The Blog

2020-

2020-12-12 g
LEFT TURN INTO OBLIVION VII
“If anyone thinks that this ad is either clever or funny or poignant they are sadly deluded.”

NHS Commercial Terrifies Kids By Showing Santa Stricken With COVID

A television commercial for the NHS terrifies children by showing Santa Claus wheeled into hospital on the verge of dying from COVID.

Because frightening kids is definitely what the good guys do.

The advert “celebrates NHS staff and volunteers” by showing them nursing Father Christmas back to full health so he can deliver presents.

Entitled The Gift, the ad shows paramedics giving Santa oxygen as he looks to be at death’s door while being transported to a medical ward as one nurse asks, “Is he responding?”

The commercial then cuts to Santa waking up before he is slowly rehabilitated and subsequently receives a get well soon card from Rudolph the red nosed reindeer.

After passing some children, Santa is then seen responding to letters from hopeful kids.

The commercial is backed by a soppy soundtrack throughout.

Respondents to the video didn’t find it heartwarming at all. (read more)

2020-12-12 f
LEFT TURN INTO OBLIVION VI
"The World Economic Forum is silent about the question of who will rule in this new world."

No Privacy, No Property: The World In 2030 According To The WEF

The World Economic Forum (WEF) was founded fifty years ago. It has gained more and more prominence over the decades and has become one of the leading platforms of futuristic thinking and planning. As a meeting place of the global elite, the WEF brings together the leaders in business and politics along with a few selected intellectuals. The main thrust of the forum is global control. Free markets and individual choice do not stand as the top values, but state interventionism and collectivism.

Individual liberty and private property are to disappear from this planet by 2030 according to the projections and scenarios coming from the World Economic Forum.

Eight Predictions

Individual liberty is at risk again. What may lie ahead was projected in November 2016 when the WEF published “8 Predictions for the World in 2030.” According to the WEF’s scenario, the world will become quite a different place from now because how people work and live will undergo a profound change. The scenario for the world in 2030 is more than just a forecast. It is a plan whose implementation has accelerated drastically since with the announcement of a pandemic and the consequent lockdowns.

According to the projections of the WEF’s “Global Future Councils,” private property and privacy will be abolished during the next decade. The coming expropriation would go further than even the communist demand to abolish the property of production goods but leave space for private possessions. The WEF projection says that consumer goods, too, would be no longer private property.

If the WEF projection should come true, people would have to rent and borrow their necessities from the state, which would be the sole proprietor of all goods. The supply of goods would be rationed in line with a social credit points system. Shopping in the traditional sense would disappear along with the private purchases of goods. Every personal move would be tracked electronically, and all production would be subject to the requirements of clean energy and a sustainable environment.

In order to attain “sustainable agriculture,” the food supply will be mainly vegetarian. In the new totalitarian service economy, the government will provide basic accommodation, food, and transport, while the rest must be lent from the state. The use of natural resources will be brought down to its minimum. In cooperation with the few key countries, a global agency would set the price of CO2 emissions at an extremely high level to disincentivize its use.

In a promotional video, the World Economic Forum summarizes the eight predictions in the following statements:

1.People will own nothing. Goods are either free of charge or must be lent from the state.

2.The United States will no longer be the leading superpower, but a handful of countries will dominate.

3.Organs will not be transplanted but printed.

4.Meat consumption will be minimized.

5.Massive displacement of people will take place with billions of refugees.

6.To limit the emission of carbon dioxide, a global price will be set at an exorbitant level.

7.People can prepare to go to Mars and start a journey to find alien life.

8.Western values will be tested to the breaking point..

... The World Economic Forum and its related institutions in combination with a handful of governments and a few high-tech companies want to lead the world into a new era without property or privacy. Values like individualism, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are at stake, to be repudiated in favor of collectivism and the imposition of a “common good” that is defined by the self-proclaimed elite of technocrats. What is sold to the public as the promise of equality and ecological sustainability is in fact a brutal assault on human dignity and liberty. Instead of using the new technologies as an instrument of betterment, the Great Reset seeks to use the technological possibilities as a tool of enslavement. In this new world order, the state is the single owner of everything. It is left to our imagination to figure out who will program the algorithms that manage the distribution of the goods and services. (read more)

2020-12-12 e
LEFT TURN INTO OBLIVION V
"Will they be next to go broke after going woke?"

Ben & Jerry's Unveils Super-Woke Kaepernick Ice Cream "To Dismantle Systems Of Oppression"

Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's has dived deeper into woke capitalism by partnering with social activist Colin Kaepernick to market a frozen dessert treat that promotes racial activism.

The former NFL star was honored Thursday by the Vermont ice-cream maker that has long promoted its activism - on climate change, LGBTQ rights, GMO labeling, and even demanding that the UK accept more illegal boat migrants, with a new flavor called "Change the Whirled," which is a vegan ice cream blended with caramel and cookies, expected to hit store shelves in 2021.

... Change the Whirled is touted as "the flavor that's supporting the fight to dismantle systems of oppression and empower black and brown people."

The packaging for the social justice ice cream features Kaepernick's illustration, with a catchy slogan that reads "I know my rights."

... As we noted above, Ben & Jerry's has been woke for years. So it comes as no surprise "the company itself has been a target of boycott campaigns because of such actions as calling for the release of an alleged cop killer and using flavor names deemed offensive by conservatives," said RT News. (read more)

2020-12-12 d
LEFT TURN INTO OBLIVION IV

Bailout Bill

Mayor de Blasio can’t conceive of solutions to New York City’s problems that don’t involve massive federal assistance.

New York mayor Bill de Blasio remains unable to conceive of any real solution to the city’s bleak fiscal and economic position short of a massive bailout from the federal government—ideally in conjunction with a massive tax hike on the rich.

“Obviously, the number-one thing we’re fighting for is a stimulus,” de Blasio told business owners in an address to the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. As a measure of how few solutions he has to offer, he reviewed the kinds of bailouts that the government might provide, and in what priority he’d prefer them. “I think a stimulus should absolutely involve direct relief for small business,” he said. “I think that’s going to be tough to achieve perhaps in the first stimulus, the one that’s being debated right now. I think there could be some, but probably limited. I think the bigger question is when President Biden comes into office with a goal of a much more substantial stimulus, how we can all work together to push for a much more real direct relief to small business to tide folks over.”

The mayor’s zeal for federal help stands in sharp contrast with his apparent indifference to doing what only New York can do for itself—make its own business climate more promising, starting with restoring public order. In September, the Partnership for New York City, also representing local business interests, albeit on a larger scale than the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, sent de Blasio a letter expressing concern about the city’s apparent lack of determination to get the economy humming again, and noting the deterioration of public order on streets and subways. The Partnership suggested that the mayor’s failure to address “concerns about security and the livability of our communities” would undermine New York’s position as “a thriving global center of commerce, innovation and opportunity.”

When asked for a response to the letter, de Blasio deflected its main point, instead calling on the Partnership to “use your power and influence in Albany to help us get long-term borrowing. You say you want to help New York City recover, the thing we need immediately is the long-term borrowing capacity so that we can, in fact, bring back some of the services that have been cut back because of the fiscal crisis.” De Blasio’s request for borrowing power—essentially, to issue debt to fund operations—absent strict financial controls or the implementation of a real savings plan would be tantamount to giving a compulsive spender a new credit card.

De Blasio simply cannot be trusted to borrow responsibly. In seven years as mayor, he has expanded city government broadly, increasing spending at three times the rate of inflation. And what are the “services that have been cut back because of the fiscal crisis?” The mayor has not laid off a single city employee; on the contrary, he has made it clear that he intends to preserve every municipal job, even though laying off workers in April would have shifted them onto the federal rolls at a time when Washington had made available trillions of dollars of support for the newly unemployed.

The mayor’s other solution to closing the city’s $9 billion loss in revenue is a massive tax hike on the wealthy, who “have literally gotten richer while everyone else is suffering.” He also calls for a “reconsideration” of the city’s inert stock transfer tax, which levies a small fee on every stock transaction but has been fully rebated since 1981.

De Blasio is incapable of recognizing that old ways of doing business may be gone for good.

... More than 300,000 New York City households have filed change-of-address forms with the Post Office indicating out-of-state destinations. Many more are eyeing the exits. (read more)

2020-12-12 c
LEFT TURN INTO OBLIVION III
"Identity politics rejects the model of traditional give-and-take politics, presupposing instead that the most important thing about us is that we are white, black, male, female, straight, gay, and so on. Within the identity-politics world, we do not need to give reasons—identity is its own reason and justification."

The Identity-Politics Death Grip

Democrats’ abandonment of their traditional blue-collar constituency is bad for their party—and for the country.

Last June, despite being outspent by nearly $10 million, Republican Karen Handel won Georgia’s sixth congressional district in a special election to fill the vacancy left when Tom Price became secretary of Health and Human Services (a position from which he has since resigned). Democratic supporters of Jon Ossoff believed that the election would serve as a referendum on Donald Trump’s presidency; instead, it proved to be a verdict on their own party. After Handel’s relatively easy win, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway tweeted, “Laughing my #Ossoff.”

If these were normal times, the Democrats’ continued setbacks in such races—to say nothing of their demoralizing loss in November 2016—would have provided an opportunity for rethinking. But these are not normal times. The most remarkable fact about the postelection months has been the absolute certainty of Democrats that they have a right to rule in America, that Donald Trump is not a legitimate president, and that there is a need for resistance (now dubbed “the Resistance”) of the sort unseen in America since the 1960s.

Normal politics—liberal politics, classically understood—involves speech, argument, and persuasion, followed by voting on ideas or proposals that can be overturned in the next election cycle. Normal politics presumes that we can rise far enough above our small-group attributes—our race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion—and that we can arrive at a political arrangement that works well enough for us to live together as part of a larger polity until the next election, when we commence the process again. But for the Democrats, absolute certainty has prevailed over normal politics—and the certainty, at bottom, rests on a single idea: identity politics.

Identity politics rejects the model of traditional give-and-take politics, presupposing instead that the most important thing about us is that we are white, black, male, female, straight, gay, and so on. Within the identity-politics world, we do not need to give reasons—identity is its own reason and justification. Because identity politics supposes that we are our identities, politics does not consist in the speech, argument, and persuasion of normal politics but instead, in the calculation of resource redistribution based on identity—what in Democratic parlance is called “social justice.” The irony of identity politics is that it does not see itself as political; it supposes that we live in a post-political age, that social justice can be managed by the state, and that those who oppose identity politics are the ones “being political.” What speech does attend this post-political age consists in shaming those who do not accept the idea of identity politics—as on our college campuses. In the 1960s, college students across the country fought so that repressed ideas would receive a fair hearing. These days, college students fight to repress all ideas except one: identity politics.

Thoughtful Democrats see that identity politics is a dead end, but fear to speak up.

... When identity politics provides the lens through which one sees the world, changing the perspective is regarded as self-blinding. The suggestion that this outlook might be harming the Democratic Party is thus denounced as racist, as insensitive to gender issues, and as inattentive to the purported needs of various identity groups. Identity politics can’t self-correct; it can only double-down. Here is the strangeness of our current moment. Untreated, diseases don’t heal; they metastasize.

... Identity pertains not simply to the kind of person that we are. People have been sorted (and self-sorted) into kinds throughout history. Identity is different. First, it carries a determination about guilt or innocence that nothing can appreciably alter. Its guilt is guilt without atonement; its innocence is innocence without fault. No redemption is possible, but only a schema of never-ending debts and payments. Second, this schema is made possible because identity politics is, tacitly or expressly, a relationship—something quite different from sorting (and self-sorting) by kinds. In the identity-politics world, the further your distance from the epicenter of guilt, the more debt points you receive. What is the epicenter of guilt? Being a white male heterosexual. (Throw in “Christian,” and the already-unpayable debt mounts still higher.) The debt points are not real currency, but they offer something that mere money cannot: a sense of moral superiority.

... Once, the Democrats were the party of the middle class, attentive to how it might be lifted up—or at least, kept from falling. But during the 2016 election, the Democrats offered the middle class nothing—Americans counted only insofar as they belonged to this or that identity group. And when the Democrats lost, they blamed white members of the middle class who voted for Trump and who had had enough of identity politics.

... As for the poor, a half-century of federal payouts, introduced with Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, has not eased their burden. These government programs proved so unsuccessful, in fact, that Democrats have needed to create new narratives to explain their failure: perhaps the real reason for poverty in America, they came to conclude, has nothing to do with money, which politics can presumably fix, but with fault and guilt. The poor are poor because of their identity, the Democrats now say: they are innocent, finding themselves in adverse circumstances because of the irredeemable fault and guilt of others. The Democrats will champion the faultless and guiltless, calling out white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege. With the new economy of identity-politics debt points, conjoined with massive federal spending, the Democrats position themselves as the vanguard of the innocent.

This new symbiosis has been a catastrophe for both the Democrats and for the poor.

... It may be that the only way that the Democratic Party can rise, Lazarus-like, from its deathbed is if African-Americans call out identity politics as the disaster that it has been—for them and for the country. If the party cannot find a cure for its confusion, it will expire in the paroxysm that identity politics produces. (read more)

2020-12-12 b
LEFT TURN INTO OBLIVION II
"If people conclude that even voting in overwhelming numbers doesn’t matter, problems will be solved another way."

The Road to Hell
... is paved with government intervention.

The current crisis did not begin with Trump, contrary to the vain repetitions of the Never Trump crowd. The Left’s woes didn’t begin with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The political turmoil on both the left and right started a couple election cycles back with Bill Clinton and Chuck Schumer. What began with government good intentions and notions of correcting injustice caused one short-term fiscal calamity and continues as a rolling cultural catastrophe.

Twenty-five years ago, the premise was this: minorities were being discriminated against when trying to buy homes. Black people, single women, and other marginalized folks were being blocked from access to credit to buy homes and therefore being deprived a piece of the American Dream. Was this true? Maybe. If it was true, the cure to this problem was worse than the disease, a cure which very nearly killed the American body.

