Sunday, November 8, 2020

The Still Report, "Sidney Powell – Trump Will Win!"

A Must Read:
The Still Report, "Sidney Powell – Trump Will Win!"
"Detroit poll watcher explains concerns; 
Protesters demand a free and fair election"

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: Special Report"

Gregory Mannarino,
"Markets, A Look Ahead: Special Report"

Musical Interlude: Medwyn Goodall, "Eyes of Heaven"

Medwyn Goodall, "Eyes of Heaven"

Full screen mode recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31 at left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group, along with our own Milky Way galaxy. This narrow- and wide-angle, multi-camera composite finds details of spiral structure in both, while the massive neighboring galaxies seem to be balanced in starry fields either side of bright Mirach, beta star in the constellation Andromeda. Mirach is just 200 light-years from the Sun. But M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is really 2.5 million light-years distant and M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is also about 3 million light years away.


Although they look far apart, M31 and M33 are engaged in a gravitational struggle. In fact, radio astronomers have found indications of a bridge of neutral hydrogen gas that could connect the two, evidence of a closer encounter in the past. Based on measurements, gravitational simulations currently predict that the Milky Way, M31, and M33 will all undergo mutual close encounters and potentially mergers, billions of years in the future.”
"Everything passes away- suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?"
- Mikhail Bulgakov, "The White Guard"

Paulo Coelho, "The Bird And The Cage"

"The Bird And The Cage"
by Paulo Coelho

"Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with two perfect wings and with glossy, colorful, marvelous feathers. One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two travelled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird. But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid, afraid that she would never feel the same way about any other bird.

And she thought: “I’m going to set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again.” The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage. She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: “Now you have everything you could possibly want.”

However, a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.

One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contentedly amongst the clouds. If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had thrilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body.

Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. “Why have you come?” she asked Death. “So that you can fly once more with him across the sky,” Death replied. “If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him ever more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again.”

"At The End Of The Day..."

"There is beauty laced within this day… 
be courageous enough to find it, be kind enough to share it,
 and at the end of the day, be wise enough to let it go."
- Steve Maraboli

"This Is What it Feels Like When a Democracy Dies"

"This Is What it Feels Like When a Democracy Dies"
by Umair Haque

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”
- Justice William O. Kennedy

"What does it feel like to live in a time really succumbing to tyranny? Would you know it if you were in such a time? Is it like the "Hunger Games", or a "Mad Max" movie? Spectacular, violent, repellent, and unmistakeable? Or is it something subtler? Something that, for example, you might not even know was happening at the very moment it was happening to you? After all, invisible poisons are the most corrosive and dangerous things of all.

Imagine that you're lying down in a park, on the grass, on a perfect summer day, your eyes closed. And from nowhere, from everywhere, a fog begins rolling in. Gentle and white, oddly out place. It washes across the tips of your feet. You feel pinpricks. Your eyes snap open. Your toes go numb. How strange, you think to yourself, as you think about getting up and running away. What is this fog doing here? Why is giving you pins and needles?

But by the time you are thinking all that, processing what is happening to you, the fog is already up to your knees. 'I really should get up!' you think to yourself. You are a little alarmed now. But as you've paused to even think that far, to register it you realize that while your knees are prickling, your feet, calves, ankles, have gone numb. And it's not entirely unpleasant. It's soothing, even, in the way that letting go is. Confused, puzzled, bewildered, you stop to think again.

Yet by now the fog, still rolling, as quiet as winter, has reached the tips of your fingers, blanketed your torso. Ahhh, you murmur. The pinpricks, you realize, only sting you where the fog's cold, icy edge is. The rest of you? It's numb. Cool. Gone. And there is a strange, disquieting peace in that. Nothing makes sense. The world seems to be vanishing and so do you. But it's not entirely a bad thing.

The fog keeps rolling. As it covers all of you, something in you cries out 'Get up!'  But there is another part that is overwhelmed, which wishes to surrender to this pleasing, beautiful, gentle numbness. That longs for it. A few pins and needles, that's not much of a price for letting go, is it? After all, isn't that exactly why you were resting in the park on that perfect summer day, eyes closed? To let the whole world, including yourself, fall away?

Authoritarianism isn't what you think it is. A sudden, violent, visible rupture. That's what Americans, especially, have been led to believe by too many TV shows and movies, which are a kind of especially paranoid American annihilation fantasy (the Rapture, the commies, the immigrants.)

