December 2020 Archives

And that is it for me for tonight...

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No "big day" tomorrow, just a normal one but used to getting up early so feeling downright sleepy.

More posting tomorrow.  The new year. Lots of fireworks going off outside - very festive neighborhood. Love it.

Oh joy - more rain

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More rain in epic quantities - from IBM's Weather.com:

Special Weather Statement until FRI 1:45 PM PST

Affected Area
Admiralty Inlet Area

Description
...HEAVY RAINFALL FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY WILL LEAD TO AN INCREASED THREAT OF LANDSLIDES IN WESTERN WASHINGTON...

Rainfall of 3 to 10 inches over much of the lowlands during the past 18 days has increased soil moisture to high levels across western Washington. Heavy rainfall of 1 to 8 inches is expected Friday through Sunday. This amount of rain will put extra pressure on soil instability, leading to an increased threat of landslides.

That is deluge territory.  Looking at the chart for the Mighty Stilly in Arlington:

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Right now it's about 3.7 times normal (little triangles).  See what happens in the next few days.  This is another Pineapple Express.

So true - the lockdown

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About sums it up:

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Do not forget that lawyer L. Lin Wood makes his money by prosecuting libel.  I seriously doubt he would me making these statements if he did not have some serious backup. From Anonymous Conservative:

Lin Wood gave an interview. I listened to the hour and 20 minutes, and these were all the important parts, from a lawyer who specializes in defamation:

A sealed document in a federal court in Maryland, sealed under National Security, documents how Nancy Pelosi, Rod Rosenstein, John Podesta, and John Brennan have tapes of John Roberts talking with Podesta about who would best replace Antonin Scalia, and they were recorded before Scalia died, and apparently had foreknowledge of his death. Roberts flew on Epstein’s plane because Epstein helped him acquire his children from Wales.

Barack Obama is worth well over billion dollars, much inherited from his step-father who owned it in Halliburton stock.

Many people in this country will go to jail for treason, and the number that will be just associated with trying to steal this election from our President will be astounding.

He predicts a violent period of civil unrest as the Cabal tries to engage in violence as part of their Color Revolution plan, just like we have seen overseas, after Trump wins the Presidency.

He believes the Governor of Georgia has been taking kickbacks on Georgia purchases of Dominion voting machines and Chinese PPE orders. And the death of Harrison Deal in a car wreck, which produced an explosion that was heard by witnesses a mile away, was a message to him.

Pat Cipillone, the disloyal White House lawyer trying to thwart President Trump at every turn, drives a new luxury vehicle to the White House every two days, including a Rolls Royce.

Rosenstein, Sally Yates, and Christopher Wray all worked in the same law firm, and are corrupt.

CIA is the most corrupt organization in the country, and President Trump is about to defang them by pulling all direct-action operational capabilities from the Agency, reducing it to an organization of paper pushers. Oddly enough President Kennedy was about to do that when he was killed, and the memo, named “Memorandum 45,” sat on his desk unsigned. Lin implies President Trump set it in motion by signing that very memo.

Bill Gates is going down as well.

George Bush 41 and 43, Bill and Hillary, and Obama all ran crime families, and they ran them out of the Oval Office. He said he believes the notes given at Bush 41’s funeral said, “I’m sorry, but they know it all.”

Under the 2018 EO on voting integrity, President Trump will have the power to seize all the assets of the Fake News mainstream media once things start happening, because they have profited from trying to aid China in voter fraud.

He also points out there were reports of gunfire before the bombing, and that it is inconsistent with a lone bomber, and might indicate good guys killed the bomber before he positioned the bomb appropriately, and that is why the bomber failed to destroy the “evidence” he was trying to destroy.

Lin says he believes if the election is shown to be fraudulent, all down-ballot elections may have to be re-held.

President Trump will prove to be the greatest President in the history of the United States.

If 10% of that is actually happening, we are in for some fun times. 2020 may have been a collective dumpster fire but January 2021 is more than going to make up for it.

Tip of the hat to Vox Day who also offers this link to this entry at Wood's twitter account.

That would jive with some rumors I heard earlier. State's evidence.

And back home again.

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What I have been through in the last couple of days will make finishing off the garage seem like a cakewalk.  The 2-3 days next week will be much easier. A vertitable walk in the park. Tip-toeing through the tulips (remember him?).

Feed the dogs, fix some dinner and then surf for a while.

Once more through the meat grinder

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Final push to get the condo cleared out and ready for sale. Quick stop for coffee and then Bellingham in about an hour.

Moving furniture today.

ZZzzzzzzzz

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That is it for me. Very busy day tomorrow too.  Got another 2-3 days to do next week and that is it.

Maybe a video or two tonight but fading fast.

Yay me!!!

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And home for the night.

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Another session tomorrow AM and then 2-3 days next week and I am done. Yippee!!!

Late dinner - leftover pasta and surf and that is it for me.  Been turning into a morning person of all things... My friends would laugh at me now.

Thank you Santa

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From America's Newspaper of Record - the Babylon Bee:

Gun Stores Overwhelmed By People Returning $600 Guns For $2000 Guns
Many Americans, in anticipation of a $600 government-issued stimulus check, have treated themselves to a brand new gun. Now that President Trump is calling instead for $2000 checks, gun stores are struggling to keep up with customers returning their $600 guns and purchasing $2000 guns.

“I sure am glad I kept the receipt!” exclaimed local gun enthusiast Anthony Harb upgrading his firearm. “It’s time to treat myself to something truly special!”

The bill was originally intended to provide relief for those out of work and affected by the ongoing pandemic, but after the U.S. paid hundreds of millions to other countries, $2000 per American was all that was left. Since $2000 is not enough to cover 8 months of rent or other necessities, many Americans have decided that one thing they can afford is protection from the bloated and power-hungry Federal Government.

Several gun stores across the country have already issued statements that they are sold out of all guns at the $2000 price point. Buds Gun Shop & Range in Tennessee has even called for no returns on $600 guns, suggesting customers buy multiple guns instead.

“We may not know what the future holds, but at least now I won’t have to face it without my Daniel Defense M4V11,” added Mr. Harb at checkout.

At publishing time, despite no arrival of stimulus checks, President Donald J. Trump had already been named gun salesman of the year.

Already would have had a nice stash of guns if it weren't for that tragic boating accident two years ago.  Why I had all my guns with me that day still bothers me.

Now this is curious - travel plans

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Reading between the lines here. From the New York City NBC affiliate, December 17th, 2020:

Pence to Head Overseas Jan. 6 Hours After Formally Declaring Biden the Presidential Victor
Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to travel overseas for the first time during the Covid-19 pandemic just hours after presiding over the congressional session in which President-elect Joe Biden will be formally declared the winner of November's contest against President Donald Trump.

The Indiana Republican will depart the U.S. on Jan. 6 for a trip that will include stops in Bahrain, Israel and Poland, according to a government document obtained by NBC News. Pence will remain abroad through Jan. 11.

And then, from today's The Times of Israel:

Pence’s final visit to Israel before leaving office is canceled
A planned visit to Israel by US Vice President Mike Pence was called off less than two weeks before he was due to arrive, the US Embassy confirmed Wednesday.

No reason was given for the cancellation, which was first reported by the Ynet news site.

Pence was reportedly scheduled to make a number of stops on a final world trip before leaving office on January 20. Earlier this month, Politico reported that the vice president planned to take off on January 6 — the same day the US Congress is scheduled to confirm President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory — visiting a number of countries, including Israel from January 10 to 13.

Wonder what is happening that would cause such a change in plans.  Hmmmmm???

Got a van full of cardboard cartons for the recycle place. Heading back to load up some shelving and take it to the new storage units I rented. Grocery deliveries and then up to Bellingham for one last push.

Minimal posting until much later tonight.

Fun with apple juice

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A Russian prank from Woodsterman:

All-righty then - are we all on the bus?

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Not a big surprise at all - from The National Pulse:

All Major Western Media Outlets Take ‘Private Dinners’, ‘Sponsored Trips’ From Chinese Communist Propaganda Front
A host of corporate media outlets including CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and MSNBC have participated in private dinners and sponsored trips with the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a Chinese Communist Party-funded group seeking to garner “favorable coverage” and “disseminate positive messages” regarding China, The National Pulse can reveal.

Other outlets involved in the propaganda operation include Forbes, the Financial Times, Newsweek, Bloomberg, Reuters, ABC News, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, AFP, TIME magazine, LA Times, The Hill, BBC, and The Atlantic.

The relationship is revealed in the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings, which reveal a relationship spanning over a decade between establishment media outlets and the China–United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

Much more at the site.  It is not amazing that these spineless children can be bought. What amazes me is how much they will do for so little money.  It is like the media are a bunch of kiddies with ADHD - they will be won over by the smallest trinkets.  The report itself is analyzed at Axios: "China's influence operations are getting harder to hide"

Good point - looting

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Major blow to the Surveilence State - from The Epoch Times:

US Turns Tide on Huawei, Ending CCP’s 5G Master Plan
The Trump administration scored a victory against the regime in Beijing this year through its “Clean Network” campaign that booted Huawei Technologies Co. out of critical telecommunications infrastructure in many countries.

The effort, while not well-publicized, secured an array of commitments from governments to exclude untrusted vendors from their fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks. As of this month, more than 50 nations, representing over two-thirds of the world’s economy, and 180 telecom companies had joined the “Clean Network” initiative led by the U.S. government.

The alliance includes 26 of the 27 EU member states, as well as technologically advanced countries such as Japan, Israel, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Canada, New Zealand, and India.

This is called Leadership.  President Trump has it.  The denizens of the deep state do not. Joe Xiden especially. And, to add delicious insult to injury:

As part of the plan, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced in May that it would build the world’s most advanced 5-nanometer chip fabrication facility in Arizona, an important milestone in securing the semiconductor supply chain and a safe 5G network for the United States and its partners.

China considers Taiwan to be a wayward state.  It just needs to come back under the beneficent wing of the Communists. Taiwan is having nothing of this.  They are an independent nation, they enjoy a free society and a robust economy.

As an aside - I work with machinery and although China is the major manufacturer, the design and the quality for Taiwanese equipment is way better than the Chinese.  India does a decent job too. Buying from China is a last resort or, for when the cheapest price is the delimiting factor.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is a beast - they are the world's most valuable semiconductor company, and the world's largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry. More here: TSMC.

Feeling sleepy

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Been working - feels good.  A video or two and then to bed.

Been doing regular nightly segmented sleep for the last several weeks - interesting. Been doing it intermittently but switched to full-time about a month ago. I do not need an alarm clock any more but my schedule is just as productive and I still reliably get up in the morning.  To sleep around 9-10 (this used to be closer to midnight) - wake up for an hour or so around 2-3 and then back for the second sleep.  Up around  7-8 AM fully refreshed. I usually read for a while in the early morning. Meditate sometimes. Or just lie in bed listening to the ocean and the rainfall.  More: here, here, here, here and here.

I for one love our Robot overloads.

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Some people at Boston Dynamics are having way too much fun:

Now this would be so much fun.

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Rumor but who knows.  From Vox Day:

The greatest showman
AC reports on a hilarious rumor floating around the chans. If it's not true, President Trump's team should make it true:

The 6 January elector ‘ballot’ count is going to go down as the greatest troll of all time.

You may or may not know, but the Vice President gets to count the electors. That’s the one thing the Constitution makes crystal clear. Apparently the plan is for Mike Pence to roll in a Dominion voting machine (or a knock off that looks like one). He’s then going to pull out a USB drive, update the software just before the count, and use the machine to count the elector ballots.

Remember, this will be on national television. The count will not only come out fractional, but it will result in more votes than actual electors AND result in Trump winning more electors than Biden.

The chamber is expected erupt in chaos. Obviously the count will be challenged. Pence will then conduct a ‘recount,’ but he will use the machine to print the recount ballots and then hand count those. The recounted number will be similar to the original count, only changing by a couple votes, but it will result in Trump winning by even more than before.

Dems are expected to cry “fraud” and Pence will object and call for order. He will tell them that it’s too late to challenge because it’s already done. The count is finished. He will then deliberately wipe the machine’s software.

I SO want to believe....

Likewise - that would be epic. Hoist with their own petard.

From The White House - a Proclamation

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Taking the long view - the very very very long view. From The White House:

Proclamation on 850th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket
Today is the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket on December 29, 1170. Thomas Becket was a statesman, a scholar, a chancellor, a priest, an archbishop, and a lion of religious liberty.

Before the Magna Carta was drafted, before the right to free exercise of religion was enshrined as America’s first freedom in our glorious Constitution, Thomas gave his life so that, as he said, “the Church will attain liberty and peace.”

The son of a London sheriff and once described as “a low‑born clerk” by the King who had him killed, Thomas Becket rose to become the leader of the church in England. When the crown attempted to encroach upon the affairs of the house of God through the Constitutions of Clarendon, Thomas refused to sign the offending document. When the furious King Henry II threatened to hold him in contempt of royal authority and questioned why this “poor and humble” priest would dare defy him, Archbishop Becket responded “God is the supreme ruler, above Kings” and “we ought to obey God rather than men.”

The aftermath of St. Becket's murder:

Thomas Becket’s martyrdom changed the course of history. It eventually brought about numerous constitutional limitations on the power of the state over the Church across the West. In England, Becket’s murder led to the Magna Carta’s declaration 45 years later that: “[T]he English church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired.”

Much more at the site.  Just go there and read the whole thing.  This is a very timely and powerfully written piece.

One more taste:

To honor Thomas Becket’s memory, the crimes against people of faith must stop, prisoners of conscience must be released, laws restricting freedom of religion and belief must be repealed, and the vulnerable, the defenseless, and the oppressed must be protected. The tyranny and murder that shocked the conscience of the Middle Ages must never be allowed to happen again. As long as America stands, we will always defend religious liberty.

Speaking truth to tyranny (masquerading as power).

A busy but delightful day

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Schlepped quite a few cartons and pieces of furniture.  One more day to go.

Had some food with my friend - she and I ate a take-out dinner in my truck (restaurants still on lockdown and too cold for outside dining). Delightful conversations.  English is her second language so fun trying to get a point across but we manage.  It is a major plus that she loves President Trump and hates the progressives with a passion. Like I said earlier - she is smart.

Quick surf and then to bed.  Grocery deliveries tomorrow and then back up to the condo for the last push. I will be there then until everything is cleared out from the house and in the garage.

Get it up and do it again - working

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Heading out to the storage locker now to unload last night's trove.  Grab another coffee and then up to Bellingham to do it all again.

Meeting my friend this afternoon - we have been texting a lot and we do get together couple times/week for walking the dogs or getting a bite to eat. She was asking about my volunteering - the grocery deliveries - and wants to come along. Really sweet lady - very shy, very old-school but really nice. Traditional. Life continues to be delightfully interesting.

From Sharyl Attkisson:

Fire destroys Rochester, New York printing business after Nashville bombing and fire
A Christmas Eve night fire that bled over into Christmas Day destroyed a Rochester, New York printing office house in an historic building.

Officials say they don't know the cause of the giant blaze at City Blue Imaging.

Watch the building collapse below:

https://twitter.com/ROC_NewsPhotog/status/1342352701074644993?s=20

Read more about City Blue Imaging at this link:

http://www.cityblueimaging.com

What makes this interesting is that City Blue printed ballots for Pennsylvania including the thousands of ballots that were pre-printed with Biden's name already filled in. Nobody else, just Biden.

Just covering their tracks.

Funny if it weren't true:

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Now this will be fun - suing Twitter

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From Legal Insurrection:

Man Who Repaired Hunter Biden’s Laptop Sues Twitter for Defamation
Computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac provided the explosive information in The New York Post‘s expose on Hunter Biden after he gave Hunter’s hard drive to Rudy Giuliani.

Twitter stopped users from sharing the Post’s articles because it came from hacked material.

Now Mac Isaac has sued Twitter for defamation and wants $500 million in damages along with a public retraction.

In the lawsuit, Mac Isaac noted he talked to the FBI and Mr. Robert Costello, an attorney for Giuliani, between July 2019 and October 2020.

The Post received the hard drive from Hunter’s computer from Giuliani, not Mac Isaac.

Therefore, Mac Isaac did not know the Post had the hard drive. He did not want the Post to print his name or give anyone permission to report his name.

But the Post named Mac Isaac in its stories about Hunter along with a photo of his store The Mac Shop.

The story caught fire on social media, mainly because of the “hacked materials” explanation from Twitter. The platform locked the Post’s Twitter account.

I bet that Twitter will settle.  I also bet that there will be an NDA on the terms of the settlement but that Mr. Mac Isaac will not have to worry about making money for the rest of his (and his heirs') life. Time to hold their feet to the fire. Repeal Section 230.

And back again...

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Just did one round trip but got a butt-load done. Hat to meet with realtor and locksmith so that took more time than expected.

Simple supper, hot shower and then sit down for some serious surfing. Less hectic day tomorrow but Wednesday through Friday are going to be ball-breakers. Good to get it done and over with.

On the road again

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Doing two trips to Bellingham today.  Trying for three.

No posting until later tonight.

Some wise words - Frédéric Bastiat

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...we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility….
– The Law 1850  Claude Frédéric Bastiat

It is just as simple as that...

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From 90 Miles:

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That is it for the evening

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Very full day tomorrow so early bedtime. Lots to do.

Decompress with a few videos and then, lights out.

Walmart on the way home

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Stopped off for some groceries - saw this on a car:

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Love the sentiment - honest.  I know the feeling with Truffle sometimes.  She can be a sweet angel and sometimes she can be a royal turd.  Part of being a puppy.

Back home and procrastinating.  Need to unload the truck but have 10,000+ things to distract me.

Got gas today and here is a cute photo - the attendents give them a lot of love when they show up.  Really sweet.

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Awwwww...

Points North today and tomorrow

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Heading to Bellingham - last push to get the condo emptied out and ready for sale. Minimal posting until later this evening.

Getting a coffee to go at my 2nd favorite place - no stopping to hang out...

It lists this Friday.

Heh - so true

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Why is this guy protected?

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Waiting to post on the Nashville blast until we get better information. Looking forward to the next 30 days.

A message for the season

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From Daniel Greenfield writing at Front Page:

They’re Not Fighting a Virus: They’re Fighting Americans
Fighting a virus is hard, but controlling people is easy
"We know people may have made mistakes over the Thanksgiving time period," Dr. Birx scolded the nation on CBS’ Face the Nation. "If you're young and you gathered, you need to be tested about five to 10 days later. But you need to assume that you're infected."

Then Birx made her own “mistake”.

After urging people not to "go near your grandparents and aunts and others", and to stick to "your immediate household", she headed off to her vacation home on a Delaware island along with members of a multigenerational family that encompasses three households across three states.

A bit more:

The essence of a free country is that people are able to make their own decisions. Everything else is boilerplate. It doesn’t matter how much governments pontificate about human rights, the rights of man, and the legacy of the Magna Carta and the Constitution, if they don’t actually let people make the most basic decisions about how to lead their own lives on an everyday basis.

And we have been here before - many many times before:

The war against smoking, then fat, salt, and soda, were all based on the unspoken assumption that people were too stupid to behave responsibly and someone had to do it for them. The CDC was utterly inept at managing pandemics, but it spent much of its budget fighting obesity.

The critical difference between fighting obesity and a pandemic is that the former is a behavior while the latter is a virus. Fighting a virus requires actual knowledge, skill, and ability, but fighting a behavior just means spending a lot of time scolding people and penalizing them.

