Jeremiah Babe,
"Green Infrastructure Coming? Economic Recovery Plan;
Oil Industry To Be Decimated; Welfare State"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
"The Entire World Is Spiraling Towards An Unprecedented Hunger Crisis"
"The Entire World Is Spiraling Towards
An Unprecedented Hunger Crisis"
by Epic Economist
"The entire world is spiraling towards an unprecedented hunger crisis. The UN has warned that over a tenth of the world’s population won’t have enough to eat this year. However, this calamitous global famine is not a consequence of a disruption in food production but directly related to the growing inequality that has been depriving most people to have access to healthy diets. In this video, we discuss how the health crisis has been causing more casualties due to the enormous increase in starvation levels worldwide than because of the viral infection itself.
An additional 132 million people are likely to go hungry by the end of this year, representing an increase in food insecurity that might be more than triple ever experienced throughout this century. The health crisis has prompted major obstacles in the access of food products, such as the unexpected surge in hoarding tendencies that led to supply chain disruptions, natural disasters that decimated crops around the world, struggling economies, and the sharp decline in consumers' purchasing power.
What makes this situation completely unparalleled is the fact that this is happening at a time of enormous global food surpluses. In theory, there's enough food to feed the whole world's population, but the number of those who can afford it has been steadily falling.
It is being projected that the sanitary outbreak will cause more casualties each day from hunger than from virus infections. By December, as many as 12,000 people could be fatally victimized per day from hunger linked to the outbreak's effects, possibly more than those perishing from the virus itself.
The current crisis has only exacerbated the already deep wealth inequality gap, now separating groups into those who can afford to eat and those who can't. Researchers found that the media-fed fear has triggered a second surge in the hoarding trend.
Anxious buying and food hoarding has not only affected the supply chain but also the amount of food waste produced in America. Supermarkets across the country have been stockpiling food and cleaning products to keep up consumers with demand.
On top of the economic downturn, lockdowns and broken supply chains have also enhanced the problem of food distribution. Also, the lack of seasonal migrant workers has made it impossible for farmers to harvest their entire produce, leading many of them to dump milk and smash eggs, left without viable alternatives to redirect their production to either grocery stores or food banks.
Most food banks rely on donations from food producers and grocery chains to deliver supplies to food-insecure households in many states, and ever since consumers started panic-buying huge amounts of food, donations have become scarce.
In face of such events, the UN forecasted that about a tenth of the world’s population won’t have access to enough food this year. The implications will transcend hunger itself and also reflect on other forms of food insecurity, with hundreds of millions unable to afford healthy diets, which might result in a spike of both malnutrition and obesity. By 2030, the number of undernourished people could reach as high as 909 million, and the effects of it will be long-lasting.
Increased malnutrition can debilitate the immune system, limit mobility, and even compromise brain functioning. Children who face malnutrition early in life can see its impact well into adulthood. Problems with physical and cognitive development in children and adolescents can undermine the chances of staying in school or getting a job, perpetuating a cycle of poverty.
Additionally, global food prices rose for the third straight month, which also relates to the dollar collapse. When the purchasing power of the US dollar falls, commodity prices in USD tend to go up. With that said, considering that many U.S. households are already living in poverty, they can't adjust their realities to keep up with increasingly high food costs. The American middle class isn't far behind and when the masses go hungry and can't find the means to feed themselves and their families, they take it to the streets.
The idea of not having the most basic needs for survival, such as food, fresh water, and shelter lead groups to react in desperation. And ever since stimulus talks have been indefinitely postponed aggravating the uncertainty about their situation, it appears that storm clouds are emerging on the horizon."
Musical Interlude: Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"
Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon.
Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110906.html
"If You Do Not Know..."
"First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?"
- Thomas Merton
Chet Raymo, "On Saying 'I Don't Know'"
"On Saying 'I Don't Know'"
by Chet Raymo
“Johannes Kepler is best known for figuring out the laws of planetary motion. In 1610, he published a little book called “The Six-Cornered Snowflake” that asked an even more fundamental question: How do visible forms arise? He wrote: "There must be some definite reason why, whenever snow begins to fall, its initial formation is invariably in the shape of a six-pointed starlet. For if it happens by chance, why do they not fall just as well with five corners or with seven?"
All around him Kepler saw beautiful shapes in nature: six-pointed snowflakes, the elliptical orbits of the planets, the hexagonal honeycombs of bees, the twelve-sided shape of pomegranate seeds. Why? he asks. Why does the stuff of the universe arrange itself into five-petaled flowers, spiral galaxies, double-helix DNA, rhomboid crystals, the rainbow's arc? Why the five-fingered, five-toed, bilaterally symmetric beauty of the newborn child? Why?