Chuck Schumer, the ranking senator on finance and representing the great state of New York and Wall Street, pushed rules onto lenders forcing them to liberalize their lending practices. He was joined in his folly by Barney Frank, Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts. Together, the Democrats through threats and rules encouraged bankers to start giving loans to anyone and everyone.

... Bankers understood the consequences if they did not give loans to “redlined areas” — places on the map that were poor minority-majority areas. Where Democrats saw racism, bankers saw high-risk loans that people wouldn’t be able to afford to pay back. The bigger risk to bankers, though, was to be accused of being bigots and racists. So they gave loans to bad risks. Lots of them. Then they bundled these subprime loans and sold them. They built a financial house of cards. Low interest rates and loose lending standards encouraged middle-class folks to buy investment properties. All these TV shows about flipping and making money off of homes? That all started in the late 1990s.

The real estate bubble that burst late in George W. Bush’s tenure didn’t just happen. It was a creation of a questionable premise of racial injustice and then Democrat regulatory policy and rhetoric that encouraged irresponsible lending and the taking on of loans that people couldn’t afford to repay. Loans that the government backed up and put taxpayers on the hook.

When the spun confection imploded, America’s financial system nearly collapsed. Individuals and then the institutions that funded them defaulted on their loans. There was not enough money flowing through the system. Choked of capital, the entire engine very nearly seized.

And it all started with a false Democrat premise.

... In the wake of the mortgage mess, citizens groups started to gather. On the Republican side, the Rebuild the Party movement which began during Bush’s tenure morphed into the Tea Party movement catalyzed by a 2009 rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli. Their motto: Taxed Enough Already. Their gestalt? Leave us alone. Stop bailing out banks. Stop bailing out irresponsible home buyers. About one-third of the Tea Party were libertarian types who just had all their suspicions about government incompetence confirmed. Their hero was Ron Paul. The rest were populist types who worried about their Social Security and jobs and hated the bailouts for big businesses, banks, and greedy home buyers while the average guy lost his job and/or had to pay for the bailouts.

Tea Partiers weren’t socially conservative necessarily. Rhetorical leaders like Andrew Breitbart introduced the concept that politics was downstream from culture. Tea Party types started making the connection between the cultural ideas put forth in education and entertainment that created policy. Thus, many of these folks also became interested in school choice, stupid policies like No Child Left Behind, etc.

On the Democrat side, Occupy Wall Street bloomed on the streets of New York. Unlike the Tea Party, which started out as an organic movement and slowly became organized and co-opted by more professional activist D.C.-based institutions, Occupy started as a Soros astro-turf movement that drew to it the dregs of society. The movement, over time, radicalized into groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. All the snazzy, militaristic equipment of the Black Block members of these groups is funded. It didn’t “just happen.” Occupy, though claiming to be a loving Marxist organization, suffered with crime against its own members. Women were raped in the encampment and didn’t want to report the crimes for fear of harming the causes. Andrew Breitbart famously yelled at a bunch of Occupy activists, “Stop raping people!”

Since 2007, this unrest has undergirded political reality. The Tea Party movement, far from being toothless, started putting up candidates. Barack Obama won in 2008. It was to be the last Democrat triumph for a while. In 2010, the first Tea Party wave crashed into Washington, D.C. Elites on both sides of the aisle were united in their loathing of these upstarts. In 2012, Obama won, but so did a bunch of Tea Party senators, including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, and Rand Paul. Mitch McConnell and the rest of the leadership did their best to marginalize them, depriving the Tea Party movement of power and a place at the table.

... It’s worth noting the media’s actions at the time. The Tea Party leaders were often women and, in many places, minority women. These leaders were acutely aware of how the media would portray a bunch of people protesting Obama and the bank bailouts and then Obamacare, which they rightly identified as a huge tax increase on the middle class. Tea Partiers were rigorous about booting the cranks and imposters with racist signs, etc. They meticulously cleaned up after themselves. They protested peacefully. Even still, the media portrayed them as racist and evil. The Republican establishment didn’t mind as they didn’t like the activists either.

Come another presidential election, war hero and political moderate John McCain was portrayed as far-right. The McCain campaign, led by former Bushies who are almost all now Democrats, refused to let Sarah Palin campaign in Michigan. She rightly saw the frustration within union ranks. She was sunny, populist, beautiful, and spoke the language the working class understood. She was and is one of the most naturally gifted politicians America has seen, and the McCain camp muzzled her. Her instincts were right, though. Eight years before Donald Trump took Michigan and stunned Democrats, Sarah Palin knew the Rust Belt could be Republican.

Four years later, the Republican establishment crowned Mitt Romney king. He was the wrong man at the wrong time. As the economy stagnated, the last guy America wanted was The Boss as president. The middle and working class was decimated by investment capital guys like Romney. He was the caricature of the manager everyone hated. Another political moderate, the media treated him like he was a fascist. Big bird, binders full of women, and high school haircuts characterized the media portrayal of Mitt Romney, a loyal family man and decent guy.

The Trump Phenomenon

While the Republican establishment didn’t accept that the media would destroy any Republican, no matter how moderate, their base voters did. The voters had enough of conventional politicians looking the part and then selling them out with legislation that is exactly the opposite of what they wanted all the while seeking the hateful media’s approval. In a crowded field of solid Republican talent, newbie politician Donald J. Trump came to the fore. Many in the Tea Party wanted a fiscal conservative like Ted Cruz. And, in fact, Sen. Cruz won his home state. Even Cruz, though, couldn’t overcome Trump’s formidable abilities, the chief being his pugilistic interaction with the media. He, more than any other living Republican, knew both the cultural and political establishment and the media. Like most Americans outside the Beltway, he had little use for either.

Trump’s honest outrage at the political classes’ failures reflected the feelings of many Americans. Had the working class been destroyed? Yes. Had the middle class been abused and harmed? Yes. Had small business owners been frustrated, inhibited with regulations and taxation? Yes. Were corporations encouraged to move production overseas due to taxation, regulation, and rhetoric? Yes. Had stupid wars sapped America’s strength? Yes.

Trump laid bare their corruption for all to see. He knew their contempt and what they said behind closed doors. He knew the stupidity and mendacity of the media.

... Trump’s voters are often portrayed as cultists. This is projection. President Obama, a lightweight and lazy politician, enjoyed slavish devotion from the Left and more importantly, the media. It continues to this day. Obama’s 1000-watt smile, talk-show circuit gabbing and slow-jamming gave vacuous commentators and media types the character they wanted. Plus, he was black. White liberals, black liberals, and even many so-called conservative commentators swooned. Forget the content of his policy; his pants were pressed perfectly.

In contrast, President Trump enjoys steadfast support because he steadfastly supports his voters. If these citizens seem desperate, it’s because they believe, and maybe not wrongly, that they’ll never have political representation again.

When No One Listens

On the left, Democrat cities are infested with homeless encampments filled with drug addicts and hopeless people — people who lost their jobs, homes, and, finally, their dignity. High-minded and pharisaical, leftists drive past these sufferers on their way to their gated communities, figuring that the government will take care of the problem. They pay huge sums in taxes. Their capacity for charity is all taxed up. The homeless touches with government often are the police and the jailer. Mentally ill, drug-addled police interactions rarely go well for anyone.

Radicalized college students high on Marxism and literally high, and also bored with COVID incarceration, march, burn, and loot in protest. It’s in the name of racial justice, but it’s more about power. Their solution is tearing down the current system, burning it to the ground, and starting over with some form of communist utopia where everyone has a job, a roof over his head, and food, and hopefully drugs but not too many, in his belly.

Corporatists like Barack Obama and now Joe Biden won’t mollify the Antifa–BLM–AOC wing of the Democrat Party. The problem is that the message these activists embrace isn’t entirely wrong. Democrat leaders, like the Republican leaders, are wholly beholden to big corporate and technology interests. Rich people pay their way, after all. That’s why Biden’s appointees are a hodgepodge of social justice and big business and big military. The Democrat Party is a mess.

In the wake of government, media, and big business betrayal of America, both sides’ bases are hardening. But so are their leaders. A toxic mix, the ingredients thrown together in the late 1990s, brews and is crystalizing into pure, refined political poison.

Words and votes don’t seem to be getting the political elite’s attention.

American governance and her form of capitalism has been hung in the balance by the American people and found wanting by both sides of America for different reasons. Americans distrust the bureaucracy, the media, the politicians, the police, and the voting process itself.

Still the media and the elites in both parties act as though the next political cycle will magically get the country back to normal, to norms, blithely denying their part in destroying norms. It’s as if they hope the country embraces their fit of amnesia.

Have these leaders considered how frustrated people solve problems when words and votes fail?

... When will the dam burst? It’s difficult to predict. There will come a day — soon, one suspects — when Nancy Pelosi gets recorded doing another maskless haircut or a mayor or governor insults his or her voters so flagrantly that he incites the populace. That Americans haven’t yet full-throttle revolted is a testament to their patience and goodwill, or maybe to their apathy and hopelessness. Gun shops and sporting goods stores have run out of ammo except for buckshot, and even that’s getting difficult to find. This should concern the powers that be.

When words fail, when votes fail, when people feel like they have nothing to lose, desperate people do desperate things. Half the country believes they’re being deprived of the politician they voted for and who finally spoke for them. The other half are agitating to destroy the system they believe is fundamentally unfair. The people at the top seem indifferent to everyone. The road that started with government interventions won’t end well. (read more)

2020-12-12 a
LEFT TURN INTO OBLIVION I
"The collapse of the Bon Appetit channel during a pandemic-fueled cooking craze proved the screeching power of outrage mob rule. The entire saga has made one thing clear: You can politicize everything, as the mob demands, or you can create a vibrant, innovative culture — but you can’t have both."

How Toxic Leftism Killed The Vibrant Bon Appetit YouTube Channel

The Bon Appetit saga proved you can politicize everything, as the mob demands, or you can create a vibrant, innovative culture — but you can't have both.

During the lockdown regime of the past year, millions of Americans turned to their televisions, computers, and phone screens to escape despair. Because we are creatures of innovation and curiosity, however, many people taught themselves to make sourdough bread starters from the internet and something new the next day.

The bread-baking game got so out of hand at one point this summer that yeast vanished from grocery store shelves. The appetite for hobbies, knowledge, and bread was ferocious.

Suddenly barred from dining out, the gastronomically inclined turned to their own kitchens, ordered new tools from the internet, and taught themselves culinary tricks. Social media overflowed with images of the burgeoning class of new home chefs, spurned from their favorite table at Le Diplomate but finally finding joy in sipping Gamay at home while searing their first-ever magret de canard.

It takes a nearly perfect combination of skill, approachability, and charisma to hook an audience the way Julia Child did, but one cooking channel stood above the rest, garnering millions of loyal followers even before the pandemic. Bon Appetit's “Test Kitchen” series on YouTube seemed to truly understand people’s modern need for a combination of real instruction with a willingness to fail.

Even in the vast sea of online cooking shows, this one stood out. Imagine the natural give and take of NBC’s enormously popular sitcom “Friends” in a cooking show. That was the vibe from the bright and engaging stars of the “Test Kitchen.”

Even with all its charisma and promise, however, Bon Appetit couldn’t stave off the death grip of leftist ideology. It became one more source of entertainment and inspiration relegated to the burning cultural heap just when Americans most needed a pandemic and political escape.

...Bon Appetit’s cooking channel should have been one of the bright spots during the pandemic. It should have been a common, nonpolitical intersection where we could all just laugh about yet again ruining our attempt at latkes. At first, it was just that. The Bon Appetit crew adapted almost seamlessly from the high-rise to their home kitchens across the tri-state area. Gleaming stainless cooking surfaces were replaced with cramped quarters, but the stars still shone just as bright.

But in a flash, the “Friends” vibe was dead, and so was the Bon Appetit cooking channel.

The Woke Mob Comes for All

It was murdered in June 2020 by a furious spasm of wokism aimed at Bon Appetit and its publisher, Conde Nast. Both magazine and publisher were accused of insensitivity to employees of any color but peach. There were also accusations of “cultural insensitivity,” disparities in compensation, ill-treatment in the workplace, and tokenism.

... Politicization Kills Everything

The newest viewer numbers reflect the failure of Bon Appetit’s relaunch. The channel easily captured millions of views per video prior to the fallout, regardless of who hosted the show. The most popular video since the channel came back to life in October is “Brad and Andy Grill Garbage Fish,” which was the first video featuring Leone in several months. After more than a month online, it has not yet gotten a million views, something that used to happen within a week.

The second most popular video from the new era was the first Bon Appetit pushed out: “Test Kitchen” director Chris Morocco making “weeknight meatballs.” Between the simplistic cooking instructions and complaints about his missing blender, Morocco managed to create one of the saddest cooking videos ever committed to the internet. (read more)

2020-12-11 j
TEXAS SUPREME COURT CASE

US Supreme Court Throws Out Texas Lawsuit Against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin

... The end of justice in America.

SCOTUS claims Texas has not demonstrated a judicially recognizable interest in the matter! (read more)

2020-12-11 i
“Allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports diminishes that equality and takes away from the original intent of Title IX. As the father of three girls involved in athletics, I want them to be able to compete on a level playing field. I am proud to lead this bill that will safeguard the integrity of women’s sports and ensure female athletes can compete fairly.”

Democrat Tulsi Gabbard Introduces Bill That Would Ban Biological Males From Women’s Sports

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) introduced legislation this week that would specify that Title IX, which protects people from being discriminated against based on sex in education programs that receive federal funding, be applied based on a person’s biological sex as determined at birth by a physician.

Gabbard introduced the bipartisan bill, dubbed the “Protect Women’s Sports Act,” with Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) on Thursday. The bill seeks to protect “the sex-based intention of Title IX protections by reaffirming the biological sex-based distinctions between men and women in athletics.” The bill would prevent organizations which allow biological males to compete against females from receiving federal funding.

