Monday, November 30, 2020

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 11/30/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 11/30/20"
"The Virus Chart That Forecasts The Future"
By David Leonhardt

"The number of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. has dropped in the last few days, but there is reason to think the decline is a statistical mirage - and that deaths are on the verge of surging again. Why? The relationship between confirmed new coronavirus cases and deaths has held fairly steady this fall. If you track the number of new cases, you can fairly accurately predict the number of deaths three weeks later. Every 100 new cases in the U.S. has led to an average of about 1.7 deaths, with that three-week lag.

It’s not a precise equation, of course. The time between diagnosis and death in fatal cases is sometimes shorter than three weeks and sometimes longer. And the death rate is not exactly 1.7 percent. But that simple formula has done a striking job of describing the path of Covid deaths in recent weeks.

The chart here shows the relationship - daily deaths compared with an index equal to 1.7 percent of newly diagnosed cases from three weeks earlier. The two lines have risen almost in tandem for the past three months:
By The New York Times
Sources: State and local health agencies and hospitals

The most likely explanation for the tick down at the end of both lines is the statistical mirage I mentioned: There was a slowdown in testing over Thanksgiving weekend, which may have artificially reduced the number of both reported coronavirus cases and deaths. “Thanksgiving has really blurred the picture,” Mitch Smith, a Times reporter who tracks the virus statistics, told me.

In coming weeks, deaths seem almost certain to rise, perhaps sharply. The run-up in cases during November suggests that daily deaths may approach 3,000 in December. The previous one-day high was 2,752, in April, and the previous high in the seven-day average was 2,232, also in April. Already, the U.S. death toll in recent weeks has exceeded one victim every minute of every day - 1,462 deaths per day in the two weeks before Thanksgiving. Barring a major surprise, that toll is about to get even worse. And January is looking worrisome, as well.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert, said yesterday that Thanksgiving gatherings may have created clusters of new infections. “We might see a surge superimposed upon that surge that we’re already in,” Fauci said.

An explainer: Andrew Joseph of Stat walks through the timeline of how an infection turns into a serious illness."
Nov. 30, 2020 8:00 AM ET: 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 62,847,000 
people, according to official counts, including 13,447,345 Americans.
At least 1,460,400 have died.

Updated 11/30/20, 8:26 AM ET
Click image for larger size.

"Market Fantasy Updates 11/30/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 11/30/20"
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
Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/30/20:
"Important Updates:
Stocks, Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, Crude, Dollar, Debt"
Updated live.
Daily Update (Nov. 25th to 30th)
Insanity... 
And now... The End Game...

“If Only Cranks Find The Election Tabulations Strange, Put Me Down As A Crank…”

“If Only Cranks Find The Election Tabulations Strange, 
Put Me Down As A Crank…”
by Patrick Basham

"Reasons why the 2020 presidential election is deeply puzzling: To say out-loud that you find the results of the 2020 presidential election odd is to invite derision. You must be a crank or a conspiracy theorist. Mark me down as a crank, then.

I am a pollster and I find this election to be deeply puzzling. I also think that the Trump campaign is still well within its rights to contest the tabulations. Something very strange happened in America’s democracy in the early hours of Wednesday November 4 and the days that followed. It’s reasonable for a lot of Americans to want to find out exactly what.

First, consider some facts: President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking reelection. He got 11 million more votes than in 2016, the third largest rise in support ever for an incumbent. By way of comparison, President Obama was comfortably reelected in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he received in 2008.

Trump’s vote increased so much because, according to exit polls, he performed far better with many key demographic groups. Ninety-five percent of Republicans voted for him. He did extraordinarily well with rural male working-class whites.

He earned the highest share of all minority votes for a Republican since 1960. Trump grew his support among black voters by 50 percent over 2016. Nationally, Joe Biden’s black support fell well below 90 percent, the level below which Democratic presidential candidates usually lose.

Trump increased his share of the national Hispanic vote to 35 percent. With 60 percent or less of the national Hispanic vote, it is arithmetically impossible for a Democratic presidential candidate to win Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Bellwether states swung further in Trump’s direction than in 2016. Florida, Ohio and Iowa each defied America’s media polls with huge wins for Trump. Since 1852, only Richard Nixon has lost the electoral college after winning this trio, and that 1960 defeat to John F. Kennedy is still the subject of great suspicion.

Midwestern states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin always swing in the same direction as Ohio and Iowa, their regional peers. Ohio likewise swings with Florida. Current tallies show that, outside of a few cities, the Rust Belt swung in Trump’s direction. Yet, Biden leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because of an apparent avalanche of black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Biden’s ‘winning’ margin was derived almost entirely from such voters in these cities, as coincidentally his black vote spiked only in exactly the locations necessary to secure victory. He did not receive comparable levels of support among comparable demographic groups in comparable states, which is highly unusual for the presidential victor.

We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes.

Victorious presidential candidates, especially challengers, usually have down-ballot coattails; Biden did not. The Republicans held the Senate and enjoyed a ‘red wave’ in the House, where they gained a large number of seats while winning all 27 toss-up contests. Trump’s party did not lose a single state legislature and actually made gains at the state level.

Another anomaly is found in the comparison between the polls and non-polling metrics. The latter include: party registrations trends; the candidates’ respective primary votes; candidate enthusiasm; social media followings; broadcast and digital media ratings; online searches; the number of (especially small) donors; and the number of individuals betting on each candidate.