But tyranny isn't like that at all. It doesn't feel like that. These days, if we are a little bit educated about it, we call it creeping. but even that fails to convey the feeling, the sense, the experience. My little parable is a way to begin expressing the strange feeling of collapse, not just anxiety and panic, but also, conflicting with it, a kind of yearning for surrender and submission. We'd be foolish, by now, not to understand the dark roots of our own apathy and resignation, wouldn't we? So let me continue.

The thing we misunderstand most about tyranny is that we suppose life becomes one long exercise in rigid, total certainty. You receive your orders, salute, and snap to business. That is what violent rupture implies: one day democracy, the next, a tyrant is there, precisely ordering everyone's last thought and action. But the truth is precisely the opposite.

Tyranny kills with the grey haze, the white fog, of all-pervading uncertainty. An uncertainty so total, that after a time, people will give up all that they love, and everyone they love, to escape it. The fog kills everything it touches and yet, it can't be touched, held, known, captured. You can't fight fog with fists or words or speeches, can you? If you join hands with someone you love, the fog will laugh, and weave itself right between your fingers. So what can fight it? Who can resist it? First, let me explain it a little.

Who will be dehumanized today? Who will win this election? Is this a President or something more sinister? Is the law still working? Did they raid that town? Why are those camps rising? Whose door will they knock at today? Am I in danger? Are they going to use my words against me? Should I not speak them? Where are the children? Do you see what I mean by all-pervading uncertainty? The grey haze. The white fog. That, my friends, is what tyranny really is. And you are already knee-deep in it. Only perhaps you don't quite know it yet.

After a time, the uncertainty erases everything. Cleanses everything. Kills everything. All. It covers everything it touches, and leaves nothing revealed. It is total and all-encompassing. Is that a person? Am I? Who is a citizen? What about my friends, family, cousins? Are these words mine? Did I speak them? Are those my friends? Can I trust them? Did they get rid of those people? The fog. The haze. That is how it kills everything it touches, by making all things exactly the same thing. An unanswerable question.

Do you have the sense, lately, that things are  unreal? Ah, you see. You are already being blanked by the grey haze, the white fog, of uncertainty. Uncertainty is what you are feeling, only you don't know it. It is that uncertainty that has turned everything unreal. Will they really put people in camps? Then why did they build them? Will women really have to go underground to get abortions? What about my kids? Will they really live without healthcare or education or retirement? You go numb, as any sane person would, having to think these terrible thoughts. Your vision goes blurry. Reality has come apart, because nothing is or isn't anymore. Everything is just the fog.

When all is fog, uncertainty, impossibility, unknowability, reality cannot be processed anymore. That is the point. To create a world where everything, being uncertain, becomes unreal. Nothing exists, or doesn't exist, only just maybe exists, but only if it is allowed to. So nothing can be held, contained, known, and therefore, held onto. Nothing. Not the people you love most. Not yourself. Not tomorrow. Not even today.

Have you ever read stories about how in tyrannies, brothers will betray brothers, husbands wives, and mothers sons? You have always thought that could never happen to me! But why do they do it? It isn't because the tyrant commands them to. He doesn't have to. They will do it for just a tiny morsel of certainty. Here, I am a good person. Let me prove it to you. Let me tell you who is a bad person. Will you reward me now, put me in the good books, give me some certainty, instead of keeping me at the edge? No human being can survive more than a few days in a totally uncertain world. So the fog takes everything, not just from us, but also in us. It takes away, at last, our capacity to feel. When that is gone, we are hollow, empty, numb. And when we are numb, what or whom won't we sell, betray, or abuse?

The tyrant has never lifted a finger. He has only produced the fog, with a conjuring trick. By shifting the sands beneath us, and letting the mist pour out of the cracks. The fog rolls over us, little by little, inch by inch, languorous tendrils whispering. We fall and fall slowly, gently into a long, dreamless coma.

In the end, nothing is left. People are erased. Time stands still. History vanishes. The future looks exactly like the present. Nobody is here at all. There is only the fog, the haze, the white. Nothing can be discerned in it. Nothing can be seen through it. But that is alright. There is nobody left to see nothing, anyways. There is just the white fog. And beneath it, the sleepers. Each one the same, none of them there, or not there.

If just one woke up, looked around, shocked, and roused another, and that one another, and so on maybe they might, together, strain, struggle, and lift one another up above the fog. But none of them ever quite understood that. The fog took them too fast, too invisibly, without a bullet, without a word, without a sound, just like that. It took all the fight in them, and turned it to surrender.