Controlling a virus is hard, but controlling people seems a lot easier.

Faced with a deadly virus, the people whom the taxpayers had been paying a small fortune so that they can have houses in three different states didn’t fight the virus, they fought behaviors.

These may be the "elites" but they sure are not that bright.  Classic example of Dunning-Kruger

Excellent essay/rant. Much more at the site.

Isn't BillG a big Malthusian who wants to limit the population on Earth? Wouldn't a vaccine be perfect for this.  Especially, a vaccine that spliced into your DNA - who knows what all is in there besides COVID immunity. From Miami Florida station WPLG:

Study investigates effects of COVID-19 vaccine on male fertility
The University of Miami is investigating the possible effects of the coronavirus vaccine on male fertility.

Lead researchers Dr. Ranjith Ramasamy, a reproductive urologist with U Health, initiated an earlier study which found the virus was present in the testicles for up to six months following infection.

That spurred his team to question the virus’ effect on sperm and reproduction.

His team is now looking at the potential impact of the vaccine as well.

“We’re evaluating the sperm parameters and quality before the vaccine and after the vaccine. From the biology of the COVID vaccine we believe it shouldn’t affect fertility but we want to do the study to make sure that man who want to have kids in the future to assure them it’s safe to go ahead and get the vaccine,” Ramasamy said.

Study participants must have a fertility evaluation before receiving the vaccine.

To protect fertility, some men may want to consider freezing their sperm prior to vaccination.

That last line again: "To protect fertility, some men may want to consider freezing their sperm prior to vaccination
Seriously? WTF? And of course, the Vaccine manufacturers are held harmless. Our government at work.

Incredible essay at New Discourses:

The University as the Woke Mission Field: A Dissident Women’s Studies Ph.D. Speaks Out
I have a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies, but I’m not woke anymore. I write under a pseudonym because, if my colleagues were to find out about my criticisms of this field, I would be unable to find any employment in academia. That someone who critiques the axioms of a field of study feels compelled to write under an assumed name tells you everything you need to know about the authoritarianism underpinning this ideology. I no longer believe that the fundamental ideas of Women’s Studies, and of Critical Social Justice more generally, describe reality; they are at best partial explanations—hyperbolic ideology, not fact-based analysis. I have seen this ideology up close and seen how it consumes and even destroys people, while dehumanizing anyone who dissents.

I’m sad to say it, but I believe that Critical Social Justice ideology—if not beaten in the war of ideas—will destroy the liberal foundation of American society. By liberal I mean principles including, but not limited to, constitutional republican government, equality under the law, due process, a commitment to reason and science, individual liberty, and freedom—of speech, of the press, and of religion. Because Critical Social Justice ideology is now the dominant paradigm in American academia, it has flowed into all other major societal institutions, the media, and even corporations. Far from being counter-cultural, Critical Social Justice ideology is now the cultural mainstream. A diverse spectrum of liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and all others who, to put it bluntly, want the American constitution to continue to serve as the basis for our society have to team up to prevent this ideology from destroying our country.

It is long but just go there and read.  The author summarizes her entry into College in 2000 and her gradual "wokeness" and then how the curtains fell from her eyes.  She sees the indoctrination and intolerance for what it is. A tyranny of ideas.

Funny thing. Wuhan Flu edition.

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The London Daily Mail by way of Don Surber:

California is at the breaking point: COVID-19 patients in ambulances are waiting EIGHT HOURS before entering ERs as ICUs run out of capacity and hard-hit LA County probes whether the new, more contagious strain is spreading locally
Hospitals in Southern California are so overrun by COVID-19 cases that doctors are running low on supplies of oxygen, infected patients are forced to wait eight hours in ambulances before they can enter an emergency room, and intensive care units are fully booked with no more beds available.

The skyrocketing surge in COVID-19 cases is raising suspicions among public health officials in Los Angeles County that a new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus is fueling the outbreak.

California's deadly Christmas was marked by pleas to avoid holiday gatherings outside the home and indoor church services in what could be a make-or-break effort to curb a coronavirus surge that already has filled some hospitals well beyond normal capacity.

Doctors say California is currently experiencing a 'viral tsunami' with COVID-19 cases surging by a staggering 68 percent in the past two weeks alone and ICU beds now at capacity in the southern part of the state.

California surpassed 2 million recorded cases of the deadly virus earlier this week, but experts predict that number will rapidly rise as residents gather to celebrate Christmas and New Year.

Of course.  They were stupid.

Viruses - all viruses: COVID, influenza, rhinovirus (common cold) are seasonal.  They go away in summer and return in winter. The healthy population of California should have been allowed to go about their business mask-free, catch the damn thing and then become immune to it. This way, there would be a lot fewer carriers when winter rolled around.

Also, cosseting the immune system is stupid.  Shielding it from every bug that comes along only makes it get weaker and weaker.  A person's immune system needs a constant challenge.  This is especially the case with newborns and the very young. Untold damage is being done to their future health.

What the Democrat governors are doing - playing power games - is unconscionable. They need to stop. Unfortunately, the low-information voter will not see this.  All they see and believe is the constant drumbeat narrative on CNN and their ilk.

And done for the day

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Still a lot more work to do but got the tool cabinets out of the van, casters installed and now prepping the wall that they will be placed against. Outside wall so adding insulation, plywood and then a french cleat system.

Time to get dinner started. Back in a bit.

December 26th - another day in paradise

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Heading out for a dog walk and coffee.  Back home.  Been texting the new friend a lot these days.  We do get together about once/week at some neutral place (walking, etc...) Looking to have her over for dinner this week.  She was not born in the USA so taking things very slowly. Maybe 2021 will actually turn out to be a good year.

A song for 2020 - soon to be over

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Says it all:

Make mine Thorium but you get the picture

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Thorium is much better for power generating reactors than Uranium. Lots of reasons. Much cheaper too.

From Daily Timewaster:

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And crap - Nashville

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From the Associated Press twitter feed:

Meanwhile in Grand Terrace, San Bernardino County, California - from Los Angeles station KTLA:

Grenade launcher found in backseat of car that crashed in Grand Terrace
San Bernardino County deputies who responded to an early Christmas Day crash in Grand Terrace reported finding a destructive device inside an abandoned vehicle.

Investigators believe the driver fled on foot after the single-car crash near the intersection of Glendora Drive and Barton Road at around 12:30 a.m. Friday, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

A bullet had gone through the vehicle’s rear window, shattering it before ending up on the dashboard, officials said. Deputies said they also found a small amount of blood in the center console, and an anti-tank rocket propelled grenade launcher “in plain view” in the backseat.

And of course:

The car is registered to a 28-year-old Colton resident named Jesus Rodriquez, who’s currently on parole for assault with an automatic weapon, authorities said.

No word on Mr. Rodriquez's immigration status.

Nashville - an update

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From Associated Press:  This is not good at all...

Downtown Nashville explosion knocks communications offline
A recreational vehicle parked in the deserted streets of downtown Nashville exploded early Christmas morning, causing widespread communications outages that took down police emergency systems and grounded holiday travel at the city’s airport. Authorities said they believe the blast was intentional.

Police were responding to a report of shots fired Friday when they encountered the RV blaring a recorded warning that a bomb would detonate in 15 minutes, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said. Police evacuated nearby buildings and called in the bomb squad. The RV exploded shortly afterward, Drake said at a midday news conference. Police did not immediately indicate a possible motive or the target.

And this caught my eye:

Buildings shook and windows shattered streets away from the explosion near a building owned by AT&T that lies one block from the company’s office tower, a landmark in downtown.

Emphasis mine - read:

AT&T said the affected building is the central office of a telephone exchange, with network equipment in it. The blast interrupted service, but the company declined to say how widespread outages were.

And more:

Several police agencies reported that their 911 systems were down because of the outage, including Murfreesboro and Knox County, home to Knoxville about 180 miles (290 kilometers) east of Nashville.

I am involved with amateur radio and some emergency services.  Nothing as yet coming through those chanels. This was deliberate and they were targeting emergency communications. If that is not a Felony with serious repurcussions, I do not know what is.  I hope they find these people and lock them away until their bones rot.

There are 22 photos of the damage at the site. That was big.

A minimum of 60 years in a federal jail would be a good start. From Newsmax:

Massive Explosion Rocks Downtown Nashville
An explosion shook the largely deserted streets of downtown Nashville early Christmas morning, shattering windows, damaging buildings and wounding three people. Authorities said they believed the blast was intentional.

Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said police were responding to a report of shots fired when they encountered a recreational vehicle blaring a recording that said a potential bomb was to detonate in 15 minutes. Police evacuated nearby buildings and called in the bomb squad.

“Shortly after that, the RV exploded," Drake said at a midday news conference.

Surveillance video published on a Twitter account Friday that appeared to be recorded from across the street captured an audio recording that included the warning, “... if you can hear this message, evacuate now.” The blast was captured on the surveillance video seconds later.

Metro Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron said three people were taken to area hospitals for treatment, although none were in critical condition. He said some people were taken to the department’s central precinct for questioning but declined to give more details.

Time to demonstrate that actions have consequences. Back it up with the full force and might of the Law.

The Best Presents

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I miss Calvin and Hobbes

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A sampling of ballots:

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Back when men and women walked the Earth (and the Moon):

Darth by Darthwest - II

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The first one came out on May 13th, 2016 - a mashup of Hitchcock's North by Northwest and the Star Wars universe.

Major editing and compositing skills on display - pitch perfect.  The second edition came out December 19th, 2020:

Again? Perfect. If not better.

The team also did this mashup of Indiana Jones in 2017: Raiders of the lost Darth

Again? Perfect. Going to have to see if these people have done anything more. Incredible work.

Quite the difference - two Christmases

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The White House 2009 and 2017:

Well crap - Seattle landmark

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From The Seattle Times:

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Seven Gables Theatre in flames in Seattle’s U District
The shuttered Seven Gables Theatre, a building that held cinematic memories for generations of Seattleites, was in flames Thursday afternoon.

Firefighters responded to the landmark University District movie house shortly before noon and saw smoke and flames coming from the second floor of the vacant building. One person who told The Seattle Times they saw the fire early and called 911 said they saw flames in a debris pile near an entrance.

Seattle fire spokesperson David Cuerpo said crews received reports of the fire at 11:46 a.m. More than 150 firefighters responded to the blaze, he said. Fire officials don’t believe anyone was inside when the fire broke out, and no injuries have been reported.

Crap - saw many a movie there.  Had some fun dates there.  Either bums or insurance fraud. Sad either way - a real landmark. Seattle is losing its history.

Good news - drug bust

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Excellent police work - from The Everett Herald:

Bust nets 247 pounds of meth, golden gun and blind rapper
In the back seat of Gordito’s white Dodge Ram sat two boxes, for Clorox bleach and an air mattress.

Federal agents had been keeping tabs on the truck — hauling a trailer with a GMC Sierra, painted black, though its registration said it was red — for about an hour on Nov. 10 as it motored north from the Columbia River to Chehalis. Police pulled it over at exit 76.

A Centralia police dog sniffed around and gave a signal that there might drugs in the vehicles. Officers told the driver, Fausto “Gordito” Paz, 38, of Ontario, California, that the trucks needed to be impounded.

Police later found 49 pounds of methamphetamine in the boxes, under blankets and beneath a floorboard of the Dodge, according to records filed this week in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

The meth was en route from California to a secluded, wooded 10-acre property east of Arlington, in the 21900 block of 123rd Avenue NE, where a “leader” of a drug-trafficking organization, Cesar Valdez-Sanudo, 35, lived in a fifth-wheel trailer, according to a prosecutor’s motion to detain the defendant pending trial. Buried 2 feet beneath gravel, and 2 feet under a pile of chopped wood, and in other scattered hiding places on the acreage, Valdez-Sanudo is accused of stashing a trove of meth, fentanyl and many thousands of dollars in bundled cash.

Prosecutors believe his drug ring suffered a major blow on Dec. 16, when federal agents served 15 search warrants in western and eastern Washington, as well as in California. In a series of arrests, they documented seizing 93 pounds of meth, 15 pounds of heroin, 35,000 pills suspected to be fentanyl, 24 guns, over a half-million dollars in cash and $100,000 from a bank account.

Much bigger wrap-up than just the initial part of the story.  And yeah - the blind rapper:

The story of Frisby’s challenging youth was recounted in a small-screen biopic, “Blind and Battered.” He lost his eyesight when he shot himself as a teen. His explicit rap lyrics borrowed from a real life of hustling and drug dealing: “Government agents and your local police / kicking in your door make you get on your knees / make you lay on the floor / while they look for your cheese.”

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes...

Coming in over the wire.  Could be interesting.

Speaking truth to power - President Trump

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From his twitter account:

More at Parler: Man in America

From The Daily Wire:

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Artist Claims Facebook Temporarily Censored Viral Painting Of Santa And Jesus Second Time
A North Carolina artist who created a viral painting in 2009 of Santa Claus kneeling over the baby Jesus is claiming that for the second time in two years, the painting was temporarily censored by Facebook.

Gaye Frances Willard said of the latest alleged censorship of the painting that Facebook flagged it for “violent content.”

Section 230 delenda est.

Done with what I wanted to do today - did not get all the cabinets set up but got space cleared and will be working inside tomorrow (supposed to rain)

Starting to feel the beginnings of a cold.  Not the 'rona - checked the symptoms.  Still have full senses of taste and smell.  Lungs are fine, gut is fine.  Sinus is feeling a bit stuffed and a bit of body ache.  Head cold in anyone's book. Taking another two-day round of ivermectin - still taking the zinc and Vitamins C & D daily. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts.  I also have a bad-ass elderberry tincture that I make that is about a year old. Gets stronger as it ages.  Elderberry is not good for a cytokine storm ( =Wuhan Flu ) so will wait for a day or two before taking it but, I have it on hand if needed.

And it is time to get on with my day.  Heading out for a dog run, some coffee, some groceries and check the mail.  Back home to put the workbenches together.

And another one

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This one is from Vanderleun's back channel: Ka-ching:

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Heh - spot on

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From Woodsterman:

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Raphael Warnock in the news

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Great video from Tucker Carlson:

Power and control. That is all they care for. Taking care of their constituents? Don't make me laugh.

But of course. Democrats steal.

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From Augusta Crime:

Democrat Volunteers Stole Packages While Canvassing Columbia County for Senate Votes
Two people handing out flyers for the Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff campaigns have been arrested for stealing packages from homes in Columbia County.

Cesar Guerrero and Santina Walker confessed to taking packages Tuesday and Wednesday while performing their job of handing out political flyers for the two Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, authorities said.

Deputies were dispatched Wednesday to the area of Chastain Drive in reference to a suspicious situation. A deputy conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle that was possibly involved in a package theft. Investigators responded to the scene and found several packages in the trunk of the vehicle driven by Walker. Known thefts occurred on Millhaven Road, Colonial Road, Paisley Lane and Herrington Drive.

“There were also multiple items in the trunk that appeared to be new. All of the items still in the boxes were returned to the owners and the other items were taken on property receipts,” sheriff’s Maj. Steve Morris said in a press release.

Walker and Guerrero were transported to CID where they were interviewed. Both suspects confessed. Officers obtained four misdemeanor theft by taking warrants for each offender and a felony obstruction warrant for Guerrero for punching a deputy multiple times in the head while being taken into custody.

To members of the Democrat party,  these two goblins are "the good guys"  Talk about sick and twisted values.

Tip of the hat to Don Surber for the link.

Good - from FOX News:

Detroit suing Black Lives Matter activists for ‘civil conspiracy’
The city of Detroit is trying a new tack during a year in which it, like many other U.S. cities, saw violent protests and destruction in the streets.

Detroit has filed a lawsuit against Black Lives Matter activists, alleging a "civil conspiracy" and claiming the protests in the city "have repeatedly turned violent, endangering the lives of police and the public," according to reports.

The city claims the activists participated in the conspiracy, "defamed" the mayor and police, and contends that the city should be awarded damages, The Intercept reported.

The city cites four protests that occurred in the city this year, and alleges that injuries to police officers included "cracked vertebrae, lacerations, and concussions," according to the report.

Whomever is funding these brownshirts needs to be put on notice.  We are watching. BLM (just like Antifa) is a well-funded and well organized paramilitary arm of the Democratic mob.  They own this.

Glorious sunrise

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But... Red sky in morning, sailor take warning. High cirrus clouds can presage rainfall. Forecast calls for 75% chance of Christmas showers. Rather shovel rain than snow.

Spending today assembling my new workbench. It will be nice to have a place for everything.

No other plans. Take the pups out for runs, get some coffee this morning and spending a quiet evening at home.

A great DIY project

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Something to do with your COVID relief check - WOW!  $600 of my own tax money.

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Tip 'o the hat to 90 miles

I bet someone has considered this

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Some major Christmas Light displays on this island:

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I shudder to think...

An old one but still relevant. From President Trump's twitter account:

So totally spot on. I love this comment:  "Can we send them Pelosi instead????"

Back home - long day

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Good grocery delivery today - six clients.  These are people who cannot go out and shop - either Covid fear or other reasons.

Also picked up three of these beauties:

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46" long tool cabinets from Harbor Freight.  They were having a killer sale so I got them for about $260 each. MSRP is $339. Very nice laminated wood top.  I will fasten them together and use them as a workbench.  I have another bench where I can sit down and work on stuff.  This is for standing and wrenching on things. Loads of storage is nice too.

Fixing some pasta primavera tonight. Salad too.

Dog walk and coffee time

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Heading out for my usual.  Delivering groceries today and picking up the order from Harbor Freight. Garage is coming together. Looking good.

From The Daily Wire:

‘More Of A Sense Of Freedom’: ‘American Chopper’ Star On Leaving NY For Florida
Paul Teutel Sr., the founder of Orange County Choppers and the star of the reality television series “American Chopper,” is pulling up stakes from current Orange County Chopper headquarters in New York state and moving to Florida. When asked why, Teutel Sr. replied, “There’s more of a sense of freedom down there than in New York, that’s for sure.”

“He also said that he thinks Florida is more prepared and poised to get past the devastating blow the COVID-19 pandemic has caused than New York,” WKRG reported, adding that Teutel concluded, ‘The whole thing makes sense.”

Teutel acknowledged, “I think I have more of a fan base down there in Florida, and the riding season is nine months maybe even ten. In New York, you have a short season, maybe only three months or so.”

American Chopper, which originally aired on Discovery Channel in 2003, focused on Teutel Sr. and his son Paul Jr. The men produced custom chopper-style motorcycles; the show moved to TLC in 2007. The show triggered two spin-off series: “Senior vs. Junior,” which aired from 2010 to 2012, and “Orange County Choppers,” which ran in 2013-14.

All of the good ones are leaving.  Wonder what the blue states will look like in 20 years if they do not reform their stupid ways. I love the ocean and I love living here but South Dakota is also very beautiful.  Spent some time there for a blacksmithing conference and traveled through there a lot.

Nice little factory you have there

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Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.
Just when HCL is allowed back for Covid treatment, this happens. From American Thinker:

Unexplained explosion and fire destroy world’s second largest pharmaceutical factory producing precursors for hydroxychloroquine
Prepare for supplies to tighten for the cheap, effective therapeutic treatment for early stage Covid-19 infection, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). Just as the medical establishment in the US is relaxing its absurd and lethal suppression of the cheap, generic drug, following President Trump’s endorsement of it early in the pandemic, HCQ’s continued availability may suffer.  The world’s second largest pharmaceutical facility producing the precursors for HCQ has been destroyed by an explosion and fire.