Despite poor recent performances, media and academic polls have an impressive 80 percent record predicting the winner during the modern era. But, when the polls err, non-polling metrics do not; the latter have a 100 percent record. Every non-polling metric forecast Trump’s reelection. For Trump to lose this election, the mainstream polls needed to be correct, which they were not. Furthermore, for Trump to lose, not only did one or more of these metrics have to be wrong for the first time ever, but every single one had to be wrong, and at the very same time; not an impossible outcome, but extremely unlikely nonetheless.

Atypical voting patterns married with misses by polling and non-polling metrics should give observers pause for thought. Adding to the mystery is a cascade of information about the bizarre manner in which so many ballots were accumulated and counted.

The following peculiarities also lack compelling explanations:

1. Late on election night, with Trump comfortably ahead, many swing states stopped counting ballots. In most cases, observers were removed from the counting facilities. Counting generally continued without the observers

2. Statistically abnormal vote counts were the new normal when counting resumed. They were unusually large in size (hundreds of thousands) and had an unusually high (90 percent and above) Biden-to-Trump ratio

3. Late arriving ballots were counted. In Pennsylvania, 23,000 absentee ballots have impossible postal return dates and another 86,000 have such extraordinary return dates they raise serious questions

4. The failure to match signatures on mail-in ballots. The destruction of mail in ballot envelopes, which must contain signatures

5. Historically low absentee ballot rejection rates despite the massive expansion of mail voting. Such is Biden’s narrow margin that, as political analyst Robert Barnes observes, ‘If the states simply imposed the same absentee ballot rejection rate as recent cycles, then Trump wins the election’

6. Missing votes. In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 50,000 votes held on 47 USB cards are missing

7. Non-resident voters. Matt Braynard’s Voter Integrity Project estimates that 20,312 people who no longer met residency requirements cast ballots in Georgia. Biden’s margin is 12,670 votes

8. Serious ‘chain of custody’ breakdowns. Invalid residential addresses. Record numbers of dead people voting. Ballots in pristine condition without creases, that is, they had not been mailed in envelopes as required by law

9. Statistical anomalies. In Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89 percent of the votes counted. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin in every single batch. It is particularly perplexing that all statistical anomalies and tabulation abnormalities were in Biden’s favor. Whether the cause was simple human error or nefarious activity, or a combination, clearly something peculiar happened.

If you think that only weirdos have legitimate concerns about these findings and claims, maybe the weirdness lies in you."

"Behind the Scenes in Swamptopia"

"Behind the Scenes in Swamptopia"
by Jim Kunstler

"Apart from the soporific side-effects of eating all that leftover turkey for three more days after Thursday’s celebration of gluttony, this holiday weekend was, news-wise, as still as the mummy’s tomb, or, rather, Joe Biden’s basement. Yet these post-election days are gravid with portent. The major newspapers and cable news platforms report nothing beyond their heartwarming narrative of Biden risin’ with Woke times a’comin’ - but the casual observer senses powerful intrigues swirling backstage in Swamptopia. Something tells me the scene is about to liven up this week, even explode.

There is the matter of the Kraken. Perhaps Sidney Powell was not speaking just figuratively about the lurking monster of the deep. The Kraken, apparently, is an actual computer system developed by the Department of Defense (DOD) to ferret out malevolent computer programs as might be deployed in cyber-warfare… or janky elections. Miz Powell has had legal consort all year with General Mike Flynn, the former chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency railroaded on a fake charge by the FBI, now pardoned, free to speak and act. Do you suppose that Gen. Flynn does not know about the agency’s cyber-warfare capabilities? Or that he does not know skilled military technicians who can spell out, say, in a court of law, exactly how the Kraken might be put to use? Or how the Kraken intersects with the two CIA proprietary election hacking programs, Hammer and Scorecard?

Next, there is the matter of where these agencies stand with each other these days. It was not for nothing that the president sacked cheeky Sec’y of Defense Mark Esper and replaced him with Christopher Miller, a Special Forces warrior, lately, as Deputy Assistant Sec-Def, in charge of counterterrorism, Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Information Operations, unconventional warfare, irregular warfare, direct action, special reconnaissance, foreign internal defense, counter proliferation, sensitive special operations.

Kind of sounds a little bit like exactly the skill-set you’d need to battle the rogue “resistance” operations across several US government agencies in their four-year quest to overthrow the chief executive climaxing in this election caper - for one example, the CIA. Somehow, when I think of the CIA, I think of the sinister John Brennan, architect of RussiaGate and probably also somehow behind the activation of his protégé, “whistleblower” (and CIA agent) Eric Ciaramella, the impeachment mole who was allowed to retreat back into the CIA fortress with no consequences after his seditious deed was done. Notice, Mr. Brennan has been tweeting like mad in recent days denouncing election skeptics. Is he worried about something? All of which raises the questions: what role did the agency play in the election, with its mystifying vote-tallying irregularities? Does Mr. Brennan still wield influence in the CIA? And is the agency an enemy of the people?

Then, what do you suppose really went down at the computer server farm in Frankfurt, Germany, after the election. Chatter on the web has it that the Frankfurt asset was a CIA installation, and that some kind of Army Special Forces unit bum-rushed the joint after November 3, and took possession of computer servers that were used to receive vote tabulations from Dominion machines back in the USA. There’s even rumor of some people getting hurt in the operation (unconfirmed). Do those servers hold actual evidence of vote-tampering? That would be my guess. Perhaps we’ll find out this week.