“Since its creation, Title IX has been confronted by various challenges, often resulting in nuanced or situational solutions to the circumstances,” reads a press release from the two members of Congress issued Thursday. “This has included considering the fairness of an individual of one sex to play on a team designated for another sex when no such team is available to the individual, such as women’s field hockey or men’s football. This bill protects the sex-based intention of Title IX protections by reaffirming the biological sex-based distinctions between men and women in athletics.”

“Title IX was a historic provision championed by Hawai’i’s own Congresswoman Patsy Mink in order to provide equal opportunity for women and girls in high school and college sports,” Rep. Gabbard said in a statement included in the release. “It led to a generational shift that impacted countless women, creating life-changing opportunities for girls and women that never existed before.”

“However, Title IX is being weakened by some states who are misinterpreting Title IX, creating uncertainty, undue hardship and lost opportunities for female athletes,” Gabbard continued. “Our legislation protects Title IX’s original intent which was based on the general biological distinction between men and women athletes based on sex. It is critical that the legacy of Title IX continues to ensure women and girls in sports have the opportunity to compete and excel on a level playing field.” (read more)

2020-12-11 h
"Articles will insist that Elliot Page was always Elliot Page and was always a man."

Transgenderism Is Orwellian

As prescient as George Orwell was, even he didn’t have the foresight to see that a major battle would be fought over the truism that women cannot become men.

It’s been a long few days for the Ministry of Truth.

On Wednesday, Ellen Page announced that she is, in fact, a “he” and that her name is not Ellen at all, but “Elliot.”

Wikipedia immediately sprang into action to rectify Elliot Page’s article, changing every instance of her name and her pronouns to conform to her new truth. Netflix did the same across its platform and the media reported the story using the newly approved name and pronouns with only a quick note—to avoid confusion—that Elliot previously had been known as Ellen.

But even that wasn’t enough for some activists. An article in Newsweek argued that even a single use of Elliot Page’s “deadname” (the name she was assigned at birth) was a problem.

“Though the deadnaming of Page in an article may not have any negative repercussions on the actor (bar any mental health effects from seeing a name he no longer identifies with), it does propagate a system that has led to transgender people (particularly trans women of color) disproportionately being the victims of hate crimes.”

By this logic, any reference anywhere to the name Ellen Page—even in old articles, interviews, and films made prior to her decision that she is he—is problematic. As a transexual activist and ACLU lawyer put it in another article, any mention of someone’s “deadname” ensures that he will “never have the authority to claim the truth” of who he is and “cedes that authority to a structure of power and discrimination.”

And so we are left with an Orwellian prospect where the entire world constantly will have to be updating itself to ensure that the past is consistent with the present. Articles will insist that Elliot Page was always Elliot Page and was always a man.

“Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound tracks, photographs—all had to be rectified at lightning speed.”

Sound familiar?

Even the term “deadname” has a certain newspeak quality to it of the B vocabulary variety.

“The B vocabulary consisted of words that had been deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them . . . the B words were a sort of verbal shorthand, often packing whole ranges of ideas into a few syllables, and at the same time more accurate and forcible than ordinary language. The B words were in all cases compound words. They consisted of two or more words, or portions of words, welded together in an easily pronounceable form.”

Doublethink. Deadname. Goodsex. Fits right in. And there’s no reason these words shouldn’t. A moment’s reflection will reveal that the current gender-bending theory shares the same metaphysics which undergirds the dystopian framework of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In both conceptions, reality “exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” In fact, it is lunacy to believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right.

This belief is cognitively dissonant with belief in an everyday experience in which the truths of the world and society hammer themselves home with shattering force. But learning to reconcile these two seemingly irreconcilable beliefs is a principal exercise in the subtle art of doublethink.

The first belief lends itself to solipsism. The second belief suggests objectivity. But the synthesis of the two leads to a perilous equilibrium where the only real goal is power. Because there are no objective truths, one can make whatever reality he pleases. But because one has to contend with other thinking beings, in order to have true control over reality, one must also control them.

There is no objective standard to which one can appeal—only one’s ability to control everyone else and force them to accept your truth. Summed up in another Orwellian maxim: GOD IS POWER. And as with all such maxims in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the maxim is reversible: POWER IS GOD.

Power typically is the ability to make people do things they otherwise would not do. And for power to be meaningful, one must in fact make people do things they otherwise would not do. For absent that, it simply would be the confluence of people’s desired actions.

But in collective solipsism, it is not enough to make people do things. You must make them believe things—as much as one can believe in something they know to be false. So in this system, you have to force people to believe things that they otherwise would reject. Without doing so the objective world still has primacy. (read more)

2020-12-11 g
MAINSTREAM MEDIA - ALL LIES, ALL THE TIME

Of all the media deceit and propagndizing disseminated in the
lead-up to the election to justify their refusal to report on
the Hunter Biden documents -- despite knowing they were genuine
and not from Russia -- this on CNN from @camanpour may be the
most amazing: pic.twitter.com/mkI4Jtd4SN

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 10, 2020

2020-12-11 f
VACCINE NEWS II

NJ Lawmaker Wants Mandatory COVID Shot For All Kids Without Exemption

A State Senator in New Jersey wants the coronavirus vaccine made mandatory for all school age children, despite them being the least at risk group.

Middlesex Democrat Senator Joseph Vitale also wants to eliminate exemptions that have been used in the past to prevent their children from receiving shots.

... Vitale also says there is a separate effort underway to make the vaccine mandatory for University students in the state.

... New Jersey currently mandates that children must have several vaccines in order to attend school, including MMR, polio, and chickenpox. However, thousands of children have been exempted from the shots, with parents citing religious beliefs.

... While New Jersey officials have stopped short of saying they will force everyone to get the vaccine, Governor Phil Murphy has signed an executive order that will see everyone who does get it automatically enrolled into a ‘New Jersey Immunization Information System’ , a move that some have seen as a way of coercing people to take the shot.

Speaking to reporters, Sue Collins, co-founder of the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccine Choice said “Putting the cart before the horse and saying when it’s available everyone has to get it does not build trust.”

“No medical procedure should ever be mandated for anyone — especially something so new, with so many unknowns and no long-term knowledge at all,” Collins added.

Pushing back against the creep toward mandating the vaccine in the state, Republican Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger, has sponsored a bill to prevent it from becoming compulsory.

While he says he is not anti-vaccine, Scharfenberger says he cannot support mandating medication, and is responding to the concerns of constituents. (read more)

2020-12-11 e
VACCINE NEWS I
"According to Australia's 10 News, the decision to drop the University of Queensland vaccine was over fears that the false positive results would scare Australians away from the vaccine, despite the fact that patients had not actually contracted the disease."

Australia Cancels COVID Vaccine Trial Over 'Unexpected' False Positives For HIV

The Australian government has canceled further development of a COVID-19 vaccine after several trial participants had false positive tests for HIV. The vaccine was being developed by the University of Queensland, while Australian biotech company CSL Limited had been under contract to provide 51 million doses. The vaccine had been on schedule for mid-2021, with phase two and three clinical trials due to commence in December.

On Friday, however, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that the "University of Queensland vaccine will not be able to proceed based on the scientific advice, and that will no longer feature as part of Australia’s vaccine plan," adding "I think the decision we’ve made today should give Australians great assurance that we are proceeding carefully, we are moving swiftly, but not with any undue haste here."

"Our processes will not be compromised. At the end of the day, the Therapeutic Goods Administration – like with any vaccine in Australia – must give their tick-off. Without the tick, there’s no jab when it comes to vaccines in this country. That is true for the Covid-19 vaccine, as it is true for any other vaccine that is administered here in Australia," Morrison added.

The vaccine was one of four secured by the Australian government, which will now turn its focus to the AstraZeneca vaccine as well as Pfizer's.

... Professor Paul Young, co-lead researcher on the vaccine, said that it would be possible to re-engineer it to avoid false positives but there wasn't enough time. "Doing so would set back development by another 12 or so months, and while this is a tough decision to take, the urgent need for a vaccine has to be everyone’s priority," he said. (read more)

2020-12-11 d
"Without the decisive use of his power as President of the Senate, Jefferson might never have become President of the United States."

Who Counts the Votes of the Presidential Electors?
This may be the most important question in American history

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

The quote is ascribed to Joseph Stalin, although there’s little evidence that he actually said it. Nevertheless, it resonates as true. Certainly America stands in crisis now because of disagreements about the count of the popular vote.

But the President of the United States isn’t actually elected by the popular vote. He’s elected by the college of presidential electors. As I noted in a previous article, one of the most important questions in this crisis is whether the state legislatures can appoint presidential electors to cast their votes in opposition to the popular vote.

But there is another question: Who counts the votes cast by the presidential electors? If “those who count the votes decide everything,” as Stalin said, then this is the most important question in American history.

The Constitutional Argument

The U.S. Constitution governs the election of the President. The controlling provision is the Twelfth Amendment, which states that:

“[T]he President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.”

What does that mean? In “Preparing for a Disputed Presidential Election” (51 Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 2018), Edward B. Foley explains:

The peculiar passive-voice phrasing of this crucial sentence opens up the possibility of interpreting it to provide that the “President of the Senate” has the exclusive constitutional authority to determine which “certificates” to “open” and thus which electoral votes “to be counted.”

This interpretation can derive support from the observation that the President of the Senate is the only officer, or instrumentality, of government given an active role in the process of opening the certificates and counting the electoral votes from the states. The Senate and House of Representatives, on this view, have an observational role only. The opening and counting are conducted in their “presence”—for the sake of transparency—but these two legislative bodies do not actually take any actions of their own in this opening and counting process. How could they? Under the Constitution, the Senate and the House of Representatives only act separately, as entirely distinct legislative chambers. They have no constitutional way to act together as one amalgamated corpus. Thus, they can only watch as the President of the Senate opens the certificates of electoral votes from the states and announces the count of the electoral votes contained therein.

This interpretation of the Twelfth Amendment is bolstered, moreover, by the further observation that the responsibility to definitively decide which electoral votes from each state are entitled to be counted must be lodged ultimately in some singular authority of the federal government. If one body could decide the question one way, while another body could reach the opposite conclusion, then there inevitably is a stalemate unless and until a single authority is identified with the power to settle the matter once and for all. Given the language of the Twelfth Amendment, whatever its ambiguity and potential policy objections, there is no other possible single authority to identify for this purpose besides the President of the Senate. (emphasis added)

Foley is not alone in this analysis. Another prominent jurist, John Harrison, makes an even more forceful case. Harrison argues in “Nobody for President,” (16 J.L. & Pol., 2000), that the most natural reading of the Twelfth Amendment grants the opening-and-counting power to the President of the Senate:

The Twelfth Amendment provides that in the presence of the two houses, [the President of the Senate] shall open all the certificates from the electors. But as history shows, there can be more than one purported certificate from a state. Indeed, multiple purported certificates may be the most common cause of dispute. The certificates that the President of the Senate is to open, however, are those of the electors, not those of non-electors. Hence, in order to know which certificates to open, the President of the Senate must know which of competing slates of electors were validly appointed.

…A natural reading [of the Twelfth Amendment] thus indicates that in one especially important context, the dispute is to be resolved by a single individual. Neither House nor Senate is given any authority over the President of the Senate when it comes to opening the certificates, and Congress by statute may not control the exercise of this constitutionally granted authority any more than it may tell the President who to pardon. (emphasis added)

Now the President of the Senate is actually the Vice President of the United States - Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence. If Foley and Harrison are correct, then Mike Pence may be the most powerful man in America right now!

The Historical Argument

Constitutional law is not, of course, merely a matter of language analysis. The intent of the Framers, the history of the Republic, and the interpretations of past jurists all bear weight.

But here, too, there is much evidence for the case that Pence has the power to open and count the votes of the presidential electors. (read more)

2020-12-11 c
THE COVID-CON I
PENNSYLVANIA HEALTH SECRETARY HAS DELUSIONS OF GENDER (as well as delusions of grandeur)

'Don't let a man in a dress rule us': Road sign mocks Pa. health secretary amid COVID crackdowns

A message board entering the Erie County town of Waterford prompted a social-media stir this week by mocking Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s secretary of health.

The sign along U.S. Highway 19 read “don’t let a man in a dress rule us Waterford!” on Wednesday.

Dr. Levine, who has been the public face of Pennsylvania’s controversial COVID-related lockdowns, was born Richard Levine and fathered two children, but transitioned to female in 2011.

... “Can you please help me make this go viral to force the man in Waterford, PA to remove his sign discriminating against Dr Rachel Levine a trans woman (sic) who is the Secretary of Health for PA,” wrote @MeaghanLeF. (read more)

2020-12-11 b
ABOLISHING ALL RISK BY ABOLISHING ALL FREEDOM II

Reply from Just a Man
December 9, 2020 at 6:46 pm

I too have watched this situation very carefully, and I have written many articles and produced several videos to explain the situation to people who have been manipulated through lies and fear.

I have also watched how the Police, the Alphabets, Politicians, and the Courts have relished the power and unrestrained control over the population this ‘virus’ has afforded them.

I have seen in Australia, the UK, and Spain in particular the absolute enthusiasm the Police have demonstrated for indulging in thuggish violence against peaceful people, or using force to close businesses, writing punitive fines, and forcing thier way into peoples homes to arrest old people and pregnant women for exercising thier rights to free speach on the internet.

I have seen societies divided down to the family level – those who hang on every word the so called elite say, and those who see the lies, the false science, and the step by step sleepwalk into crushing tyranny.

In many countries around the world I see pressure building. I see anger building. I see people now openly talking about arresting the elites and restoring true democracy and freeedoms and rights.

However, those of us who understand these things know that peaceful protest is only going to get met with state sanctioned violence – potentially crushing violence against the people.
Those of us who understand know, that once that happens there can only be one response, and the consequences of that response will have massive consequences for everyone – including the so called elite.