Kepler struggles with the problem, and along the way he stumbles onto sphere-packing. Why do pomegranate seeds have twelve flat sides? Because in the growing pomegranate fruit the seeds are squeezed into the smallest possible space. Start with spherical seeds, pack them as efficiently as possible with each sphere touching twelve neighbors. Then squeeze. Voila! And so he goes, convincing us, for example, that the bee's honeycomb has six sides because that's the way to make honey cells with the least amount of wax. His book is a tour-de-force of playful mathematics.
In the end, Kepler admits defeat in understanding the snowflake's six points, but he thinks he knows what's behind all of the beautiful forms of nature: A universal spirit pervading and shaping everything that exists. He calls it nature's "formative capacity." We would be inclined to say that Kepler was just giving a fancy name to something he couldn't explain. To the modern mind, "formative capacity" sounds like empty words.
We can do somewhat better. For example, we explain the shape of snowflakes by the shape of water molecules, and we explain the shape of water molecules with the mathematical laws of quantum physics. Since Kepler's time, we have made impressive progress towards understanding the visible forms of snowflakes, crystals, rainbows, and newborn babes by probing ever deeper into the heart of matter. But we are probably no closer than Kepler to answering the ultimate questions: What is the reason for the curious connection between nature and mathematics? Why are the mathematical laws of nature one thing rather than another? Why does the universe exist at all? Like Kepler, we can give it a name, but the most forthright answer is simply: I don't know.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
"The Myth of 'Limited Government'"
"The Myth of 'Limited Government'"
by Brian Maher
"E-Day plus seven… and the ballots are still being counted. Many will be recounted. Others will undergo rigorous audit to determine their validity. Chesterton - G.K. Chesterton - wrote of the “democracy of the dead.” Yet he did not suggest the dead should vote in current elections… as many allegedly did last Tuesday. The president and his men are alleging colossal voter fraud. The challenger insists he won squarely and fairly.
Could they both be correct? We imagine it is possible. But we do not pretend to know. Yet we are confident the challenger will be crowned United States president no. 46 come January. The incumbent’s legal challenges will likely falter in the courts - justly or unjustly. Which judges will award Mr. Trump the election after the national media has declared him the loser? They would spend the next four years fleeing protesters with pitchforks in their hands… and vengeance on their minds.
Three Cheers for Gridlock: We are bitterly and ruthlessly bipartisan. That is, we denounce each party for its multiple atrocities. Yet if you’ll allow us this one partisan deviation: It is our sincere wish that the Republican Party retains its Senate majority. That is, we are out for gridlock.
The other party is hot to “get things done.” Yet we do not want it to get things done. That is because getting things done generally equates to massive raids upon our liberties… and our wallets. If government is to get things done for A, it must first do things to B. And so B is knocked about by his own government for A’s benefit.
If Democrats run the White House, Senate and House they would have two years to get things done - many things - until the midterm elections. It is not yet clear if Republicans will cling to their majority. Yet we pray upon two knees that they do, and for the reason listed. It is not because of their self-professed fidelity to “limited government.” Government has grown, debt and deficits have mushroomed under Republican management as they have mushroomed under Democratic management. Perhaps it was inevitable. And we do not necessarily fault them...
What Is Limited Government Exactly? "Limited government." It goes between the tongs of quotation marks for a reason. It of course sounds infinitely agreeable. Who among us declares for unlimited government? Even those who are for unlimited government keep it dark. Else they would be denounced as communist hellcats and packed off to the gallows. Yet here we file our brief against "limited government."
The term is as hollow as a jug, hollow as a drum, hollow as a congressman’s skull. Never before have so many used a term... so often... that meant so little. Government limited to what precisely? How does one define it in this, the 21st century?
Perhaps we can liken limited government to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's 1964 definition of pornography - “I know it when I see it.” Some see limited government when federal spending is limited to $3.9 trillion rather than $4.3 trillion… or 19% of GDP as opposed to 21%. But do We the People truly desire limited government?
Thanks, but No Thanks: Ask the fellow next door if he believes in limited government. He will likely roar a hearty yes, bursting with the spirit of American independence. Proceed to ask him this question: Should Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Education - to name some - be eliminated? Not reformed. Eliminated.
Ask him if he would prefer greater retirement benefits or limited government...Greater health care benefits or limited government...Saving the planet - or limited government.
Up in smoke goes his belief in limited government. Next we come to the politicians themselves... One minute they gloat about the virtues of limited government. The next minute they issue impassioned pledges to save Social Security or Medicare. Or to heave more money at the Department of Education.