And if it were the case that the CIA and other actors - perhaps even in foreign countries -worked to rig the election to make absolutely sure that Mr. Trump was finally expelled from office, would this not amount to something like treason? Is the US government at war with itself? If so, does the president not have a duty to do something about it? Is he in the process of doing something… that the public is not yet aware of through and beyond the holiday week? Did Mr. Biden or Kamala Harris know about any of this? Allegations (with actual evidence) emerged in October that Mr. Biden and his family received large sums of money for services rendered from several countries considered not friendly to the USA. Maybe that’s just a sidebar to the election op, but it sure doesn’t look good, considering. A reasonable authority might designate Joe Biden a national security risk. Such a person would not be permitted to take an oath for the highest office in the land.

So, with Thanksgiving behind us, and Christmas a month away (and a very fraught Covid Christmas, at that), and the deadline for the states’ electoral vote certifications and the actual meeting of the electoral collegians looming in between now and then, we might gird our loins for some very weird doings out of Washington, DC. Unless it’s all just a bad dream… a conspiracy theory… a blather of peevish, deplorable nutters who just refuse to bend over and take it good and hard from their betters, as they deserve to. Standing by… just as you are… on developments."

"Stop Whinin'..."

“We all got problems. But there’s a great book out called “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart.” Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin’ about what’s wrong, because everybody’s had a rough time, in one way or another.”
- Quincy Jones

"Truth..."

“Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees, reminding us that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all its immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.”
- Dean Koontz

Sunday, November 29, 2020

"America’s Pride In The Economy Is About To Be Greatly Shaken As Tens Of Millions Face Eviction In 2021"

"America’s Pride In The Economy Is About To Be 
Greatly Shaken As Tens Of Millions Face Eviction In 2021"
by Michael Snyder

"Unless there is emergency intervention, tens of millions of Americans could be facing eviction once the holiday season is over. We kicked the can down the road throughout 2020, but all of the rent that was originally owed to landlords all over the country is still due, and they are very eager to collect. Countless landlords are on the verge of financial ruin because of the rent moratoriums which were put in place, and kicking the can down the road even more would be absolutely disastrous for them. Of course it would also be absolutely disastrous if the moratoriums are not extended, because in some states more than half of all households are behind on their rent or mortgage payments, and most of them have no way to pay.

One way or the other, we are about to hit a breaking point. The Aspen Institute is telling us that a whopping 40 million people “could face eviction over the next several months”: "According to research by the Aspen Institute, nearly 40 million Americans could face eviction over the next several months. The only thing holding back the flood right now is the CDC’s eviction moratorium order and a patchwork of state and local protections for renters.

But these moratoriums are only kicking the can down the road. Chief economist for Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi told the Washington Post that tenants could owe nearly $70 billion in back rent by year’s end. And for landlords left holding the bag, there’s been little relief, as they’ve been forced to take on the role of government - subsidizing housing for millions even as their own taxes, mortgage payments, and other expenses are due.

That is about 12 percent of the entire country. If they get evicted, where are they going to go? Into the streets?

Vox recently interviewed a 48-year-old Texas resident named “Kimberly”, and she says that is exactly where she is headed if she gets evicted: "But after Covid-19 hit, she lost hours at her job as a crew trainer at Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers and found herself on the brink of financial collapse. She fell behind on her rent and when she tried to work with her landlord to set up a repayment plan, she told Vox that she was served an eviction notice. Now, the only thing keeping her in her home is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) national eviction moratorium, which prohibits landlords from evicting qualifying tenants for failing to make rent."

If she’s evicted, Kimberly says she has nowhere to go - and will be homeless for the second time in five years. And there are countless others out there that are just like her. According to Zero Hedge, “at least half of households in Arkansas, Florida and Nevada are not current on rent and mortgage payments”.

We have never seen anything like this in modern American history, and the new lockdowns that are being instituted across the nation will just make things even worse.

Of course there are many Americans that will be able to move in with family, and this has already been happening in very large numbers. In particular, young people are moving back in with their parents on a massive scale. According to the Pew Research Center, “a majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression”.

The phrase “since the Great Depression” has been popping up a lot lately, hasn’t it? That is because this is literally the first economic depression that the U.S. has experienced since that time. Everywhere we look, we can see the sort of economic devastation that I have been warning was coming for a very long time.

In New Jersey, approximately one-third of all small businesses “have closed down in 2020”: "A third of small businesses in New Jersey have closed down in 2020, according to a report from The Star-Ledger newspaper. “It’s really bad… And without federal dollars coming into New Jersey, the Main Street stores and other establishments are not gonna make it through the winter.” said Eileen Kean, the state director of the National Federation of Independent Business."

New Jersey’s number is higher than the national average, but not by very much. Of course Atlantic City has been hit particularly hard because it is so dependent on tourism. At this point, it is being called “the city without a pulse”: "The boardwalk is empty, the beaches are deserted, and the casinos, though partially reopen, are limping into their fifth month of severely curtailed operations after four months of shutdowns. The coronavirus pandemic skewered the economic engine of this beachside town, taking the city’s vibrancy and its residents’ livelihoods out with it."