That is what tyranny feels like, my friends. And you might not know it, or you might, but the fog is rolling silently across you now, gentle, languorous, with love, with absolution, with death."

"Just Because..."

"Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, 
that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe."
- Kurt Vonnegut

"How Could You? A Dog's Story"

  

"How Could You? A Dog's Story"
by Jim Willis

"When I was a puppy I entertained you with my antics and made you laugh. You called me your child and despite a number of chewed shoes and a couple of murdered throw pillows, I became your best friend. Whenever I was "bad," you'd shake your finger at me and ask "How could you?" - but then you'd relent and roll me over for a bellyrub.

My housetraining took a little longer than expected, because you were terribly busy, but we worked on that together. I remember those nights of nuzzling you in bed, listening to your confidences and secret dreams, and I believed that life could not be any more perfect. We went for long walks and runs in the park, car rides, stops for ice cream (I only got the cone because "ice cream is bad for dogs," you said), and I took long naps in the sun waiting for you to come home at the end of the day.

Gradually, you began spending more time at work and on your career, and more time searching for a human mate. I waited for you patiently, comforted you through heartbreaks and disappointments, never chided you about bad decisions, and romped with glee at your homecomings, and when you fell in love.

She, now your wife, is not a "dog person" - still I welcomed her into our home, tried to show her affection, and obeyed her. I was happy because you were happy. Then the human babies came along and I shared your excitement. I was fascinated by their pinkness, how they smelled, and I wanted to mother them, too. Only she and you worried that I might hurt them, and I spent most of my time banished to another room, or to a dog crate. Oh, how I wanted to love them, but I became a "prisoner of love."

As they began to grow, I became their friend. They clung to my fur and pulled themselves up on wobbly legs, poked fingers in my eyes, investigated my ears and gave me kisses on my nose. I loved everything about them, especially their touch - because your touch was now so infrequent - and I would have defended them with my life if need be. I would sneak into their beds and listen to their worries and secret dreams. Together we waited for the sound of your car in the driveway. There had been a time, when others asked you if you had a dog, that you produced a photo of me from your wallet and told them stories about me. These past few years, you just answered "yes" and changed the subject. I had gone from being your dog to "just a dog," and you resented every expenditure on my behalf.

Now you have a new career opportunity in another city and you and they will be moving to an apartment that does not allow pets. You've made the right decision for your "family," but there was a time when I was your only family.

I was excited about the car ride until we arrived at the animal shelter. It smelled of dogs and cats, of fear, of hopelessness. You filled out the paperwork and said "I know you will find a good home for her." They shrugged and gave you a pained look. They understand the realities facing a middle-aged dog or cat, even one with "papers."

You had to pry your son's fingers loose from my collar as he screamed "No, Daddy! Please don't let them take my dog!" And I worried for him and what lessons you had just taught him about friendship and loyalty, about love and responsibility, and about respect for all life. You gave me a goodbye pat on the head, avoided my eyes, and politely refused to take my collar and leash with you. You had a deadline to meet and now I have one, too.

After you left, the two nice ladies said you probably knew about your upcoming move months ago and made no attempt to find me another good home. They shook their heads and asked "How could you?"

They are as attentive to us here in the shelter as their busy schedules allow. They feed us, of course, but I lost my appetite days ago. At first, whenever anyone passed my pen, I rushed to the front, hoping it was you - that you had changed your mind - that this was all a bad dream... or I hoped it would at least be someone who cared, anyone who might save me. When I realized I could not compete with the frolicking for attention of happy puppies, oblivious to their own fate, I retreated to a far corner and waited.

I heard her footsteps as she came for me at the end of the day and I padded along the aisle after her to a separate room. A blissfully quiet room. She placed me on the table, rubbed my ears and told me not to worry. My heart pounded in anticipation of what was to come, but there was also a sense of relief. The prisoner of love had run out of days. As is my nature, I was more concerned about her. The burden which she bears weighs heavily on her and I know that, the same way I knew your every mood.

She gently placed a tourniquet around my foreleg as a tear ran down her cheek. I licked her hand in the same way I used to comfort you so many years ago. She expertly slid the hypodermic needle into my vein. As I felt the sting and the cool liquid coursing through my body, I lay down sleepily, looked into her kind eyes and murmured "How could you?"