In thier arrogance the so called elite believe they are protected by the thugs they have paid for and protected behind the laws they wrote (and the judges they have bought), however, they forget that we see them. We know who they are, we know where they have thier 2nd, 3rd, and 4th homes, and where their floating palaces are docked.

When this blows, and it will – my Solzhenitzen like line in the sand is forced vaccination – when this blows the elite will have no where to hide from the millions of angry people whos lives they have destroyed.

I think the elite recognise their time is now short, and that if they do not get whatever the hell is inside us this ‘vaccine’ inside our bodies now, they will be set back years, perhaps generations in thier Luciferian plan of ‘great works’ to destroy and then ‘build back better’.

This rush with thier evil brew of RNA, nanopaticles, and who knows what else – and the desperation to get inside as many people as soon as possible has woken up more people than any article anyone could ever write.

Once the mandates start and force is used against the people to give the evil brew, or crush protests – then it starts. Once it starts it will not end until one side is completely crushed. There will be no surrender by either side on this one because its game over for ever who looses this coming war.

May God bless you all who choose to fight the great evil that has overtaken the entire World at this time. (read more)

2020-12-11 a
ABOLISHING ALL RISK BY ABOLISHING ALL FREEDOM I
"I am seeing some encouraging signs these days that the globalist reset is NOT a sure thing, and those that know my work know I have never been one for misplaced optimism. Specifically, the exploitation of the pandemic response as a means to ram through numerous draconian restrictions does not seem to be going exactly as the elites planned."

Is The Globalist “Reset” Failing? The Elites May Have Overplayed Their Hand

One aspect of narcopaths (narcissistic sociopaths) that is important to remember is that they live in their own little world in which their desires and bizarre dysfunctions are normalized. They believe themselves superior to most people because they are predatory, and don’t suffer from annoying hang-ups like empathy and conscience. They generally tend to believe they have pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes the majority of the time. They think that you are a submissive idiot, and that when they bark an order, you will simply jump to attention because you “believe”.

Almost every aspect of the globalists and their behavior indicates they are a club or cult of narcopaths. Their obsessive need to control as well as to corrupt and destroy in order to get what they want is not an extension of mere greed, it is a deep-seated aspect of who they are as beings. It is a defining mechanism at the core of their character. They are real world monsters, like vampires attempting to blend into an unsuspecting population.

their arrogance, then tend to expect they can drain the public dry at will without being resisted or exposed. The problem is, as soon as they start to feed and destroy they draw attention to themselves. Eventually, they will attract the suspicions of the public, along with some vampire hunters. Unless they find a way to hide a stake through the heart is inevitable.

I have been writing about the threats of globalism and the “reset” for many years now, and I have noted for some time two separate quandaries; one affecting the liberty movement and the other affecting the globalists:

1) First, criminals tend to brag about their crimes when they think that it’s too late for anyone to do anything about them. I predicted the globalists would be very open in revealing their agenda the moment they believed themselves “untouchable”. For the freedom loving public this suggests that in 2020 going into 2021 that the elites must think there is nothing that can be done to stop the machine; they are so blatant in their calls for the global “reset”, a cashless society, totalitarian lockdowns and a surveillance state that no one in their right mind can claim these notions are “conspiracy theory” anymore.

The fact is, the “conspiracy theorists” were RIGHT ALL ALONG, and now there is nothing anyone can say about it.

2) Second, I have also argued in the past that the globalist push for a “new world order” is a double edged sword that could very well end up annihilating them. As they attempt to initiate their reset agenda, they become more and more exposed; they can no longer lurk in the safety of the shadows and there is no going back once the process is started. Once the globalists become widely known, they must either swiftly take control through engineered chaos and collapse, or face retribution that could eliminate a cabal that took them centuries to build. Vampires must make the rest of the world a dark place before leaving the shadows, or they risk dying in the light of day.

There are two schools of thought in the liberty movement; one suggesting that the globalist agenda is fixed and unstoppable and that the best anyone can do is survive. The second suggests that the reset can be stopped and the globalists can be brought to justice. I stand in both camps.

... I have to look back at Event 201 to really gauge the state of the game, because what the elites planned and what has happened do not completely match up. For those not familiar, Event 201 was a type of “war game” held by globalists from the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The scenario? A pandemic outbreak of a coronavirus which would spread like wildfire and kill a predicted 65 million people. The simulation was held only a couple of months before the real thing happened at the start of 2020.

In the year since the outbreak, the globalists have attempted to enforce nearly every plan that was outlined during Event 201, including using social media to censor or restrict any news or information outside of the establishment approved narrative (Yes, narrative control was discussed at the event in great detail). Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum has consistently and excitedly applauded the pandemic crisis as a “perfect opportunity” to institute the “reset” that the globalists have been talking about for years.

Unfortunately for them, the virus has not been anywhere near as deadly as they appear to have hoped. With a death rate of well below 1% for anyone outside of a nursing home with preexisting conditions, the establishment has now been forced to pump up infection numbers as a means to terrorize the populace because the death numbers are not enough to convince people to willingly hand over their freedoms. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) for Covid 19 not counting nursing home deaths with preexisting conditions is only 0.26% of those infected.

... Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from diseases and illnesses including the flu, common colds and pneumonia, yet, the prospect of abandoning the Bill of Rights, submitting to economic shutdowns and wearing a muzzle on our faces wherever we go was never brought up before.

Why should we ask 99.7% of Americans or the world to accept medical tyranny just to make .26% of the population feel safe? People who question the mandates are called “selfish”, but even if I was one of the people susceptible to the virus, I would NEVER demand that 99% of the population bow to totalitarianism at the off chance that I might live a little while longer. Now THAT would be selfish.

As more and more studies and data are released, the mask mandates are also coming into question. Though Big Tech has sought to suppress or censor studies that run contrary to the mainstream narrative, this has only led more people to question the motivations of governments pushing the mandates. After all, the mainstream media keeps saying that we should “listen to the science”, but they ignore or censor the science. So, if the pandemic response is not based in science, then it must only be about control.

Many Americans are not as stupid as the elites think. They see the inconsistencies in the rhetoric and the data and they are increasingly prone to refuse to comply. This might be why the establishment is suddenly rushing out at least two Covid vaccines in the span of half a year; they have to get the vaccine phase of the Reset underway before too many people jump from the panic bandwagon.

The vaccine rush and the claims of effectiveness of 94% to 95% from Pfizer and Moderna are suspect. The average effectiveness of most vaccines is around 50% or less, and these are vaccines with hundreds of trials and years of usage. Somehow, Pfizer and Moderna were both able to produce a vaccine for a SARS type virus when multiple governments tried for over a decade to produce vaccines for SARS in China and were unsuccessful, and they were able to achieve 95% effectiveness?

... Americans are skeptical of the vaccines for a number of reasons. The reality that they are minimally tested and rushed out in less than a year is one reason . The fact that the government and the media have been caught censoring or lying about Covid data is another reason. People just don’t trust the elites, and who can blame them? Who would trust a cabal of psychopaths to inject them with an unknown viral cocktail? Maybe their intentions are not so pure?

The public is right to be suspicious. A former Pfizer vice president, Dr. Michael Yeadon among other medical professionals have recently warned that the vaccines have not been adequately tested and that there is a risk of “indefinite infertility” for women who take the current Covid vaccine due to damaging autoimmune response. In other words, the vaccine could make many women barren and unable to have children.

Maybe this is what Bill Gates meant when he stated in his Ted Talk that “vaccines and reproductive services” could help contribute to a reduction of the Earth’s population of 10% to 15% as a means to “stop global warming.

Why would Bill Gates mention vaccines in the same breath as “reproductive services” in reference to population reduction? Aren’t vaccines supposed to help people live longer? Well, the Pfizer VP’s warning about the Covid vaccine is ringing bells for me. Maybe the Covid vaccine won’t make you sick, or kill you. Maybe you will live a long life free of coronavirus, but you’ll find out a few years after taking the vaccine that you won’t ever be able to have kids.

Watch the movie ‘Children Of Men’ to get a sense of what the future might be like if the globalists get their way.

In the meantime, the elites are trying with everything they have to convince the public that they must abandon notions of civil liberties in the name of survival and “the greater good”. They are already talking about how things will never go back to normal, and the changes being made today will stay in place for many years to come.

... I’m not pessimistic about the future. I know a crash is coming. I know a fight is coming. But right now what I see is a fight that can and will be won by those that respect the principles of freedom. The globalists may have overplayed their hand. (read more)

2020-12-10 l
TEXAS SUPREME COURT CASE III

Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives Joins Texas in Suit Against Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia

The list of states joining Texas continues to increase.

The state of Texas sued Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Monday night with the US Supreme Court challenging their unlawful election procedures.

Texas argued these four states violated the US Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions. But these states did not make the changes through the state legislatures as spelled out in the US Constitution.

We reported earlier today that President Trump joined Texas in suing the four states being sued by Texas.

Last night we reported 18 states have to date joined Texas in their case against the four states:

Arizona Becomes 18th State to Back Texas in Lawsuit Against Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin Over Fraudulent Election

Next we reported that 106 US House Republicans have signed a brief backing Texas in this case (the list should be over 200):

Now this afternoon, the Pennsylvania House joined the case: (read more)

2020-12-10 k
TEXAS SUPREME COURT CASE II

Pennsylvania responded to Texas’ lawsuit at the Supreme Court Thursday, calling it “legally indefensible” and an “affront to principles of constitutional democracy.”

“Since Election Day, State and Federal courts throughout the country have been flooded with frivolous lawsuits aimed at disenfranchising large swaths of voters and undermining the legitimacy of the election. The State of Texas has now added its voice to the cacophony of bogus claims,” Pennsylvania said in its court filing.

It responded on behalf of itself. Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia were also sued by Texas.

The Lone Star State sued the four battleground states this week at the high court, alleging the state officials in those four battleground states changed election laws without authorization from the state legislatures, in violation of the Constitution.

Texas argues that the move disenfranchised its electoral votes.

... The justices could decide to grant or deny the lawsuit at any time, but they are set to meet for a private conference Friday morning where the matter will likely be discussed. (read more)

2020-12-10 j
TEXAS SUPREME COURT CASE I
“President Trump seeks to have the votes cast in the Defendant States unlawfully for his opponent to be deemed invalid.”

President Trump Files Motion to Join Texas Supreme Court Lawsuit Against Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia

The state of Texas sued Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Monday night with the US Supreme Court challenging their unlawful election procedures.

Texas argued these four states violated the US Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions. But these states did not make the changes through the state legislatures as spelled out in the US Constitution.

President Trump Wednesday evening filed a motion to intervene to join Texas’ lawsuit because he is “the real party in interest.”

Trump, acting “in his personal capacity” as a presidential candidate, seeks to intervene in order “to protect his unique and substantial personal interests as a candidate for re-election,” according to the 39-page court filing. (read more)

2020-12-10 i
VACCINE NEWS IV
“The only thing that is contraindicated with this vaccine (meaning you mustn’t have it) is hypersensitivity to the vaccine or any of the excipients (other things in the vaccine), but some people won’t know if they have hypersensitivity to some constituents of the vaccine.”

UK Requires ‘Resuscitation Facilities’ at Corona Vaccine Centres After Allergic Reactions

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) confirmed on Wednesday that it is deploying “resuscitation facilities” in coronavirus vaccination centres following the revelation that two healthcare workers suffered anaphylactoid reactions after receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on the first day of rollout

The new advice went on to state: “Resuscitation facilities should be available at all times for all vaccinations. Vaccination should only be carried out in facilities where resuscitation measures are available.”

In comments made to Breitbart London on Wednesday, an NHS spokesman said that “vaccination hubs all follow the guidelines set by the MHRA”.

The NHS also said that it is seeking “further information and will issue further advice following investigation”.

Breitbart London approached the MHRA for comment but the medical body did not respond by the time of publication. (read more)

2020-12-10 h
In sum, we have the extraordinary historic disgrace of media outlets collaborating with the intelligence community in the weeks before a presidential election to manufacture and peddle a propagandistic lie to justify censorship of highly relevant materials about the presidential front-runner and his family’s efforts to profit off his name — namely, that the documents were not authentic but rather “Russian disinformation.”

With News of Hunter Biden's Criminal Probe, Recall the Media Outlets That Peddled the "Russian Disinformation" Lie

The now-validated facts about Hunter are precisely those the U.S. media -- in tandem with Silicon Valley and the intelligence community -- suppressed based on lies.

The revelation that Hunter Biden is being criminally investigated for his business activities in China came on Monday from the investigative target himself, and he predictably and self-servingly depicted it as just a narrow probe about his “tax affairs” by the U.S. Attorney for Delaware. As I wrote last night, that by itself would be significant enough — the documents published in the weeks before the election by The New York Post contained ample information about exactly that matter, yet were widely repressed by a union of mainstream news outlets, the intelligence community and Silicon Valley based on propaganda and lies. But new reporting suggest the investigation has been far broader.

“The federal investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been more extensive than a statement from Hunter Biden indicates,” Politico reported Monday night. Specifically, “the securities fraud unit in the Southern District of New York also scrutinized Hunter Biden’s finances”; “investigators in Delaware and Washington were also probing potential money laundering and Hunter Biden’s foreign ties”; and “federal authorities in the Western District of Pennsylvania are conducting a criminal investigation of a hospital business in which Joe Biden’s brother James was involved.” CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz added that “at least one of the matters investigators have examined is a 2017 gift of a 2.8-carat diamond that Hunter Biden received from CEFC [China Energy’]'s founder and former chairman Ye Jianming after a Miami business meeting.”

All of these topics are what the large bulk of the U.S. media, working in concert with the intelligence community and Silicon Valley, suppressed prior to the election. One of the first New York Post articles based on materials from Hunter’s laptop, headlined “Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm,” described how he “pursued lucrative deals involving China’s largest private energy company — including one that he said would be ‘interesting for me and my family,’” and specifically noted that Hunter “was identified as ‘Chair/Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC,’ an apparent reference to the former Shanghai-based conglomerate CEFC China Energy Co.”