I had posted about the writeup in the AMA here: Finally - American Medical Association  The AMA quietly recinded their proscription against the use of HCL on page 18 of a weekly 24 page document. Got to support those vaccines after all.  Can't have anything that is cheap and works.

The artice closes with this:

The Taipei Times reports that company spokesmen state, “… it would take at least six months to rebuild the plant, as most production lines were damaged by the fire….”

And this:

But a six-month delay in resuming production may delay HCQ supplies to early stage Covid-19 patients, who could otherwise treat their affliction with it, combined with zinc and an antibiotic like azithromycin.

More at Taiwan English News

Gorgeous photo of the conjunction

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Missed it here yesterday but caught a glimpse this evening as I was driving home. No idea who took this photos but it is gorgeous - great idea and excellent execution:

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Coal delivery in 3... 2... 1...

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What a clueless braying ninny:

There are a bunch of blacksmiths in upstate New York who could each probably spare a hundredweight of coal...

Drop it off at the Governor's offices in Albany.

Hell NO! dammit. Fsck.

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This little bundle of joy is buried in plain sight at the International Monetary Fund website:
(fintech is financial technology)

What is Really New in Fintech
By Arnoud BootPeter HoffmannLuc LaevenLev Ratnovski

The financial industry is undergoing rapid technological change. Traditional banks face competition from online start-ups with no physical branches. Social media and other digital platforms are expanding into payments and credit. The increase in demand for digital services triggered by COVID-19 is turbo-charging this transformation. The confluence we are witnessing is driving fintech innovation and raises important questions. What are the transformative aspects of recent financial innovation that can uproot finance as we know it? Which new policy challenges will the transformation of finance bring?

And here, they lay the groundwork:

New types of information
The most transformative information innovation is the increase in use of new types of data coming from the digital footprint of customers’ various online activities—mainly for credit-worthiness analysis.

Credit scoring using so-called hard information (income, employment time, assets and debts) is nothing new. Typically, the more data is available, the more accurate is the assessment. But this method has two problems. First, hard information tends to be “procyclical”: it boosts credit expansion in good times but exacerbates contraction during downturns.

And Ka-Boom:

Fintech resolves the dilemma by tapping various nonfinancial data: the type of browser and hardware used to access the internet, the history of online searches and purchases. Recent research documents that, once powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, these alternative data sources are often superior than traditional credit assessment methods, and can advance financial inclusion, by, for example, enabling more credit to informal workers and households and firms in rural areas.

Emphasis mine.
Let me run that by you again: "the type of browser and hardware used to access the internet, the history of online searches and purchases"
So you are proposing to base my financial credit rating on what I search for on the internet? Fuck you!
And, you are proposing to monitor my purchases on the internet? Fuck you!

This is the face of the one world totalitarian government that the Chinese are so rabidly pushing. All of the useful idiots and fellow travelers in the West are slurping this up like it was mother's milk. Fools.

This is not a conspiracy theory, this is straight out of the mouthpiece of the International Monetary Fund.  Their website. Look at the URL in the link:  IMF.ORG

From 90 Miles:

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This is not counting the approx. 3,000 times than Narcan was used sucessfully to prevent a death.

2019 it was 290
2018 it was 173

Talk about an inconvenient truth. That is Nancy Pelosi's district. These are the people she is supposed to be representing.

WOW - I agree with AOC

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Alexandria Occasional-Cortex is to the left of the left but she said something that I really agree with.
From her twitter account:

Of course, she turned around and voted for the damn thing but... baby steps...

Fantastic news - pork thrown out

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The bill that was rushed through congress is a disgrace. President Trump rightfully rejected it. From NOQ Report:

President Trump rejects pork-filled stimulus bill
President Trump took to the airwaves to describe what was pumped into the so-called “COVID-19 Relief Bill” that Congress sent him last night. In it, he detailed multiple examples of legislative pork that Congress tried to ram down everyone’s throat. He concluded by saying he will not sign the bill unless it is tremendously amended.

“The $900 billion package provides hard-working taxpayers with only $600 each in relief payments. and not enough money is given to small businesses, and in particular restaurants whose owners have suffered so grievously,” he said.

A bit more:

“Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists, and special interests while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it,” he said. “It wasn’t their fault. It was China’s fault.”

The President has long blamed China in general and the Chinese Communist Party in particular for COVID-19. Their release and subsequent cover-up of the coronavirus led to a massive pandemic that spread across the world. It could have been avoided.

Here is the 4 minute speech from President Trump's twitter account:

Be sure to visit the site and read the comments - people are pissed.

Came home and went right out again

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My new workbench(s) arrived today so went out to pick it up.  It is three of the Harbor Freight rolling tool cabinets which I will butt together. Lots of storage and keeps things relatively dust-free.

Back home, heating up some ham and bean soup and making a salad.

Out for a short while - errands

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Dog run, pick up some hardware that I had loaned out, couple of phone calls, coffee and back home.

The Chinese Tentacles

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Remember the story of the leaked database of Communist Chinese infiltrators into Western corporations?
December 13th: But of course - China  The entries have been translated from the Chinese and the implications are very scary indeed. From The Epoch Times:

IBM, 3M, PepsiCo Among Leading US Firms That House Chinese Communist Party Units: Leaked Database
Hundreds of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members are embedded within the Chinese divisions of major U.S. corporations, from IBM to PepsiCo to 3M, a leaked CCP-member database revealed.

The existence of Party units within foreign companies in China is hardly surprising, given that the regime mandates any organization with at least three CCP members to form a Party branch. But the 1.95 million CCP member list, which includes names, levels of education, ethnicity, and the Party branches they belong to, was to date the biggest revelation on the scale of the CCP’s influence on international companies.

Most of the members in the database are from the country’s southeastern coastal metropolis of Shanghai.

New York-headquartered tech firm IBM has at least two dozen Party units with 808 members in China.

3M, a manufacturer of consumer and health care goods, including N95 respirators and other medical products critical to preventing COVID-19 spread, employs at least 230 CCP members within five Party units.

PepsiCo, the multinational snack and beverage company, has 45 employees listed under the company’s Party branch committee.

Dow Chemical Company, one of the world’s three largest chemical producers, lists 337 CCP members in four Party committees.

Other notable U.S. firms on the list include Westin Hotel & Resorts owned by Marriott International (23 members); analytics firm Nielsen Holdings (94); leading food company Mars Food (14); and insurance provider MetLife (31).

And it is clueless ninnies like Joe Biden that handed over the keys for a couple million in kickbacks to his son. To them, he is not President-elect, he is President-select. He is their meat-puppet. Their stooge.

About that COVID-19 relief Bill

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Relief for who? From Breitbart:

Billions Going to Foreign Aid in Spending Bill: ‘Gender Programs’ in Pakistan, Sri Lankan Ship Refurbishments
American taxpayers still reeling from coronavirus lockdowns will be shelling out billions to foreign countries if Congress passes a $2.3 trillion spending bill unveiled Monday.

The 5,593 page budget-busting bill was posted online Monday afternoon, only hours before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a vote would be held.

For some countries, Christmas came early:

    • $169,739,000 to Vietnam, including $19 million to remediate dioxins (page 1476).
    • Unspecified funds to “continue support for not-for-profit institutions of higher education in Kabul, Afghanistan that are accessible to both women and men in a coeducational environment” (page 1477).
    • $198,323,000 to Bangladesh, including $23.5 million to support Burmese refugees and $23.3 million for “democracy programs” (page 1485).
    • $130,265,000 to Nepal for “development and democracy programs” (page 1485).
    • Pakistan: $15 million for “democracy programs” and $10 million for “gender programs” (page 1486).
    • Sri Lanka: Up to $15 million “for the refurbishing of a high endurance cutter,” which is a type of patrol boat (page 1489).
    • $505,925,000 to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama to “address key factors that contribute to the migration of unaccompanied, undocumented minors to the United States” (pages 1490-1491).
    • $461,375,000 to Colombia for programs related to counternarcotics and human rights (pages 1494-1496).
    • $74.8 million to the “Caribbean Basin Security Initiative” (page 1498).
    • $33 million “for democracy programs for Venezuela” (page 1498).
    • Unspecified amount to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Curacao, and Trinidad and Tobago “for assistance for communities in countries supporting or otherwise impacted by refugees from Venezuela” (page 1499).
    • $132,025,000 “for assistance for Georgia” (page 1499).
    • $453 million “for assistance for Ukraine” (page 1500).

Rep. Andy Biggs slammed the bill before the details even emerged:

Nancy,  Chuck and Mitch are doing this as a big F. Y. to President Trump.  When President Trump refuses to sign this bill, they will go crying to the heavens about how he does not care for the poor American Citizens who are having to deal with this horrible pandemic. This is so egregious and over the top that I am betting many Democrats will jump ship and vote against it.

This may actually be a good thing because it exposes just how corrupt the swamp is.  How bloated the deep-state. Nancy and Chuck own this.  Any bad reaction? This is all theirs. They seriously overstepped.

And I am out for the night

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Meeting was long but good. There are some board members with strong personalities and I was worried that there may be some issues but nothing happened.  I'm a numbers guy and had the poll results presented in a way that they could not deny.

Long day today, another long day tomorrow - meeting up with my new friend later.

Pot of tea, some videos and that is it for my night.

Perfect for the tree

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Wild weather

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North of here is getting snow, south of here is getting high temperatures. From Seattlle station KOMO:

Wild storm brings heavy rains, snow, damaging winds and record heat around Puget Sound
A strong warm front brought a wild day of weather across Western Washington on this first day of winter Monday, complete with record springtime warmth, record rains with widespread urban street flooding, strong winds, and lowland snowfall(???) -- all in the same region!

Heavy rains caused widespread flooding of local roads in the Puget Sound area, with snow snarling traffic in the far northern reaches of the state, and wind toppling trees in the South Sound.

In Lynnwood, "widespread flooding" was occurring over major roadways in the area, including 44th Ave. West.

And to the North?

Meanwhile, on the north side of the storm, the system is drawing in cooler air from British Columbia making for a more traditional winter entrance along the Northern Olympic Peninsula -- where it was snowing around Port Angeles and across much of Whatcom County and the San Juan Islands.

And the temperatures?

Seattle warmed to 59 degrees, smashing the record high of 56 degrees set in 2005 with nary a peek of sun to be had. It reached 60 in Tacoma and 61 in Puyallup and Renton(!!!).

No lightning. Convergence zones usually bring lightning. This area is still just a couple hundred out.  Puget Sound Electric has just under 12,000 outages, Oregon, 6,200 and BC Hydro continues to bring it home with 72,300 household outages. A dark and stormy night indeed.

A bit of perspective - cause of death

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Inconvenient truth from CNBC:

The third-leading cause of death in US most doctors don’t want you to know about
“My little angel” is how Christopher Jerry describes his daughter Emily.

At just a year and a half, Emily was diagnosed with a massive abdominal tumor and endured numerous surgeries and rigorous chemotherapy before finally being declared cancer-free. But just to be sure, doctors encouraged Chris and his wife to continue with Emily’s last scheduled chemotherapy session, a three-day treatment that would begin on her second birthday.

On the morning of her final day of treatment, a pharmacy technician prepared the intravenous bag, filling it with more than 20 times the recommended dose of sodium chloride. Within hours Emily was on life support and declared brain dead.

Three days later she was gone.

Sadly, Emily’s case is not unique. According to a recent study by Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes, making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Other studies report much higher figures, claiming the number of deaths from medical error to be as high as 440,000. The reason for the discrepancy is that physicians, funeral directors, coroners and medical examiners rarely note on death certificates the human errors and system failures involved. Yet death certificates are what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rely on to post statistics for deaths nationwide.

Interesting...

The real pandemic - San Francisco

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From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Overdose deaths far outpace COVID-19 deaths in San Francisco
A record 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco so far this year, a staggering number that far outpaces the 173 deaths from COVID-19 the city has seen thus far.

The crisis fueled by the powerful painkiller fentanyl could have been far worse if it wasn't for the nearly 3,000 times Narcan was used from January to the beginning of November to save someone from the brink of death, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday.

The data reflects the number of times people report using Narcan to the Drug Overdose Prevention and Education Project, a city-funded program that coordinates San Francisco’s response to overdose, or return to refill their supply. Officials at the DOPE Project said that since the numbers are self-reported, they are probably a major undercount.

Last year, 441 people died of drug overdoses — a 70% increase from 2018 — and 2,610 potential overdoses were prevented by Narcan, a medication commonly sprayed up the nose to reverse an opioid overdose, according to data from the city Medical Examiner's office and the DOPE Project.

Hmm... From 2018 to 2019, a 70% increase.  From 2019 to 2020, a 71.0,4% increase. Looks like there is a major problem, a growing problem and that relief efforts are ineffective.

Anyone remember George Christopher?  He was Mayor of San Francisco from January 8, 1956 through January 8, 1964. He was a Republican.  He was the last Republican Mayor of San Francisco.  It has all been downhill from there.

Who ordered this? Snow.

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Nothing here yet but it is snowing up North.

From the WS DOT traffic came for the Blaine Peace Arch at the Canadian border:

20201221-snow-peacearch.jpg

Cliff Mass has more: Superfront Brings Snow to Western Washington in Unusual Conditions

Couple hundred households without power in this area. Puget Sound Electric has about 7,900 outages, Oregon, 1,500 and BC Hydro takes home the brass ring with over 62,000 household outages.

The pandemic - a report form Holywood

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Some interesting news from The Hollywood Reporter:

Hollywood Boulevard Struggles Amid Pandemic: "75 Percent Is Boarded Up"
Hard-hit by the pandemic, the iconic street struggles amid a plunge in tourism and the months-long shuttering of theaters and other draws: "I don’t know what we're going to do."

On a street typically lined with superheroes and Disney characters, Batman, with precious few tourists to greet, sits on a quiet corner doing crunches.

This is Hollywood Boulevard today, nine months into the pandemic-induced shutdown that has stripped the tourist destination of its usual 10 million annual visitors who clamor to take photos with costumed street performers and pose with their favorite celebrity's star.

"The pandemic has canceled what I do for a living," says another street performer, Mark Roman, who for the past six years has worked on the boulevard as Captain America and Reno 911!-inspired Lieutenant Frank. He has not busked since COVID-19 hit, partly because he cannot naturally incorporate a mask into his costume. "I don't know how I'm going to financially survive," says Roman, who has attempted to replace the money he once made from tips with background acting gigs and personalized videos on Cameo, "but I'm trying to figure it out."

All of this for nothing.  This is not a public health issue, this is a political issue.

Some numbers - masks

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Masks do not work - some simple charts from Justin Hart's twitter account:

The numbers do not lie. Be sure to visit the site - lots of additional data to support this claim.

Do not forget that: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and the evidence for masks being effective is simply not there.  Never has been.

Back for the day

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Done with my errands - lunch, surf and meeting.

And out for a while

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Big meeting tonight so was prepping.  Some coffee would hit the spot right now - dogs need a good run too.

The media may not have noticed

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But the rest of us certainly did - from the New York Post:

Obama trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes — lefty media didn’t notice
The words leap out and grab you. Former President Barack Obama characterizes no other world leader in anything like the terms he reserves for former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In his recent memoir, Obama tells us that Sarkozy is a “quarter Greek Jew.” Little wonder, then, that Sarkozy has “dark, expressive, Mediterranean features,” which resemble the exaggerated, often distorted figures “of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting.”

Little wonder, too, that he is “all emotional outbursts and overblown rhetoric,” while his conversation, which reflects unbridled ambition and incessant pushiness, “swoops from flattery to bluster to genuine insight.”

One might have thought Obama was deliberately directing at Sarkozy the insults notoriously hurled at Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), the first person of Jewish birth to become Britain’s prime minister. The colonial administrator Lord Cromer said of Disraeli that he was driven by “a tenacity of purpose” that was “a Jewish characteristic.” With his swarthy, “Oriental features,” Disraeli was consumed by an “addiction” to the “passionate outbursts” and “excesses of flattery” that were the hallmarks of his “nimble-witted” race.

And the author is just getting started.  Lots of examples and history.  We The People could see it very clearly but the mainstream media? The fellow travelers?

. . . crickets . . .

Unintended consequences - New York City

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Democrat regimes are much more expensive to run than Conservative ones.  They really really really need their tax revenue to function. What happens when they make stupid decisions? From Reuters:

Fleeing New Yorkers resulted in an estimated $34 billion in lost income
Millions of people have moved out of New York City during the pandemic, but at the same time, millions of others with lower incomes have taken their place, according to a study released on Tuesday.

All told, a net 70,000 people left the metropolitan region this year, resulting in roughly $34 billion in lost income, according to estimates from Unacast, a location analytics company.

So there are millions moving in because of the cheaper rents. When they do not find work, they are going to go on the dole costing Gotham even more of its dwindling tax dollars. Meanwhile the infrastructure will crumble as maintenence will have to compete with social programs and guess which one of these always wins out in a Democrat administration. Sounds like a true worker's paradise.

Lowland snow in the offing? Cliff Mass

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Cliff Mass has the story:

The Upcoming Lowland Snow Event on Monday
Many of you in western Washington are going to see snowflakes tomorrow.

But there is going to a huge variation from flurries to several inches.

The mountains and foothills are going to get hit hard and the snow-level will be low.

This is a very complex, marginal event with the potential for some surprises. But like the COVID-19 vaccines, scientists/forecasts have better tools than even a few years ago.

Wondered when it was going to hit.  We are due. Conditions are ripe.

Not even the Rose Bowl is safe. From CBS Sports:

College Football Playoff relocates Rose Bowl semifinal to Dallas amid COVID-19 concerns, attendance policy
With local and regional health statutes preventing fans from being in attendance, the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Rose Bowl has been moved to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The move, announced Saturday evening by the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, is a result of a "growing number of COVID-19 cases in Southern California along with the inability to host player and coach guests at any game in California."

The semifinal will still be played on Jan. 1, two days after the Cotton Bowl, but it's unclear whether it will still be called the "Rose Bowl". Unlike other college football postseason games, the Rose Bowl is a part of the Master License Agreement and co-owned by the Pasadena Tournament of Roses and the City of Pasadena.

If it does maintain the Rose Bowl moniker, it will be the first time it has not been played in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl Stadium since January 1942 on the heels of the Pearl Harbor attack.

I am waiting for the pushback to reach critical mass.  It is coming - I can feel it in the wind.

UPDATE at bottom of page

taken straight out of Nazi Propeganda. Way to go Washington Post
(Jeff Bezos' playtoy - Democracy Dies in Darkness indeed)

From Steve Milloy's twitter account:

Steven is an interesting character - he runs this website: Junk Science and is a contributer to FOX News. 

UPDATE:  Turns out that the same cartoonist - Ann Telnaes - seriously stepped over the line in 2015 (a lot at the site) and depicted Ted Cruz' children as dancing monkeys. Disgusting. The Russians have this wonderful word: nekulturny

Russian pejorative term. Literally means uncultured, but has connotations of white trash, chav, or naco.
Ivan, you nekulturny bastard, don't pick your nose in public!

From the New York Post:

Joe Biden’s niece Caroline gets no jail time after DUI guilty plea
Another Biden walks free.

Joe Biden’s niece Caroline Biden pleaded guilty to DUI on Dec. 3 — and was sentenced to 20 days to six months of “confinement,” Pennsylvania court records said.