Perhaps because she understood my dogspeak, she said "I'm so sorry." She hugged me and hurriedly explained it was her job to make sure I went to a better place, where I wouldn't be ignored or abused or abandoned, or have to fend for myself - a place of love and light so very different from this earthly place. With my last bit of energy, I tried to convey to her with a thump of my tail that my "How could you?" was not meant for her. It was you, My Beloved Master, I was thinking of. I will think of you and wait for you forever. May everyone in your life continue to show you so much loyalty."
"If there are no dogs in Heaven, 
then when I die I want to go where they went."
 - Will Rogers

Dogs are better souls than we could ever hope to be...

The Daily "Near You?"

 
Alliston, Ontario, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

"Choices..."

"The human life is made up of choices. Yes or no. In or out. Up or down. And then there are the choices that matter. Love or hate. To be a hero or to be a coward. To fight or to give in. To live. Or die. Live or die. That's the important choice. And it's not always in our hands."
- Dr. Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy"

“This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist. If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...would you slow down? Or speed up?"
- Chuck Palahniuk

"This Species is Amusing Itself to Death. The Addictive Contaminated Media Reality"

"This Species is Amusing Itself to Death.
The Addictive Contaminated Media Reality"
By Dr. Gary G. Kohls

“And when they found our shadows (grouped ‘round the TV sets), they ran down every lead; they repeated every test; they checked out all the data in their lists. And then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed, but on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise they logged the only explanation left: This species has amused itself to death.” – Roger Waters

“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies and soaps, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.” – Clive Maund

“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed… When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.”
 – Dresden James

“A lie gets halfway around the world before 
the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
 – Winston Churchill

"30 years ago (1985) Neil Postman (a professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University – until his death in 2003) wrote the best-selling book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. (Free download below.) The book exposed, among other things, the subtle but profound dangers to the developing mind from the mesmerizing (and addictive) commercial television industry.

The lessons from that book have essentially been ignored by the amoral and corrupted sociopathic capitalist system that says “damn the torpedoes/full steam ahead” and blindly and greedily promotes unlimited growth no matter what the costs and who or what gets hurt long–term in the resource-extractive, exploitive and permanently polluting processes.

But Postman’s thesis applies even more strongly today to the current internet/computer/ age-inappropriate, pornographic sex and pornographic violence-saturated televangelist/political-contaminated media reality with which the prophetic Postman was properly alarmed.

SOMA, the Drug That Predicted Prozac by 50 Years: In the classic “Brave New World” (1932) Aldous Huxley wrote about the new form of totalitarianism that has now come to pass in the developed world, thanks to the privatized profit-driven, drug, medical and psychiatric corporations whose practitioners were once (naively or altruistically?) mainly concerned with relieving human suffering and trying to holistically and permanently cure their distressed patients’ ailments (rather than lucratively “managing” said “clients” as permanently paying consumers of unaffordable prescription drugs). Nearly 30 years after he wrote the book, Huxley said,

“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.”

Neil Postman’s very last sentence of his book concerned the prescription drug-infested victims of the new form of totalitarianism that Huxley had described in “Brave New World”.

Of course, Huxley’s book was all about his imaginary psychotropic drug SOMA that Prozac’s makers and promoters in the late 1980s to falsely claim to make its swallowers “feel better than well”. One of the characters in Brave New World said: “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always Soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always Soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears; that’s what Soma is.”

Postman ended his book by writing: “what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.”

A couple of years after the publication of Postman’s book, Roger Waters (of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” fame) released a “concept” album that was inspired by the book. He titled the album “Amused to Death”. The lyrics of the title track are as follows:

“Amused To Death”
by Roger Waters

"Doctor Doctor what’s wrong with me?
This supermarket life is getting long.
What is the heart life of a color TV?
What is the shelf life of a teenage queen?
Ooh western woman,
Ooh western girl,
News hound sniffs the air.
When Jessica Hahn goes down
He latches on to that symbol of
detachment,
Attracted by the peeling away of
feeling,
The celebrity of the abused shell
of the belle.
Ooh western woman,
Ooh western girl,
And the children of Melrose strut
their stuff,
Is absolute zero cold enough?
And out in the valley warm and clean
The little ones sit by their TV screens.
No thoughts to think,
No tears to cry,
All sucked dry down to the very
last breath.

Bartender what is wrong with me?
Why I am so out of breath?
The captain said excuse me ma’am,
This species has amused itself to death.

