Nov 162020
 


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

 

 

 

 

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

Read more …

“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

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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.”

Read more …

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.

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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.”

Read more …

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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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…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.

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“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.

Read more …

 

 

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

 

 

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Nov 092020
 


Jean-Michel Basquiat Untitled 1982

 

COVID Risk Exaggerated, Talk Of A Second Wave Misleading – 500 Academics (DM)
Biden’s First Move As President-elect? Mask Mandate For All (Fox)
COVID Set Back Attitudes To Public Transport By Two Decades (G.)
The Bush/Cheney Administration Was Far Worse Than Trump (Greenwald)
Inside Trump’s Legal Warfare (Axios)
Kerry For Climate Chief, Buttigieg For Veterans, Yates For DOJ (ZH)
Donald Trump Jr: “Declassify Everything” (sundance)
Software That Gave Biden 1000s Of Michigan Votes Used In 28 Other States (JTN)
EHRC Report Into Labour Antisemitism Is The Real Political Interference (Cook)
NATO Says Biden Victory Will Help With ‘Assertive Russia’ (RT)

 

 

 

 

How old is the president?

 

 

“Listen to the science” becomes hollow and meaningless when scientists start contradicting each other. Because it shows there is no such thing as “the science”.

COVID Risk Exaggerated, Talk Of A Second Wave Misleading – 500 Academics (DM)

Official data is ‘exaggerating’ the risk of Covid-19 and talk of a second wave is ‘misleading’, nearly 500 academics told Boris Johnson in open letter attacking lockdown. The doctors and scientists said the Government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has become ‘disproportionate’ and that mass testing has distorted the risk of the virus. They said tests are likely to be producing high numbers of ‘false positive’ results and the Government must do more to put infection and death rates within the context of normal seasonal rates. The letter criticised the Government’s handling of coronavirus for ‘causing more harm than good’. It comes after the UK yesterday confirmed a further 24,957 positive Covid tests, up just 13.9 per cent on last week’s total.

Top scientists suggested the UK’s second wave of coronavirus has already peaked. Professor Tim Spector, who leads the Covid Symptom Study app aiming to track the spread of Covid-19 in the UK, confirmed that there were ‘positive signs’ the country has ‘passed the peak of the second wave’. The open letter to the Prime Minister was signed by 469 medics and is titled First Do No Harm – the medical principle that a cure must never be worse than the disease itself. It is signed by immunologist Dr Charlotte R Bell, paediatrician Dr Rosamond Jones, consultant surgeon and Keith Willison, Professor of Chemical Biology at Imperial College.

The letter reads: ‘The management of the crisis has become disproportionate and is now causing more harm than good. ‘We urge policy-makers to remember that this pandemic, like all pandemics, will eventually pass but the social and psychological damage that it is causing risks becoming permanent. ‘After the initial justifiable response to Covid-19, the evidence base now shows a different picture.

Read more …

Mask mandates in the US are an invitation for unrest.

Biden’s First Move As President-elect? Mask Mandate For All (Fox)

One of Joe Biden’s first priorities as president-elect will be implementing mask mandates nationwide by working with governors. The future 46th president, however, says if they refuse than he will go to mayors and county executives and get local masking requirements in place. Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel believes that while masks are “the icing on the physical distancing cake” and should be worn properly both indoors and outdoors, especially when people are too close together, a more punitive approach to mask wearing may have the opposite impact of what the administration intends.

“I think masks are quite useful, but they have a place and they’re not the be all and end all,” Siegel said. “I’m worried that mandating this with fines and such may actually lead to more of a rebellion against it.” He noted that the use of masks should be determined based on how much of the risk of exposure to the coronavirus is in a specific area rather than mandating it everywhere. As for social distancing, Biden’s plan says it will be used as more of a “dial” approach that will determine the risk of spread using evidence-based guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a move Siegel says is a mistake.