But the small print shows Biden, 33, won’t see a day behind bars after she negotiated a plea deal with the Montgomery County district attorney.

Instead of jail, she got five-plus months of probation, with 20 days of rehab in January counted toward her sentence.

The walk-free plea continues a long Biden family tradition of avoiding jail time. A Post investigation in July found at least eight other busts of Bidens resulted in wrist slaps.

Quite the problem child - spoiled and entitled:

While the DUI may have been Caroline Biden’s first offense in Pennsylvania, her New York rap sheet includes dropping more than $110,000 on a stolen credit card and allegedly assaulting an NYPD officer.

What are these people?  Some kind of royalty? They got their exaulted positions because they hired on to work for us - We The People.  Their job is to represent our interests in DC - nothing else.

Flagrant YouTube suppression of the truth

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From Trump Attorney Jesse Binnall's twitter account:

The video has resurfaced at another YouTube account here: Make Schumer Cry Again

Pretty damning if you ask me...

Three headlines:

And some study material - see if you see any of this going on here:  Proletarians and Communists

And... Time for coffee

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Doing the blankets today at the laundromat. Get the dogs run ragged first.  And yes, some coffee.

From The Coney Island Blog:

NYC Restaurants to Ban Cuomo from Dining
According to bar owner Larry Baird “ He can eat at some shitty roadside diner outside of Albany but he will not be served anywhere in New York City, known universally as the world’s greatest dining destination! If he has to use the restroom he can go pee on my street-corner! That’s what he wants anyway!”

Former life long Coney Island resident Val Torre said that he’s finally moving to Florida. “It’s 70 degrees every day. My Coney Island childhood friends have all retired to Florida now! All the restaurants and bars are open and the grannies live!”

Many members of the Facebook Group NYC Restaurants Open applaud the Executive Order banning Cuomo from being served at all New York City establishments. One member stated “Completely schizophrenic behavior! How are they coming up with these rules is beyond any logical reasoning”

Another furious lifelong New York resident exclaimed “ He can dine at Gracie Mansion if he wants hospitality in Manhattan. He ain’t getting it here!”

I do not like large cities but the people of New York are true Americans.  I love their spirit.

Reactions to the Wuhan Flu vaccine

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Looks like a lot of people are having injection site pain with a measurable percentage of people having more severe reactions. From the Centers for Disease Control:

Local Reactions, Systemic Reactions, Adverse Events, and Serious Adverse Events: Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine
Among all study vaccine recipients asked to complete diaries of their symptoms during the 7 days after vaccination, 84.7% reported at least one local injection site reaction. By age group, 88.7% in the younger group (aged 18 to 55 years) and 79.7% in the older group (aged >55 years) reported at least one local reaction. Pain at the injection site was the most frequent and severe solicited local reaction among vaccine recipients. After dose 1, the younger age group reported pain more frequently than the older age group (83.1% vs 71.1%); a similar pattern was observed after dose 2 (77.8% vs 66.1%). Injection site redness and swelling following either dose were reported less frequently than injection site pain. Redness and swelling were slightly more common after dose 2. No grade 4 local reactions were reported. Overall, the median onset of local reactions in the vaccine group was 0 (day of vaccination) to 2 days after either dose and lasted a median duration between 1 and 2 days. Data on local reactions were not solicited from persons aged 16-17 years. However, their reactions to vaccination are expected to be similar to those of young adults who were included. In addition, reactogenicity data from adolescents aged 12-15 years were obtained and reviewed, and were similar to those from adults aged 18-55 years. (Table 1Table 2)

They have some good charts there.  The sample size is OK - usually 1,000 to 2,000+ and they are also testing with a placebo. It is interesting in that the placebo tests for non-measurable things like "fatigue" "headache" "muscle pain" are much higher than for demonstrable things like fever, vomiting, dirrhea. People are uncertain about the vaccine and are attributing worse problems than it actually gives.

Taking my second dose of ivermectin shortly - looking for symptoms so want to do it on an empty stomach. Go to weekly doses after this.

A good way to look at it...

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Yes, President Trump's impeachment was a result of his checking up on Hunter's "board membership" at Burisma.

20201220-biden.jpg

I am outta here - YouTube and bed. Busy day tomorrow. Board meeting Monday and Bellingham Tuesday.

Been texting up a storm with my new friend. A lot of fun. She is not from the US so it is interesting working around our language differences and having the usual boy/girl chat.

This came out on December 7th, 2020 - just noticed it today. From the World Health Organization:

WHO Information Notice for IVD Users
Nucleic acid testing (NAT) technologies that use real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for detection of SARS-CoV-2

And this:

Purpose of this notice: To ensure users of certain nucleic acid testing (NAT) technologies are aware of certain aspects of the instructions for use (IFU) for all products.

Description of the problem: WHO has received user feedback on an elevated risk for false SARS-CoV-2 results when testing specimens using RT-PCR reagents on open systems.

As with any diagnostic procedure, the positive and negative predictive values for the product in a given testing population are important to note. As the positivity rate for SARS-CoV-2 decreases, the positive predictive value also decreases. This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as positivity rate decreases, irrespective of the assay specificity. Therefore, healthcare providers are encouraged to take into consideration testing results along with clinical signs and symptoms, confirmed status of any contacts, etc.

...yadda... ...yadda... ...yadda... Basically, they say that the RT-PCR test (swab up the nose, not the spit test or cheek swab) can deliver false positives (up to 90% in several studies)  Come on guys.  We knew that back in Summer. I thought that this organization was supposed to be proactive.  What are we paying you for then?

Progress - Michigan

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Great news from Michigan Live:

Michigan House votes to repeal 1945 emergency law used by Whitmer to issue coronavirus orders
Legislation that would overturn one of the emergency laws Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used as authority to issue COVID-19 orders during the first several months of the pandemic cleared the Michigan House early Friday morning.

Senate Bill 857, sponsored by Sen. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, would repeal the 1945 Emergency Powers of Governor Act, one of two state laws currently on the books Whitmer used to issue a wide swath of orders that required masks in public spaces, limited crowd sizes, and closed various establishments after the legislature opted not to extend the initial state of emergency declaration on April 30.

Whitmer’s use of the act was ultimately deemed unconstitutional in a split October Michigan Supreme Court decision after Republicans and others challenged the orders in state and federal courts. That’s left it up to the legislature to codify many of the COVID-19 executive orders invalidated by the ruling, although the state’s Department of Health and Human Services has mirrored several of Whitmer’s response measures in subsequent public health emergency orders.

Excellent - stand up to the tyrant and pull her fangs. Enough.  She does not represent her constituency.

More at 11:00PM

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Could be true - I love the Pelosi reference:

20201219-vaccine.jpg

Ivermectin

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Study after study show efficacy in treating the Wuhan Flu both during the illness and as a prophylactic.  Enough to prompt me to buy a bottle of it.  Had my first dose this morning and so far, so good.  No side effects outside of an itching and burning of my third eye.  My tentacles are proving to be a bit of a challenge as my newest pup Truffle likes to nibble on them. She has sharp little puppy teeth.

It is in an oil suspension so diluted it into an ounce of avocado oil and did it as a shot.  3ml.  Planning another 3ml tomorrow and then do them weekly. These people carry it: Valley Vet

But seriously, here is an interesting eight minute podcast:

Mike Pence - the Space Force

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From Mike Pence's twitter account:

Somewhere up there, Stan Lee is smiling. Guardians. I love it.

Joe Biden in 2007

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Great video - Essential Fleccas twitter account:

Quite the volte-face.

Some tab clearing - a couple more memes

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Here are some more:

20201216-mask.jpg

20201218-restaurant.jpg

20201216-poll.jpg

A modest proposal

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Offer them a choice:

20201215-kneel.jpg

Getting closer to that day

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So true - I'm right there with them:

20201218-alone.jpg

Oregon gets walloped

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The wind is off and on here but the south of Oregon is getting hit. Pacific Power is showing over 2,300 households without power. BC Hydro is down from 6,000 to around 2,400. Our little chunk of paradise is fine - the last couple of storms shook out all the weak spots.

Of course they are interconnected. From National File:

SolarWinds Board Director ‘Led The Establishment’ Of $75 Billion Investment Firm Into China
SolarWinds, the major technology company that was recently victim to an unprecedented hack, shares board member Kenneth Hao with Silver Lake. Hao was responsible for leading “the establishment” of the $75 billion private equity firm into China.

Kenneth Hao serves on the Board of Directors at SolarWinds. He also serves as the Managing Partner and Managing Director at Silver Lake.

According to his SolarWinds bio, “Hao has served on our board of directors since February 2016.” The biography also identifies Hao as the “Managing Partner and Managing Director of Silver Lake, which he joined in 2000.” This is reflected on Silver Lake’s website as well.

A lot more at the site. It is surprising that these pages are still online. National File has screen-caps for when they are purged.  Do not forget that Dominion Voting Systems runs on the SolarWinds management platform - this login screen has been scrubbed but here is a screen-cap of the original:

20201218-dominion.jpg

These corporations and nations are all interconnected.  The bones of the deep-state.

Fredo's dumber brother hits bottom

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And keeps digging. From Rick Moran writing at PJ Media:

Cuomo Sentences Small Businesses to Death with Minimum Wage Hike
Despite an unemployment rate of ten percent and about one-third of small businesses already shuttered as a result of his coronavirus lockdowns, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is apparently unsatisfied in his efforts in the state. So he’s decided to go ahead with a planned minimum wage hike.

That’s OK. All business people are rich, aren’t they?

Reason:
The New York Department of Labor announced Wednesday that it will move forward with plans to hike the state’s minimum wage on December 31. Under the state’s phased-in minimum wage increase that started in 2016, businesses in New York City are already required to pay workers a minimum of $15 per hour. On December 31, the minimum wage in Long Island and Westchester County will increase by $1 to $14 per hour, and the minimum wage across the rest of the state will jump from $11.80 to $12.50 per hour.

Cuomo’s Labor Department considered canceling or postponing the increase — especially after the governor reimposed many lockdown orders and promised more in the future. After all, “minimum wage” is sort of irrelevant when no one is getting paid any wages at all.

But the fight for social justice and economic equality must go on — even if it kills off every business in the state.

What a clueless fucktard. He is prancing about on the stage but only representing 1% of his constituency. His style of leadership is like playing chess with a pigeon.

So true - Investigation

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It still amazes me that a lot of people do not see this for what it is. From 90 Miles:

20201218-investigate.jpg

This is cute - jammin' on the bridge

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Who knew that Data was such a master on the B3:

A new term - PIC

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From our ever-wonderful Centers for Disease Control:

COVIDView - Key Updates for Week 50, ending December 12, 2020
Nationally, surveillance indicators tracking levels of SARS-CoV-2 circulation and associated illnesses declined slightly or remained stable during the week ending December 12, 2020. The percentage of deaths due to pneumonia, influenza and COVID-19 (PIC) has been increasing since October. Both COVID-19-associated hospitalizations and PIC mortality for the most recent weeks are expected to increase as more data are received.

PIC = pneumonia, influenza and COVID-19

So anyone dying from pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 will have their death reported as PIC and it will be counted as a COVID death. Talk about fudging the numbers.

A new word - Journalisn't

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From retired journalist Don Surber:

Journalisn't (Times retracts award-winning series)
Readers are terrific and kind in alerting my typos and other errors. They also send me news tips, for which I am grateful. I check them out. Sometimes the stories I reject turn out to be true. Oh well. I can come back to them later.

Getting the facts right is the whole point, isn't it? Typos are regrettable. Telling people Putin rigged the 2016 election is unforgivable.

Today a reader tipped me to a Daily Mail story that had a great headline, and no facts. Clickbait. I sent the reader a one word reply:

Journalisn't.

I really should have thanked him. He took the time to tip me to what could have been a juicy story. My job is to check it out.

Sadly, there is more journalisn't than journalism these days.

Great word - spread it around.  More examples at Don's website.

Quite the windstorm

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The high winds that have been forecast for several days finally made landfall this afternoon.  About 6,000 households without power in Canada. Scattered outages throughout the Pacific Northwest. Wild and woolly out there.

Did not get to the dump today - still a lot more to toss out. Still filling the van. Do it tomorrow. Tacos for dinner.

A nice retrospective from the Washington Examiner:

The forgotten lessons of Stalinism
Dec. 18, 2020, marks the 142nd birthday of Joseph Stalin, the communist dictator who ruled the Soviet Union for almost three decades. For many people, Stalin is synonymous with mass murder and totalitarianism; his misdeeds are so voluminous and epic in scale that they are incomprehensible.

Historians continually debate just how many deaths Stalin was responsible for. Even a prominent former Soviet and Russian official estimates that Stalin’s victims, whether through famine, purge, or deportation, number around number around 20 million. Figures such as these are almost impossible for anyone to grasp in full.

The accounts of the Stalin era reveal a man as cruel and ruthless as the numbers suggest. During the Great Terror of the 1930s, Stalin routinely signed off on execution lists with hundreds or thousands of names. In one particularly bloodthirsty day during the Terror, he approved 3,167 executions.

Moments such as these were so commonplace in the Stalin era that the tyrant enjoyed a movie screening immediately afterward, his conscience apparently untroubled by the lives he was ruining.

Stalin’s regime targeted those suspected of being insufficiently dedicated to the communist cause, as well as their innocent family and friends. Millions of Armenians, Bulgarians, Chechens, Germans, Greeks, Jews, Muslims, Poles, and Turks were persecuted for being more loyal to their racial or religious affiliations than to the glorious truths of Karl Marx.

Stalin’s own words reveal his sadistic nature. He once remarked, “The greatest delight is to mark one’s enemy, prepare everything, avenge oneself thoroughly, and then go to sleep.”

These are the people lining up behind the great meat puppet Joe Biden. Fellow travelers.

From Summit News:

Top Catholic Cardinal Warns COVID-19 Being Used to Usher in “Evil” Great Reset
A top ranking Catholic Cardinal has warned that the COVID-19 pandemic is being exploited by proponents of “The Great Reset” to “advance their evil agenda.”

Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of the most powerful Catholics in the United States, gave a homily in which he savaged “secular forces” who want to “make us slaves to their godless and murderous agenda.”

“Then there is the mysterious Wuhan virus about whose nature and prevention the mass media daily give us conflicting information,” said Burke. “What is clear, however, is that it has been used by certain forces, inimical to families and to the freedom of nations, to advance their evil agenda. These forces tell us that we are now the subjects of the so-called ‘Great Reset,’ the ‘new normal,’ which is dictated to us by their manipulation of citizens and nations through ignorance and fear.”

He also addressed our subservience to China

“To attain economic gains, we as a nation have permitted ourselves to become dependent upon the Chinese Communist Party, an ideology totally opposed to the Christian foundations upon which families and our nation remain safe and prosper,”

See the whole thing here: (17:27)

Getting on with today

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Doing a dump run this morning - sorting and tossing. Nice and cathartic. Out for dog walk and coffee in a little while - picked up a really good bread machine book at the library so will try one of the recipies later this morning.

Supposed to be quite the wind today - forecast is for gusts to 50MPH. Where I live is sheltered by a high hill but it will be fun to listen to.

Some good news from the US Supreme Court

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From Newsmax:

Supreme Court Throws out Challenge to Trump Census Immigrant Plan
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday threw out a lawsuit seeking to block President Donald Trump's plan to exclude immigrants living in the United States illegally from the population count used to allocate congressional districts to states.

The 6-3 ruling on ideological lines with the court's six conservatives in the majority and three liberals dissenting, gives Trump a short-term victory as he pursues his hard-line policies toward immigration in the final weeks of his presidency.

And the reason for the suit:

Challengers led by New York state and the American Civil Liberties Union said Trump's proposal would dilute the political clout of states with larger numbers of such immigrants, including heavily Democratic California, by undercounting state populations and depriving them of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to the benefit of his fellow Republicans.

They wanted to pack the House of Representatives. Illegals are dependent on gimme programs and they reliably vote Democrat. The more representatives a state has in Congress, the more political power it can wield.  The Democrats have nothing to offer so they have to cheat. Simple as that.

What's up at the Pentagon

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Planning something anytime soon? From Axios:

Pentagon halts Biden transition briefings
Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller ordered a Pentagon-wide halt to cooperation with the transition of President-elect Biden, shocking officials across the Defense Department, senior administration officials tell Axios.

Behind the scenes: A top Biden official was unaware of the directive. Administration officials left open the possibility cooperation would resume after a holiday pause. The officials were unsure what prompted Miller's action, or whether President Trump approved.

Why it matters: Miller's move, which stunned officials throughout the Pentagon, was the biggest eruption yet of animus and mistrust toward the Biden team from the top level of the Trump administration.

What happened: Meetings between President Trump's team and the Biden team are going on throughout the government, after a delayed start as the administration dragged its feet on officially recognizing Biden as president-elect.

Then on Thursday night, Miller — who was appointed Nov. 9, when Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper right after the election — ordered officials throughout the building to cancel scheduled transition meetings.

Something is up.  This is a fun time to be alive. A re-birth of our republic.  Cleaning house.

Serious problems with the Supreme Court

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First this: "Our Supreme Court - Justice Roberts" and now this:
They are refusing or slow-walking anything to do with the election. From Sydney Powell's twitter account:

WTF is going on here? What does the deep state have on Justice Roberts?

From Rumble:

Nurse passes out on live TV after being administered COVID-19 vaccine

Unfortunately, Big Tech is already in the process of wiping this video from existence.

There's nothing to be concerned about with the vaccine, according to mainstream media, Big Tech, and most medical professionals. That's why they're in the process of scrubbing the internet of the video above. They do not want anyone to know about the issues that have been popping up all week since the COVID-19 vaccine began rolling out.

I will probably take the vaccine but not now - give it six months or so.

That's Doctor Jill Biden to you

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Some people are starting to take a look at Doctor Jill Biden's credentials - Kyle Smith writes at National Review:

Jill Biden’s Garbage Dissertation, Explained
To call Jill Biden’s dissertation thin gruel is an insult to gruel. Whatever meager substance puddled in Bob Cratchit’s miserable bowl at mealtime was a bountiful feast compared with this paper. I wrote yesterday about the problems with this capstone project, the foundation of her Ed.D. degree and of the insistence of so many in recent days that we must call her “Dr.”

Mrs. Biden’s only original research consists of interviews with two — that’s right, two — ex-students and a few colleagues at Delaware Technical Community College, where she used to teach, plus the results of a vacuous questionnaire she wrote that was returned by about 150 people who worked or studied there. Oh, and she also called two nearby community colleges seeking interviews about their retention rates. One of them wouldn’t answer the question; the other wouldn’t assign anyone to speak to her at all. Telling us about this misadventure serves no academic purpose, though it does fill up four pages of her generously spaced paper. The transcripts of her group chats with campus figures and colleagues take up nearly 30 pages out of 129. The questionnaires eat up another 18 pages.

Kyle lists a number of things he has found and offers this:

Jill Biden looks like yet another member of the Biden family who successfully leveraged the family name to obtain things of value that otherwise would have lain far beyond the reach of someone of such meager talents.

So true. Also, this is not the work of a student in their 20's - Jill Biden was 56 when she wrote this.

