether their scenario towards a Blue victory can roll out without bringing in mail-in ballots. Their preferred mechanism is to manufacture the “will of the people” by keeping up an illusion of fairness. Yet they can always rely, as Plan B, on urban mail-in ballots on tap, hot and cold, until Blue squeaks by in two particularly key swing states that Red had bagged in a previous election.

“Initial Supreme Court order to segregate ballots received after Election Day ignored by Pennsylvania counties, Justice Alito issues SECOND order to segregate and separately count these disputed ballots!”

• Justice Alito Orders Late PA ballots Be Kept Separate (JTN)

Justice Samuel Alito ordered Friday that any Pennsylvania ballots received after 8 p.m. on Election Day must be segregated and kept secure, and they must be counted separately. Election officials were already supposed to be doing that with the late-arriving ballots, but now they are under a Supreme Court order to comply. According to Alito’s Order, “… neither the applicant (PA GOP) nor the Secretary has been able to verify that all boards are complying with the Secretary’s guidance, which, it is alleged, is not legally binding on them.” Alito ordered the state to reply by 2 p.m. on Saturday.

“47 counties [in Michigan] use this same software in the same capacity..”

• Michigan County Flips Back To Trump After Repair Of Software Glitch (JTN)

An election-software glitch in Michigan’s Antrim County that had incorrectly directed Democratic votes to presidential candidate Joe Biden was fixed Friday, putting thousands of votes correctly into President Trump’s totals. The software had reportedly caused a significant number of votes to be allotted to Biden in a county that has for years been reliably red. In the presumed final count, Biden had originally led in the county by roughly 3,000 votes. Revised totals show that Trump won the county by around 2,500. Addressing the alleged software glitch, Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox said Friday during a press conference that “47 counties [in Michigan] use this same software in the same capacity.” “These counties that use this software need to closely examine their results for similar discrepancies,” she said.

Thank you 15…

In light of this video, which mirrors what happened in VA, let’s look at a few things shall we… https://t.co/MmarMwaN14 pic.twitter.com/9oIWDMTVon

— Werise (@We_Have_Risen) November 6, 2020

Strange number.

• Rate Of Rejected Mail-In Ballots 30 Times Lower In PA Than In 2016 (JTN)

Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania so far this year have been accepted at almost 30 times the rate predicted by historical rejection numbers, raising potential questions in a state in which Democratic challenger Joe Biden is maintaining a lead of just several thousand votes. A county-by-county review by Just the News of accepted and rejected mail-in ballots throughout the state of Pennsylvania show that, when added up, the state only rejected 951 of 2,614,011 mail-in ballots this year, or a rate of 0.03%. That is significantly less than the historical rate of mail-in ballot rejection, which generally hovers around 1%. For first-time mail-in voters the rate can jump as high as 3%.

In 2016, the state saw about 266,208 mail-in ballots; just under 1% of them, 2,534, were rejected, roughly in line with historical expectations, according to the 2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey. At that historical rate of rejection, around 26,000 mail-in ballots would be rejected from this year’s final Pennsylvania tally. Such numbers would not have been unexpected: Last month, for instance, the Bucks County Courier Times estimated that, based on predicted vote-by-mail turnout, around 28,000 Pennsylvanians might have had their ballots pulled, rather than the 951 that were ultimately dumped.

[..] Voting by mail, unsurprisingly, has a significantly higher rejection rate than voting in person. Voters who use mail-in ballots often make errors such as miswritten forms, non-matching signatures and improper vote tabulation. That number goes up for first-time mail-in voters, with rejected rates among that group sometimes reaching rates as high as 3%. Millions of Americans voted by mail for the first time during the 2020 election, largely out of concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic. In Pennsylvania on Friday afternoon, the race between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican President Donald Trump was razor-thin, with nearly all the ballots counted and Biden leading by around 13,000 votes.

Sidney Powell “software glitches”

WATCH: @SidneyPowell1 says it is likely that the software programs HAMMER and SCORECARD were used to change 3% of early voting numbers. She also says the Michigan software “glitches” were intentional. pic.twitter.com/BAUkQ8rM4J

— The Election Wizard (@Wizard_Predicts) November 6, 2020

Scorecard, Hammer, Dominion. Powerful tools that warrant much more scrutiny then they get.

• ‘The Hammer’ And ‘Scorecard’: Weapons Of Mass (Vote) Manipulation?