“I don’t think social distancing is dial. I think masks are a dial,” Siegel said. “Social distancing is something we should just be doing right now. You never know how much virus was in the community.” He believes physical distancing is actually more important to curbing the spread than masks are. “I think physical distancing is more important than masks,” Siegel argued. “If you’re 10 feet away from someone, you’re not going to get the virus. If you’re one foot away with a mask, you might.”

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But not nearly as much as the destruction of public transport did.

COVID Set Back Attitudes To Public Transport By Two Decades (G.)

The pandemic has put back attitudes to driving versus public transport by two decades, with almost two-thirds of UK car owners now considering their vehicle essential, research has found. A clear majority would now refuse to switch to a greener alternative even if better trains or buses were available, according to the RAC. The research for its annual Report on Motoring found reluctance to use public transport was now at its highest for 18 years. Compared with 2019, significantly more young drivers, and those living in the capital – around 65% of each – regard their vehicle as essential.

Although 50% reported actually using their car less overall this year, with 33% of the 3,000 respondents currently working from home, more than half, some 57%, perceived access to a car as more important now than before the coronavirus pandemic. While 54% said safety was a consideration, an increasing number now deemed a car necessary to shop or visit friends. Meanwhile, only 43% agreed they would use their cars less if there was better public transport, a sharp fall from 57% in 2019, and the lowest figure since 2002. The findings will further concern transport campaigners, with optimism dwindling that lower traffic volumes and increased cycling and walking could be maintained as a positive side-effect after the pandemic.

Cycling trips fell significantly below pre-pandemic levels in October, and people largely continued to avoid public transport. Passenger numbers were around 30% of normal demand on rail, and 60% on buses, while car use had risen to around 90% of pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest government figures up to last Monday. Other sources showed road traffic leapt in the following days before new lockdown restrictions, with data from satnav providers showing some of the worst congestion in two years on Wednesday.

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Something I’ve mentioned numerous times:

“Numerous media outlets that in 2015 were sputtering if not collapsing, and numerous television personalities about to be fired because nobody was watching them, were first rescued and then propelled into the stratosphere by The Trump Show.”

The Bush/Cheney Administration Was Far Worse Than Trump (Greenwald)

That the liberal belief in and fear of a Trump-led fascist dictatorship and violent coup is actually a fantasy — a longing, a desire, a craving — has long been obvious. The Democrats’ own actions proved that they never believed their own melodramatic and self-glorifying rhetoric about Trump as The New Hitler — from their leaders joining with the GOP to increase The Fascist Dictator’s domestic spying powers and military spending to their (correct) belief that the way to oust The Neo-Nazi Tyrant was through a peaceful and lawfully conducted democratic election in which vote totals and, if necessary, duly constituted courts would determine the next president. The motives for concocting this Wagnerian fantasy about coups, dictatorship, concentration camps and civil war are numerous.

Politics is boring, and your life unspectacular, if it’s dedicated to a goal as banal and uninspiring as empowering a septuagenarian career-politician — the centrist-authoritarian author of the 1994 Crime Bill, the credit card industry’s most loyal servant, and key Iraq War advocate — along with his tough-on-crime prosecutor-running-mate who always seems as if she just left a meeting of the Aetna Board of Directors where massive hikes in deductibles were approved. Glory is available only if one can convincingly herald oneself as a front-line warrior risking it all to courageously battle unprecedented evil and a Nazi-like menace. But working to do nothing more than elect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the rest of the painfully ordinary and mediocre corporatist and imperialist Democratic Party politicians through a standard American election?

There’s no glory residing in that, no courage needed for it, to put it mildly. Posturing as a courageous soldier in an existential battle for freedom, democracy and the survival of the marginalized against Nazi despotism is far more exciting and psychologically satisfying (and financially profitable) than being an obedient liberal drone marching in perfect tune to the dreary, McKinsey-scripted musical theater produced by Tom Perez and the DNC. That is therefore the delusional storyline adopted by many. Then there’s the multi-pronged profit that the Trump-as-Hitler motif has generated for virtually every institution of American authority. Numerous media outlets that in 2015 were sputtering if not collapsing, and numerous television personalities about to be fired because nobody was watching them, were first rescued and then propelled into the stratosphere by The Trump Show.