If you have an evening to kill, the 137 page dissertation can be downloaded here:
STUDENT RETENTION AT THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE: MEETING STUDENTS’ NEEDS

Tucher Carlson has a few words:

Arkancide - Georgia

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Looks like Hillary's team is alive and working behind the scenes:

The Covid closures - an explanation

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Makes perfect sense - from 90 Miles:

20201217-closures.jpg

Our Supreme Court - Justice Roberts

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A two-fer. First, from Lin Wood's twitter account:

Second, from Kyle Becker's twitter account:

I would really like to know who has what on Roberts. Someone has him blackmailed. Be sure to visit Kyle's twitter page as a lot of other people chime in with additional reporting.

From MSN:

Insurers balk at covering Portland businesses; brokers say downtown upheaval has made carriers wary
Eric Murfitt watched helplessly from a live security feed as looters trashed his downtown clothing store, Mercantile, during a riot on May 30. Murfitt said the business suffered $1 million in losses due to the break-in and had to file an insurance claim to stay afloat.

But in November, Murfitt was informed that his insurance carrier would not be renewing the store’s policy. Nearly a dozen other insurance companies declined to even offer Mercantile a quote.

So earlier this month, Murfitt settled for a policy that nearly quadrupled his premium, had a significantly higher deductible, included a much smaller cap on coverage related to robbery and excluded any property damage related to civil unrest.

“We’re effectively uninsured right now,” Murfitt said. “And we’re paying four times as much for the privilege.”

Meanwhile, Target, Amazon, Walmart are posting record profits. They are targeting the little guy.  They want us dependent on the state for everything.

The Motor City does not like the Kraken

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Sydney Powell's lawsuit at the Supreme Court has ruffled from feathers. From Law & Crime:

Detroit Is Trying to Get Sidney Powell Fined, Banned from Court, and Referred to the Bar for Filing the ‘Kraken’
The City of Detroit wants Sidney Powell and her self-styled “Kraken” team to face sanctions for “frivolously undermining ‘People’s faith in the democratic process and their trust in our government.'”

The Motor City’s motion asks a federal judge to fine the lawyers, ban them from practicing in the Eastern District in Michigan and refer them to the Wolverine State’s bar for grievance proceedings.

“It’s time for this nonsense to end,” Detroit’s lawyer David Fink told Law&Crime in a phone interview.

“The lawyers filing these frivolous cases that undermine democracy must pay a price,” Fink added.

Much more at the site.  As they say:  If you are receiving flak, you are over the target.

And that is it for tonight.

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Texting up a storm with the person I met recently. Fun time.

Full day tomorrow and got a lot to do here so that is it for tonight.

Great news - Docket No. 20-815

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From the US Supreme Court:

Title:
Timothy King, et al., Petitioners
v.
Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan, et al.
Docketed: December 15, 2020

Specifically: PETITIONERS’ NOTICE OF SUPPLEMENTAL AUTHORITY

And the Conclusion:

In an earlier generation, Mr. Dooley remarked that the Court follows the
election returns. Were it to do so now, the Court would first have to decide whether
it could trust the returns. Allowing a fraudulent result to be enforced would
threaten the legitimacy of two branches of the federal government, not just one. The
Court is called to its duty by the ghosts entombed on the other side of the Potomac
River. Fiat justitia ruat caelum

Gentle people - I present The Kraken.  Let justice be done though the heavens fall

Now this is fun - Google's Blob Opera

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Just go here and mess around: Blob Opera

Change my mind - emergencies

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Good news - California

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Great rant from Adam Carolla - at TMZ:

YEAH, RECALL GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM ... Wake Up, You Sheep!!!
Adam Carolla supports the recall effort gaining steam against Gov. Gavin Newsom -- because he says the guy's a tyrant, and that Californians should snap out of his BS spell.

We talked to the comedian Tuesday in Burbank, CA, where he was about to head into a restaurant his friend owns for a little sit-down meal ... almost out of protest, it seems. It's pretty clear ... Adam thinks the new shutdown orders are ridiculous, and he explains why.

In his eyes, there's just no proof to connect outdoor dining to massive outbreaks of coronavirus cases -- he thinks Newsom's just throwing crap at a wall and doing what he wants ... behavior of an unhinged king, which Adam says Newsom is not.

He also speaks to Californians, telling them to stop acting like sheep by blindly taking orders ... without thinking about the logic, or lack thereof, behind them.

He speaks for me.

A very good point - the vaccine

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From My Pensieve:

20201216-vaccine.jpg

Lots of smoke - no fire yet...

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Project Veritas released a teaser yesterday - today, the first recording has been made public. Project Veritas.

This could be interesting.

Some headlines - Democrats

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And that is it for me for tonight.

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Accidently deleted some files - I have a backup but it is two weeks old.  Cobbler's children and all that.  Was able to recover most of them using Recuva - excellent program and free,

Time for some YouTube and then bed - long day tomorrow.

Interesting times as well - met someone nice a few weeks ago. Had a fun time together this afternoon.

Curious news from Canadian outlet RebelNews:

Chinese pilots training at former Canadian military base in Alberta
A troop of Chinese nationals are training to become pilots at a decommissioned Canadian military base near Red Deer, Alberta. After receiving several tips suggesting that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was actively training military personnel at the former CFB Penhold, Rebel News visited the location to investigate.

Rebel News confirmed that there is a vast number of Chinese nationals conducting flight training, and they have been doing so for years. One student said that he had been there for “around 500 days,” and that another group of students headed back to China had been there for “32 months.”

Training foreign nationals from an increasingly belligerent nation like China in the art of flying our aircraft is not as innocuous as it might seem. The knowledge gap between flying a plane full of civilians and flying a plane full of soldiers is not that wide.

Couple this revelation with the recent confidential documents released by Rebel News which show Justin Trudeau inviting the PLA to send its troops for cold weather training at CFB Petawawa in Ontario — it makes you wonder where this Canadian government’s loyalties lie.

Much more at the site including a short video interviewing a couple of the Chinese airmen.

Trudeau is not politically correct, he is a clueless buffoon.  He thinks that he will be sitting at the adults table once the globalists cement their power. He and Biden and BLM and their ilk will be at the adults table but not sitting.  They will be roasted and in the serving platters with a side of steamed broccoli. They are the useful idiots to be cast aside as soon as control is achieved. Ditto the foppish intellectuals at the universities.  Remember what Mao did when he came to power.

He has been releasing the CNN audio with CNN President Jeff Zucker.  CNN's bias and political machinations are writ large for anyone to listen to.  Now, a new series is starting.
James has the announcement:

Very interesting. Not surprised that he is staying away from his office - too many cases of Arkancide happening these days.

Some more corruption is coming to light - from CD Media:

Obama And Pelosi Didn’t Win Elections In The Last Decade, It Was Dominion
Then Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi assured the American public in 2018 the Democrats would win in the general election and take the House of Representatives. She knew ahead of time this would be true of course. You see, the Democrats have had Dominion for some time now. They knew the fix was in.

The software in Dominion Voting Systems devices has its roots in Venezuela, according to recent reports. It was there that Hugo Chavez developed the technology to take power and install socialist rule in the country. This capability has been exported elsewhere, and is in 28 of our United States for election use.

The Antrim County forensic examination results revealed software that is designed to generate errors – approximately 70% – so most of the ballots get ‘adjuticated’ by a human being, possibly even outside the country.

This is how the con was done — create ballot errors in Trump votes, then call them all for Biden in batches.

Carefully orchestrated but the sheer number of people voting for Trump in 2016 caught them unprepared.  They were ready in 2020 but so was Team Trump. Still waiting for the jail doors to start slamming shut.

And you wonder why?  Does not fit the narrative...  From the New York Post:

St. John the Divine Cathedral shooter ID’d, had attempted murder charge
The gunman shot dead by cops after opening fire on the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Sunday had a long rap sheet that included an attempted murder bust, according to records and sources.

And it wasn’t the first time he shot at cops, sources said.

Luis Vasquez, 52, was arrested on the Upper West Side for attempted murder in 1990, and on an assault charge there a year earlier, sources said Monday.

In the first case, Vasquez was accused of firing a gun at police and an unidentified woman on Aug. 21, 1990, according to sources.

State prison records show he was sentenced to three-to-nine years after pleading guilty to a lesser felony weapons possession charge.

He was released but rearrested on a drug charge in 2007 and turned over to immigration authorities in November of that year.

Vasquez is a native of the Dominican Republic. His travel visa from the country expired on Sunday, sources said. 

Illegal immigrant, prior rap sheet for violence.  Of course the mainstream media will not touch this story - undocumented refugees are fleeing persecution and trying to make a better life for themselves. The respective foreign governments are not emptying out their prisons and giving them bus tickets North - how could you even think of such a thing...

And out for a while - dog walk and coffee

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Dogs are restless so taking them to a large agricultural field and let them run around for a while.  Coffee next and then dropping off some tools to a friend who is doing a project at their house.

Unloading the van today. Back in a couple...

Finally - the FTC

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Should have done this fifteen years ago - from Tech Crunch:

FTC orders ByteDance, Facebook, Snap and others to explain what they do with user data
The FTC is ordering the companies behind many of the largest social and video platforms to explain how they use the treasure troves of data they harvest from users. Amazon, TikTok owner ByteDance, Facebook, WhatsApp, Discord, Reddit, Snap, Twitter and YouTube were all sent the order, with a deadline set 45 days from now.

The FTC’s focus is on how these companies “collect, use, and present personal information, their advertising and user engagement practices, and how their practices affect children and teens.” Four of the FTC’s commissioners voted in favor of the order, with Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips dissenting.

“Despite their central role in our daily lives, the decisions that prominent online platforms make regarding consumers and consumer data remain shrouded in secrecy,” Commissioners Rohit Chopra, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Christine S. Wilson said in a joint statement.

Good - the Federal Trade Commission's job is to protect consumers and to prevent unfair practices. The Social Media companies are stomping all over us.  It will be good for them to be taken down a notch or two.

Massive data dump last night - no goodies yet but holy cow - what a trove. WikiLeaks

Heh - James Woods on Biden

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From his twitter account:

Be sure to visit the site to see more of the memes - a lot of fun and spot on.

And that is it for me for the evening

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Nothing much on the web.  Got a pretty full day tomorrow so an hour or two of videos and then an early bedtime.

Got a big one - Cocaine boat

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From gCaptain:

USS Gabrielle Giffords Catches Drug Smuggling Vessel Carrying Over $100 Million of Cocaine
The littoral combat ship USS Gabrielle Giffords has seized suspected cocaine worth more than $100 million from a low-profile drug smuggling vessel in the Pacific Ocean, the Navy said over the weekend.

USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) was embarked with a U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment when it intercepted the low-profile vessel suspected of smuggling narcotics on December 5. A search of the vessel recovered approximately 134 bales containing an estimated 2,810 kilos of suspected cocaine. Three suspected drug traffickers were also detained.

The Navy estimated the value of the cocaine at $106 million wholesale.

There is a photo of the two craft:

20201214-cocaine.jpg

The smugglers are getting very clever in the last ten years or so.  Their boats are semi-submersable.  Built very cheaply but with sophisticated engineering. Designed as single-use craft. Not very fast but fuel efficient and stealthy - too low a profile to be seen on most radar screens. I would hate to be in a storm in one though...

Heh - celebration

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Just askin'

20201214-plague.jpg

A comment - fun times

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Found this on the internet - the thread was talking about this curious chain of events, the fact that there are dual sets of electors for PA, GA, MI, WI, AZ, NV, and NM and that the President of the Senate gets to choose which get counted.  That would be our Vice President Mike Pence. The envelopes with the Democrat Electors can be tossed in the trash.

Riffing on the NORAD Santa Claus website:

More than Santa will be on NORAD radar screens on December 24...

Puts a smile on my face.  My Birthday present (Nov 3rd) requires a lot of assembly. Maybe I'll get some help from Santa in a week or two.

And buh-bye - Bill Barr

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Had great hopes for him but he turned out to be another slow-walking deep state meat puppet.  He is outta there.   
From President Trump's twitter account:

He could have done so much to right the wrongs in this Nation. His legacy will be a big fat Meh...

And back home - Bellingham

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Back from Bellingham - van is loaded with more crap to sort, triage and find homes for.

In for the evening.

The hack

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Wrote about it yesterday: Hacking - a curious incident

It's real and it's massive - from the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

Active Exploitation of SolarWinds Software
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is aware of active exploitation of SolarWinds Orion Platform software versions 2019.4 HF 5 through 2020.2.1 HF 1, released between March 2020 and June 2020.

CISA encourages affected organizations to read the SolarWinds and FireEye advisories for more information and FireEye’s GitHub page for detection countermeasures:

SolarWinds makes software that helps large organizations manage their network and IT infrastructure. Monitoring network and server performance, databases, trouble tickets and service desk. The basic tasks.  They are used by a lot of corporations, our government, military and yes, Dominion Voting Systems.

The issue here is not just the initial breach.  The core issue is that it installs backdoors into the infected machines which lay dormant until triggered - either by an external signal or a length of time. These systems will need to be taken down to bare metal and rebuilt. More as I hear about it.

Would not be surprised

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Always a possibility:

20201214-vaccine.jpg

Crap - RIP John le Carré

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From CNN:

Best-selling spy novelist John le Carré dies at 89
Best-selling British espionage writer David Cornwell -- known to the world as John le Carré -- died Saturday at 89, according to his literary agent.

Le Carré's family said in a statement that he died from pneumonia. He is survived by his wife, Jane, and four sons.

We have lost some amazing talent in 2020. le Carré was a damn good writer.

Finally - American Medical Association

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Buried on page 18 of this 24 page document:
Subject: Handbook Addendum - Supplemental Business and Information

RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association rescind its statement calling for physicians
to stop prescribing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine until sufficient evidence becomes
available to conclusively illustrate that the harm associated with use outweighs benefit early in
the disease course. Implying that such treatment is inappropriate contradicts AMA Policy
H-120.988, “Patient Access to Treatments Prescribed by Their Physicians,” that addresses off
label prescriptions as appropriate in the judgement of the prescribing physician (Directive to
Take Action); and be it further

RESOLVED, That our AMA rescind its joint statement with the American Pharmacists
Association and American Society of Health System Pharmacists, and update it with a joint
statement notifying patients that further studies are ongoing to clarify any potential benefit of
hydroxychloroquine and combination therapies for the treatment of COVID-19 (Directive to Take
Action); and be it further

RESOLVED, That our AMA reassure the patients whose physicians are prescribing
hydroxychloroquine and combination therapies for their early-stage COVID-19 diagnosis by
issuing an updated statement clarifying our support for a physician’s ability to prescribe an FDA
approved medication for off label use, if it is in her/his best clinical judgement, with specific
reference to the use of hydroxychloroquine and combination therapies for the treatment of the
earliest stage of COVID-19 (Directive to Take Action); and be it further

RESOLVED, That our AMA take the actions necessary to require local pharmacies to fill valid
prescriptions that are issued by physicians and consistent with AMA principles articulated in
AMA Policy H-120.988, “Patient Access to Treatments Prescribed by Their Physicians,”
including working with the American Pharmacists Association and American Society of Health
System Pharmacists. (Directive to Take Action)

So, physicians are now able to prescribe hydroxychloroquine again. It works. It is cheap. Now, if they would do the same for ivermectin we would go a long way towards actually fixing this problem instead of just throwing vast amounts of taxpayer money (our dollars) at an unproved vaccine technology.

Looks like they do not see the communist mob for what it really is. Still living in their fantasy world. Still believing the narrative.  Still pushing the narrative.  Still saying what their masters want them to say. From PJ Media:

Portland MSM Shocked When Antifa Attacks Them for Covering Armed Takeover. Mike Strickland and Andy Ngo Say Told Ya So
They’re shocked that antifa attacks them. Reporters with The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune, freelance photographers, and a local TV station reporter and crew complain they’ve been attacked and/or threatened by antifa and Black Lives Matter activists at the so-called Red House Autonomous Zone. This is the spot along Mississippi Avenue in North Portland where armed insurrectionists have taken over a neighborhood to stop a foreclosure of a house – in a foreclosure that actually happened two years ago.

The stunned reporters expect understanding, appeasement from the mob, help from official Portland, and appreciation of their constitutionally protected, God-given right to cover the news.

They’re late. Michael Strickland and Andy Ngo want to know where this same mainstream media have been. Where were the appeals to the constitution and help from official Portland in 2016 and 2019 respectively, when Strickland and Ngo were attacked by antifa thugs? Where were capital “J” Journalists when Strickland was sent to jail and Ngo was sent to the hospital because of attacks by antifa?

The Oregonian reported that troubles began almost immediately for reporters covering the takeover of the house and the streets surrounding it.

The problems for reporters began almost as soon as demonstrators on Tuesday clashed with sheriff’s deputies and police, who had come to serve an eviction notice and help secure the property.

The activist group PNW Youth Liberation Front set forth a rationale for limits on journalists in a tweet Thursday. “The space at the Red House is an active eviction blockade,” it said. “If you enter that space not to defend the Kinney family, but to livestream or film the risks that others are taking for your personal gain, then you are a guest. If you aren’t respectful, you will be an unwelcome one.”

The newspaper was shocked that a KATU-TV news crew was stopped and attacked for videoing the armed insurrection.

Much more at the site - lots of reports from other journalists who were harrassed, had cameras knocked out of their hands, were beaten or threatened. This is the militant wing of the Democrat party as they try to take over the United States.

Quite the letter - Reverend Warnock

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He is the Democratic Senate candidate from Georgia - he is an advocate of Critical Race Theory and an anti-Semitic bigot. Far far left. His mentor was Jeramiah Wright - that says it all. From The Daily Wire:

‘Scandal To The Faith’: Group Of Black Pastors Rebuke Warnock For ‘Open Advocacy Of Abortion’
A group of black pastors penned a letter rebuking Democratic Georgia Senate candidate Raphael Warnock for what they describe as his “open advocacy of abortion,” and urge Warnock “to fight against the systemic racism of abortion.”

Twenty-eight black leaders in the Christian community pushed back against Warnock’s hardline abortion views in the letter, including evangelist Alveda King, who is the niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Warnock presently pastors Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, a congregation which King also once pastored.

Warnock, whose runoff Senate race in Georgia is under intense national attention for the potential it has to swing the upper chamber to the Democratic Party, has before raised eyebrows among some Christians for comments he has made about Christianity, such as when he described Jesus Christ as “a poor Palestinian prophet” and a “Palestinian peasant.”

The text of the letter is there.  Wow!  Just one paragraph:

Couching abortion in the language of “reproductive justice” may be savvy marketing, but killing an innocent human life has nothing to do either with reproduction or with justice. Do American adults really need another public voice urging them to put their own short-term desires ahead of the needs of their children? As a pastor who speaks for the Christian community, we implore you to speak the plain truth about a practice as barbaric and destructive as abortion.

That will leave a mark. The fact that the authors are 100% correct makes it even more devistating.

Hmmmm - is something being planned?

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Over Christmas? Two recent executive orders (a few days ago):

Coupled with this one from September 12th, 2018

The first one changes this Christmas from a three-day weekend to a four-day weekend.

The second one specifies who will be in command if there is a change of personnel.

The third one states in part:

Not later than 45 days after the conclusion of a United States election, the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the heads of any other appropriate executive departments and agencies (agencies), shall conduct an assessment of any information indicating that a foreign government, or any person acting as an agent of or on behalf of a foreign government, has acted with the intent or purpose of interfering in that election.

Well, 45 days from November 3rd is Friday, December 18, 2020.

Never bet against President Trump. Get the assessment, spend a week finalizing plans and moving materiel and then blammo. A Christmas present to America the likes of which we have never seen before. We do live in interesting times.