Duller Than Dishwater: "Limited government." The term is not merely meaningless... It is duller than dishwater. It inspires as an Alan Greenspan lecture on accounting practices inspires. It excites as drying paint excites. We hear it and applaud... politely. We nod our heads dutifully. Limited government, yes, of course. But how dreadful.
There were two great orators of antiquity, the Roman Cicero and the Greek Demosthenes. When Cicero spoke the people said, "What a great speech." But when Demosthenes spoke? "Let us march," said the people.
How many march for limited government? Who goes to the barricades for limited government? Many will march for "Health Care for All." "Save the Planet." "Social Justice Now." These are the cries that awaken the blood. They summon the hormones. They are calls to action that inspire us to run off and enlist… and charge into the breach.
Limited government inspires us to… snooze. "Limited government" is a dismal marketing slogan. Would you wish to sell it for a living? Alas, you might starve.
Limited Government Is Defensive: Here is the cardinal sin of limited government: It is defensive. The sob mongers and tear-squeezers forever shout about this crisis or that crisis. Only energetic government action can put it down and scotch it. It may be the environment. Health care. Housing. Racism. Sexism. Income inequality. Bedbugs. Anything, everything, A through Z.
This bunch is commonly perceived as the angels on our collective shoulder. They stand for social justice… and equality. And who can come out against social justice and equality? Certainly not politicians seeking office. And so they must budge. Limited government therefore finds itself on the back foot, perpetually on the defense. Yet no successful defense can forever remain static. The enemy ultimately punches through. Limited government cedes ground year by year, decade by decade. It makes one tactical retreat after another. It gives a little here to gain a little there. But it loses ground in the aggregate. Thus limited government is a shifting line in the sand. It is erased and withdrawn as circumstances demand.
Goodbye, Limited Government: In the 1930s, New Deal critics sobbed and moaned about the end of limited government in America. And not - we may add - without cause. World War II was next. A nation mobilized for war is not a nation of limited government. The national security state came along in the 1950s. Then the Great Society in the 1960s.
To talk of limited government at that point was to talk of unicorns, of pink elephants, of circular squares, of honest liars. The surveillance state has since been riveted atop the administrative state. Not a sparrow falls in these United States - as it was once known - that escapes Uncle Samuel’s eagle eye. The Federal Register - meantime - runs to some 70,000 dense pages. It totaled 16 pages in 1936.
America is an empire now. Few dare whisper the word, of course. But it is a strange kind of empire - an “empire of debt,” as our own founders Addison Wiggin and Bill Bonner argued in 2006. It is certainly an empire in debt - some $27 trillion and counting.
The Most Important Election in Our Lifetime: Yet as the frog in the gradually warming pot of water, Americans have acclimated to the changes. Even now, many “conservatives” croon about our super-excellent system of limited government… as if the New Deal, Great Society and the rest were mere trifles.
Twenty years hence, we hazard they will still be crooning about our superexcellent system of limited government... but that it will be lost to time if Democrats win the next election. The 2040 election thus will be "the most important in our lifetime"... as were the 2008 and 2012, 2016 and 2020 elections. But this we can predict safely: Limited government will not be on the ballot..."
"Decide..."
“We're all going to die. We don't get much say over how or when, but we do get to decide how we're gonna live. So, do it. Decide. Is this the life you want to live? Is this the person you want to love? Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger? Kinder? More Compassionate? Decide. Breathe in. Breathe out and decide.”
- “Richard”, “Grey’s Anatomy”
"The Story Of Man..."
“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."
- Scott Morse
Vangelis, "Alpha"
This song always suggested the image of our relentless, idealized, noble, glorious March of Mankind through the ages. Despite it all, despite ourselves, we survive and march onward towards our unknown destiny.
Still, some wonder about our true nature as a species, as the Apex Predator of this planet, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did when he asked,“What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts.”
Indeed, Angelic aspirations regardless, the historical record suggests a less benevolent but far more accurate and truthful view of the instincts of beasts within Humanity...
Steve Cutts, "MAN"
“What a chimera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?”
- Blaise Pascal
"Pride and refuse," indeed...
Gregory Mannarino, "The Debt Bubble Is HYPER-BALLOONING. JPM Caught Rigging The Market AGAIN!"
Gregory Mannarino,
"The Debt Bubble Is HYPER-BALLOONING.
JPM Caught Rigging The Market AGAIN!"