Sadly, things are inevitably going to get worse in the months ahead thanks to the new lockdowns. The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment has risen significantly for the past two weeks, and more bad weeks are almost certainly ahead. Needless to say, rising unemployment will mean more Americans being pushed out of their homes and more Americans being pushed into poverty. According to a survey that was released in October, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 8 million since May:

"The number of Americans living in poverty grew by 8 million since May, according to a Columbia University study, which found an increase in poverty rates after early coronavirus relief ended without more to follow. Although the federal Cares Act, which gave Americans a one-time stimulus check of $1,200 and unemployed workers an extra $600 each week, was successful at offsetting growing poverty rates in the spring, the effects were short-lived, researchers found in the study published Thursday." Of course that number is more than a month old, and so the true number of Americans that have been forced into poverty is substantially higher by now.

This is what an economic collapse looks like, and even worse days are ahead of us.

The good news is that those that were warned in advance that an economic collapse was coming had time to make preparations for this sort of a scenario. But most Americans never wanted to listen to the warnings, and so now they find themselves in the middle of a storm without an umbrella. Unfortunately, what we have experienced so far is just the leading edge of the storm, and most people still do not realize that."

“This Collapse Will Devour Millions; Great Depression 2.0; Economic Skillset; Drug Addiction Soars”

Jeremiah Babe,
“This Collapse Will Devour Millions; Great Depression 2.0; 
Economic Skillset; Drug Addiction Soars”

"Hotel Industry Apocalypse: 7 Of 10 US Hotels Say They Will Be Out Of Business In Six Months!"

"Hotel Industry Apocalypse: 7 Of 10 US Hotels 
Say They Will Be Out Of Business In Six Months!"
by Epic Economist

"Hotel owners and retailers have seen their businesses dramatically collapse throughout the current economic recession. Amid a holiday season marked by a critical spike in confirmed viral infections - which previously used to be the most crowded time of the year for both brick-and-mortar retailers and hoteliers - in addition to social distancing rules and the shift to online shopping and remote working, these industries are on the brink of a major a financial catastrophe. 

Since several anchor stores have been closing doors for good to switch to virtual platforms, and the home office trend is considerably intensifying, the empty retail space on malls and vacant hotel rooms are setting the stage for a change in the landscape of both industries, as their owners fall behind on loans and have accumulated billions in debt. Now, every day it passes by, we see an increasing number of permanent store closures, and on the other hand, a recent survey alerted that 7 in 10 hoteliers are going out of business within less than 6 months. In this video, we're going to uncover the apocalyptic state of the hotel and retail industry.

A new survey from the American Hotel and Lodging Association forecasts that seven in ten hoteliers are likely to be out of business in six months. To be precise, 71% of all hotel owners across the country affirmed that without federal aid their businesses wouldn't survive for much longer. The sector, which has been the most impacted by social distancing regulations and the consequent economic downturn, has become a major financial liability since owners couldn't afford to pay their mortgages for months now. 

The federal response of imposing strict lockdowns and letting businesses die will bring enormous financial damage. Several historic and iconic properties continue to be shut down all over the U.S. In the New York area, the owners of 43 New York hotels are delinquent on loans backed by $1.5 billion in bonds. 

Shopping malls and hotels of the nation's biggest cities are struggling to meet their accumulated loan payments. Nationwide, considering that more than a thousand hotel and retail borrowers have defaulted on their loans, over $35 billion in delinquencies were piled up ever since travel and tourism stalled due to virus-related protocols and visits to shopping malls became unappealing and unsafe, particularly now that consumers have an easier online alternative.

At this point, almost 20% of all hotel loans and over 14% of all retail loans generated by commercial real estate lenders and packaged into securities that are sold to investors are currently delinquent. We just had Black Friday, which used to be the kickoff of the frenetic shopping period leading up to Christmas, producing half of a year’s sales for several non-food retailers. But this year, while brick-and-mortar sales were lower than expected, e-commerce has experienced significant growth. 

Evidently, large corporations such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target were the biggest beneficiaries. For the fourth quarter, Amazon's revenues are forecasted to top $100 billion for the first time. By contrast, small business owners that have managed to keep their stores open in the hope to compensate for this year's massive losses with the revenue of the holiday season are coming to the realization that their downfall is inevitable.

As a result, shopping malls are becoming obsolete a lot faster than analysts previously predicted. Experts suggest that hundreds of America's 1,100 malls are likely to shut down. As for the hotel industry, in New York alone, 20% of its hotel rooms could close before the current crisis is over. That accounts for 6,800 rooms that will have to be converted to some other use. 

Countrywide, occupancy rates declined to 33% from 70% during the same time last year, while average room prices fell to $83 per night from $133, reported Cushman & Wakefield. The outcome of this sharp rates drop and the upsurge in vacant rooms, led to 738 borrowers defaulting on hotel loans backed by about $17 billion in bonds as of October 31.

The arrival of a widely accepted vaccine may help, but it won't fix the financial wound opened throughout this crisis. All these businesses are being smashed and wiped out of the map. Indeed, the worst is yet to come, and as a tidal wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures of hotels and retail stores is still forming, when the crash happens - don't be mistaken: it will drag whatever is left of our economy with it.

KEYWORDS: hospitality industry apocalypse, retail apocalypse, hotel industry downfall, economic collapse, economic recession, Great Recession, loan delinquency, Big Short 3.0, store foreclosure, bankruptcy, financial catastrophe, economic downturn, mortgage default, financial damage, economic meltdown, hotel closure, mall closure, financial crisis."

Musical Interlude: Suzanne Ciani, "Anthem"

Suzanne Ciani, "Anthem"
Full screen mode suggested.

"A Look to the Heavens"

“NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor, NGC 253 lies only about ten million light-years distant. 
NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies. The dense dark dust accompanies a high star formation rate, giving NGC 253 the designation of starburst galaxy. Visible in the above photograph is the active central nucleus, also known to be a bright source of X-rays and gamma rays.”