General Flynn weighs in - interview

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Great 8:42 interview with Maria Bartiromo:

He mentions this website: Defending the Republic

The Chinese breach - our media

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I am getting very disgusted with the media these days - from NOQ Report:

Media outlets knew of massive CCP infiltration in September but chose to wait until after the election
The stunning report about Chinese Communist Party members infiltrating seats of power across the western world is old news, at least to many journalists. They were made aware of the data leak in September, but with the presidential election coming up, nobody reported on it until yesterday.

The leaks, which were made public by multiple news outlets today, reveal that among nearly two million active members of the Chinese Communist Party, thousands have positions of power at major companies, non-government organizations, and even in western government bodies. It’s a shocking revelation that shines a light on the massive influence Beijing has over western society. On top of that, this data was collected in 2016, meaning there are likely thousands more major players in the CCP who have embedded themselves around the world in the last four year.

And Party membership is a really big thing:

Membership in the Chinese Communist Party, which is held by nearly 100 million people mostly living in China, is contingent on absolute devotion to the party itself. Many people spend their whole lives training to achieve membership because of the social and economic benefits it offers. But strict adherence to a party-first ideology is a requirement. Members have sworn to put the party above all other considerations and must be willing to make the ultimate sacrifices on orders from Beijing.

About one in ten who apply get accepted.  The media ignored it - they wanted to keep China out of the public narrative.  Can't steal Joe Xiden's rice bowl.

Hacking - a curious incident

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From the Washington Examiner:

Kremlin-backed hackers breach US Treasury and Commerce
A "sophisticated hacking group" backed by the Russian government reportedly infiltrated the Department of Treasury's systems and stole information related to internet and telecommunications policymaking as part of a broader campaign that also hacked the Commerce Department and other government agencies.

The FBI is investigating the attacks and is looking into the Russian hacking group APT29, also known as Cozy Bear, as a potential culprit, according to the Washington Post. The foreign-backed hack was first reported by Reuters.

As a result of the hack, the National Security Council held a meeting at the White House on Sunday.

The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed the incident in a statement but did not suggest who was behind the attack.

"We have been working closely with our agency partners regarding recently discovered activity on government networks," the agency said. "CISA is providing technical assistance to affected entities as they work to identify and mitigate any potential compromises."

Nothing yet on any of the white-hat sites but they generally keep quiet until they have conclusive data. Should be a day or two.

So true - sucess

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Great comment from Eric Trump

20201213-trump.jpg

The Biden family - cooperative

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Stonewalling is more like it - from CBS reporter Catherine Herridge's twitter account:

According to a Saturday press release from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, several requests dating back to September 23 for interviews and records have been ignored by President-elect Joe Biden’s son, his brother, and other associates.

Not a big surprise.

Measure twice

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Fun idea - planning to swipe it when I am doing some of the trim at the house:

20201213-cut.jpg

BillG is getting crazier and crazier

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From The Hill's twitter account:

He simply does not get it. Wrapped up in his own little bubble.

Defund the police

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Joe Xiden on a zoom call:

Because defunding the police has worked so well for the last couple of months - Portland and Seattle come to mind

But of course - China

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From the London Daily Mail:

Leaked files expose mass infiltration of UK firms by Chinese Communist Party including AstraZeneca, Rolls Royce, HSBC and Jaguar Land Rover
Loyal members of the Chinese Communist Party are working in British consulates, universities and for some of the UK's leading companies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

An extraordinary leaked database of 1.95 million registered party members reveals how Beijing's malign influence now stretches into almost every corner of British life, including defence firms, banks and pharmaceutical giants.

Most alarmingly, some of its members – who swear a solemn oath to 'guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party, work hard, fight for communism throughout my life...and never betray the Party' – are understood to have secured jobs in British consulates.

Companies in the USA as well - all around the world.  Defense, pharma and technology. Not at all surprised.

The raw data can be found here - the text is in Chinese but translations are ongoing.

A cautionary tale - Shiri’s Scissor

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Just go and read.  Makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

Got nothing this morning - gray cold day

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Nothing happening on this island paradise. Heading out shortly to take the pups for a run, do some large laundry (bedding) and get a coffee.

High wind warnings in the forecast for this afternoon. See what happens.

From the Abbeville Institute:

The Battle of Athens, Tennessee
On August 1, 1946, a group of Southern World War Two veterans in Athens, Tennessee, fought and won the only successful armed insurrection in the United States since the War of Independence. These brave men embodied that irrepressible Southern spirit, that martial valor and moral sublimity that suffused the souls of Dixie and her children for generations upon generations, stretching backwards in time through the annals of Indo-European civilization — that constitution which we fervently hope has not drained from our blood forevermore. The Battle of Athens stands, then, as a monumental event in the history of Southern, and thus Western, civilization, the fulfillment of an ancestral promise; so, too, does the Battle of Athens represent a call echoing through the ages to fall on modern ears that must not remain deaf — a call to actualize the destiny that our forefathers spilt so much blood, both their own and their enemies’, to leave to us.

Athens is the seat of McMinn County, which, at the time, was the nerve center for Sheriff Paul Cantrell, a major lieutenant of a corrupt Democratic machine which stretched from Tennessee to the District of Columbia. Though we will eschew labeling Cantrell or his machine politics “evil,” as this was simply the way things were done in many American polities, it is worth noting that before and especially during the Second World War, Cantrell presided over corruption and graft on an industrial scale. As Chris DeRose details, the Sheriff drew salaries of nearly sixty thousand dollars per year over his first six years that were worth well over one million dollars in today’s purchasing power. He was also appointed superintendent of the county workhouse for an additional salary of over two thousand dollars; DeRose notes that “McMinn County did not have a workhouse, making its superintending easy.” This at a time when the median Tennessee home was worth less than two thousand dollars and the starting salary for enlisted men was fifty dollars per month. Despite strict rationing, McMinn machine men never wanted for cars, tires, or fuel. Illegal casinos, speakeasies, and whorehouses payed thousands of dollars per month in protection money. Dozens of county employees were listed on the payrolls for the sole purpose of providing cover for a vast money laundering operation.

The story is pretty amazing - deep deep levels of corruption and returning soldiers banded together to put a stop to it.  The article closes - in part - with this:

Letters inundated the local papers, with messages of encouragement such as: “To the GI Patriots, Athens, Tennessee: Thank you indeed for restoring the faith in America which so many of us had lost. Keep pitching and firing when necessary.”; “We have chicken-stealers and hog-stealers! House-stealers and auto-stealers! But the lowest, dirtiest of all are our election-stealers!”; and, “I congratulate you in the memory of my son, who lies buried in the South Pacific.” One GI carried a small paper with him everywhere, which read: “Remember…that no American can afford to be disinterested in any part of his Government, whether it is county, city, State, or nation.” The Tennessean praised what “has happened in the beautiful little city of Athens in McMinn County,” which “undoubtedly has awakened a thrill of pride throughout this machine-ridden state. Make no mistake. The McMinn County veterans and their supporters had first won their victory at the polls. Then they fought, with their bare fists and such weapons as they could seize, to protect their election from the theft attempted by force of arms before their eyes. This was no ‘riot’—unless Bunker Hill was a riot.” The “Boston Tea Party of Tennessee [caused] by a decade of election corruption and thievery, has stamped upon a brutal farce it had determined to endure no longer.” The battle was “what always has happened where men not born of a craven race have been pushed too far by tyranny.”

Similarly, a Commonwealth editorial read: “Since, after all, our American nation was founded by virtue of revolution, and since such revered figures as Jefferson evidently thought that revolution had valuable tonic effects on the body politic, it would be a trifle hypocritical for Americans to raise their hands in horror at these goings-on in the shadow of the Great Smokies.”

We need the same spirit now. Clean out Washington. What the last four years has shown me is that it is not just a few bad actors.  The entire system is corrupt. They keep talking about a Reset?  Let us give them a Reset they will remember for the rest of their lives.  As they enjoy it from behind bars.

Mossyrock, Washington - I Will Not Comply

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The City of Mossyrock is a gorgeous small town between Seattle and Portland. From Seattle station KING-5:

Freedom rally drums up support for businesses in small Lewis County town
Hundreds of people converged on the small town of Mossyrock in Lewis County Saturday to support small businesses hit hard by the pandemic.

The "Freedom Rally" gave people a chance to share their frustrations about Gov. Jay Inslee's latest set of COVID-19 restrictions that prohibit indoor dining and set capacity restrictions on retail stores.

It's been a rough year in Mossyrock, where the cancellation of the annual Blueberry Festival along with Loggers Jubilee in nearby Morton has deeply impacted tourism. Those closures along with increased COVID restrictions have pushed some to the breaking point, emotionally and financially.

"What people don't understand is those three events in those towns is what gets the towns by for the year because of the tourism," said Arminta Melis, who came with her husband from Morton to show support for Mossyrock.

I would love for our small island to do the same. There is hope in this world. The Conservative Treehouse has some observations:

Consent Withdrawn, Entire Town of Mossyrock Washington Defies Governor Inslee’s Latest Set of COVID-19 Restrictions
Many people talk of a foreboding sense. A sense that something is very close to erupting on the surface. I believe, and have said for months, the final eruption will come as a result of overreach by control authority in reference to COVID dictates. We are close.

In Washington State the entire town of Mossyrock has united to defy the COVID-19 dictatorial fiats of the State Governor Jay Inslee. This is how the rebellion will succeed.

And a bit more:

The power of the local, regional or state authority comes from the expressed consent of the people. As soon as the majority of people in that municipality deny that consent, those officials and state authoritarians lose all of their power.

Yes, it really is that simple.

And, of course:

..”If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.”..
~Sam Adams

So true - a few people at first but more and more are saying: "We will not comply"  Witnessing the rebirth of the American Republic.

And do not forget this day

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Some wise words - Adam Carolla

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At RedState:

Adam Carolla Brilliantly Breaks Down Self-Esteem, Free Speech, and Cancel Culture
Adam Carolla wants to know why he should listen to dummies.

In an interview with The Daily Caller’s Stephanie Hamill, the entertainer continued his long-established position on liberty: He’s for it.

What caught my eye:

“We started…in earnest with this self-esteem movement, that it’d be really good if everyone had high self-esteem. And the way you get high self-esteem is through accomplishing things that are tough. But you can’t just hand people high self-esteem and tell them they’re the best and they don’t need to listen to anybody, and nothing they can do is wrong. And when you do that, you create a monster, essentially. You create horrible citizens.”

“[W]hen people try to graft self-esteem onto you, you will be miserable eventually. And the reason you’ll have to be miserable is ’cause everyone’ll keep telling you, ‘Oh, you’re the best, you’re the coolest, you’re the greatest,’ and everything like that. But you start looking around, and five years [have] gone by, and clearly there’s nothing going on — like you’re not the best, you’re not rich, you don’t have a great job, you don’t have a cool car. So now you feel like the best person in the world driving a beat-up car and working at a Burger King, and…that then turns to anger. … If you’d earned that self-esteem — if you felt as good about yourself as you should feel about yourself based on your accomplishments — then you would have a completely different world view.”

Much more at the site - this is a wide-ranging interview.

From The Daily Wire:

Hunter Biden Called Father And Chinese Business Partner ‘Office Mates,’ Requested They Get Office Keys
A newly discovered email reportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop raises new questions over what his father, Joe Biden, knew about his son’s foreign business dealings.

In an email dated September 21, 2017, Hunter Biden wrote to Cecilia Browning, the general manager of an office building called “House of Sweden,” requesting that “keys” be “made available for new office mates.”

Hunter Biden listed the “new office mates” as being Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden, and Gongwen Dong (Chairman Ye CEFC emissary). Hunter Biden also requested a sign made for his office that stated “The Biden Foundation” and “Hudson West (CEFC US).”

CEFC China Energy was a Chinese conglomerate that was among the largest energy companies in China before going out of business a couple of years ago. CNN notes that the company “aligned itself so closely with the Chinese government that it was often hard to distinguish between the two.”

All the while Joe was denying any knowledge of Hunter's business dealings.

Slow newsday

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Lots of stuff pending but nothing breaking today.

Some good perspective on the election

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From Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò - November 4th, 2020 - The Remnant:

MESSAGE OF ARCHBISHOP CARLO MARIA VIGANÒ TO AMERICAN CATHOLICS AND TO ALL AMERICANS OF GOOD WILL
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

As devout Christians and faithful citizens of the United States of America, you have intense and heartfelt concern for the fate of your beloved country while the final results of the Presidential election are still uncertain.

News of electoral fraud is multiplying, despite the shameful attempts of the mainstream media to censor the truth of the facts in order to give their candidate the advantage. There are states in which the number of votes is greater than the number of voters; others in which the mail-in vote seems to be exclusively in favor of Joe Biden; others in which the counting of ballots has been suspended for no reason or where sensational tampering has been discovered: always and only against President Donald J. Trump, always and only in favor of Biden.

In truth, for months now we have been witnessing a continuous trickle of staggered news, of manipulated or censored information, of crimes that have been silenced or covered up in the face of striking evidence and irrefutable testimony. We have seen the deep state organize itself, well in advance, to carry out the most colossal electoral fraud in history, in order to ensure the defeat of the man who has strenuously opposed the establishment of the New World Order that is wanted by the children of darkness. In this battle, you have not failed, as is your sacred duty, to make your own contribution by taking the side of the Good. Others, enslaved by vices or blinded by infernal hatred against Our Lord, have taken the side of Evil.

Do not think that the children of darkness act with honesty, and do not be scandalized if they operate with deception. Do you perhaps believe that Satan’s followers are honest, sincere, and loyal? The Lord has warned us against the Devil: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).

Much more at the site - I quoted a bit less than half of the letter.  Now this is speaking truth to power.
This really is a battle between good and evil.

Some pushback - California

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From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A small tourist town is refusing to comply with California's shutdown. It may not be the only one
On Sunday at midnight, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order went into effect for the greater Southern California region. The order shuttered all in-person dining, closed hotels to everyone but essential workers, and further reduced capacity in retail establishments. Breweries and wineries were closed to all but retail sales.

But the small tourist town of Solvang is refusing to comply — even as the pandemic surges.

On Monday, Solvang Mayor Ryan Toussaint filed an emergency motion in a Solvang City Council meeting that the town would not comply with the order. It passed 5-0.

“As of tonight, they can go about their business as they had done this weekend,” said Councilman Daniel Johnson. While restaurants are still adhering to safety protocols and limiting capacity, they are continuing to allow outdoor dining.

“Significant concerns about the latest round of business shutdowns were expressed by residents, business representatives and our Council,” Toussaint wrote in a letter on Dec. 7 to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. “The community of Solvang has done a great job at being mindful, safe and responsible while keeping our local economy going during these challenging times. The current order by the State is ill-conceived, unnecessary and quite frankly negligent when it comes to protecting our community in a safe, balanced and sane manner.”

Great move - We The People are speaking out.  Gruesome Newsom put the lockdown trigger at 15% knowing full well that Emergency rooms and ICU capacity always hits 10% this time of year.  Makes perfect sense when you think about it - building a new hospital?  Statistically, what is your busiest time and how busy are you? Build in a 10% buffer and go. I wrote about that a couple of days ago: The California Lockdown

Some fun photos at the site - two signs: "Don we now our face apparel" and "Please Santa-tize upon entering"

Two memes for today

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From the intarwebs:

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An interesting tweet - Lou Dobbs

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Old school journalist from FOX News - his twitter account:

Interesting times.  These are real people he posted in this document. Wonder when the rest will be released.

UPDATE: It comes from Sidney Powell - here is a 6:13 interview of her by Lou

The Kraken continues to develop - the level of corruption and the interconnectedness of the various actors and states is beyond belief.

Inflating the numbers - WA State

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Looks like they are correcting them - from Patch.com

214 Coronavirus Deaths Removed From WA Totals After Adjustment
The Washington State Department of Health on Thursday made a major adjustment to how it publicly reports coronavirus deaths, resulting in a noticeable drop in the totals reflected on the state dashboard.

Previously, the department included deaths that had a preliminary cause listed, the department said. Moving forward, the count will only include cases with an official, registered cause of death listed. According to state health officials, the change will streamline its process as death counts increase and allow for more precise reporting.

"Our normal process for releasing final death data is complex, involves multiple data systems, and can take up to 18 months from start to finish. This modified process requires that we make adjustments publicly and quickly without impacting the quality of the data or of our reporting.

Deaths due to factors other than COVID-19 can be hard to definitively rule out. For many of these conditions, COVID-19 may have hastened the death. These are the deaths we are reviewing, along with local health jurisdictions, to assess COVID-19's impact on the death."

As a result of the adjustments, Washington's official death count dropped from 3,016 on Wednesday to 2,850 Thursday, a difference of 166.

Now if they would just start coding correctly - someone coming to the hospital with a heart attack is not a COVID death. Even if they have it in their bloodstream. We need the real and accurate numbers, not the "numbers" that support their narrative.

They deserve each other - Melinda Gates

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From The Daily Wire:

Melinda Gates ‘Incredibly Disappointed’ Trump Put Americans First For Vaccines, Gushes Over Biden
Melinda Gates, wife of billionaire Bill Gates, told CNN on Thursday that she was “incredibly disappointed” that President Donald Trump’s signed an executive order that put Americans at the front of the line to receive coronavirus vaccines.

“The president just signed an executive order to try to put Americans at the front of the line when it comes to vaccines,” CNN host Poppy Harlow said, adding, “I wonder if that’s what you were worried about when you kept saying and warning against vaccine nationalism?”

“That’s exactly what we were worried about,” Melinda Gates responded. “I knew it was coming and I was just incredibly disappointed.”

“I’m much more optimistic about the president-elect and the COVID task force, this eminent task force that he has put together,” Melinda Gates said with a smile on her face. “I think we’re going to see a lot more sensible policy making in the United States, but that starts, you know, January 20 and we have still some dark months to live ahead until then.”

Stupid and willfully clueless is no way to go through life.  There is a reason that President Trump signed this Executive Order. It was developed in the USA, by US citizens, funded by the US taxpayers and we should have access to it first.  The Chinese puppetmasters should not be able to get it - We The People have first crack. It is not like we are preventing other nations from getting it - I refer to Section Four:

Sec. 4. International Access to United States Government COVID-19 Vaccines. After determining that there exists a sufficient supply of COVID-19 vaccine doses for all Americans who choose to be vaccinated, as required by section 3(b) of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of State, in coordination with the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, the Chief Executive Officer of the United States International Development Finance Corporation, the Chairman and President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and the heads of other agencies, shall facilitate international access to United States Government COVID-19 Vaccines for allies, partners, and others, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law.

Other nations can get it - it is just that we get it first.

So true - censorship

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From Allie Beth Stuckey's twitter account:

If there is nothing wrong, why did the states go to such great lengths to prevent observers from being there and why are Google and Facebook now activly engaging in censorship.

A bit of irony - The North Face clothing

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Their stuff is overpriced so I do not buy it to begin with but...  From the Midland Texas CBS affiliate:

North Face turns back on West Texas oil and gas company
Innovex Downhole Solutions says it was recently denied an order of jackets by The North Face, a popular outdoor recreation company because they are in the oil and gas business.

“I was surprised but not surprised if that makes sense,” Innovex CEO Adam Anderson said.

Innovex is based in Houston and has nearly 100 workers in the Permian Basin.

Each year, the company gets a Christmas gift for its employees. This year, it was supposed to be a North Face jacket with an Innovex logo, a company Innovex has ordered gear from in the past.