That was the same email that referenced ten percent to be “held by H for the big guy” — which one of Hunter’s business partners on the email chain, Tony Bobulinski, stated categorically referred to Joe Biden. The Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel similarly reviewed numerous laptop documents and reported that “records produced by Mr. Bobulinski show that in 2017, Hunter Biden and James Biden were involved in negotiations about a joint venture with a Chinese energy and finance company called CEFC China Energy," adding that the documents also “make clear that Hunter Biden saw the family name as a valuable asset, angrily citing his 'family’s brand' as a reason he is valuable to the proposed venture." (read more)

2020-12-10 g
EXECUTIVE ORDER 13848

A Resolving Picture

... What on earth was Canada-based Dominion, with its grotty Smartmatic software — connected to Venezuela and to George Soros’s would-be world-changing Open Society Foundation, and very possibly to China’s ruling party — doing in charge of counting our votes? Perhaps serving something other than America’s national interest. We’ll soon find out in a way that will make a lot of heads explode.

An awful lot has been churning in the deep background for months before the election. Mr. Trump was onto the mass write-in vote scam enabled by the media-assisted hysteria over Covid-19. The wheels of genuine US intel against national security threats still turned in spite of whatever Deep State perfidy had been aimed at Mr. Trump himself from Day One in office, and the president made use of his own private counter-intel hackers to suss out the game — which was finally to overthrow him by ballot fraud. The result was Executive Order 13848 issued in September 2020, which specified foreign interference in elections as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security” and laid out some pretty stringent remedies.

The main one was a requirement for the top executive agencies — DOJ, DOD, Homeland Security, Treasury plus the Director of National Intelligence (Mr. Ratcliffe) — to deliver an assessment within 45 days of the election. We’re now in the sweet-spot of that 45-day delivery period when something has to pop. Looks a little like the AG, Mr. Barr, has been dithering and wriggling painfully over this, and even making noises about resigning. But he may have already surrendered his credibility, with the foot-dragging of the FBI under Christopher Wray and the agency’s apparent lack of interest in election fraud. The consequences of EO 13848 will roll out with him or without him.

The real action was over at the Department of Defense, where the President hastily cleaned house this fall and installed the trustworthy Christopher Miller as SecDef, along with top aide Kash Patel and Ezra Cohen-Watnick as Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Mr. Cohen-Watnick had been an assistant to General Michael Flynn, former Director of Defense Intelligence, in his brief tenure as National Security Advisor before getting sandbagged by Barack Obama and James Comey.

Both Mr. Cohen-Watnick and General Flynn are intimately familiar with the apparatus of Defense Intelligence, of course, and have been actively using it to identify DNC and Joe Biden activists who played a role in election irregularities as well as foreign actors. This wasn’t any RussiaGate type bullshit; it was the real deal. EO 13848 includes this provision:

The report shall identify any material issues of fact with respect to these matters that the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security are unable to evaluate or reach agreement on at the time the report is submitted. The report shall also include updates and recommendations, when appropriate, regarding remedial actions to be taken by the United States Government, other than the sanctions described in sections 2 and 3 of this order.”

The “remedial actions” are interesting. They include pretty severe sanctions against any “persons” (entity or company) involved in or enabling foreign interference in elections: attaching property in the US, blocking trade, and an array of financial restrictions and penalties. The EO does not spell out criminal penalties that might fall under the sedition and treason statutes, but expect these to be activated as the law provides. Quite a few political celebrities and figures in the news and social media may have exposed themselves to liability in this. If it doesn’t mean the end of Facebook or Twitter, it may spell the end of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey running them. Also include the less-well-known execs at The WashPo, The New York Times, and several cable news networks.

Eventually, Mr. Trump will have to personally deliver the bad news to Joe Biden that he and Dr. Jill won’t be attending the inaugural ball on January 20 (live or on Zoom). Sound too wild to be true? Well, stand by on it. We’ll know soon enough. (read more)

2020-12-10 f
VACCINE NEWS III
"Until we learn more and build our own experience with this vaccine, plus, until we see the uptake of vaccine in our communities, and have an understanding about the role that vaccination has in ending this pandemic, it’s not the right thing to make it mandatory."

University Of Pittsburgh Medical Center Won't Require Staff To Take COVID-19 Vaccine Due To 'General Uncertainty'

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) won't require its health care employees to take the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine, which the medical provider expects to begin offering as soon as this month, according to PennLive.

The reason are several-fold, according to UPMC medical director of infection prevention and epidemiology, Dr. Graham Snyder. For starters, general uncertainty over the vaccine. And while the $21 billion nonprofit organization (which employs 89,000 people) has a mandatory flu vaccination policy, it's "based on decades of experience with the influenza vaccine," according to Snyder. (read more)

2020-12-10 e
VACCINE NEWS II

Russia Warns Citizens Not To Drink Alcohol For Six Weeks After COVID-19 Vaccine

Russians are being asked to make the ultimate sacrifice; no drinking alcohol for six weeks after taking the country's COVID-19 vaccine.

In a statement to state-owned Tass, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said that Russians will need to take heightened precautions during the 42 days that the 'Sputnik V' coronavirus vaccine requires to reach maximum effectiveness.

"[Russians] will have to refrain from visiting crowded places, wear face masks, use sanitizers, minimize contacts and refrain from drinking alcohol or taking immunosuppressant drugs," she said.

(So, no transplant recipients or HIV-positive individuals?)

And as the New York Post notes, the head of Russia's consumer safety watchdog, Anna Popova, echoed Golikova's statement in the Moscow Times - saying "It’s a strain on the body. If we want to stay healthy and have a strong immune response, don’t drink alcohol." (read more)

2020-12-10 d
VACCINE NEWS I
“It is inappropriate for public health officials and state legislators to be introducing legislation that mandates use of an experimental vaccine being considered for release under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).”

New York State Assembly Introduces Bill Mandating COVID-19 Vaccine

New Yorkers will no longer have to decide if they will receive a COVID-19 vaccine if a bill calling for a mandatory vaccine gets approved.

New York State Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, a Democrat who represents New York’s 67th Assembly District, quietly introduced a bill on Dec. 4 that would require “COVID-19 vaccine to be administered in accordance with the department of health’s COVID-19 vaccination administration program and mandates vaccination in certain situations.”

Every New Yorker, except those medically exempt, are required to receive the vaccine if the state’s vaccination efforts do not achieve “sufficient immunity from COVID-19.”

Rosenthal told WGRZ-TV the bill was “a protective health measure” that would “ensure that our residents are safe and protected against further spread.”

But in an event where not enough people get vaccinated to reach herd immunity, “the department of health of the state can then say that we need people to get the vaccination.” Rosenthal explained that an estimated 75 percent to 80 percent of the population would need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity.

Barbara Loe Fisher, cofounder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, described the legislation as inappropriate.(read more)

2020-12-10 c
THE COVID-CON III
"abolishing all risk by abolishing all freedom"

Covid Regulations in Loco Moco

In August, I reported here on how Montgomery County, Maryland, was seeking to shut down private schools as part of their Covid-19 strategy of abolishing all risk by abolishing all freedom. As more individuals have recently tested positive for Covid, the county government is responding with a new array of iron-fisted decrees. Some of the latest edicts make little or no sense, confirming the county’s nickname of LoCo Moco.

Gov. Larry Hogan blocked the county government’s effort to criminalize private teaching; Catholic, Jewish, and other schools have operated safely with no significant Covid outbreaks. But county schools remain shut down in large part due to the clout of the teachers union, a bulwark of political support for County Executive Marc Elrich.

For at least 40 years, MoCo politicians and school officials have invoked “closing the achievement gap” as a sacred goal which justifies the sacrifice of as many taxpayers as necessary. But that goal is not as sacrosanct as assuring that teachers continue to collect full pay while taking zero risks and leaving the most vulnerable students far behind.

Since the county padlocked public schools earlier this year and shifted to unreliable “distance learning,” there has been a 500%+ increase in the number of black junior high students failing mathematics and a 600%+ increase in Hispanic students failing. The percentage of black elementary school students failing English increased more than 350% and the percentage of Hispanic students failing increased more than 500%. These numbers were revealed during a County Board of Education meeting on December 3; a local activist captured screenshots of the disastrous test results. Some of the data was also reported in yesterday’s Washington Post. Shutting down public schools has done more harm to black students than anything since the end of local school segregation in 1961.

Montgomery’s results are in line with reports elsewhere that show that minority students have suffered far more harm from shutdowns justified to curtail the spread of Covid. This carnage was foreseeable. An analysis by McKinsey & Company consultants last spring estimated that if schools were entirely online until January, on average “white students would lose 6 months of learning, Hispanic students 9 months, black students 10 months and low-income students more than a year during the time school buildings have closed for the pandemic.”

MoCo leaders recite their devotion to “science and data” except when the data might curb their arbitrary power.

... Many kids may have unnecessarily lost practically a year of their learning lives but MoCo has compensated with a maniacal devotion to mandating masks. On April 9, Montgomery County’s chief health officer Travis Gayles decreed that any store customer who failed to wear a mask would be fined $500. Gayles discouraged local residents from acquiring and wearing the most reliable protection, such as surgical masks or N95 masks, which the county said “should be reserved for health care workers.” Mandating the wearing of unreliable masks makes about as much sense as requiring everyone to wear a dunce cap with the inscription, “Save me, Big Brother!” (read more)

2020-12-10 b
THE COVID-CON II
Melinda French Gates: “That was a piece that I think we hadn’t really prepared for.”

“We Hadn’t Really Thought Through the Economic Impacts” ~ Melinda Gates

In a wide-ranging interview in the New York Times, Melinda Gates made the following remarkable statement: “What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.” A cynic might observe that one is disinclined to think much about matters than do not affect one personally.

It’s a maddening statement, to be sure, as if “economics” is somehow a peripheral concern to the rest of human life and public health. The larger context of the interview reveals the statement to be even more confused. She is somehow under the impression that it is the pandemic and not the lockdowns that are the cause of the economic devastation that includes perhaps 30% of restaurants going under, among many other terrible effects.

She doesn’t say that outright but, like many articles in the mainstream press over this year, she very carefully crafts her words to avoid the crucial subject of lockdowns as the primary cause of economic disaster. It’s possible that she actually believes this virus is what tanked the world economy on its own but that is a completely unsustainable proposition.

Further, her comments provide a perfect illustration of the core problem all along: most of the people who have been advocating lockdowns in fact have no actual experience in managing pandemics. To many of these, Covid-19 became their new playground to try out an unprecedented experiment in social and economic management: shutting down travel, businesses, schools, churches, and issuing stay-at-home orders that smack of totalitarian impositions.

Here is what she says:

You can project out and think about what a pandemic might be like or look like, but until you live through it, it’s pretty hard to know what the reality will be like. So I think we predicted quite well that, depending on what the disease was, it could spread very, very, very quickly. The spread did not surprise us.

What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts. What happens when you have a pandemic that’s running rampant in populations all over the world? The fact that we would all be home, and working from home if we were lucky enough to do that. That was a piece that I think we hadn’t really prepared for.

There are plenty of specialists who have lived through pandemics in the past and managed them by maintaining essential social and economic functioning.

... Melinda together with her husband Bill have been the major funding source for pro-lockdown efforts around the world, giving $500M since the pandemic began, but also funding a huge range of academic departments, labs, and media venues for many years, during which time they have both sounded the alarm in every possible interview about the coming pathogen. Their favored policy has been lockdown, as if to confuse a biological virus with a computer virus that merely needs to be blocked from hitting the hard drive.

We can look at how this disease traveled around the world and see that the countries who locked down first, they’re doing better. Many African countries saw it coming and locked it down early. Their replication rate just never got as high as many other countries. And that is a good thing.

While it is true that Africa is an odd outlier, the claim that this is due entirely to early lockdowns has no support. Those who have looked at the anomaly in Africa point to the very young population (just 3% are over 65), cross immunities with other coronaviruses as the main reason for the low death rate, and stronger overall immunities. Indeed, the demographics alone could account for nearly the whole of the mortality difference with Europe and the U.S. In addition, Melinda says here what Bill has said for years: the only solution to a virus is to suppress it and develop a vaccine – the previously untested experiment that has brought poverty, death, and despair to the entire world. Africa in particular was devastated by lockdowns. (read more)

2020-12-10 a
THE COVID-CON I
“It is time—past time—to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques.”

It’s Time For Mass Civil Disobedience Against Lawless Lockdown Orders

For too long, mayors and governors and health officials across the country have overstepped their authority. Time to ignore them.

By now it should be obvious that elected state and local officials issuing COVID-19 lockdown and stay-at-home orders are just making things up as they go along.

Too often, their edicts aren’t based on science or data, but on a grotesque understanding of their own authority and infallibility. In the face of a worsening pandemic, they want to be seen doing something, taking bold action to stop the spread of the virus—that is, so long as it doesn’t hurt certain favored special interests.

That’s why Americans living under arbitrary and unconstitutional lockdown orders should simply ignore them, en masse, as an act of civil disobedience.

How else are ordinary people to push back against the capricious rules of politicians like Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti? On November 25, the day before Thanksgiving, Garcetti and county health officials banned outdoor dining at bars and restaurants for three weeks. Because of the spread of the virus, they said, it’s just too dangerous, so we all have to do our part and make sacrifices.

But then they gave a carve-out for certain kinds of outdoor dining, like film and television crew’s catering sites. In Garcetti’s town, a massive film crew eating outside is safe but a small restaurant or bar with outdoor, socially distanced seating is too dangerous to remain open. Got it?

Then last week, L.A. County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant called out the mayor and county health officials on this arbitrary exercise of power, ordering them to produce scientific evidence to justify the outdoor dining ban. “You have to do a risk-benefit analysis for public health. You don’t just talk about the risk of spreading disease. You have to talk about the benefit of keeping restaurants open,” Chalfant said.