"Dwell on the beauty of life.
Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them."
- Marcus Aurelius

"If Only We Would Listen To It..."

"How do the geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans, know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us; there is a voice within, if only we would listen to it, that tells us so certainly when to go forth into the unknown." 
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"What Are The Facts?"

“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!” 
- Robert A. Heinlein

And always remember...

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

"The 'Smartest Man In The Room' Just Joined Sidney Powell's Team"

"The 'Smartest Man In The Room' Just Joined Sidney Powell's Team"
by Andrea Widburg

"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught.
In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity." 
- Hunter S. Thompson

"In her Georgia complaint, Sidney Powell included the declaration of Navid Keshavarz-Nia, an expert witness who stated under oath that there was massive computer fraud in the 2020 election, all of it intended to secure a victory for Joe Biden. Dr. Kershavarz-Nia's name may not mean a lot to you, but it's one of the weightiest names in the world when it comes to sniffing out cyber-security problems.

We know how important Dr. Kershavarz-Nia is because, just two and a half months ago, the New York Times ran one of its Sunday long-form articles about a massive, multi-million-dollar fraud that a talented grifter ran against the American intelligence and military communities. Dr. Kershavarz-Nia is one of the few people who comes off looking good:

Navid Keshavarz-Nia, those who worked with him said, "was always the smartest person in the room." In doing cybersecurity and technical counterintelligence work for the C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I., he had spent decades connecting top-secret dots. After several months of working with Mr. Courtney, he began connecting those dots too. He did not like where they led.

Not only does Dr. Kershavarz-Nia have an innate intelligence, but he's also got extraordinary academic and practical skills in cyber-fraud detection and analysis. The reason we know about his qualifications is that it takes seven paragraphs for him to list them in the declaration he signed to support the Georgia complaint.

His qualifications include a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in various areas of electrical and computer engineering. In addition, "I have advanced trained from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), DHS office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) and Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT)."

Professionally, Dr. Kershavarz-Nia has spent his career as a cyber-security engineer.  "My experience," he attests," spans 35 years performing technical assessment, mathematical modeling, cyber-attack pattern analysis, and security intelligence[.]" I will not belabor the point. Take it as given that Dr. Kershavarz-Nia may know more about cyber-security than anyone else in America.

So what does the brilliant Dr. Kershavarz-Nia have to say? This:

1. Hammer and Scorecard is real, not a hoax (as Democrats allege), and both are used to manipulate election outcomes.

2. Dominion, ES&S, Scytl, and Smartmatic are all vulnerable to fraud and vote manipulation — and the mainstream media reported on these vulnerabilities in the past.

3. Dominion has been used in other countries to "forge election results."

4. Dominion's corporate structure is deliberately confusing to hide relationships with Venezuela, China, and Cuba.

5. Dominion machines are easily hackable.

6. Dominion memory cards with cryptographic key access to the systems were stolen in 2019.

Although he had no access to the machines, Dr. Kershavarz has looked at available data about the election and the vote results. Based on that information, he concluded:

1. The counts in the disputed states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia) show electronic manipulation.

2. The simultaneous decision in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia to pretend to halt counting votes was unprecedented and demonstrated a coordinated effort to collude toward desired results.

3. One to two percent of votes were forged in Biden's favor.

4. Optical scanners were set to accept unverified, un-validated ballots.

5. The scanners failed to keep records for audits, an outcome that must have been deliberately programmed.

6. The stolen cryptographic key, which applied to all voting systems, was used to alter vote counts.

7. The favorable votes pouring in after hours for Biden could not be accounted for by a Democrat preference for mailed in ballots. They demonstrated manipulation. For example, in Pennsylvania, it was physically impossible to feed 400,000 ballots into the machines within 2–3 hours.

8. Dominion used Chinese parts, and there's reason to believe that China, Venezuela, Cuba interfered in the election.

9. There was a Hammer and Scorecard cyber-attack that altered votes in the battleground states, and then forwarded the results to Scytl servers in Frankfurt, Germany, to avoid detection.

10. The systems failed to produce any auditable results.

Based on the above findings, Dr. Keshavarz-Nia concluded with "high confidence that the election 2020 data were altered in all battleground states resulting in hundreds of thousands of votes that were cast for President Trump to be transferred to Vice President Biden."

This is going to be tough evidence for Democrats to counter. Back when the naïve Democrats thought Trump would be the one to commit fraud, they held congressional hearings and wrote articles about the voting machines' vulnerability. And with the New York Times touting Dr. Keshavarz-Nia's brilliance and his ability to sniff out fraud, they'll struggle to assert that he's not a reliable expert. Things are getting fun."
Securing the actual servers which were used 
in this massive fraud gives credence to this report:
"Charlie is joined by Lt. General Thomas McInerney to detail the shocking allegations surrounding Hammer and Scorecard, weaponized digital tools that allegedly allow our intelligence agencies to alter election results, including those in the United States. Are these tools actually real? Were they deployed in this most recent election? Can we know who is behind these treasonous acts if they did in fact occur? In what might be one of the most important interviews ever conducted on the show, Gen. McInerney lays out an election fraud scheme in extensive detail on a scale never before experienced in America or the world."

"That's Why..."

"That's why crazy people are so dangerous. 
You think they're nice until they're chaining you up in the garage."
- Michael Buckley

The Daily "Near You?"