"It’s Started Already: 'We have a list…'”
"It’s Started Already: 'We have a list…'”
by Simon Black
"On September 18 of the year 96 AD, a fairly obscure and elderly politician named Marcus Cocceius Nerva was proclaimed Emperor of Rome by the Senate. Rome was in chaos at the time; the empire had suffered from years of turmoil, economic decline, and oppression. Most of the last several emperors – going back before the suicide of Nero in 68 AD – had been extremely destructive… plundering the treasury, waging expensive wars, and dismantling individual liberty.
The government was also extremely unstable; it was not uncommon at that point for emperors to be deposed or even assassinated. In fact, Nerva’s predecessor– the emperor Domitian– had literally been murdered that morning. Nerva was seen by many Senators as the ‘safe choice’ to take over the government. He was old, frail, and sick… so he wasn’t expected to last very long.
Most of all, Nerva was completely unremarkable. He had spent his entire professional life in the service of the Empire, yet his name is barely mentioned in any historical record or associated with any major achievement. But ‘unremarkable’ was exactly what Romans felt like they needed at the time: Nerva would be a break from the chaos. Or so they thought.
We know now with the benefit of hindsight that Rome would never fully recover. There would be a few ‘good’ emperors along the way – people like Marcus Aurelius who were able to temporarily hold back the decline. But the long-term trends were unstoppable. Rome was slowly going bankrupt, destroying its currency, and rejecting the basic principles of its civilization that made it so powerful and prosperous to begin with. And no politician was able to put the brakes on those big trends and reverse the inevitable decline.
This is a common theme throughout history: empires rise and fall, not because of a single individual, but from decades of major trends that gradually cause an inevitable decline. These same trends keep surfacing over and over again across the centuries. Economic mismanagement is an obvious one: empires in decline almost invariably hold an arrogant belief that they are exempt from the natural laws of finance. In other words, they believe they can spend as much as they want, accumulate infinite amounts of debt, and debase their currency without limit, and somehow there won’t be any consequences.
Another trend is that the empire abandons its core values. Integrity, civic-mindedness, and hard work give way to corruption and entitlement. And perhaps the biggest trend of empires in decline is that society frequently turns on itself. Civility ends, and rage takes over.
It goes without saying that these trends are alive and well in the West today, especially in the Land of the Free. US finances have been in disarray for decades. Just this year alone, the national debt has grown by $4 trillion and the Federal Reserve has conjured another $3 trillion out of thin air. And even before Covid struck when the economy was firing on all cylinders, the government was still adding more than $1 trillion each year to the debt.
Now there are entire factions of politicians that want to take those numbers to the next level. In fact, there’s an entire school of economics now called “Modern Monetary Theory” which poses that governments can simply print as much money as they want without consequence. This is pretty classic empire arrogance.
But, again, the even more powerful trend now is the growing rage that’s so prevalent. We’ve seen it unfold in front of our very eyes – violence, arson, assault, looting, vandalism, intimidation. And if the this angry mob isn’t out in the streets causing mayhem, they’re on social media trying to destroy someone’s life who committed the thoughtcrime of intellectual dissent.
The election results last week proved that this angry mob is still a numerical minority. Unfortunately they are a very powerful minority that has taken over a number of important institutions. They already control the media. Objective journalism doesn’t exist anymore – it’s just activism and propaganda. (And if anyone needs any proof, look no further than a prominent CNN ‘reporter’ weeping tears of joy over the weekend on live television. How can these people expect to be taken seriously as objective journalists?)
The mob has also taken over education too. Schools and universities are now filled with enraged Marxists who spend dozens of hours each week indoctrinating our children with their new woke religion. They’ve even reinvented science, history, and mathematics to conform to the principles of critical race theory.
The mob also exerts extreme influence over major corporations. You can’t watch a Disney movie, or an NFL game, or even a commercial for men’s razors anymore, without having identity politics shoved down your throat.
They also hold extreme influence over Big Tech, whose one-sided censorship policies have become so absurd they’re starting to rival the Chinese Communist Party. Over the weekend, for example, Twitter was ablaze with activists who launched an ‘accountability project’ to create a database archiving every supporter, donor, staffer, etc. who supported the current Presidential administration. The project’s tagline is “Remember what they did,” and “We must never forget. . .” And they’re targeting “those who elected him,” and “those who funded him,” referring, of course, to the President and the 70 million people who voted for him.
One reporter from the Washington Post deemed that everyone archived “should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position, or be accepted into ‘polite’ society.” She concluded her thinly-veiled threat by saying, “We have a list.” Twitter, of course, did not see fit to censor this shining example of objective journalism, which now has 40,000 likes.
It’s a pretty blatant sign of decline when people start keeping ‘lists’ of political opponents they want to punish. And this madness is just getting started."