Exactly right. Chalfant is also requiring the county to provide data on hospital and ICU capacity to justify the claim that the health-care system would be overwhelmed without the outdoor dining ban. County health officials are scheduled to appear in Chalfant’s courtroom Tuesday to give whatever evidence they were able to cobble together since last week.

The lawsuit, brought by an attorney who also owns a downtown L.A. restaurant, captures the dynamic of pandemic governance in a microcosm. Health officials, based on nothing but their opinions about what might be safe or not, have put tens of thousands of people in America’s second-largest city out of work right before the holiday season.

This pattern has played out all across the country this year. Elected officials, often Democratic mayors or governors, promulgate rules, curfews, capacity limits, and outright shutdowns that betray either animosity or indifference toward certain groups while protecting other, favored groups.

... A terrible injustice is being perpetrated against ordinary working people by elected officials who believe they can shutter entire industries and destroy people’s livelihoods with the stroke of a pen. (read more)

2020-12-09 i
FEDERAL BUREAU OF PREVARICATION

After 4 Years of Stonewalling Corrupt FBI Finally Admits They’re Holding Seth Rich’s Laptop

A stunning development on the legal front that directly impacts the so-called conspiracy theory that the death of Seth Rich was something more than routine street crime. The FBI now admits it has Seth Rich’s laptop. This information has just been posted on Lawflog.com courtesy of Ty Clevenger.

According to an email posted at Lawflog.com and sent to attorney Ty Clevenger, the attorney for the FBI now admits that the:

FBI has completed the initial search identifying approximately 50 cross-reference serials, with attachments totaling over 20,000 pages, in which Seth Rich is mentioned. FBI has also located leads that indicate additional potential records that require further searching. . . . FBI is also currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed. As you can imagine, there are thousands of files of many types. The goal right now is to describe, generally, the types of files/personal information contained in this computer.

After more than four years of repeated denials from the FBI that they had searched their files and had no information on Seth Rich, we now know that was a blatant lie. It was David Hardy, a FBI Senior official, who put that denial in writing in September 2017. Hardy was the Section Chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section (“RIDS”), Information Management Division (“IMD”),1 Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), in Winchester, Virginia. He stated under oath that the FBI had no records on Seth Rich:

... These searches located no main or reference records responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request.

... In his 2018 declaration, Mr. Hardy also testified under oath that the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. was solely responsible for investigating Mr. Rich’s murder.

Now we learn that not only does the FBI have more than 20,000 pages relevant to the search term, “Seth Rich,” the FBI still has Seth Rich’s laptop computer.

... But the FBI has insisted for more than four years that it was never involved actively in the investigation of Seth Rich’s murder and that it never opened a case. That lie is now exposed.

... After four years of stonewalling, the FBI is now starting to come clean and admit to its previous lies. Why now? (read more)

2020-12-09 h
TEXAS SUPREME COURT CASE

UPDATE: 17 States Join Texas in Supreme Court Lawsuit Against Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Over Fraudulent Election

... And the list has now grown to 17 states.

MO, AL, AR, FL, NE, ND, OK, IN, KS, LA, MS, MT, SC, SD, TN, UT and WV.

(read more)

2020-12-09 g
VACCINE NEWS IV

Four trial volunteers who got Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine developed Bell's palsy - but FDA denies that the temporary facial paralysis was caused by the shot

•Four people who received Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine in its clinical trial developed Bell's palsy, a form of temporary facial paralysis
•The alarming but rare side effect was revealed in a release of detailed data from the FDA ahead of its Thursday meeting when regulators will vote on approval
•FDA scientists ruled the side effect was not likely caused by the shot, but said they would likely recommend that Pfizer closely monitor recipients for palsy
•Bell's palsy can happen to anyone at any time, and its cause is unknown, though viral respiratory infections are considered a risk factor
•Only one inactivated flu shot was found to cause the serious side effect in 2001 and was quickly taken off the market

Four people who got Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine in the firm's trial developed Bell's palsy, a form of temporary facial paralysis, according to U.S. regulators' report on the shot.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators said there wasn't any clear way that the vaccine caused Bell's palsy, but warned that doctors should watch for the alarming side effect and Pfizer should continue to keep tab on how many people it strikes.

No one knows what exactly causes Bell's palsy, which resolves on its own most of the time.

This isn't the first time it's been linked to vaccines, but scientists have ultimately ruled that shots did not trigger Bell's in all but one case - a Swiss flu vaccine that was sold during the 2001-2002 flu season there, then promptly taken off the market.

So far, the FDA said that the number of Bell's palsy cases seen in the Pfizer vaccine trial was 'consistent with the background frequency of reported Bell's palsy in the vaccine group that is consistent with the expected background rate in the general population, and there is no clear basis upon which to conclude a causal relationship at this time,' but will keep a close watch on future cases. (read more)

2020-12-09 f
INTOLERANT TRANS-HYSTERIA
"‘Deadnaming’ is a neo-Orwellian word used to publicly shame anyone who utters names, or facts, that the woke elites have agreed to put in the memory hole. ‘Ellen Page’, ‘Bruce Jenner won gold’, ‘born a male’, ‘born a female’ – these are all now deadnaming thoughtcrimes."

We need to talk about Ellen Page

I’m sorry, but a woman cannot just click her fingers and become a ‘he’.

So that’s it, is it? Ellen Page is no more? She’s been disappeared? She’s been shoved down the memory hole, left to stalk that netherworld of people whose names must never be uttered out loud, like Bruce Jenner, Frank Maloney, Voldemort? Ellen Page, the actress most famous for starring in irritant quirkhouse movie Juno, has now declared that she is Elliot Page and that she’s a he. And, boom, just like that, Ellen’s gone. She’s being erased from film history. People are getting into trouble even for saying the word ‘Ellen’. ‘Who?’, woke identitarians ask, as if they’ve all gone mad.

We need to talk about this. Specifically we need to talk about Ellen Page. We need to talk about the fact that this woman – yes, woman – existed in public life and in the celluloid imagination for many years, and that can’t just be scrubbed from the record, Soviet-style.

... The strength of the trans ideology was confirmed by the swiftness with which media institutions turned Ellen into Elliot and started calling her ‘he’. They had to, I guess, given the fury that will be visited upon anyone who says ‘Ellen’ or ‘she’. How dare you mention that mere woman who we have all agreed to erase from the historical record?

... The policing of discussion about Ellen Page is already intense. The Transgender Journalist Association says it is unacceptable for any media outlet even to mention the word ‘Ellen’. Even saying ‘Elliot Page, formerly known as Ellen Page’ is a no-no according to these jumped-up guardians of correct thought. Teen Vogue, the wokest magazine in Christendom, was praised for not mentioning Ellen Page anywhere in its report about Elliot Page. Well done! You completely erased a woman who did some very important cinematic work over the past 15 years!

The disappearing of Ellen Page, and the demonisation of anyone who dares to mention that woman’s name, matters because it tells us a great deal about the increasing instability and elitism of identity politics. There are many reasons we should have a frank, legitimate discussion about Ellen Page rather than robotically repeating that she is now a he and that anyone who says otherwise is a moral reprobate. First, is it really the case that Page is male? A he? How can someone who doesn’t have male biology and who has had no male experiences – boyhood, male puberty, masculine impulses, being a brother, an uncle, a father – be a ‘he’? How does that work? Is it magic?

... The transgender fad captures just how atomising, anti-democratic and elitist identity politics has become. The idea is that an individual can be whatever he or she wants to be, and everyone else must – absolutely must – bow down to their view of themselves. (read more)

2020-12-09 e
THE COVID-CON II
"Dr Mark Sklansky, an American cardiologist, told Time he has always hated hand-shaking. ‘Hands are warm, they’re wet, and we know that they transmit disease very well’, he said. But where ‘being anti-handshake was fringe thinking’ in the past — !! — it is now increasingly common to be handshakephobic, says the wise doctor. Put your wet, diseased paws away, everyone."

Down with the New Normal

Who wants to live in a nerdy world of no handshakes and no big sweaty crowds?

Few phrases inspire more horror in me than ‘the new normal’. It is falling from the lips of public-health experts and lockdown-loving commentators everywhere. Forget the ‘old normal’ of going maskless into the streets, or ramming yourself into a crowd of thirsty punters at the bar in a pub, or taking a lover without constantly worrying that he or she might make you ill with his or her breath. Such reckless libertinism was for the old world, apparently, the era BC (Before Covid). We are all now heading into the New Normal, a brave new world of forever social-distancing being built for us by a benevolent bureaucracy that simply wants to protect us from disease.

Everywhere you turn there is talk of the new normal. Out will go bare faces, hand-shaking, hugs and sweaty crowds, and in will come masks, elbow-bumping, and sitting six feet away from everyone else at concerts and shows. Bye bye, mosh pits. Yes, even when the vaccine comes, which is when many of us hoped we would see our freedoms restored, the uber-cautious habits we have developed during the Covid crisis should continue, experts say. Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, said this week that these ‘habits’, including face-covering, should continue for ‘many years’. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Van-Tam isn’t alone. Many experts and commentators are predicting, and even welcoming, a decline in social engagement and physical contact as we head into the new normal.

... Their new normal — for this new era is entirely an invention of the out-of-touch expert class, not of democratic debate — sounds awful. Some seem determined to cultivate a world in which social atomisation is not defeated, but institutionalised. In which we will enter the social sphere not as citizens keen to engage with one another, but as vectors of disease, as possessors of dirty hands and virus-spreading breath, who must be kept apart. In which we will be actively encouraged to view others as a threat.

... No, it isn’t a conspiracy. They haven’t all sat down in a Covid-secure committee room and decided to rob the public of its hard-won freedom to hug and smile. Rather, what we are witnessing in all the talk of the new normal is an intensification of trends that have been apparent for quite a while. From safe sex to safe spaces on campus, from the depiction of a boozy come-on as a threat to one’s physical safety to the growing cult of germophobia, the elitist insistence that other people are a threat has been around for some time. Other people’s words will hurt you; sex with them could kill you; their wolf-whistle on the street is a dagger to the heart of your self-esteem. So you had better hide in this safe space that forcefields you from disagreeable ideas, always wear a condom, and phone the police if a stranger tells you you look fit. Misanthropic suspicion of others has been the meat of public-heath agitation and the political class’s nanny statism for years — the Covid crisis is merely taking it all to the next level.

... If we unquestioningly enter the new normal, faces covered, hands behind backs, heads bowed, we may find that it will be very difficult indeed to get out again. Recovering our everyday freedom is the most important task facing humanity right now. (read more)

2020-12-09 d
THE COVID-CON I
"Instead of beatdowns, today’s regulators favor lockdowns, which are less bloody but inflict more social pain. For all the talk about following science, the authorities—and much of the citizenry—can’t resist the primal intuition that a pandemic can be quelled only through public penance. "

Pandemic Penitents

Lockdowns are more about faith than science.

In 1349, as the Black Death ravaged Europe, a new pandemic-control strategy was adopted in cities across the continent. The protocol was precisely regulated by the experts. Three times a day, for a total of exactly eight hours, hundreds of men known as Flagellants would march in single file through town, wearing caps with a red cross and carrying scourges of knotted ropes studded with nails. “Using these whips,” one witness reported, “they beat and whipped their bare skin until their bodies were bruised and swollen and blood rained down, spattering the walls nearby.”

This specific strategy is no longer in favor among public health officials, but the spirit of the Flagellants lives on. Instead of beatdowns, today’s regulators favor lockdowns, which are less bloody but inflict more social pain. For all the talk about following science, the authorities—and much of the citizenry—can’t resist the primal intuition that a pandemic can be quelled only through public penance. Consider two strategies for dealing with the Covid-19 virus: urge the public to spend time outside in the sun to build up their vitamin D, and to take supplements of the vitamin, repeatedly demonstrated to protect against viral infection; or shut down most businesses, deprive children of classroom education, and order everyone to stay home, a strategy never previously tested and yet to prove effective.

Which strategy would you try first? If you chose the vitamin D, you have no future in the public-health establishment. While a few researchers are touting the vitamin’s potential and advocating government programs to distribute the supplements during the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control can’t bring itself even to suggest that people take the pills on their own. In its Covid-19 guidelines, the CDC declares that “there are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of vitamin D.”

Somehow, though, the “insufficient data” problem disappeared when it came to lockdowns and mask mandates. Before the pandemic, the official expert consensus was against those measures, but the consensus was promptly discarded in the hope that these sacrifices might help. The evidence since then could easily be called insufficient, given the lack of randomized studies and the inconvenient data showing that places with lockdowns didn’t fare any better than the places without strict measures.

... But whatever these lockdowns and mandates do or don’t accomplish in stopping viral spread, they definitely enable officials and citizens to demonstrate that they’re taking bold actions against Covid—and the more painful the measures, the more virtuous and heroic they feel. Whenever evidence emerges that the lockdowns are ineffective, the proponents have a ready answer: not enough people are following the rules. Stop sinning! Do your penance!

Going out for a walk or taking a vitamin D pill is just too easy. It entails no pain and provides no glory or power to public-health officials and politicians, so they rarely give this advice despite the evidence that vitamin D helps the immune system against viral infections. It’s not surprising that groups with disproportionately high rates of Covid mortality are also prone to vitamin D deficiency: African-Americans and other minorities, the obese, residents of nursing homes and other elderly people. Levels of vitamin D tend to decline with age, and because the vitamin is synthesized in the body by exposure to sunlight, people tend to have lower levels if they spend less time outdoors or have darker skin that absorbs less ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

As days shorten in the autumn, people’s vitamin D levels tend to decline because of less exposure to the sun, and that’s one explanation for why the flu season starts in October in northern Europe and the United States (whereas flu occurs throughout the year in tropical countries).

... Those painful measures give at least the illusion that something serious is being done—and even if the measures turn out to be useless, officials can always claim success when the pandemic ebbs, as all pandemics eventually do. (read more)

2020-12-09 c
VACCINE NEWS III
"The MHRA (Britain's regulator) warned Wednesday that any patients with histories of having "powerful allergic overreactions" should avoid the vaccine."