Martinez, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Have It Done..."

”Never explain. Never apologize. Have it done and let them howl.”
- Winston Churchill

"Market Fantasy Updates 11/29/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 11/29/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!

Gregory Mannarino, “Markets: A Look Ahead”

But always remember, folks...

"In Fact..."

"You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. 
In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, 
so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, 
how you can still come out of it." 
- Maya Angelou

“Who Is Delusional? The Answer Is: We All Are”

“Who Is Delusional? The Answer Is: We All Are”
by Noel Hunter

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you” 
- Carl Jung 

“Within the mental health profession, clinicians and researchers who value a system of categorical illnesses and individual defects too often proclaim that the major feature delineating “real psychosis” from other “disorders” is the presence of delusions. Two articles in the New York Times exemplified for me how skewed this assertion is. It also led to a greater awareness, more specifically, of how problematic it is to view so-called delusions as meaningless indicators of disease… for we all experience delusion. How one experiences the self, the world, and relationships (usually based on our relationships with our caregivers) determines the level with which one must cling to seemingly irrational ideas in order to maintain a sense of order and meaning in the world. Let me explain…

The first article, entitled “Hating Good Government”, is an op-ed piece that can be summed up by this quote: “At this point it’s hard to think of a major policy dispute where facts actually do matter; it’s unshakable dogma, across the board.” It goes on to describe various political situations wherein people strongly adhere to their political views even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Lest anybody mistake this present piece for a political one, I am not defending the legitimacy of any of the accusations made by the NYT author; rather, the important point is that the article highlights how strongly people can believe in something that may be completely false (whatever side you might be on), and how these beliefs become even more rigid in the face of contrary evidence. None of us can deny that this happens in politics all the time… on all sides. 

The other article, titled: “How Expensive it is to be Poor”, can be summarized by its first paragraph: “Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center released a study that found that most wealthy Americans believed ‘poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.’” The author goes on to say that “This can be the view only of those who have not known – or have long forgotten – what poverty truly means.” 

Interestingly, in the first article, the beliefs are described as “dogma” and in the second as an “obtuse view.” To me, these were overt examples of the universality of delusion as part of human nature. Isn’t it remarkable how language can change everything when describing something? 

What Are Delusions? A delusion is described as “a fixed-false belief.” Using this definition, both of the NYT articles are describing delusional beliefs that just happen to be held by groups rather than lone individuals. Look, though, at how horrible this word is, and how quickly it dismisses the belief itself or, more importantly, the foundation upon which it is based. Many who are reading this blog now may believe some of the beliefs described in these articles. I imagine such persons would be enraged by my insinuation that their beliefs are delusional… and rightly so. So why do we think it is ok to do just that to people deemed “insane” or “psychotic”? I suggest that the view that “delusions” are the meaningless drivel of madmen can be the view only of those who have not known – or have long forgotten – what being mad truly means. 

Delusions are the brain’s way of doing its job. Even in the actually diseased brain, in those suffering the debilitating effects of dementia, the brain is trying to make sense of its surroundings based on the limited knowledge it has left or the concurrent associations that arise through the degenerative process. The beliefs themselves are not disease, but may be indicative of some internal problem (with true “disease” being only one possibility). The beliefs appear irrational due to the lack of current context with which to appropriately explain circumstances. 

Where is the line between an “irrational belief” and a delusion? Some might say that “real” delusions, as in psychosis, are bizarre and completely implausible. Hmmm… so who gets to define what is bizarre? Is Scientology a delusion? Telepathy? The idea that there is a humanoid-like figure who died and came back to life after first being born to a virgin? The existence of good and evil? Who decides where to draw this ambiguous line of “bizarre” and “implausible” and a respected “belief”? 

They may not always be overt or spoken aloud, but we all have delusions that underscore a great deal of suffering. This assertion is not unique to me; much of Buddhist philosophy is built on this basic tenet. Delusions are not symptoms or diseases unto themselves; they are a “side-effect,” if you will, of being thinking, imperfect, humans. Trouble ensues, however, when one’s beliefs fall too far astray from the majority belief and/or when it leads one to behave in seemingly bizarre, socially unacceptable, or aggressive ways. Perhaps these behaviors result in being labeled a criminal, a sociopath, a narcissist, a terrorist, an evangelical, a genius, an artist, a gangster, or, maybe it just gets one labeled as psychotic. 

Trauma and Childhood Development: Any kind of ideology can provide people a sense of control, particularly when experiencing chaos or confusing random events. The more confusing, terrifying, overwhelming, chaotic or unjust the world in which one exists, the more elaborate, concrete, or fantastical the beliefs needed to feel in control, ease anxiety, and have a sense of purpose and importance. In general, belief systems serve to protect us and help us survive. 

Like all other living beings, survival is the greatest instinct motivating human behavior. The term “trauma” is often used to describe events that are perceived as life-threatening and that create a sense of terror and dread; however, this term too often results in judgmental assertions of what is “bad” enough to be considered traumatic despite its subjective nature. Trauma theorists have long said that “trauma disorders” are behaviors and experiences that were once adaptive but now are causing problems. Why does this not translate beyond those recognized conditions or behaviors that are so-called “trauma-based”? I tend to talk about “trauma” because this is the field that appears to have the greatest amount of research on how problematic childhoods and overwhelming life experiences lead to what society calls “mental illness.” But, really, the term refers to an internal experience of panic, dread, terror, and brushes with death. 