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” said the network’s then-CEO Les Moonves in 2016 about Trump TV. Of course media outlets don’t want to declare the 2020 election over: they will milk the abundant Trumpian cash cow until the very last drop has been monetized. The frightening spectre of a Dictatorial Menace also led liberal advocacy groups such as the ACLU to drown in previously unimaginable quantities of #Resistance cash, frenetically donated in the name of stopping Trump’s incomparable evil. Rotted and discredited institutions like the CIA, NSA and FBI re-branded themselves as patriotic guardians of liberal democracy and stalwart protectors of a besieged population.

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First cases to be launched today in an increasingly uphill battle. Legal costs will be phenomenal.

Inside Trump’s Legal Warfare (Axios)

President Trump plans to brandish obituaries of people who supposedly voted but are dead — plus hold campaign-style rallies — in an effort to prolong his fight against apparent insurmountable election results, four Trump advisers told me during a conference call this afternoon. Obits for those who cast ballots are part of the “specific pieces of evidence” aimed at bolstering the Trump team’s so-far unsupported claims of widespread voter fraud and corruption that they say led to Joe Biden’s victory. Fueling the effort is the expected completion of vote counting this week, allowing Republicans to file for more recounts Team Trump is ready to announce specific recount teams in key states, and it plans to hold a series of Trump rallies focused on the litigation.

In Georgia: Doug Collins, the outgoing congressman who lost to Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a special election to fill former Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat, will be leading the campaign’s recount efforts. The team has also redeployed 92 staffers from Florida to Georgia, doubling its group on the ground In Arizona: Kory Langhofer, former counsel for Trump’s 2016 transition, will serve as lead attorney. In Pennsylvania: Porter Wright’s Ron Hicks is heading up the legal effort. Nationwide: They’re assembling additional surrogates and lawyers. “We want to make sure we have an adequate supply of manpower on the ground for man-to-man combat,” one adviser said. The group is also staffing a campaign-style media operation.

The team led by Trump communications director Tim Murtaugh is now a surrogate messaging center. It will pump out “regular press briefings, releases on legal action and obviously things like talking points and booking people strategically on television,” one adviser said. They’ll also make a big play to raise money for their legal defense fund. Trump’s formal legal team includes 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien, lawyer Justin Clark, and senior advisers Jason Miller and David Bossie. Reps. Jim Jordan and Scott Perry, as well as former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, are also advising.

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Meet the swamp creatures. For pete’s sake, John Kerry? Climate? Sally Yates? Wasn’t she supposed to be in jail?

Kerry For Climate Chief, Buttigieg For Veterans, Yates For DOJ (ZH)

While Trump is still far from conceding the election, whose outcome is called not by the media, but by the Electoral College on Dec 14… … Joe Biden is already busy forming his cabinet, where he need to draw a fine line between the hard-left progressive in the Democratic party (AOC has already been quite vocal in her criticism of how the Squad has been ignored) and centrist elements. Also, in addition to rolling out such new policies as fighting climate change and aggressively promoting women and minorities, Biden will focus on an economic team that will confront the surging unemployment and business slowdown touched off by the coronavirus pandemic. In total, as he builds out his economic team Biden will need to fill out the nearly two dozen cabinet-level positions in his administration.

Starting at the very top, Bloomberg reports that Biden will look for a Treasury secretary and other key officials “to negotiate with Congress on more stimulus, roll back some of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and mend relations with U.S. trading partners.” Among the contenders that have emerged to fill the top economic-policy job are Fed Governor Lael Brainard for Treasury and economist Heather Boushey as director of the National Economic Council. Other crucial jobs include naming the secretaries of Defense, State and Homeland Security, together responsible for carrying out administration policy and overseeing a federal bureaucracy with more than 2 million civilian employees.