The company providing the jackets said The North Face doesn’t want to support the oil and gas industry in the same way they’d reject the porn industry or tobacco industry.

“They told us we did not meet their brand standards,” Anderson said. “We were separately informed that what that really meant is was that we were an oil and gas company.”

The irony of The North Face denying service to an industry that provides its ability to make and sell its products isn’t lost, either.

“The recreational activities they encourage are all ones that require hydrocarbons to make the products, to provide the means to get to whatever activity folks want to perform,” Anderson said. “It’s just so intertwined with everything that we do.”

Yeah - nylon and polypropylene are both made starting with petroleum feedstocks. The CEO of Inovex published a four-page document laying out the truth: Virtues of Low Cost and Reliable Energy  Listening to the soft popping of liberal heads exploding.

Corona testing in Austria

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A few droplets of a cola drink caused the test to yield a positive reaction. From this twitter account:

From the Austrian newspaper reitschuster.de (Google Translate)

Corona test strikes Cola
Controversial experiment in the Austrian parliament
Incredible scenes in the Austrian Parliament in Vienna: FPÖ General Secretary Michael Schnedlitz not only violently attacked the government's corona policy. Before the eyes of the parliamentarians, he also made an attempt: After going to the lectern and starting his speech, the politician sprinkled a corona rapid test with a few drops of cola. Three minutes later the test showed a result: It was positive. So Coke triggered such a result.

Schnedlitz commented: "Mr. President, we should now have a problem, we have a positive corona test in Parliament, namely this cola triggered a positive corona test. I don't know how to handle it now. With things like this you are throwing tens of millions of euros in tax money out of the window instead of providing real protection for old people's and nursing homes, instead of investing money in our hospitals. "

The one constant with this disease is the high levels of false positives - up to 90%. This is a major power grab masqurading as a major public health problem.

Google silences Scott Adams

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Dilbert creator and very smart cookie - Adams posted this on his twitter account:

Be sure to visit the page and read the thread that follows.

To quote Tyrion Lannister from the Game of Thrones, "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."

Masks - a comparison

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So true:

20201211-masks.jpg

All of Scotland's snow plows have been named and this website allows you to track them as they work. 

From Not The Bee:

Scotland named every single one of their snowplows, and the names are hilarious
They call them "gritters" in Scotland.

The country has 230 vehicles that remove snow and salt the roads, and every single one of them has been getting a name since 2006 when the Scottish Transport Ministry began asking children to give them monikers.

A few of my favorites are David Plowie, Snowkemon Go, Spready Mercury, and The Grittest Snowman.

Not The Bee is the factual adjunct to the Babylon Bee satire website.

Well shit - Supreme Court decision

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From Newsmax:

Supreme Court Rejects Texas Lawsuit and Trump Bid to Undo Election Loss
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday brought an abrupt end to a long-shot lawsuit filed by Texas and backed by President Donald Trump seeking to throw out voting results in four states, dealing him a crushing setback in his quest to undo his election loss to Joe Biden.

The justices in a brief order rejected the bid by Texas to file the extraordinary challenge targeting Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin directly with the Supreme Court, as is allowed in some instances of litigation between states under a legal doctrine called "original jurisdiction."

The order said Texas did not have legal standing to bring the claim.

"Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections," the court said in the unsigned order.

I was feeling really good about the suit.  What happened?

Biden and China

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From the South China Morning Post (owned by the Communist Chinese government):

US-China relations: Joe Biden says trade war tariffs to remain in place for now as alliance building comes first
US President-elect Joe Biden confirmed that he will not make any “immediate moves” to lift the tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed on imports of Chinese goods before a full review of the existing phase one trade deal and consultations with US allies, despite China’s hopes that it would be able to renegotiate the trade agreement with the new US administration.

In an interview with The New York Times published on Wednesday, Biden said the “best China strategy” was to get all traditional US allies in Asia and Europe “on the same page”, which will be his major priority “in the opening weeks” of his presidency.

In other words, he is going to hold out for even more kickbacks and bribes.  Once a Biden, always a Biden.

And out for coffee - busy morning

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Got the van unloaded.  The room that I use for sorting is now cluttered again.  Sigh.  Get it organised and sorted and then I bring another tranche of crap down and it is cluttered.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Heading out for a dog walk and some coffee shortly.

The CIA has always treated itself as a private quasi-military power.  It was always able to borrow ordnance and vehicles from the US Military for their beloved black clandestine ops. Now? No longer. From Newsmax:

Pentagon to End Military Support for CIA Counterterrorism Missions
The Pentagon is planning to cut most of the military support it provides to the CIA’s counterterrorism missions by Jan. 5.

According to ABC News, the Pentagon has already informed the CIA of its plans. The network news attributed its information to a former senior administration intelligence official.

The decision, described as both surprising and unprecedented, was reportedly detailed in a letter by Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller to CIA Director Gina Haspel.

The CIA’s Special Activities Center has its own paramilitary force to carry out counterterrorism operations. However, it often relies on the military for transportation and logistical support, according to ABC News.

We do not need them. Let that agency wither on the vine. Move them to some abandoned shopping mall in Nebraska - let a small (80 people) core group operate there and retire the rest of them.  What have they done for We The People?

They (OSS anyone?) - like a lot of other organizations (labor unions come to mind) - originally were a brilliant solution to a major problem but they grew complacent, fat, lazy.  They failed to adapt and need to be disbanded.

Living in a bubble - Melinda Gates

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Insider information - she was one of the marketing managers for Microsoft Bob.

Fast forward to today - from the American Institute for Economic Research:

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

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

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

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

The article goes on to cite other pandemics with no lockdowns:

There are plenty of specialists who have lived through pandemics in the past and managed them by maintaining essential social and economic functioning. A major case in point is Donald A. Henderson, who as head of the World Health Organization is given primary credit for the eradication of smallpox. He wrote as follows in 2006:

Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.

Much more at the site - BillG fancies himself to be another Hari Seldon from the Foundation series.  The only man who is smart enough to guide and protect civilization. BillG is not that smart.  He has a downright cutthroat business sense and was in the right place at the right time but, a Hari Seldon? No.  Just look into some of his other programs.

Heh - I feel sorry for her. I really do.

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Talk about a dumb idea - California

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Newsom keeps hitting bottom and digging.  From the San Francisco ABC affiliate:

'It's unsafe': Nurses alarmed at possible 2-day ICU training program announced by Gov. Newsom
Bay Area nurses are expressing concern over an ICU training plan announced By Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday.

"We're looking at training RNs, this two-day, very effective, focused to training to speed up opportunities to bring nurses into the ICUs to help out patients that's being rolled out as well," Newsom said at Monday's press conference, detailing the state's strategy to prepare for surging COVID-19 numbers.

Newsom did not go into detail about the program or where it will be rolled out.

Of course he didn't go into details.  He fancies himself to be the idea man.  In reality, he is just a clueless pointy-haired boss (PHB for short)

A nurse wants to get training to work in an ICU?

ABC7 News reached out to his office - We are still waiting for a response. But Bay Area ER nurse Mawata Kamara, who is also a board member at National Nurses United, says she can't believe Gov. Newsom would even consider such a program.

"I've worked all over the hospital, I've never heard of an ICU nurse training for two days, it's just unconscionable that such a discussion can even be happening," said Kamara.

At Stanford Health Care, nurses get at least six months to a year of training before working with critical care patients. Their Chief Nursing officer says such a program wouldn't be used at their hospital.

The Great State of California is in the best of hands. Governed wisely.

The Texas lawsuit is a steamroller.  From Pamela Geller:

Pennsylvania House Leaders File Brief to Support Texas in Supreme Court Lawsuit Against Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s House speaker and majority leader on Thursday filed an amici curiae brief with the Supreme Court against the state of Pennsylvania and in favor of Texas’s lawsuit against the commonwealth and three other states.

A brief (pdf) filed by Pennsylvania House Speaker Bryan Cutler and Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, both Republicans, requests that the Supreme Court “carefully consider the procedural issues and questions raised by the Plaintiff concerning the administration of the 2020 General Election in Pennsylvania.”

“The unimpeachability of our elections requires clear procedures of administration so that everyone gets a fair shake. Unfortunately, outside actors have so markedly twisted and gerrymandered the Commonwealth’s Election Code to the point that amici find it unrecognizable from the laws that they enacted,” they wrote, adding that the state of Texas “raised important questions about how this procedural malfeasance affected the 2020 General Election.”

Texas is saying that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin introduced changes to their election laws that violated the State and the Federal constitutions and therefore prevented Texas (and the 18 21 other states that have signed on to this) from being able to determine the winner. It is being filed with the Supreme Court and the Court said that they will take the case. Going to be a very large smoking crater when this is over and done with.

Slam. Ted Cruz on Eric Swalwell

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Swalwell can't get no respect these days. First President Trump's son and now Senator Ted Cruz - from his twitter account:

Heh - I would be very surprised if he did not resign in 30 days or less. He is a laughingstock and a major security risk. I am waiting for a couple of these deep staters to turn and enter the witness protection program.  Roll up the rest of them. I would not mind seeing Senator Cruz on the ticket in 2024.

Lisa sent me this photo of a sign from where she is in California:

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Talk about being uncertain of the situation. They fail to realize that they themselves are willfully giving up their own freedom.  They were handed a length of rope and they took it upon themselves to fashion a noose, put it around their necks, they tied the other end to a tree branch and are now about to step off into oblivion. Unreal. Clueless.

And I am full of good Thai food.  Get the dogs fed, change into some sweats and sit down to surf.

Ouch! Brutal tweet

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From Donald Trump Jr's twitter account:

That is going to leave a mark...

And that's it for now - Bellingham

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Out for the usual dog run, coffee and then heading up to Bellingham for another load of crap wonderful things from the condo.

Curious but not unexpected - Georgia

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From lawyer L Lin Wood's twitter account:

They are caught and they know it. Texas' suit with the Surpreme Court is going to be epic. Four more years.

The new vaccine

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From Woodsterman:

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Peace in the Middle East - Morocco

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Brokered by the United States.  From Dan Bongino:

Morocco to Normalize Relations With Israel in U.S. Brokered Deal
Another day, another U.S.-brokered peace deal.

Following United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, Morocco has become the fourth country since August to normalize relations with Israel in a U.S. brokered deal. Including the Serbia-Kosovo economic normalization, that makes five historic deals just this year.

From President Trump's twitter account:

Do you seriously think that Joe Biden would have done this?

That Chuck Yeager cartoon

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Posted it here but could not tell who the artist was.

Bill Bramhall from the New York Daily News - I like his work.

Interesting news from China

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Looks like their economy is based on continued growth.  This is a sort-of Ponzi Scheme where the income from the new marks are used to keep the old ones afloat. In China's case, they sign deals with other established corporations and then the revenues from these new deals are used to keep the older ones afloat.  Easy to do when all big busuniesses are functional arms of the state. From CNN/Business:

Chinese state-owned companies are in trouble. That could hurt the global recovery
Chinese state-owned companies are starting to default on their debts. It's a problem that could ripple through the country's financial system, threatening to slam the brakes on the nation's economy and hobble the global recovery from the pandemic.

State firms defaulted on a record 40 billion yuan ($6.1 billion) worth of bonds between January and October, according to Fitch Ratings. That's about as much as the last two years combined.

The problem has only gotten worse in recent weeks. A slew of major companies — including BMW's Chinese partner Brilliance Auto Group, top smartphone chip maker Tsinghua Unigroup, and Yongcheng Coal and Electricity — declared bankruptcy or defaulted on their loans last month, sending shock waves through the nation's debt market. Bond prices have plummeted and interest rates have spiked, and the turmoil has even spilled over into the stock market, where shares of state-owned firms have been sinking.

No wonder they wanted to swing last November's election - Biden is a known quantity to them.  His administration would give Bejing another four years of stability. They have suffered under President Trump - he will not let them get away with doing whatever they want. Trump has his eye on them and this makes them very uncomfortable. Good.

And that is it - good night all...

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Some videos and to bed. Busy day tomorrow - Bellingham.

The people at Western Rifle Shooter have compiled a little list on Georgia's Republican governor who is not what he says he is. Know them by their actions. Starts with this screen-cap of a tweet:

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Keep reading.  I'll wait for you. Much much more.

Oh yes. The link between China and Doninion Voting Systems is at this tweet - China paid Doninion's parent corporation $400 million dollars:

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Oopsie - but, the internet is forever.  From archive.org:

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The document can be found at the US Securities and Exchange Commission

Anyway, go and read the site - well worth your time to see just how corrupt some of these people are.

Well that did not take long - Swalwell

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From NJ US Senate candidate Tricia Flanagan's twitter account:

Be sure to visit the site to see the comments - some good ones.

A time for delight

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Great words from Adaptive Curmudgeon:

Shit Is Getting Real, And I’m Delighted About It
I’ve started… and rejected… a dozen posts lately. I had to delete them. They were inadequate.

The election situation exceeds my grasp as a wordsmith. Meanings too deep, ramifications too numerous, it cannot be “wished away” with a silly joke. Nothing I can say in 1,500-ish words is sufficient to the task. So, I’ve limped along with posts about woodworking and (behind the scenes) gone about my personal life with as much inner peace as I can muster.

Some words of introduction and then they just slam it home - let's start here:

Here’s how I know they’re idiots. They couldn’t win a free and fair election in the richest and most peaceful nation on earth, during the richest and most peaceful time in history. If you can’t gain power and prestige legally, in that fertile ground, despite wanting it real bad, you’re fundamentally flawed.

That’s why I’ve been guardedly optimistic. If this is the best they have to offer, they’re in over their head. They’re malevolent, they’re a hassle, they cause a lot of problems, but they’re hampered by their internal limitations.

They could have hunkered down and waited things out. “Orange man bad can get 10,000 people to show up with a day’s notice. He seems to enjoy fighting. Our guy can barely fill out a bowling league and looks like a strong wind will blow him over. Lets wait out the next four years and step in when the time is right.” That’s the wise move.

In their hubris, they overreached and made a mess. It’s so huge and ugly it can’t be ignored. Now the mess must be sorted out. It will get sorted out. Ideally it’ll be resolved by serious people in suits. I’d rather a Socratic Dialogue than the French Revolution.

And then they talk about the Texas lawsuit:

Simple logic: “We played by the rules. Every state that didn’t play by the rules has done us harm. There are remedies in the Constitution. Use them.” Quickly, they were joined by Louisiana. Then several others. A score of states with clean elections have squared off against four states that cheated too much.

It was time. Americans just stepped into the ring. They’re beckoning to the coup. “Get in here. Step out of the shadows. I’m going to sort this out right here in the spotlight and you’re going to be in the ring with me.” It feels good. Damn I love Texas today!

Seventeen states are now in the suit and the Supreme Court said that they will take the case.  It will be really interesting to see how the liberal justices will decide. Also, the turncoat John Roberts. There was a John Roberts listed on the airplane manifest to Epstein's Pedo Island, wonder if that is what they are holding on him:

20201209-roberts.jpgMore at the site. The gloves are coming off. Interesting times indeed...

Just wow - Pierre Kory MD

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His testimony at yesterday's Senate Hearing:

Dr. Pierre Kory, Associate Professor of Medicine at St. Luke's Aurora Medical Center in Milwaukee, testified December 8, 2020 at the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. 

I used Ivermectin on all of the critters at the farm and never had a sick animal in the 16 years that I kept them. Sheep, goats, horses, llamas. Thinking about buying a couple tubes of it and starting a prophylactic dose for myself.

The whole hearing (2:50;26) can be found here: Early Outpatient Treatment: An Essential Part of a COVID-19 Solution, Part II

Great cartoon - Chuck Yeager

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Can't see who the artist is but they nailed it:

20201209-yeager.jpg

Swalwell and the Chinese spy

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The London Daily Mail has the story:

Eric Swalwell refuses to admit wrongdoing over 'top secret' friendship with Chinese spy Fang Fang and demands probe into who leaked story - as he refuses to say if he slept with her (and she's STILL Facebook friends with his dad and brother)

    • Eric Swalwell said Wednesday he wants a probe into who leaked information regarding his relationship with Chinese honeytrap spy 'Christine' Fang Fang
    • He claims the timing of the leak is questionable as it was in 2019 when he was working on impeachment against President Donald Trump'
    • 'I hope it is investigated into who leaked this information,' he told CNN
    • Fang is still friends with Swalwell's father, Eric, and brother, Joshua, on Facebook
    • Swalwell said he cut off ties with Fang in 2015 when he was briefed by the intelligence community on concerns over Fang's behavior with California politics
    • Fang liked a video posted by Joshua Swalwell featuring Eric in November 2016
    • Swalwell refuses to say whether he had a sexual relationship with Fang
    • The lawmaker was unmarried at the time he knew Fang from 2012-2015
    • The California congressman is just one of a group of Democrats targeted by the Chinese spy
    • Fang is known to have had sexual relationships with two midwestern mayors

Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell demanded Wednesday that there be an investigation into who leaked his relationship with a Chinese spy who he is accused of having sex with while she worked as a Communist honeytrap.

The former presidential candidate claimed his relationship with Christine Fang - or Fang Fang - was leaked while he was involved with impeaching Donald Trump and that classified information was being 'weaponized' against him.

Swalwell, who represents a Bay area district and sits on the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee, has refused to confirm or deny sleeping with Fang before he was tipped off in 2015 that she was a Chinese agent.

She fled the country as the FBI investigated her and her infiltration efforts which also saw her become friendly with other California politicians and have sex with two mayors from the midwest, with the encounters caught by FBI eavesdroppers.

Talk about smoking gun. And this guy has not resigned yet?
And then, there is this from America's Newspaper of Record - the Babylon Bee:

Security Concerns Raised As Eric Swalwell's Girlfriend Revealed To Be President Xi In A Wig

Security concerns were raised over how bad Chinese spying has gotten after it was revealed this week that Eric Swalwell had been secretly dating President Xi Jinping in a wig.

"Hey, wait a minute!" said an FBI agent as he saw Rep. Swalwell holding hands with a woman who looked suspiciously like President Xi in light makeup, a dress, and a wig. "That's that Chinese guy! Get him!" Pulling the wig off, the agent revealed the Chinese woman to be Xi himself.

"Cheryl... why? Why did you lie to me? We had something great!" Swalwell said, tears in his eyes, as President Xi activated his jetpack and escaped.

Swalwell defended his actions, saying Xi was a tender lover and a great kisser, and "WE WERE IN LOVE, OK!? YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND! THE HEART WANTS WHAT IT WANTS!"

Jinping's plan was reportedly to get close to Joe Biden to tempt him to sniff his hair, apparently not realizing all the Chinese government has to do is ask Biden and he'll surrender any information they want.

CNN called the development a "non-story" and criticized right-wing media for "pouncing" on the revelation that China's president was sleeping with congresspeople, saying it would only be a story if it were Putin sleeping with Swalwell.

Speaking truth to power. Or something like that.

Trimming their feathers - China

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Some good legislation being passed - from Market Watch:

House passes bill that could delist Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges
The Democratic-run House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that could bar many Chinese companies from listing shares on U.S. exchanges or otherwise raising money from American investors.

The measure, known as the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, could get signed into law quickly by President Donald Trump, as it was approved by the Republican-controlled Senate in May.

The bill aims to make foreign companies let the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board oversee the auditing of their financial records if they want to raise money by selling stocks or bonds to the U.S. public. All U.S. companies and most foreign companies already work with the PCAOB in this way, but Chinese ones do not.