A sense of terror and fear of death has been shown to increase when confronted with questions regarding the meaning of life often brought about during times of life crises. Furthermore, an increased fear of death develops when a person’s strong beliefs are directly refuted or challenged, leading one to cling even harder to said beliefs in an effort to ease the overwhelming terror and anxiety. Protection against this cycle of psychological entrapment is brought about, in part, by close relationships and secure attachment to caregivers. On the other hand, when attachment with caregivers is damaged through engulfment, stress, neglect, inconsistency, or outright abuse, a child often learns to manage anxiety partly through symbolic representations of others. Additionally, an insecure attachment has been shown to be directly associated with odd behaviors in the face of existential fears and terror, and being diagnosed with a mental disorder. 

So, when a person grows up with a fractured or undeveloped sense of self due to difficulties within the family dynamics, he or she is much more prone towards extreme emotions and socially abnormal behaviors, particularly when experiencing fear and anxiety. Usually such children have also become either hyper-vigilant (where they over-react to sensory experiences and are constantly on alert), hypo-vigilant (where they shut down and become disconnected from the self and the world), or on a roller-coaster cycle of both. When the terror-inducing experiences are overt, a belief system that makes sense to others may develop around these events. Conversely, when the experiences are covert or implicit, greater effort needs to be put forth to explain the internal extreme emotional distress, and often this is done through symbolization. 

For instance, when a person is beaten or sexually abused (and it is actually acknowledged by others) and this results in overwhelming anxiety, fear, feeling unreal, feeling the world around the person is a dream, heightened sensitivity to sensory experiences, rage, and violent images haunting their very existence, it is likely that this person will have the context of the physical threat to the body to make sense of these anomalous experiences. When they hear voices, they are often more clearly related to these events and are conceived as flashbacks, and “paranoia” is contextualized as hypervigilance. Because they can make some sense of these experiences, so can all those around this person. The person may feel like they are “going crazy,” but are never quite deemed so because the context for meaning-making exists, even if it is only on a superficial level. 

On the other hand, when the source of one’s fears and anxiety is less identifiable (for instance, experiencing severe alienation, parental engulfment, confusing communication within the family, parents who are chronically stressed, double binds, implicit discrimination, etc.) or when overt trauma is denied by others, the more confusing things become. A child experiencing these phenomena is just as threatened as he who is being beaten, but does not have the recognition of others or the context in which to make sense of his emotional state. The fact that some of these experiences are just as traumatic to a child is backed up by research: Children who experience psychological “trauma,” such as emotional abuse, insults, verbal bullying, isolation, and overwhelming psychological demands within the family, are MORE likely to develop severe psychological disorders as adults than those who have been physically or sexually abused. This includes so-called “symptoms” of PTSD. Of course, too often, children experience a combination of all. 

When terror and anxiety develop through psychological trauma, or when physical trauma is denied within the family, a belief system is likely to develop that serves to make sense of this illogical world. Robust research shows the undeniable link between childhood trauma and symptoms of psychosis, including delusions. Additionally, some researchers have argued quite convincingly that in many cases, delusions directly represent extreme emotional distress that can be understood through developmental processes. 

Importantly, the person who is stuck in a state of terror is one whose brain has directed all of its resources on survival. This does not leave room for taking the time for “rational” thought, decision-making, patience, conforming to social norms, etc. Research shows that those who are prone to what is clinically determined to be “delusional” thinking are also more likely to impulsively jump to conclusions, generally resulting in inaccurate decision-making. Perhaps most striking, is that many of these studies are conducted with “healthy” undergraduate university students who display a wide range of “delusional” thinking, thus further underscoring the idea that delusion is universal and is not necessarily indicative of disease. 

So, people develop belief systems to help them make sense of the world, ease anxiety, create identity and meaning, and to provide a sense of protection. When a person has been traumatized (psychologically or physically), has a fractured sense of self, has had their reality chronically invalidated, experiences extreme and confusing internal states, and is alienated and alone, their belief system will develop accordingly. When such a person comes to the conclusion, for instance, that they are God, perhaps this is serving to explain the power such a child had growing up to greatly affect a parental figure, the fear this child had that if he was not “good” enough his parent might die (a normal reaction of a child to a distraught parent), a sense of identity that counter-balances the internal feeling of overwhelming worthlessness, and a sense of purpose or meaning as to why he suffers so. Once such a belief sets in, everything else must be explained in terms of this to protect the belief system; anything that refutes it is either ignored or distorted to maintain the illusion of identity and purpose. The more one challenges said beliefs, the more it triggers self-hatred, increased fear, anxiety, etc, leading one to need that belief even more. 

Isn’t it ironic that we live in a world where “treatment” is focused on precisely that? And then we wonder why so many “patients” never heal? And this remains the case despite the fact that when a strong belief system is directly challenged, almost every human being in existence will react in the same defensive and rigid fashion. 

How “Delusion” Becomes Viewed as “Illness”: Unfortunately, most of what the mental health field bases its assumptions regarding “delusion” and “psychosis” on is individuals who have been referred for mental health services. Once there, they have often been acutely traumatized by the process of involuntary commitment, their immediate presentation is often exacerbated by acute reactions to drugs/alcohol, and they are seen through a prism of biases that, in turn, create iatrogenic behaviors that may not have existed before entering the system in the first place (not to mention the effect of “medications”). Once a belief has been determined “sick” or “delusional”, the actions and attitudes against said person correspond. In turn, the person reacts to this invalidation and injustice in understandably extreme ways. It has been shown with so-called “normal” populations that when there is uncertainty, fear, and a sense of being treated unfair, people will exhibit extreme emotional reactions. So imagine, then, the person who is already terrified and experiencing extreme emotions and then is invalidated and unjustly imprisoned. The person will behave in a manner that confirms the biased beliefs that set off such behaviors in the first place. As R. D. Laing said in “The Divided Self”: “The initial way we see a thing determines all our subsequent dealings with it.” 