UK Warns People With "Severe Allergies" Shouldn't Take COVID Vaccine

Millions of Britons, particularly the most vulnerable in their society, probably breathed a sigh of relief on Tuesday when NHS leaders introduced the first patient to receive a dose of the still-experimental Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine: A 90-year-old woman on the cusp of her 91st birthday who said she is thrilled she'll be able to spend the holiday with family without fear. Adding to the media interest, patient No. 2 was a man, 81, named "William Shakespeare".

One day later, after a week where leading vaccine developers like Pfizer and Moderna warned about supply constraints, hinting that they're widely touted projections might be unrealistic, and forcing President Trump to sign an executive order to try and ensure American patients are treated as a priority, the Britain's pharma regulator has dropped a bombshell warning.

The MHRA (Britain's regulator) warned Wednesday that any patients with histories of having "powerful allergic overreactions" should avoid the vaccine. For a report published by a professional news agency like Reuters, the details were surprisingly vague. Since a huge number of Americans are allergic to something, a little more clarity would be appreciated.

... According to public opinion polls, state and federal health officials have apparently been succeeding in establishing "credibility" to these vaccines. But there's no question that setbacks like this could have a profound affect on individuals' willingness to accept the vaccine, which also reportedly comes with punishing side effects.

... What's more: In the US, at least 2, possibly 3, participants from the Pfizer and Moderna trials have died in the following weeks. (read more)

2020-12-09 b
VACCINE NEWS II

Cornell offers 'person of color' exemption for flu vaccine requirement

Students at Cornell University can use their status as a “person of color” to be exempt from the university’s flu vaccine requirement.

“Students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC) may have personal concerns about fulfilling the Compact requirements based on historical injustices and current events,” explains Cornell Health’s vaccine requirement FAQ.

Students can send a private message to Cornell Health in order to request a non-medical or non-religious exemption for the immunization. For more information, the FAQ links to a page “especially for students of color,” which is meant to help minority students concerned about the flu vaccine requirement.

“We recognize that, due to longstanding systemic racism and health inequities in this country, individuals from some marginalized communities may have concerns about needing to agree to such requirements,” explains the page. “For example, historically, the bodies of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) have been mistreated, and used by people in power, sometimes for profit or medical gain.”

The university, therefore, considers it “understandable that the current Compact requirements may feel suspect or even exploitative to some BIPOC members of the Cornell community.”

Nevertheless, Cornell strongly encourages minority students to receive immunizations. (read more)

2020-12-09 a
VACCINE NEWS I

FDA Says 2 Participants In Pfizer COVID Vaccine Trial Have Died

With the FDA expected to grant emergency-use approval for the Pfizer-BionTech COVID vaccine Thursday after releasing a preliminary assessment of the trial data that the panel will use to assess the drug earlier today, the agency has admitted Tuesday that two participants in the Phase 3 trials have died. One of them was immunocompromised, according to the Jerusalem Post, citing data released earlier.

The FDA is expected to release two separate assessments of the trial data before a panel of experts meets to review the data and either approve Pfizer's request for emergency approval, or deny it.

This also comes after the FDA warned of a "severe averse reaction" frequently seen in patients after taking the second dose.

In the US, there has been at least one other trial participant who reportedly died not long after receiving the second dose. The participant in that case was a priest in Philadelphia who participated in the Moderna trial. In the UK, two patients were seriously sickened during the trial of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine (though Oxford later said the illnesses had nothing to do with the trial). While In Brazil, authorities briefly halted a trial of Sinovac's experimental COVID vaccine after a participant died.

... To be sure, it's unclear whether the participants who died succumbed to vaccine-related complications, or whether they even received a vaccine at all (they could have received a placebo). (read more)

2020-12-08 j
THE ELECTORAL ABYSS VI

Seven States Will Join Texas in SCOTUS Lawsuit Against Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania

... SEVEN states have now joined the Texas lawsuit, arguing that the Equal Protection Clause has been violated in this election from state-to-state:

Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Dakota. (read more)

2020-12-08 i
THE ELECTORAL ABYSS V
"Expedited consideration of this matter is warranted by the seriousness of the issues raised here, not only for the results of the 2020 presidential election but also for the implications for our constitutional democracy going forward. If this Court does not halt the Defendant States’ participation in the electoral college’s vote on December 14, a grave cloud will hang over not only the presidency but also the Republic."

In the Supreme Court of the United States

STATE OF TEXAS, Plaintiff, v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, STATE OF GEORGIA, STATE OF MICHIGAN, AND STATE OF WISCONSIN, Defendants.

MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE BILL OF COMPLAINT

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1251(a) and this Court’s Rule 17, the State of Texas respectfully seeks leave to file the accompanying Bill of Complaint against the States of Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (collectively, the “Defendant States”) challenging their administration of the 2020 presidential election. As set forth in the accompanying brief and complaint, the 2020 election suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities in the Defendant States:

•Non-legislative actors’ purported amendments to States’ duly enacted election laws, in violation of the Electors Clause’s vesting State legislatures with plenary authority regarding the appointment of presidential electors.

•Intrastate differences in the treatment of voters, with more favorable allotted to voters–whether lawful or unlawful–in areas administered by local government under Democrat control and with populations with higher ratios of Democrat voters than other areas of Defendant States.

•The appearance of voting irregularities in the Defendant States that would be consistent with the unconstitutional relaxation of ballot-integrity protections in those States’ election laws. All these flaws–even the violations of state election law–violate one or more of the federal requirements for elections (i.e., equal protection, due process, and the Electors Clause) and thus arise under federal law.

... Taken together, these flaws affect an outcome-determinative numbers of popular votes in a group of States that cast outcome-determinative numbers of electoral votes. This Court should grant leave to file the complaint and, ultimately, enjoin the use of unlawful election results without review and ratification by the Defendant States’ legislatures and remand to the Defendant States’ respective legislatures to appoint Presidential Electors in a manner consistent with the Electors Clause and pursuant to 3 U.S.C. § 2.

BILL OF COMPLAINT

Our Country stands at an important crossroads. Either the Constitution matters and must be followed, even when some officials consider it inconvenient or out of date, or it is simply a piece of parchment on display at the National Archives. We ask the Court to choose the former.

Lawful elections are at the heart of our constitutional democracy. The public, and indeed the candidates themselves, have a compelling interest in ensuring that the selection of a President—any President—is legitimate. if that trust is lost, the American Experiment will founder. A dark cloud hangs over the 2020 Presidential election.

Here is what we know. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification, government officials in the defendant states of Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (collectively, “Defendant States”), usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes. They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity. Finally, these same government officials flooded the Defendant States with millions of ballots to be sent through the mails, or placed in drop boxes, with little or no chain of custody and, at the same time, weakened the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote—signature verification and witness requirements.

Presently, evidence of material illegality in the 2020 general elections held in Defendant States grows daily. And, to be sure, the two presidential candidates who have garnered the most votes have an interest in assuming the duties of the Office of President without a taint of impropriety threatening the perceived legitimacy of their election. However, 3 U.S.C. §7 requires that presidential electors be appointed on December 14, 2020. That deadline, however, should not cement a potentially illegitimate election result in the middle of this storm—a storm that is of the Defendant States’ own making by virtue of their own unconstitutional actions.

This Court is the only forum that can delay the deadline for the appointment of presidential electors under 3 U.S.C. §§ 5, 7. To safeguard public legitimacy at this unprecedented moment and restore public trust in the presidential election, this Court should extend the December 14, 2020 deadline for Defendant States’ certification of presidential electors to allow these investigations to be completed. Should one of the two leading candidates receive an absolute majority of the presidential electors’ votes to be cast on December 14, this would finalize the selection of our President. The only date that is mandated under3the Constitution, however, is January 20, 2021. U.S. CONST. amend. XX.

Against that background, the State of Texas (“Plaintiff State”) brings this action against Defendant States based on the following allegations:

NATURE OF THE ACTION.

Plaintiff State challenges

1. Defendant States’ administration of the 2020 election under the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

2. This case presents a question of law: Did Defendant States violate the Electors Clause (or, in the alternative, the Fourteenth Amendment) by taking—or allowing—non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors?

3. Those unconstitutional changes opened the door to election irregularities in various forms. Plaintiff State alleges that each of the defendant States flagrantly violated constitutional rules governing the appointment of presidential electors. In doing so, seeds of deep distrust have been sown across the country. In the spirit of Marbury v. Madison, this Court’s attention is profoundly needed to declare what the law is and to restore public trust in this election.

4. As Justice Gorsuch observed recently, “Government is not free to disregard the [Constitution] in times of crisis. ... Yet recently,during the COVID pandemic, certain States seem to have ignored these long-settled principles.” Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. ____ (2020) (Gorsuch, J., concurring). This case is no different.

5. Each of Defendant States acted in a common pattern. State officials, sometimes through pending litigation (e.g., settling “friendly” suits) and sometimes unilaterally by executive fiat, announced new rules for the conduct of the 2020 election that were inconsistent with existing state statutes defining what constitutes a lawful vote.

6. Defendant States also failed to segregate ballots in a manner that would permit accurate analysis to determine which ballots were cast in conformity with the legislatively set rules and which were not. This is especially true of the mail-in ballots in these States. By waiving, lowering, and otherwise failing to follow the state statutory requirements for signature validation and other processes for ballot security, the entire body of such ballots is now constitutionally suspect and may not be legitimately used to determine allocation of the Defendant States’ presidential electors.

7. The rampant lawlessness arising out of Defendant States’ unconstitutional acts is described in a number of currently pending lawsuits in Defendant States or in public view including: ...

8. Nor was this Court immune from the blatant disregard for the rule of law. Pennsylvania itself played fast and loose with its promise to this Court. In a classic bait and switch, Pennsylvania used guidance from its Secretary of State to argue that this Court should not expedite review because the State would segregate potentially unlawful ballots. A court of law would reasonably rely on such a representation. Remarkably, before the ink was dry on the Court’s 4-4 decision, Pennsylvania changed that guidance, breaking the State’s promise to this Court.
...
9. Expert analysis using a commonly accepted statistical test further raises serious questions as to the integrity of this election.

10. The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000. For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power (i.e., 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000⁴). See Decl. of Charles J. Cicchetti, Ph.D. (“Cicchetti Decl.”) at ¶¶ 14-21, 30-31. See App. 4a-7a, 9a.

11. The same less than one in a quadrillion statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—independently exists when Mr. Biden’s performance in each of those Defendant States is compared to former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s performance in the 2016 general election and President Trump’s performance in the 2016 and 2020 general elections. Again, the statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in these four States collectively is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000⁵. Id. 10-13, 17-21, 30-31.

12. Put simply, there is substantial reason to doubt the voting results in the Defendant States.
...
15. The number of absentee and mail-in ballots that have been handled unconstitutionally in Defendant States greatly exceeds the difference between the vote totals of the two candidates for President of the United States in each Defendant State.

16. In addition to injunctive relief for this election, Plaintiff State seeks declaratory relief for all presidential elections in the future. This problem is clearly capable of repetition yet evading review. The integrity of our constitutional democracy requires that states conduct presidential elections in accordance with the rule of law and federal constitutional guarantees.
(read more)

2020-12-08 h
THE ELECTORAL ABYSS IV
"the statistical probability of Joe Biden’s victory in those four states as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, given Trump’s substantial lead, is “less than one in a quadrillion.”

Will This Texas Lawsuit Overturn the 2020 Election?

Texas lawsuit seeks to declare the selection of electors in four states void. Things are getting interesting.

In a lawsuit filed Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court, the state of Texas accuses four states currently “won” by Joe Biden of using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to violate the Electors Clause and the 14th Amendment. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin for usurping the sole authority of state legislatures to create election law and charges that millions of absentee ballots were unlawfully processed by local election officials.

“They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity,” the plaintiffs wrote. “Finally, these same government officials flooded the Defendants States with millions of ballots to be sent through the mails, or placed in drop boxes, with little or no chain of custody and, at the same time, weakened the strongest security measures protecting the integrity of the vote—signature verification and witness requirements.”

The filing asks the court to extend the December 14, 2020 deadline to certify each state’s electoral slate noting that the only date “mandated by the Constitution” is January 20, 2021.

The bill of particulars against the four rogue states is damning. Unelected bureaucrats such as Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and members of the Wisconsin Election Commission changed rules at the last minute and without authority. Local election workers flagrantly violated numerous state election laws; rejection rates for mail-in ballots were far lower than in the primary elections despite the unprecedented volume of absentee voting; and the statistical probability of Joe Biden’s victory in those four states as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, given Trump’s substantial lead, is “less than one in a quadrillion.”

... The suit asks the court to declare that the four states “administered the 2020 presidential election in violation of the Electors Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment” and essentially nullify any presidential electors appointed in those states.

Things are getting interesting. (read more)

2020-12-08 g
THE ELECTORAL ABYSS III

Texas Sues Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin at Supreme Court over Election Rules

The State of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court shortly before midnight on Monday challenging the election procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the grounds that they violate the Constitution.

Texas argues that these states violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions, but not through the state legislatures. Additionally, Texas argues that there were differences in voting rules and procedures in different counties within the states, violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Finally, Texas argues that there were “voting irregularities” in these states as a result of the above.

Texas is asking the Supreme Court to order the states to allow their legislatures to appoint their electors. The lawsuit says:

Certain officials in the Defendant States presented the pandemic as the justification for ignoring state laws regarding absentee and mail-in voting. The Defendant States flooded their citizenry with tens of millions of ballot applications and ballots in derogation of statutory controls as to how they are lawfully received, evaluated, and counted. Whether well intentioned or not, these unconstitutional acts had the same uniform effect—they made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States. Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution.

This case presents a question of law: Did the Defendant States violate the Electors Clause by taking non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors? These non-legislative changes to the Defendant States’ election laws facilitated the casting and counting of ballots in violation of state law, which, in turn, violated the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. By these unlawful acts, the Defendant States have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but their actions have also debased the votes of citizens in Plaintiff State and other States that remained loyal to the Constitution.