○
Related:
○
The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. [Jim Quinn - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal at the website.
"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 11/10/20"
by David Leonhardt
Nov. 10, 2020 8:06 AM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 50,967,300
people, according to official counts, including 10,191,261 Americans.
Nov. 10, 2020 8:06 AM ET:
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count◆
NOV 10, 2020 1:12 PM: "Dr. Fauci Says Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Will Soon Be Approved; Italy Sees Another 35k Cases: Live Updates"
◆
Updated 11/9/20, 10:48 PM ET
Click image for larger size.
○
A "Must Read":
"Market Fantasy Updates 11/10/20"
"Market Fantasy Updates 11/10/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
○
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
○
○
Updated live.
○
○
○
○
Daily Update (Nov. 9th to 12th)
○
Insanity...
○
And now... The End Game...
"Reputation, Honor"
"Reputation is what other people know about you.
Honor is what you know about yourself."
- Lois McMaster
Happy 245th Birthday United States Marine Corps!
Happy 245th Birthday United States Marine Corps!
Semper Fidelis!
Semper Fidelis!
On the 245th Marine Corps birthday Gen. David H. Berger
reminds us how the Corps' legacy lives on in every Marine.
"The Marines' Hymn"
- CP, Veteran, USMC
"Here’s How Trump Can Still Win"
- Social philosopher Omar Little, "The Wire"
"Here’s How Trump Can Still Win"
by Dick Morris
"1. Only the electoral college or the various state legislatures can declare a candidate the winner. To base this decision on network vote totals and projections and to call Biden the “president-elect” is irresponsible.
2. The recounts in Arizona, Georgia, and the other states are likely to go heavily for Trump. Most of the likely errors or invalid votes took place on mailed-in ballots. (Machine votes are harder to tamper with). Since Biden won upwards of two-thirds of mail-in votes and absentee ballots, it is likely that most of the discarded mail ballots will be subtracted from Biden’s total.
3. The networks currently give Trump 214 electorate voters (270 is the victory level)
4. Alaska, where Trump has led by 2:1 all week and is now more than half counted will likely throw its 3 votes to Trump giving him 217.
5. Trump has likewise led in North Carolina (15 votes) all week and his margin of 75,000 has not diminished. He will undoubtedly carry North Carolina. Like Alaska, the media will not call it for Trump to promote the illusion of a Biden victory. North Carolina would bring Trump’s vote to 232.
6. The vote count in Arizona shows Trump’s deficit shrinking from 30,000 on Friday to 18,500 on Saturday with about 100K left to count. After Arizona (11 votes) is fully counted, it will go through a recount subject to the pro-Trump bias identified in point 2. Were he to win Arizona, he would have 243 votes.
7. In Georgia (16 votes), Biden leads by only 8,400 votes, a margin that has been dropping. Like Arizona, Trump may still win the count and, if not, would have a very good chance of prevailing in the recount. With Georgia, Trump would have 259 votes
8. Wisconsin (10 votes) is tallied as having been won by Biden by 21,000 votes but a recanvass is in the offing. Given the facts enumerated in point 2, there is a very good chance Trump will carry Wisconsin. The recount process in Wisconsin is uniquely fair and transparent - a model for the nation - so Trump may well flip the state. If he does, he will have 269 votes - one shy of victory.
9. Then, it comes down Pennsylvania and its 20 votes. The Supreme Court provisionally allowed ballots to be counted if they arrived before Friday, Nov. 6, and were postmarked before Election Day, Nov. 3, and ordered late votes to be segregated. When Justice Samuel Alito was informed that the state had not segregated the late votes, as Pennsylvania’s secretary of the commonwealth had advised, Alito made it an order on Friday.
Biden currently leads by 37,000 votes in Pennsylvania. The number of late-arriving ballots likely far exceeds this total (the state has not published this information). Justice Alioto and a Court majority may throw out the late ballots, likely delivering the state to Trump. In addition, for the reasons stated above, a recanvass is likely to give Trump a decisive advantage. If he wins Pennsylvania, he would have 289 votes and a victory.
Will there be a recount in Pennsylvania? The current law requires one if the margin is under 0.5 percent and in Pennsylvania, it likely will be slightly greater. There are two ways to trigger a recount: First, the Supreme Court could order one after the vote counters so flagrantly violated Alito’s order to segregate the votes that he had to re-issue it. And remember, four justices wanted to reconsider whether to allow late ballots entirely but the court deadlocked 4-4 in October. Now with Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the mix, it may take a different view, particularly if the presidency hangs in the balance.