While Biden will be mindful of the possibility that a Republican-controlled Senate would almost certainly scuttle nominees for top posts who belong to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, liberal groups will be policing Biden’s choices closely, fearful that he won’t reach into their ranks for top positions but will instead choose “moderate” Democrats in his own mold. Biden may try to tamp down that sentiment by putting a liberals in jobs that don’t require Senate confirmation. Most importantly, this means that “the swamp” which Trump vowed to fight – and lost – is back, because in forming his cabinet, Biden will rely on an inner circle of longtime veterans from the Obama administration as well as Wall Streeters. Finally, while Biden could make history by naming the first women to lead the Defense and Treasury departments, his key White House advisers are likely to be White men.

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Too late: “I don’t think post-election this will work, because the executive branch cabinet officers will refuse to support it. The enemies inside the gate will protect DC.”

Donald Trump Jr: “Declassify Everything” (sundance)

Amid all of the election ramifications and discussions, Donald Trump Jr. outlined a thought today that has likely been on the mind of many, myself included. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this since the media began their insufferable onslaught and “president-elect Biden” narrative. The time has long past for President Trump to fully demand his executive cabinet members declassify the evidence outlining intrusive government surveillance upon not only himself, but all Americans. CTH has a rather unique perspective on the declassification angle. This conversation has traveled with me for over two years as I have talked to people inside the machinery.

Ultimately the discussion ends around something like this: Is the DC political surveillance state, and all of the ramifications within that reality, so fundamentally corrupt and against our nation’s interests, that no entity dare expose the scope and depth of it? And ultimately… is it the preservation of institutions that is causing so many disconnected outcomes from evidence intentionally downplayed? If we assume the scale of unconstitutional conduct has become systemic, that likely answers the questions. Personally, I believe this is the most likely scenario. “Likely” meaning the entire apparatus, DOJ, FBI, Legislative Oversight and the Intelligence Community (IC), is now so enmeshed within this corrupt out-of-control state that no-one, even the good guys, is willing to expose it because the institutional collapse would be devastating.


This is what I would call the Biggest of the Big Ugly. This catastrophic outcome, in combination with DC having made the system the primary source of their income, is what unites the Republicans and Democrats to stop anyone from exposing it. Once any elected official goes inside this system, they end up serving it. All of that said, I have previously outlined a pre-election process for President Trump to declassify information that would lay the system naked to We The People. However, I don’t think post-election this will work, because the executive branch cabinet officers will refuse to support it. The enemies inside the gate will protect DC.

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Nancy Pelosi’s Chief of Staff Is Chief Executive and Feinstein’s Husband a Major Shareholder at Dominion Ballot Counting Systems

Software That Gave Biden 1000s Of Michigan Votes Used In 28 Other States (JTN)

Election software that incorrectly awarded thousands of votes to Joe Biden in Michigan is used in a majority of U.S. states, including statewide in Georgia where it has reportedly been implicated in several voting-related “glitches” there. The Michigan Secretary of State confirmed on Friday that a software error in Antrim County, Michigan, in which Joe Biden was incorrectly awarded thousands of votes that led him to be declared the county winner, was caused by an error in which the county clerk “did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results.” The software is administered by the company Dominion Voting Systems. Following the correction of the error, the county flipped back to Trump, who walked away with 2,500 more votes than Biden.

Beyond Michigan, Dominion Voting System is also used in a majority of U.S. states, with the company boasting on its website of having “customers in 28 states,” including “9 of the top 20 counties” and “4 of the top 10 counties” throughout the county. The system was used for a presidential election in Georgia for the first time this year, after the state announced in July of 2019 that Dominion would be given a statewide contract to provide systems and software to the state’s 159 counties. Multiple election-related “glitches” have been reported in the state since Tuesday. In one instance, voting in two Georgia counties ground to a halt for several hours after an unknown update was applied to voting machines there.