In February 2009, the Obama administration commandeered a powerful supercomputer system known as THE HAMMER. THE HAMMER includes an exploit application known as SCORECARD that is capable of hacking into elections and stealing the vote, according to CIA contractor-turned-whistleblower Dennis Montgomery, who designed and built THE HAMMER. THE WHISTLEBLOWER TAPES, confidential audio recordings released by U.S. DIstrict Judge G. Murray Snow’s courtroom in November 2015, revealed that SCORECARD was deployed by the Obama team against Florida election computers to steal the 2012 presidential election on behalf of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

SCORECARD is now being activated to steal the vote on behalf of Joe Biden once again. Biden utilized THE HAMMER and SCORECARD while running for Vice President in 2012. Votes are again being stolen on Joe Biden’s behalf as he runs for President of the United States in 2020. This time, SCORECARD is stealing votes in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona, according to Montgomery. SCORECARD steals elections by tampering with the computers at the transfer points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults as votes are being transferred. SCORECARD uses a prismatic scoring algorithm that Montgomery created, to achieve the desired results by those that control THE HAMMER and SCORECARD.

In Florida, one of the transfer points is VR Systems Inc, based in Tallahassee. Software vendor VR Systems operates in eight U.S. states. The Democrats tested their technology during the Democrat party primaries. Otherwise Bernie Sanders would have won the 2020 nomination. SCORECARD was utilized on behalf of Joe Biden during the 2020 primary against Bernie Sanders. The Democrat primary was stolen from Bernie Sanders. CIA whistleblower Dennis Montgomery turned over a massive cache of illegally harvested surveillance and election data in August 2015 and December 2015 to the FBI and CIA under two immunity agreements that were granted to Montgomery by Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Curtis and FBI General Counsel James Baker.

Montgomery testified regarding SCORECARD and THE HAMMER while under oath and while being videotaped at the FBI’s secure Washington DC Field Office SCIF (Sensive Compartmented Information Facility). If CIA whistleblower Montgomery had lied about anything he would be in prison today for lying to the FBI. Montgomery is not in prison.

The election software system in Michigan that switched 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden is called "Dominion."

It is used in 30 states including:

☑️Nevada
☑️Arizona
☑️Minnesota
☑️Michigan
☑️Wisconsin
☑️Georgia
☑️Pennsylvania

Every single major swing state. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. pic.twitter.com/R6s2RnVmEF

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 7, 2020

“..a now lethal loss of faith in the essential fairness of American life and the institutions that were created to insure it.”

• With or Without (Kunstler)

The matrix of interests, parties, and people styling themselves as The Resistance, who tried unsuccessfully to cough up Donald Trump like a hairball for four years, may finally succeed by harvesting the magical crop of mail-in ballots delivered by unicorns in the gathering darkness this post-election week of mathematical wonders. America walked wide-eyed into this signal institutional failure, the one that lowers us to the level of places in the world where the loincloth is a business suit and the only instrument of persuasion is a machete. The Attorney General, Mr. Barr, warned the country months ago in so many words that mail-in voting would invite massive fraud, and so it has gone, but exactly as predicted, in plain sight, shamelessly.

The Resistance dared to work this operation because there were no consequences to their previous seditions and felonies. Nobody ever answered for the many crimes of RussiaGate (and possibly never will). The lying slattern Christine Blasey Ford slunk back to her cushy life in California with a big GoFundMe bundle after defaming Judge Kavanaugh. Eric Ciaramella and his UkraineGate accomplices, IC Inspector General Michael Atkinson and Col. Alexander Vindman, never even faced an inquiry over their janky scheme. Judge Emmet Sullivan still refuses to follow the DC Circuit order to close the General Flynn case. Rep. Adam Schiff never paid any price for knowingly lying his ass off, nor did The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg are allowed to suppress the news and deform the public conversation because they’re more important than the rest of us, and they know better, too.

No consequences for these actors in a rough and dirty game, but great consequences for the USA — a now lethal loss of faith in the essential fairness of American life and the institutions that were created to insure it. Shame on us for letting it get this far.

He will blame anybody but himself.

• Erdogan Fires Turkish Central Bank Governor (ZH)

So what happens next? Well, for one, the latest firing will cement the reality that the Turkish central bank is now merely a branch of Erdogan’s executive presidency, one where the higher the inflation the lower the interest rates. More importantly for Turkey and its residents, Erdogan’s action will trigger a new and even more acute crisis for the Turkish lira, now that it is clear that Erdogan will resume another aggressive rate cut cycle. Only instead of sparking growth, the imminent rate cuts will end up destroying any “carry” currency value the Turkish lira may have had to western investors, leading to what will be a historic dump, perhaps as soon as Monday.

In short, we expect this to be the first salvo in what ultimately culminates as a full-blown currency crisis for the Turkish nation, and while Erdogan may try to impose capital controls, it won’t last for one simple reason: the Turkish central bank is almost out of FX reserves. And once those are gone, the Turkish lira will promptly go bidless and will follow in the footsteps of the Venezuela bolivar.

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