We watched the tragedy unfold,
We did as we were told.
We bought and sold,
It was the greatest show on earth.
But then it was over,
We oohed and aahed

We drove our racing cars,
We ate our last few jars of caviar,
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light.
Our last hurrah.

And when they found our shadows
Grouped ‘round the TV sets,
They ran down every lead,
They repeated every test.
They checked out all the data in
their lists.
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed.

But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise,
They logged the only explanation left...
This species has amused itself to death
No tears to cry.
No feelings left.
This species has amused itself to
death…"

Roger Waters, “Amused To Death”
Freely download “Amusing Ourselves to Death:
 Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, by Neil Postman, here:

"We're Here..."

 

The Poet: David Whyte, "One Day"

  

"One Day"

"One day I will say
the gift I once had has been taken.
The place I have made for myself
belongs to another.
The words I have sung
are being sung by the ones
I would want.
Then I will be ready
for that voice
and the still silence in which it arrives.
And if my faith is good
then we'll meet again
on the road,
and we'll be thirsty,
and stop
and laugh
and drink together again
from the deep well of things as they are."

- David Whyte, 
"Where Many Rivers Meet"
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.
And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see -
it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life."
- Robert Penn Warren

"How It Really Is"

 

Benford’s Law Proves Unilateral Fraud Beyond a Reasonable Doubt"

"Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
 Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties Will Go Red: 
Benford’s Law Proves Unilateral Fraud Beyond a Reasonable Doubt"
by mjwfour

The key takeaway from the graphic is that only Biden’s votes violate Benford’s law, as Trump’s votes follow Benford’s law to a tee. Benford’s law will be used to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was voter fraud in certain areas (Milwaukee, Detriot, Philadelphia, and Allegheny). Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania will be red and Trump will get the corresponding 46 electoral votes.”

Visit web site, click images for larger size.

"Binaural Beats Music For Deep Focus, Concentration, Super Intelligence"

Greenred Productions, 
"Binaural Beats Music For Deep Focus, 
Concentration, Super Intelligence"

"Greenred Productions meditation music with binaural beats (brainwave music) can work as sleep music, studying music, relaxing music and many more. Relaxation music can also be used as Spa music and Massage music. Here you can find powerful self-help hypnosis including healing music, Zen music and yoga music. Some sessions are produced for your inner transformation: to overcome fear, elevate your mood and energy levels, and lose weight faster. Meditation music recordings also include reiki music, Zen meditation music and deep trance hypnosis sessions.

We compose instrumental and electronic music that is specially designed to enhance brain function and concentration, spa and massage therapy, and healing music therapy. For this reason, we use binaural beats. There are many types of beats for different daily meditation purposes: Delta Waves – Sleep Music/NREM sleep, Alpha Waves are neural oscillations, Theta Waves (cortical theta rhythm and Hippocampal theta rhythm). Beta waves associated with muscle contractions in isotonic movements, Gamma waves can help to release serotonin, endorphin and dopamine, so it works as happiness music for depression treatment."

Turn it on as background music. Go about your business. It works. As simple as that. I for one will take any edge I can get these days. You should too...
- CP

"It's Not The Load..."

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it."
- Lena Horne

"Life Under Biden"

"Life Under Biden"
by Jim Rickards

"An Historic Turning Point Election: This was a historic, turning-point election. Turning-point elections are the most historic because they put the country on a different path: Party Politics in 1800, Populism in 1828, Civil War in 1860, Liberalism in 1932, and Conservatism in 1980. Every 100 years, America gets a president who shakes the establishment and cleans out the Washington sewers. In the 1800s it was Andrew Jackson. In the 1900s it was Teddy Roosevelt. In the 2000s, it’s Donald Trump.

There is no doubt that Trump and Biden would lead America in almost opposite directions with profound consequences for the future of the country and for future elections. If Trump had won, we would have gotten more of the same, which is saying a lot. Trump would offer more tax cuts (or at least preserve the tax cuts we’ve received). He’d offer less regulation, a major accomplishment of his first term. Trump would continue the trade war with China and expand it in ways that would move jobs back to the United States (or at least get them out of China into friendlier countries such as Vietnam and India).