In another county, a “software glitch” caused a delay in counting thousands of absentee ballots. Dominion reportedly received a $107 million contract last year to install 30,000 voting machines throughout the state. Georgia was moving away from its earlier election equipment provider, Election Systems & Software, after complaints following the 2018 midterm elections. Joe Biden currently leads in Georgia by about 7,000 votes.

Standard deviations

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The report says no antisemitism, so it’s used to suggest … antisemitism. Works exactly the way Russiagate does.

EHRC Report Into Labour Antisemitism Is The Real Political Interference (Cook)

I recently published in Middle East Eye a detailed analysis of last week’s report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission into the question of whether the UK Labour party had an especial antisemitism problem. (You can read a slightly fuller version of that article on my website.) In the piece, I reached two main conclusions. First, the commission’s headline verdict – though you would never know it from reading the media’s coverage – was that no case was found that Labour suffered from “institutional antisemitism”. That, however, was precisely the claim that had been made by groups like the Jewish Labour Movement, the Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Board of Deputies and prominent rabbis such as Ephraim Mirvis.

Their claims were amplified by Jewish media outlets such as the Jewish Chronicle and individual journalists such as Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian. All are now shown to have been wrong, to have maligned the Labour party and to have irresponsibly inflamed the concerns of Britain’s wider Jewish community. Not that any of these organisations or individuals will have to apologise. The corporate media – from the Mail to the Guardian – are continuing to mislead and misdirect on this issue, as they have been doing for the best part of five years. Neither Jewish leadership groups such as the Board of Deputies nor the corporate media have an interest in highlighting the embarrassing fact that the commission’s findings exposed their campaign against Corbyn as misinformation.

What the report found instead were mainly breaches of party protocol and procedure: that complaints about antisemitism were not handled promptly and transparently. But even here the issue was not really about antisemitism, as the report indicates, even if obliquely. Delays in resolving complaints were chiefly the responsibility not of Corbyn and his staff but of a party bureaucracy that he inherited and was deeply and explicitly hostile to him. Senior officials stalled antisemitism complaints not because they were especially antisemitic but because they knew the delays would embarrass Corbyn and weaken him inside the party, as the leaked report of an Labour internal inquiry revealed in the spring.

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The swamp hasn’t had a new war in ages.

NATO Says Biden Victory Will Help With ‘Assertive Russia’ (RT)

After Joe Biden declared victory in the US presidential election on Saturday, there are fears that tensions between Russia and the West could escalate under his leadership. Congratulating the Democratic candidate on his projected win, which incumbent President Donald Trump continues to allege is the result of electoral fraud, the secretary general of NATO singled out Moscow as a priority for the incoming American leader. In a statement on the US-led military bloc’s website, Jens Stoltenberg wrote, “I warmly welcome the election of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. I know Mr. Biden as a strong supporter of NATO and the transatlantic relationship.”

He continued: “We need this collective strength to deal with the many challenges we face, including a more assertive Russia, international terrorism, cyber and missile threats, and a shift in the global balance of power with the rise of China.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry has argued that NATO is increasingly succumbing to anti-Russian rhetoric. Spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters last month in a discussion about tensions with Sweden that the bloc was the source of “invented anti-Russian phobias” and “fanning tensions and the escalation of military activities in Northern Europe, one of the most stable regions in the world until recently.”

The past record of Biden, a stalwart of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, has concerned many Moscow lawmakers. The presumptive winner is unlikely to oversee an easing of tensions between the two countries, cautioned Leonid Slutsky, who heads the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs, which is the Russian equivalent to the body which Biden chaired, adding that he didn’t “expect essential changes for the better.” “Biden, together with President [Barack] Obama, launched the flywheel of new deterrents against Russia, with a series of sanctions at various levels,” Slutsky said.He also pointed to comments that Biden made in the past in which the Democratic candidate positioned Russia as America’s “main enemy” in his pre-election rhetoric.

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