Better yet is when professionals assert their descriptions of what “real psychosis” is, based on people who are in their 50s and have been shocked, locked up, and drugged several times a year off and on for decades. The continuum of experience goes unrecognized and the context in which the extreme states have developed go ignored. The iatrogenic effects of the system and the so-called “treatment” is hidden and never spoken of. Even in cases where some attempt is made at meaning-making, the process may be so convoluted due to decades of interwoven associations and beliefs setting in, that the professional might still be “proven right” that no meaning can be made from “delusions.” 

I would venture to state that for many, “delusion” can save from a far worse fate: death of the soul; suicide; annihilation. I know for myself, one of the worst phenomena I’ve experienced is overwhelming internal panic and a chronic need to escape. When I have believed that I must escape a friendship because the person wishes to harm me, or quit a job because all the employees are plotting against me, or I am being haunted within my own home by beings from the netherworld, or I’m being watched by unseen boogiemen, I have found relief; there was something to escape from. When I started to realize that everything I desperately wanted to escape was within me, there was nowhere to go. How does one run away from their self? An alternate reality sometimes is the only escape that results in continued survival. 

In fact, psychosis may not be a “bad” thing at all, but rather the body’s way of healing. Let’s look at it from an evolutionary, human survival perspective. Inflammation, now erroneously considered a disease unto itself, is actually the body’s process of trying to heal itself. We drug it, haphazardly take supplements to decrease it, but when we pay attention, we might find the true disease. It is often stress, poor diet, a virus, an acute injury, and/or a lack of balance within the body that leads to its attempt to heal: inflammation. 

If we just suppress the inflammation without looking at the source, we may get even sicker or even die because we have not found what the body is trying to heal from. Likewise, if we just insist on suppression of the anomalous experiences, dismiss them through terms like “delusion”, and ignore their purpose, the person may get even sicker because we have not found what the body is trying to heal from (which most often is trauma, oppression, a fractured identity, and learned behavior). Sometimes the extreme experiences must be temporarily abated in order to prevent great harm, but in most cases they must be tolerated and understood in order to foster the process of healing. 

What if? Imagine if mental health professionals did not insist upon gaining “insight” (really a euphemism for “believe what I tell you”), “fixing” a “broken brain”, or managing “symptoms.” Imagine if instead we all recognized that there is a reason someone has developed the beliefs they have and that understanding the suffering underneath is the key to healing and growth. What if we simply acknowledged a person for having a particular belief system instead of using judgmental qualifying terms like “delusion”? Mental health professionals have stopped asking “why” and instead focus so much on “what is wrong.” I believe this has set back any possible advance in the field of human studies because the “what is wrong” is ever-changing so long as the “why” is never addressed. If mental health professionals were to take a moment to view strange beliefs from this perspective, it might lead them to then ask “What happened, or what is happening that makes such beliefs logical?” 

What do the delusions represent, what is the need? This is where intervention may come in. Directly invalidating and negating one’s beliefs is unhelpful and even harmful when they have developed to either protect from an even worse reality or to make sense of chaotic internal experiences. Understanding how they are used and what they represent opens a window into finding the source of pain or confusion. The one thing that is for certain, is that behind almost every so-called mental illness is a person who has little to no compassion for his or her self and likely loathes his or her very being. That is why “treatments” that focus on building true relationships, meaning-making, empowerment, a sense of purpose, calmness, autonomy, and validation are so incredibly powerful. 

We all must strive to foster compassion on all levels. Building compassion comes from moving beyond our ego-centric viewpoints and understanding those with whom we disagree or do not understand the most. The truth is that we all live with some delusion. The NYT articles are just 2 examples of how delusions exist on a large societal level. Perhaps this whole blog is in some way a delusion. Maybe I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. But… what if I do? At the end of the day, really, all any of us can do is our best to hold our beliefs lightly and be wary of what we think we know, while respecting and trying to understand that which we don’t. “

"How It Really Is"

 

"US Special Forces Raid and Capture CIA Server Farm in Frankfurt, Germany?"

Skip to 1:00 to avoid the commercial.
"US Special Forces Raid and Capture CIA 
Server Farm in Frankfurt, Germany?"

"Reports indicate that a large contingent of Delta Force personnel engaged CIA operatives in a huge fire fight at the CIA server farm in Frankfurt, Germany. Casualties included 5 Delta Force soldiers and 1 CIA operative dead, before the server farm was secured and the servers removed. Despite the expected denials otherwise this appears to have been a factual event."
A must read:
Securing the actual servers which were used 
in this massive fraud as evidence gives credence to this report.
If this event actually occurred, and it appears that it did,
 the reasons are here:

“The Attempted Coup Of The US Presidency Revealed”


Additional sources:
Draw your own conclusions after verifying or disproving this report. 
Please comment below, including active links that support your conclusion.
"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"
- Sir Walter Scott, from his 1808 poem "Marmion"
“I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot…”
- William Shakespeare, “King Henry V,”  Act 3. Scene I