Second, Article II Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution reads: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”
The Pennsylvania Legislature, solidly in Republican hands (both houses) may choose to demand a recount before appointing electors. To build the case for doing so, it may hold hearings into the allegations of fraud so as to help the voters of the state understand how flagrantly their votes were mishandled. Already, the leader of the State Senate in Pennsylvania and the Speaker of the State Assembly have held a news conference announcing their intention to “audit” the vote-counting process.
As the saying goes: “It’s not over until the fat lady sings.” And she hasn’t."
○
They missed, and left far too much evidence.
So...
Musical Interlude: The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"; "If I Was a Dancer"
The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"
○
The Rolling Stones, "If I Was a Dancer"
"First Comes A Rolling Civil War"
"First Comes A Rolling Civil War"
by Pepe Escobar
"The massive psyops is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) knew how this would imperatively play out. I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.
US intel is very much aware of well-documented instances of election fraud. Among them: NSA software that infiltrates any network, as previously detailed by Edward Snowden, and capable of altering vote counts; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard app that hacks computers at the transfer points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults; the Dominion software system, known to have serious security issues since 2000, but still used in 30 states, including every swing state; those by now famous vertical jumps to Biden in both Michigan and Wisconsin at 4am on November 4 (AFP unconvincingly tried to debunk Wisconsin and didn’t even try with Michigan); multiple instances of Dead Men Do Vote.
The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next. They have weighed the pros and cons of placing as candidate a senile, stage 2 dementia, neocon warmonger and possible extortionist (along with son) as “leader of the free world”, campaigning from a basement, incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies, and seconded by someone with so little support in the Dem primaries that she was the first to drop out.
The optics, especially seen from vast swathes of the imperial-interfered Global South, may be somewhat terrible. Dodgy elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus. Yet only the Empire is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard.
Welcome to the New Resistance: The GOP is in a very comfortable position. They hold the Senate and may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House. They also know that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will have…consequences.
The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing. Why are they suddenly supporting Biden? Way beyond internal family squabbles worthy of the Succession saga, Rupert Murdoch made it very clear, via the laptop from hell caper, that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family. So they will do whatever he wants. Murdoch does not need Trump anymore.
Nor, in theory, does the GOP. Former CIA insiders assure of serious backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris gang. Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP hates with a vengeance. The most important man in Washington will be in fact GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Still, to clear any lingering doubts, a vote recount would be absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI, MI, PA, GA, NV and AZ. Through hand counting. One by one. The DoJ would need to act on it, immediately. Not gonna happen. Recounts cost a ton of money. There’s no evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it.
While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “a torrent of misinformation” and “trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US election”, mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes.
Yet what really matters is the letter of the law. State legislatures decide whose electors go to the Electoral College to appoint the President. Here it is – Article II, Section 1, Clause 2: Each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct.”
So this has nothing to do with governors, not to mention the media. It’s up to GOP state legislatures to act accordingly. The drama may roll out for weeks. The first step of the Electoral College procedure takes place on December 14. The final determination will only happen in early January.
Meanwhile, talk of a New Resistance is spreading like wildfire. Trumpism, with 71 million + votes, is firmly established as a mass movement. No one in the GOP commands this kind of popular appeal. By sidelining Trumpism, the GOP may be committing seppuku.
So what will Deplorables do? The always indispensable Alastair Crooke hits the nail on the head in a powerful essay: Trump is the President of Red America. And depending on how the scripted (s)election tragicomedy develops next, the Deplorables are bound to become The Ungovernables.
Crooke references a crucial parallel evoked by historian Mike Vlahos, who shows how the current American saga mirrors Ancient Rome in the last century of the Republic, pitting the Roman elite against the Populares – which today are represented by Red (Trumpist) America: “This was a new world, in which the great landowners, with their latifundia [the slave-land source of wealth], who had been the ‘Big Men’ leading the various factions in the civil wars, became the senatorial archons that dominated Roman life for the next five centuries - while the People, the Populares, were ground into a passive - not helpless - but generally dependent and non-participating element of Roman governance: This sapped away at the creative life of Rome, and eventually led to its coming apart.”
So as much as the Dem machine had wanted it, Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus, whom the Greeks called Autokrator (autocrat), but was a de facto monarch. The American Augustus, Tiberius and most of all Caligula is still further on down the road. He will definitely be a benign, humanitarian imperialist.
In the meantime, what will imperial Big Capital do? The West, and especially the American Rome, is on the edge of a double precipice: the worst economic depression ever, coupled with imminent, myriad, uncontrollable explosions of social rage.