He would also curtail Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property and cut off Chinese tech investment in the United States. Trump has also stopped foreign installation of sensitive 5G telecommunications systems from Huawei and ZTE, which are hidden arms of the Chinese military. Trump built alliances to constrain Chinese expansion efforts. His main breakthrough was the Quad Alliance of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India that effectively surrounds and can interdict China’s sea lanes to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Trump also made great strides toward Middle East peace with the first two Israeli-Arab peace treaties in twenty-five years – one with the UAE and one with Bahrain. Other peace treaties with Israel may have followed. Finally, Trump was imposing crippling sanctions on Iran that would have forced it to negotiate in good faith on its nuclear program or crush its economy in ways that would also impede its efforts at terrorism and nuclear weapons.

With Trump, what you see is what you get: Lower taxes, less regulation, more jobs, no new wars, peace in the Middle East, and peace through strength in confronting Iran and China. With four more years, Trump could have accomplished his goals and perhaps be ranked among the ten most significant presidents of all time.

The Scenario Under a Biden Administration: Biden is another matter entirely. First of all, Biden is running for president in name only. He has never been that bright. He has accomplished little in his almost fifty years in public service. He is physically frail and clearly suffering acute cognitive decline.

If Joe Biden does win, he’ll be 78 years old when sworn in and 82 years old at the end of his first term. Both marks are the oldest in U.S. history for a president. Some individuals are still sharp in their late 70s. Biden is not one of them. The result is that Biden will never be president de facto. With Trump out of the picture, Democrats wouldn’t need him anymore. Steps would be taken at some point to remove him from office on the grounds of mental incapacity under the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Nancy Pelosi recently proposed legislation to set up a commission to do just that as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution. But while he remains in office, who will be the real president in a Biden administration? There are three camps contending for power:

The first camp is the Biden family led by Joe Biden’s wife Dr. Jill Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and Joe Biden’s brothers Jim Biden and Frank Biden. These are the individuals who have been enriched through association with Joe Biden by using or selling access to Biden’s power to win lucrative investment management roles, consulting engagements, construction contracts and other remunerative pursuits. The Biden family will want to keep Joe in power (with Jill Biden pulling the strings) in order to keep their shakedown operation intact and avoid scrutiny.

The second camp is led by Kamala Harris and those who control her, including the Obama crew and the Resistance. If Biden is removed under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Harris becomes Acting President. If Biden resigns under threat of removal, Harris becomes the president. She would be a front for the Obamas and Valerie Jarrett who would operate through a cabinet consisting of Obama family retainers including Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Sally Yates and Eric Holder.

The third camp is led by the extreme left wing of the party including Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (and The Squad), Elizabeth Warren and radical organizations such as BLM. This group is already embedded in the Biden campaign as part of a deal whereby Bernie Sanders agreed to end his primary campaign and endorse Joe Biden in exchange for Biden adopting most of the Sanders platform.

The most likely outcome is that the Obama crew and the Bernie Bros will join forces and run the Biden family off the road. The Bidens will be allowed to keep their Chinese and Russian money and will not face any scrutiny or prosecution in exchange for going away quietly. The Obama crew will take charge of foreign policy (to preserve Obama’s deals on Iran, the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership), while the Bernie Bros will get domestic policy including much higher taxes, free healthcare, free tuition, forgiveness of student loans, guaranteed basic income, Modern Monetary Theory and the Green New Deal.

A “Blue Wave” Could Have Meant The End of Republican Power in U.S. Politics: One initiative all Democrats can agree on is radical change in U.S. governance to ensure that Republicans never take power again. This agenda means ending the Senate filibuster so the Senate can operate with a simple majority instead of the 60 votes needed today. Democrats would add Puerto Rico and D.C. as states to ensure four new Senate seats that will likely all be Democrats.

Next, Democrats would pack the Supreme Court with six new liberal Justices to wipe out the recently achieved conservative majority after the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett. Once these changes are in place, Democrats could take further steps to eliminate the Electoral College, which means that California and New York alone will choose all future presidents.

If these governance changes were in place, the Bernie Bros’ agenda could be implemented with ease and without fear of opposition from the courts. But, it looks like this entire agenda will be stopped in its tracks. To ram it through, Democrats would have had to take control of the Senate. With the White House, Senate and House of Representatives controlled by Democrats, Republicans would be powerless to stop them. But, it appears that the Republicans are going to retain control of the Senate. If that holds, the Democrats’ more radical legislation will never make it out of the Senate.

One of the reasons the stock market rallied so much after the election is because it expects gridlock in Washington, meaning no punitive taxes or other policies harmful to markets. So if Biden holds on and Republicans hold onto the Senate, you can expect a lot of bickering and a lot of gridlock. And that might not be the worst thing."