(read more)

2020-12-08 f
THE ELECTORAL ABYSS II
“As I said last week, the bitter division and acrimony we see across the Nation needs resolution. I believe #SCOTUS has a responsibility to the American People to ensure, within its powers, that we are following the law and following the Constitution.”

Sen. Cruz Agrees to Argue Pennsylvania Election Case If Taken Up by Supreme Court

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on Monday that he was willing to make oral arguments before the Supreme Court in an appeal seeking to block the state from taking further action to certify their election results.

The appeal is currently pending before the Supreme Court after Pennsylvania Republicans filed a request to block the finalizing of certification citing constitutional challenges.

In the instance where the certification has been finalized, Republicans asked the court to restore the “status quo” by compelling Pennsylvania officials to nullify its actions until an order from the court.

The Republicans also asked the court to treat the request as a petition of certiorari, asking the court to review the lawfulness of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision. (read more)

2020-12-08 e
THE ELECTORAL ABYSS I
"We can never accept the results of fraud. Our right to vote includes the right to a fair vote count. I will fight to restore the rightful victor, President Trump."

Congressman Paul Gosar’s Open Letter to Arizona: Are We Witnessing a Coup d’etat?

As I write this, I am in our nation’s Capital attending to legislative business, but I remain focused on what is happening in our country regarding our election.

In 2016, then candidate Donald Trump fell victim to a heinous crime that had never before been committed in the history of our country. The outgoing Obama administration weaponized our Department of Justice and FBI to unlawfully spy on their political opponent. They falsified information and crafted a ridiculous narrative around a Russia hoax that would be used as the basis to pursue a sham investigation. That disgraceful investigation became a Sword of Damocles throughout the majority of President Trump’s Presidency.

Before President Trump was even sworn in, Democrat Leftists swore an oath to remove him by any means they could. Official calls to impeach him came before he was even sworn in. At the conclusion of the Russia investigation, they cherry picked a phone call the President had with Ukraine to pursue a farcical impeachment. They failed. They lied about our President every day for four years. Having failed everywhere else, they brazenly engaged in systemic voter fraud and are trying to steal this election. They did it right in front of us with no shame.

For months Joe Biden hid while they carefully planned. The “fact-checkers” became more bold — removing reports and slapping “this claim is disputed” labels on anything that might bruise Joe Biden. For weeks leading up to Election Day, we were told to expect Trump to win big on election night but that in the days that followed, Biden would overtake any lead as mail-in ballots were counted. On election night as votes poured in overwhelmingly for President Trump, Joe Biden told supporters to “Keep the Faith” and “We believe we are on track to win this.” The next morning, we all awoke to see massive, statistically impossible spikes in votes for Joe Biden and almost zero for President Trump. Are we witnessing a coup d’etat?

We will not tolerate this.

... We all remember when candidate Joe Biden held a rally in downtown Phoenix and precisely zero people attended. Nada. Zilch. It was a clear reflection of the utter lack of popular support in Arizona for Biden. Conversely, President Trump held rallies in Yuma, Bullhead City, Prescott, and several other places and 30,000 people showed up in person on 48 hours notice while millions of others watched online. You could not look out your window without seeing patriots waving flags and declaring their support for President Trump. I travel extensively all over this state. I saw 2 maybe 3 signs for Biden between Yuma and Mohave Counties. Otherwise Arizona was a sea of MAGA 2020.

In short, from the pre-election polls, to Election Day, to voter enthusiasm, and to the extreme turnout for Republicans statewide, where every contested down ballot race was won by Republicans (with the notable exception of Martha McSally), it was apparent that Trump would win, and indeed did win, Arizona. It was not even close.

I attended a legislative hearing on Monday and listened to two expert witnesses familiar with Dominion voting software and voting patterns. They both testified that the Arizona results, particularly in Maricopa County, were altered to take votes from President Trump and give them to Biden. Perhaps one of the more damning testimonies came from Dr. Shiva who presented data showing that based upon demographic distribution of Party affiliations, the only way for Biden to have statistically caught up with Donald Trump was if Democrat votes came in at 130% for Biden and -30% for Trump.

... Our Constitution, our Republic and our nation demand election integrity. We are not giving up. The President has not conceded and will not concede to a Third World coup d’etat. We have a constitutional republic, not a banana republic. (read more)

2020-12-08 d
THE BANKING ABYSS

The BIS Issues A Dire Warning: "We Are Moving From The Liquidity To The Solvency Phase Of The Crisis"

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and the BIS - the central banks' central bank - warning about excesses from monetary policy (the most recent amusing example of this was last October when as we wrote, "Fed Announces QE4 One Day After BIS Warns QE Has Broken The Market"). Actually, to this list of 3 certainties we can add one more: central banks roundly ignoring the warnings from the central bank mothership.

That, however, does not prevent the BIS from continuing this trend of warnings, and today the Basel-based organization did just that when in its Quarterly Review publication it cautioned that the surge in financial markets following COVID-19 vaccine breakthroughs and the U.S. election has left asset prices increasingly stretched.

Sounding surprisingly similar to Goldman, which as we reported earlier today issued an almost identical warning, when it observed that its sentiment indicator is now +2.0 standard deviations above average...

... And in a dire warning that got virtually no airplay today, Borio made the following stunning announcement to reporters. "We are moving from the liquidity to the solvency phase of the crisis."

Translation: it's about to get much worse, only because central banks will ignore all the warnings, they will double down on the same failed policies, pushing leverage to even record-er highs, yields to even record-er lows, and sparking a propagation of zombies the likes of which have never before been seen.

"We should be expecting more bankruptcies going forward yet credit spreads are quite low by historical standards, and indeed while banks are pricing risk more carefully we don’t see the same in capital markets."

One almost sensed the futility in Borio's comments when he said that with $17.5 trillion worth of bonds now carrying negative yields many money managers were being pushed into riskier and riskier assets.

... In his parting words absolution to the helicopter money insanity that has taken over, Borio had no choice but to admit that - despite his misgivings - he has to side with the central banks: "The outlook is rather uncertain and you would rather err on the side of doing too much as opposed to doing too little."

Brilliant... just ignore that the entire world is now on the verge of a financial cliff where the next crash will not only wipe away hundreds of trillions in wealth and destroy confidence in central banks and fiat money, but abolish the voodoo "science" that is modern economics that keeps people like Borio employed. (read more)

2020-12-08 c
THE BIDEN ABYSS II
"Transgender Awareness Week, and the enthusiasm bordering on fanaticism that it elicits in the milieus of the Biden-Harris organization, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street, and woke capitalism at large, is precisely the opposite of what earns us respect among our allies or would-be allies in the Arab and Muslim worlds and in other God-fearing, traditional societies."

How ‘Transgender Awareness Week’ Hurts Our National Security

The Geneva Consensus Declaration must be embraced, defended, and fought for by American conservatives. Our true national security depends on fundamental moral realism.

We have just completed Transgender Awareness Week. Let me be the first to say that had it not been for the energetic ideologues at Google, who shoved this unwanted information into my frowning face every time I used the omnipotent search engine, I would not have known about it.

Because I could not stop for the death of Judeo-Christian Biblical faith, morals, and civilization, it kindly stopped for me. Thank you, Google!

Americans are usually incurious about international affairs, even those that have an impact on our security. Conversely, educated foreigners—both those who wish us well and those who wish us ill—are alert and well-informed about economic, political, and cultural matters in the United States.

And in this, the weeks, or days, or months, or centuries of transgender awareness become relevant.

... “It’s about this business of men wanting to use women’s public restrooms in North Carolina.”

“Really?”

Yes, he said, really. “I’m a liberal. I’m not religious. I don’t have any issues with whether or not people are gay or what they do in their private lives. But living in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, I know what the people here read and hear and think. We’re inundated with news here about political controversies in your country. Now the big story is about whether men who say they have changed into women can use women’s public restrooms in your country.

“This is making your country a laughingstock,” he said. “It’s not just expats like me. All of the Arabs know about this, and they are laughing. It’s not happy laughter, it’s nervous laughter. They are very concerned about their security.”

“I’m not an American,” my friend continued. “But when the United States is a laughingstock, it’s dangerous for my security. It’s dangerous for the UK and Europe. It’s dangerous for the Middle East. And the only beneficiary is China.”

Yes, China. Everyone in the Middle East is aware of the Chinese Communist challenge for primacy in economic and political influence in that region. A decade ago, China overtook the United States as the biggest customer of Saudi oil. This was huge news in Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf region, one of the most consequential turning points in the modern history of that region. I doubt this event drew much attention in the United States.

Here in the United States we rightly celebrate our having become a net exporter of oil, after having been a large net importer of oil from the Middle East and other foreign sources. By itself, this is very good for our balance of payments and our energy security.

As indisputably good as our “energy independence” is in itself, in the zero-sum game of international power politics, an important secondary effect is that China has gained a relatively larger measure of economic, and therefore political, influence among the Arab Gulf oil producers.

That makes it all the more incumbent upon the United States to do everything consistent with our other interests and values to earn and retain the respect of the Gulf Arabs.

The Gulf Arab nations are not the only countries that promote national and international policies on the conservative, pro-family, pro-life side of the global social-issues divide. Last month, the United States, represented by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration.

Thirty-one other nations joined the United States in signing the declaration, including Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda.

... A Biden-Harris Administration will renounce the United States’ adherence to the declaration. It will remain for conservatives in Congress, in non-governmental organizations, and in other international networks, to fight for the rights of the families, women, and unborn children with whom the declaration is concerned. These same U.S. leaders will need to fight also for the rights of the other national signatories to have their sovereign national policies respected by the United Nations and other international bodies. (read more)

2020-12-08 b
THE BIDEN ABYSS I
“That requires substantial investment to help build capable and willing allies, to negotiate and collectively enforce international rules and practices that restrain adversaries.”

Multilateral Dreamin’

The foreign policy establishment’s vapidities veil a substantive void. Their competence is bounded strictly by their experience, which is of personal success and public failure.

The prospective renewal of the establishment’s full powers in a Democratic administration secures its longtime foreign policy personnel’s influence; yet it also puts them in the position of trying to convince Americans that they would use that influence to accomplish something other than the diminution of American security that they delivered to us over the past generation. Unable to argue that the same actions and attitudes would produce different results, they mix generalities about multilateralism with straw-man characterizations of those who understand that foreign governments pursue their proclivities—not their private dreams.

They have another problem. The American people strongly approve of President Trump’s emphasis on an “America First” foreign policy, and will not look kindly on re-subordinating America to the establishment’s hobby horses.

Trump was elected to end pointless military adventures abroad. Whatever the establishment might prefer, nobody now is going to send U.S. troops to fight overseas, especially not in the Middle East.

He was elected to be “tough on China.” Returning to business as usual with China is the establishment’s top international priority. But public opinion has so shifted that candidate Biden promised to be even tougher on China. His administration will have to pretend.

The entire U.S. ruling class decried Trump’s bypassing the Palestinians to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. But that bypassing transformed the Middle East. Nothing so thrills the establishment like sitting down with “the Europeans” as senior partners. But the Europeans pull in different directions. Helping America is the last thing on their minds.

Published in Foreign Affairs, the establishment’s flagship organ, “Defense in Depth” by Kori Schake, James Mattis, Jim Ellis, and Joe Felter, may be the purest example of this genre. There is hardly a proper noun in it. It’s all fluff, the point of which is something like “we’re the experts, trust us.”

“International engagement,” the authors claim, “allows the United States to see and act at a distance, as threats are gathering, rather than waiting for them to assume proportions that ultimately make them much costlier and more dangerous to defeat,” and serves as “an early warning system that gives time and space to meet dangers when they arise.”

When was the last time anything like that happened? These credentialed historians might think of an example. All they come up with is, “The pandemic should serve as a reminder of what grief ensues when we wait for problems to come to us.” Did anyone warn us about the pandemic? Certainly not China, which hid the facts. And certainly not China’s plaything, the World Health Organization. In fact, the establishment decried Trump’s severance of travel from Asia and Europe. The authors pretend not to know.

They charge that, by concentrating on America’s interests we have been “allowing a long-tended garden to become choked with weeds.” What gardens, what weeds? Which do they want to pull, and how?

... What about the United States, Europe, Russia triangle? On the one hand, our establishment wants us to provoke the Russians. On the other hand, it knows that, were push to come to shove in the East, Germany especially would support us the way a rope supports a hanged man.

No. The establishment’s vapidities veil a substantial void. Their competence is bounded strictly by their experience, which is of personal success and public failure. Thus they will speak authoritatively amongst themselves. But America no longer listens.

The best comments on this genre may have come from, of all people, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Though smitten by the foreign policy establishment’s externalities for some years, Rubio most recently tweeted: “I support American greatness, and I have no interest in returning to the ‘normal’ that left us dependent on China.” Take progress where you can find it. (read more)

2020-12-08 a
THE COVID-CON I
"There is no "crisis" in US hospitals, nor was there last time. Even perennial basket case NYC was never overwhelmed - they never used javits nor the hospital ship."

"It's Panic Porn Clickbait" - Media Scare-Stories About Hospitals Are (outrageously) Misleading

You can't turn on your TV, flip open your tablet, or scroll your social media feed today without being bombarded by horrifying stories of over-worked nurses and doctors and throat-grabbing headlines about COVID-driven hospitalizations amid the casedemic.

Time to panic?

Perhaps not, as El Gato Malo (@boriquagato) notes in the following information-full twitter thread: while it's disappointing to see that we are back in the "media scare stories about hospitals" stage, the good news is that, just like last time, this is simply not the case.

They either have no idea what they are saying or are seeking to mislead...

Let's look.

... It's like the whole world, egged on by media and government seeking to frighten and inflame rather than inform has lost all historical perspective this year.

They are telling it like it ain't.

It's panic porn clickbait.

There is no excuse for reporting like this in an age when anyone can check this tool in seconds and see the actual figures. (read more)

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