So the Deep State is reasoning that with Biden – or, sooner rather than later, Supreme shakti and Commander-in-Chief Maa Durga Kamala – the path gets smoother towards the Davos Great Reset. After all, to reset the chess pieces, first the chessboard must be knocked over. This will be one step beyond Dark Winter – which not accidentally was evoked by teleprompter-reading Biden himself on the final presidential debate. The script gets ominously closer to the Rockefelller Foundation’s 2010 Lock Step.
Meanwhile, Plan B is kept in ready, steady, go mode: the lineaments of a global rampage, focused on “malign” Russia’s sphere of influence to satisfy a “revived” NATO and the military-industrial complex, which selected the now media-appointed President-Elect in the first place because he’s no more than a pliant cardboard figure."
Monday, November 9, 2020
"Rental Market Apocalypse Triggers A Housing Crisis: Prepare Your Self For The Worst!"
"Rental Market Apocalypse Triggers A Housing Crisis:
Prepare Your Self For The Worst!"
by Epic Economist
"The rental market collapse is not only putting families at risk of eviction as it is contributing to the permanent closures of several stores and leading U.S. shopping malls to bankruptcy. As the economy awaits another stimulus package, unemployed workers drowning in debt don't find the means to meet their rental payments, consumer spending continues to critically decline making several businesses delinquent on their leases, and leaving mall owners in a dangerous position.
The more the delivery of further federal assistance is postponed the more store closures are increasing the risk for shopping malls to become bankrupt. This week, two major U.S. malls have already filed for bankruptcy, and economists are fearing that an explosion of debt on the rental market may trigger a commercial real state and residential housing apocalypse of unprecedented proportions.
In this video, we discuss the many decisive factors building up the rental market crisis. The housing market is in big trouble due to the lack of federal aid to ease the effects of the economic collapse. Market analysts outline that commercial real estate and residential housing have enormous capitulation risks, which will add massive pressure on the next stock market crash.
A recent study found that up to 40 million people risk missing rent. Researchers indicated that the United States may be facing the most severe housing crisis in its history, while executives in the real estate and housing sectors argued that the longer the federal government waits to act, the steeper the financial cliff that renters will be pushed off when the eviction moratorium expires this winter.
Meanwhile, a recent analysis showed that in 25 major US cities, over 50% are at risk of facing a housing market bubble. Renters and tenants coping with hardships, combined with a looming correction in home values, could weigh heavily on the housing market.
Landlords are having to deal with huge amounts of default, which means renters then will be on the hook for months of missed payments, meaning that mass evictions, permanent business closures, and more bankruptcies are expected to happen shortly, and its consequences are likely to bleed over the broader economy.
The outstanding rent debt could reach $7.2 billion before the close of 2020, and the total rent debt could reach nearly $70 billion by year-end if there is no additional stimulus spending, with nearly 12.8 million Americans owing an average of $5,400 from missed payments. Although the larger figure is far smaller than the 2007 subprime-mortgage bubble burst, this time around, tens of millions of people are going to be caught in a web of home-rental debt and eviction rates can be much higher.
However, the problem doesn't stop right there. As many renters relied on credit cards to afford their payments, the total national rent debt is probably far larger than what can be counted from missed payments alone. This relocation of debt from landlord to plastic can harm renters’ credit long term by using too much of their available credit line, which can lower scores.
Renters that have previously arranged alternative payment plans with their landlords month are now falling behind on their settlements, and some landlords have been adding punitive late fees on top of what is already owed, so their debt is becoming much higher than just the face value of the rent. That is to say, the multibillion-dollar rent debt added to the fast-climbing credit card debt could put a large burden of uncollectible debt on bank balance sheets, which will restrict their ability to lend, and consequently, undermine the credit of landlords.
On top of that, commercial properties have been experiencing growing hardships as the considerable decline in consumer spending at brick-and-mortar retail stores continues to compromise the livelihood of retailers in shopping malls, and thereby, jeopardizing mall owners' ability to pay for their commercial mortgage and stay in business too.
Last week, CBL & Associates and Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust have filed for bankruptcy, seeking protection from creditors. Together the two properties account for some 87 million square feet of real estate nationwide. Both companies mentioned how the current recession has hurt their tenants, and, in turn, their own businesses.
Others are expected to follow, since a recent survey showed shopping centers and malls rank as the most-avoided public places among consumers, and despite the coming holiday season, 55.4% of those polled said they would avoid shopping at malls, which means our economy will still experience a lot of turbulence before the year ends."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. Centered on NGC 7814, the pretty field of view would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy.
Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive central bulges cut by a thinner disk with dust lanes in silhouette. In fact, NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing to be smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. A very faint dwarf galaxy, potentially a satellite of NGC 7814, is revealed in the deep exposure just below the Little Sombrero.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131025.html
"Despite My Firm Convictions..."
"Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth."
- Malcolm X
"Stock Market Euphoria; Dow Jones Rockets; Economic Bubble And Bailouts; US Debt"
Jeremiah Babe,
"Stock Market Euphoria; Dow Jones Rockets;
Economic Bubble And Bailouts; US Debt"
"The U.S. Presidential Election is NOT Over. Here's Where Things Stand Right Now"
"The U.S. Presidential Election is NOT Over.
Here's Where Things Stand Right Now"
by Graham Summers
Disclaimer: none of the following is meant to be political analysis. I am not endorsing nor disparaging any candidate. I’m simply outlining the facts pertaining to the U.S. Presidential election.
"I want to warn you that the next few months in the U.S. will be extremely ugly. The country was already deeply divided before this election. And unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse. The fact is that Joe Biden HASN’T actually won this election yet. That is not a typo. The media has done the U.S. a great disservice by claiming that Biden is the winner this early in the game. Everyone needs to take a step back and understand how the actual election process occurs based on federal law, not media reporting.
1) The election occurs in early November.
2) Votes are tallied while officials from both parties (Democrat and GOP) are present.
3) Provided officials from both parties are present during the vote tallies and there are:
No credible accusations of fraud.
No software glitches.
Then the vote tallies are ratified.
4) If the vote margin between winner and loser is 0.5% or smaller, an automatic recount is required.
5) If the margin between the winner and loser is larger than 0.5%, but either candidate (or a 3rd candidate for that matter) wants to dispute the results, he or she can pay to have a recount performed. The cost if roughly $3 million per state.
6) Once the recount is completed, or if a recount is not necessary, the individual states formally declare the winner on December 14th when they officially cast their electoral college votes for him or her.
7) Then, in early January of the next year, the new congress meets to count the electoral college votes and formally declare the winner.
8) The new President is sworn into office on January 20th.
This is how Presidential elections work in the U.S. under normal circumstances. The media cannot decide who wins. The media can simply project who they think will win based on vote totals at a given time. And unless the loser formally concedes prior to December 14th, the election remains in play.
So where are we in terms of the 2020 Presidential election? For starters, the races in multiple states (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona) are close enough to require mandatory recounts (within a margin of 0.5%).
On top of this, the Trump administration will be filing lawsuits in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona alleging fraud, illegitimate votes being counted, and GOP officials being barred from witnessing the ballots being tallied. Whether or not the Trump administration is right about this remains to be seen.
However, the fact lawsuits are being filed means the election will move into the courts. If the courts decide that the evidence the Trump administration presents is compelling, they can require a formal vote audit. If, during the vote audit, actual fraud is discovered, the court can rule that those votes are no longer valid, the formal vote counts can change, and it is possible that a given state ends up declaring a different winner.
Even if fraud is not discovered by the audits, but there is a particular problem with vote cards (the wrong type of ink was used, the hole punch didn’t go all the way through the ballot as was the case in Florida in 2000, etc.), the courts can deem those problematic votes as illegitimate. This again can mean the formal vote counts can change, and it is possible that a given state ends up declaring a different winner.
Mind you, that’s if the courts resolve the issue to everyone’s liking on the first go round. If either party or candidate is dissatisfied with a lower court’s ruling, they can appeal the ruling, which can result in the lawsuit moving up to a higher court, eventually reaching the Supreme Court, which serves as the ultimate arbiter of election law in the U.S. This was the case with the 2000 election, when the Supreme Court ruled that vote cards from Florida that didn’t have clean hole punches were NOT valid, which gave the state to George W. Bush and resulted in Al Gore conceding the election on December 13th.
None of the above items are conspiracy theory or wishful thinking. These are the actual facts of how Presidential elections are decided in the U.S. The media doesn’t decide elections. And technically, Joe Biden is NOT the President elect, no matter how much certain people might want him to be.
Remember, he wouldn’t be formally declared the President Elect until December 14th 2020, and that’s under normal circumstances. And as I mentioned already, this election is anything but normal. I mention all of this to help you keep a clear head during what is going to be an extremely stressful and psychologically draining four-week period between now and that date. Again, this election WILL not be decided before December 14th. And it’s possible things run even longer than that."
○
Related:
• Ken Starr: "Pennsylvania Ballot Extension A "Constitutional Travesty" “What the state Supreme Court did was utterly unconstitutional, so it’s a lawless act...”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)