A simple case of financial transparency.  Nothing more, nothing less. We have to do it - they should have to do it too.

Overstepped their boundaries - China

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They got a little too enthusiastic and the mask slipped.  From Breitbart:

Pompeo: Thanks to Trump, Chinese Communist Party ‘Has Now Shown Itself’ and Is Exposed
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Breitbart News exclusively that President Donald Trump and his administration have successfully exposed the Chinese Communist Party as the most significant threat to the United States – something he hopes will last long into the future.

Thanks to the work of Trump and his administration, Pompeo said, combined with the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party and its influence operations across the country and around the world are well known and public. The CCP, the president’s top diplomat and former CIA director argued, was able to operate in the shadows with impunity for years—but now it can no longer hide its agenda and actions from the world.

“The CCP has now shown itself,” Pompeo said. “It frankly didn’t for a long time. We can now see it. Each time we push back, you can see it more clearly. Each time we talk about how this virus emanated from Wuhan, China, the Chinese try to tell a story that it came from Italy or it came from American soldiers. I think the story this week was it came from packaged food. This is false and disinformation. We are unraveling their narrative. We have taken this seriously because Xi Jinping is taking making China the Middle Kingdom—a global hegemony—seriously. So we have a responsibility to get this right.”

More at the site.  Give them enough rope... President Trump is going to have a very interesting four more years.

The Wuhan Flu - from across the pond

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Going to have to find more about her - I think I'm in love:

Her YouTube channel is here: Katie Hopkins OFFICIAL

From the disclose.tv twitter account:

Again, be sure to visit the site and read the comments. We have gone from a Republic to mob rule in less than four years. Call the election for President Trump and then call the National Guard. Get these goblins in jail - a couple of long sentences in a federal slammer will take the wind right out of their sails.

Now this will be good - Facebook

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From the New York Attorney General Letitia James' twitter account:

Be sure to visit the site to read her entire thread. The comments are universally good too.

Clearing up a bit

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Back home waiting for the groceries to be ready for me to deliver.

Skies have cleared up nicely - still cold though.

Some headlines - Swalwell

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Rainy morning

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Dull gray skies - nothing much happening here.  Got grocery deliveries later this afternoon.

Quick surf of the internet brings up nothing much of interest beyond the stolen election and Chinese spies.

Time to get on with my day...

Stormy weather - ONE Apus

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Talk about a rough voyage - from gCaptain:

ONE Apus Arrives in Kobe, Revealing Cargo Loss of Epic Proportions
The containership ONE Apus arrived at the Port of Kobe, Japan on Tuesday after its eight-day trek from the middle of Pacific Ocean where it lost nearly 2,000 containers during a storm.

“Chidori Ship Holding LLC as owners and NYK Shipmanagement Pte Ltd as managers of the container vessel ONE Apus (IMO# 9806079) can confirm that the ship is now safely berthed in the Port of Kobe after losing 1,816 containers overboard when it encountered severe weather on Monday, November 30, 2020,” the latest update said.

Calm weather but the ship faced up to 16 meter tall waves.  That pencils out to 52.5 feet in height. Yowser! Two photos:

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Ho. Li. Crap - that must have been a wild ride.  Ship is OK, no lives lost. Still - bet there were not that many people showing up for dinner.  I have only been seasick once in my life but I bet that would have been the second had I been aboard. Full coverage here: ONE Apus Cargo Loss

Well crap. RIP Harold Budd

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One of my favorite ambient composers. Nice obituary at exclaim!

Harold Budd Has Died
While details remain scarce, reports have emerged that ambient legend Harold Budd has passed away. According to multiple social media posts from close friends and colleagues, including Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie, the composer died last night (December 7). Budd would have been 84.

As of press time, Budd's official channels have not confirmed his passing, so details surrounding his death remain unclear.

His work:

By 1976, Budd began to work with fellow ambient pioneer Brian Eno, with the pair joining forces to craft what would become Budd's proper debut album The Pavilion of Dreams. This led to his Eno collaboration Ambient 2 (The Plateaux of Mirror), which was released in 1980. The record was then followed by 1984's beloved album, The Pearl, which found Budd and Eno joining forces with frequent collaborator Daniel Lanois.

Throughout albums like these, Budd went on to develop a slow and sustained style of piano playing he called "soft pedal," though he frequently voiced his disdain with being categorized as "ambient" — a label Budd found limiting.

Budd went on to work with other notable collaborators throughout his career, such as with Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde on their joint effort The Moon and the Melodies, which was released via 4AD in 1986.

This led to Budd striking up a longstanding working relationship with Guthrie, with the pair going on to release multiple collaborative albums over the years. In fact, earlier this year the pair released the album Another Flower.

A real talent - I love ambient music.  He will be missed.

Heh - electrician needed

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Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt.

California and China

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Again, my surprised face - some excellent reporting from Axios:

Exclusive: Suspected Chinese spy targeted California politicians
A suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, in what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, Axios found in a yearlong investigation.

Why it matters: The alleged operation offers a rare window into how Beijing has tried to gain access to and influence U.S. political circles.

This catches my eye:

Among the most significant targets of Fang's efforts was Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).

    • Fang took part in fundraising activity for Swalwell’s 2014 re-election campaign, according to a Bay Area political operative and a current U.S. intelligence official. Swalwell’s office was directly aware of these activities on its behalf, the political operative said. That same political operative, who witnessed Fang fundraising on Swalwell's behalf, found no evidence of illegal contributions.
    • Federal Election Commission records don’t indicate Fang herself made donations, which are prohibited from foreign nationals.
    • Fang helped place at least one intern in Swalwell's office, according to those same two people, and interacted with Swalwell at multiple events over the course of several years.

A statement from Swalwell's office provided to Axios said: "Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person — whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn’t seen in nearly six years — to the FBI. To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story."

If you will remember, Swalwell was one of the key promoters of the idea of Russian collusion with President Trump. An idea that was found to be baseless after spending three years and $43 million dollars of taxpayer money.

The idea that he was - at that time - consorting with a Chinese spy makes me think of Psychological Projection - fits the definition to a "T"

My surprised face - China's influence

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Thank God we are waking up to this - from the Washington Examiner:

Grenell: Secret intelligence shows 'much more' on US-China collusion
Former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell said that China is a "top" security concern and claimed there is "much more" to U.S.-Chinese relations.

Grenell, the current special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations, made the comment on Twitter Tuesday morning following a segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight that the host dedicated to the threat that the Chinese government poses to the United States.

"This is a must watch," he said of the segment. "Everyone in the intel community knows that China is a top US national security concern. And there is so much more that we can’t say."

I wrote about the Tucker Carlson segment here: Smoking gun - China

Fun times in Seattle - new mayor

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The old mayor was barly able to keep a lid on things.  She announced that she was bowing out after only one term.
From Jason Rantz writing at FOX News:

Seattle is about to go unthinkably left as liberal mayor announces she won't seek reelection
Seattle’s first-term Mayor Jenny Durkan announced on Monday that she won’t seek reelection. This almost ensures the unthinkable: Seattle will drift even further to the left.

The news didn’t come to me as a shock. I have been hearing rumors for the last couple weeks that Durkan was reconsidering reelection after being rendered powerless by a City Council that repeatedly stands in her way. After the last Council election, she was left with a majority of members who would never be her political allies.

At the same time, the mayor faced daily political pressure from the city’s most vocal and fringe activists, pressuring her to adopt their dangerous plans, including defunding the police.

A major shame - Seattle used to be a great city.  In 1972, I visited there for three days and went back to Boston and moved there the next year. Loved it. Now? It is a third-world shithole city.  Not as bad as San Francisco or Minneapolis but getting close - very very close.

Let's hope that people come to their senses and vote this vocal minority out of office. Get Seattle back to work again.

Another one bites the dust - JP Sears

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Yet another Facebook censorship - this time JP Sears - two from his faceborg page:

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Here is his account at Parler: Awaken with JP

He does some really fun videos - here is his YouTube account: Awaken with JP - so far, no censorship there.

Tyranny? Just say no.

A little ray of light - WA State

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From the Washington Examiner:

Washington state GOP wants to limit Inslee's emergency powers ahead of budget battle
Washington state Republicans say they are losing patience with Gov. Jay Inslee and are considering legislation to limit his emergency powers in lieu of solutions to the state’s housing crisis.

On Friday, members of the Washington Republican House and Senate caucuses said such legislation could include placing a word count on gubernatorial proclamations and mechanisms for triggering a legislative session 30 days after a proclamation is issued.

“We need to find a way that incorporates all branches of government, or at least the legislative branch of government, in a better way,” Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, said.

Put a muzzle on that cur.  He has no ability to lead.  He is a meat puppet for MSFT, Amazon, Boeing, etc... He does not represent us.

Communist China and our Congress

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Don Surber writes about some very disturbing information:

Proof Red China owns Congress
The revelation that Democrat Congressman Eric Swalwell -- a member of the House intelligence committee -- had a close relationship to a spy from Red China should be a scandal that rocks Nancy Pelosi and the rest of House leadership. What did they know? When did they know it? Why didn't they do anything about it?

National Review reported, "A suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed relationships with a number of American politicians as part of a Chinese political intelligence operation that ended in 2015, including Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell, for whom Christine Fang helped raise funds.

And this has been going on for some time:

"Between 2011 and 2015, Fang also developed close ties with several other local and national U.S. politicians across the country, particularly in the Bay Area, according to the Axios investigation, which cites current and former U.S. intelligence officials and one former elected official.

"She also had romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors over a three-year period. Fang, who was in her late 20s or early 30s at the time, was enrolled as a student at California State University, East Bay."

Forget my questions earlier. The media does not care if Red China spies on us. It merely reports and moves on because holding Democrats accountable could cost a reporter his sources and even his job.

The media moves on just as it did with Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein. She is the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee. Red China placed a spy on her staff.

When it became public knowledge, nothing happened to her. She stayed on the committee as if it were OK to give Red China state secrets through a third party.

China's influence makes a lot of things clear. Vote the bums out.

And some people are just plain crazy

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Drunk a little too much of their own kool-aid. Actually believed their own indoctrination.
From Bend, Oregon station KTVZ:

Jefferson County teacher on leave after viral video of Bend protest confrontation
A first-year teacher with Jefferson County School District 509-J has been placed on leave pending an investigation after being identified as the woman in a video that went viral of a shouting encounter with a Bend group protesting the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.

More than 2 million people had viewed the Twitter and Facebook posts by Monday of the 55-second video in which the woman, driving a car, screamed at chanting downtown Bend protesters, most not wearing masks: “Kill yourself! I’m a teacher! I work in schools! My student’s families are dying!”

There were also obscenities and obscene gestures as well, before she waved and smiled at the person taking the video, then drove away.

Video at the site.  This is not a case of speaking truth to power, this is a case of extreme mental instability. She is unhinged. A crazy lady. She will be living by herself with 27+ cats in under 30 years.

Bullies chased out witnesses

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Short and to the point - from Dilbert creator Scott Adams

Tip of the hat to Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man

Well crap - RIP Chuck Yeager

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97 is a good run but still...  From the New York Post:

Legendary airman Chuck Yeager dead at 97
Legendary airman Chuck Yeager — the first pilot in history confirmed to break the sound barrier — died Monday, his wife announced. He was 97.

“It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET,” Victoria Yeager wrote on her husband’s verified Twitter account.

“An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.”

She gave no details on the cause of her husband’s death.

A World War II fighter pilot, Yeager was propelled into history by breaking the sound barrier in the experimental Bell X-1 research aircraft in October 1947 over Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

The embodiment of The Right Stuff. One of the greats.

Mail-in voting - the corollary

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Mail-in voting offers no chance for fraud. Right? Let's extend this:

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From My Pensieve

Smoking gun - China

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Want your smoking gun? Here it is from Tucker Carlson - from Trump's twitter account:

From 90 Miles:

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The California lockdown

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Turns out that Gruesome Newsom's number of 15% vacant was cherry-picked.  California hospitals always hit 10% vacant this time of year.  Seasonal flu and all that. From NOQ Report:

Gavin Newsom’s ICU ‘trigger’ for lockdowns is below average December ICU numbers
When California Governor Gavin Newsom set his 85% ICU capacity “trigger” to automatically start a new round of totalitarian lockdowns, he had zero doubt the number would be reached in December. How? Because that number is reached EVERY December. Knowing this, why wouldn’t he prepare by assisting hospitals across his state to increase ICU capacity?

The answer is obvious. He wanted the lockdowns. They’ve always been part of his plan, a plan that likely comes on orders from higher radical leftist puppetmasters. But instead of asking how California is going to get through this, they need to be asking why this was all laid out the way it was in the first place. What, Governor Newsom, is your endgame?

In any given year, most parts of California reach 90% ICU capacity in December. This is usually due to the surge in flu cases, but the flu is allegedly non-existent this year, replaced on paper by the more lucrative COVID-19 diagnoses preferred by hospitals. They knew it was coming, which is why they made moves separate from the state to increase ICU capacity. But without the state’s help, there was no way they were going to stay below the Governor’s 85% threshold. And they were okay with that.

The article also links to this story at the Los Angeles Times from January 16th, 2018:

California hospitals face a ‘war zone’ of flu patients — and are setting up tents to treat them
Ana Oktay rushed to the hospital in late December struggling to breathe, with a 102-degree fever and a cough that wouldn’t let up.

​​​​​She expected doctors to tell her she had pneumonia or bronchitis.

“They were just like: ‘It’s just influenza A. It’s just what’s going around,’” said Oktay, 49.

An influenza A strain known as H3N2 is making people so ill in California that thousands have shown up in recent weeks at hospitals struggling to fight the infection.

And this little tid-bit:

Connie Cunningham and her staff at Loma Linda University Medical Center were triaging so many flu patients after New Year’s that they assembled what looks like a giant, brown camping tent in their emergency room parking lot. Several hospitals in California are treating flu patients in so-called “surge tents” intended for major disasters.

And:

Cunningham, executive director for the hospital’s emergency services, said she’d thought they would dismantle the tent after a few days, but staff are still treating 60 more patients each day than usual, she said.

Nothing new. Newsome knew he could count on those numbers so he implemented his plan to kill small businesses in his state. Straight out of the communist playbook.  Small businesses are too "messy" - they depend on capitalism which is "impure". The State is pure - it serves the people. Until it does not. And then people die.

“If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.”
--Joseph Stalin

And these people want to lead us.

New developments in rocket science

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From America's Newspaper of Record - the Babylon Bee:

California To Require All Rockets To Run On Wind Power By 2030
California has announced a bold new initiative: all rockets produced or launched in the state must run on wind power just ten years from now.

Governor Newsom claimed the executive order was guided by SCIENCE and MATH.

"We are following the SCIENCE here!" Newsom said. "We are once again leading the nation with initiatives that other states are too stupid to enact. Those backward hillbillies in states like Texas and Florida say they are pro-business because they have primitive technology like electricity, gasoline, and cars, but really, they just want the world to burn."

Giggles could be heard behind the curtain at the press conference, causing many to suspect it was a practical joke. But Newsom managed to keep a straight face, saying, "With SCIENCE on our side, we can go where no man has gone before, fully powered by green energy like wind and solar."

Early wind rockets have been unsuccessful, as the first one just fell over and then blew into an angry neighbor's yard. Another one got stuck in a tree. But Newsom is confident the technology will be ready in a decade.

Newsom and the state legislature were then shocked as Elon Musk announced SpaceX would be moving to Texas. A spokesperson for Texas said the state is excited to have Musk and that "that rootin-tootin space cowboy can build any kind o' rocket he wants down here, shoot, I tell you what."

Makes perfect sense - because SCIENCE. Absolutely. And don't forget MATH

From President Trump's twitter account:

And this from NOQ Report:

Some, including most at NOQ Report, have speculated Kemp has somehow been compromised. Just as the President wonders what he’s hiding, we wonder if he has been bribed, bullied, or blackmailed into participating in covering up the massive voter fraud that is clearly rife within his state. He’s running cover for whoever perpetrated it, as is Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. But that’s all just speculation. To do anything with it, we need hard facts.

Georgia was front-and-center in the voter fraud debate last week when the President’s attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, brought forth witnesses at the state legislature’s hearings on the topic. Among them was Jackie Pick, a local attorney who delivered a bombshell video demonstrating unambiguous voter fraud. This initially seemed to bother Kemp who made a statement that he would seek further information, but since then nothing has been done.

It’s clear the Democrats and their Republican operatives are in the process of trying to “run out the clock.” This is a pivotal week in the election with tomorrow being the so-called “Safe Harbor” day in which electors are locked in. But the Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on the situation and there are still state legislatures contemplating moves on their part.

Indeed...  What do they have on Kemp and Raffensperger - makes you wonder...

Our Chinese masters - Michigan

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From The National Pulse:

Michigan Lt Gov Attended Chinese Communist Party Conference With Secret Meetings, Chinese Military Ties
Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist attended a controversial “collaboration summit” between Chinese Communist Party officials and U.S. Governors.

The summit, which occurred in May of 2019, was touted as an “exclusive deal making opportunity” for closer financial ties between the Chinese government and their U.S. counterparts.

Gilchrist, a Democrat who’s held the position since 2019 and labeled President Trump’s election grievances a “house of cards,” attended the summit alongside the Governors of Kentucky and Tennessee. A Chinese Communist Party mayor, two Vice Governors, and one Governor attended the summit.

What these idiots fail to realize is that as soon as the communists take control, they (Gilchrist, et. al.) will no longer be useful to them and they will be discarded like used toilet paper.

So true

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A quote from the master (one of them anyway):

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And I am gone - morning routine

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Time for a dog walk and some coffee. Working at home today.

Our elites - Nancy Pelosi

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Needs to just go home. She has enough money - time to hand the reigns over to someone who actually cares for their constituency. From The Federalist:

Nancy Pelosi Let Millions Suffer To Win An Election
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has cackled the quiet part out loud. In a statement Friday, she announced that all of a sudden, after months and months of American people and small businesses begging for relief, that she will now compromise on a $908 billion stimulus package.

Why the sudden change of heart? Because Joe Biden is the proclaimed winner of the presidential race. What is as plain as the couture mask on Nancy’s face is that she let millions suffer for one reason and one reason only, to help Joe Biden win the election.

Scum. She has no redeeming aspect.

So true - the media

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Specifically CNN - the propaganda arm for the Democrat party

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A reminder - the deep state

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Don Surber has an excellent essay this morning - well worth reading and remembering:

America's Pornocracy
It is highly appropriate that Democrats nominated the creepiest president candidate in history. No one better represents the hedonism and corruption of the party. Xiden (as a reader called him) cannot control himself in public. Imagine how he acts in private.

The ancient Greeks had what they called a pornocracy, which is a rule by prostitutes. Their definition of prostitutes included corrupt politicians, as well as the harlots. That Xiden is corrupt is well-established Chairman Xi's minions gave Hunter Biden a billion dollars to "invest" -- a mere pittance in the face of the $365 billion a year trade surplus (profit) that Red China enjoys.

American politicians are cheaper by the dozen.

They also are easy to blackmail. The irony of the Russian Collusion scandal was the deep state accused President Donald John Trump of behaving overseas in a manner Putin could exploit and blackmail him.

This was projection. Red China has plenty of underage girls and boys to entrap American politicians. Indeed, Hunter Biden's infamous laptop contained incriminating evidence of this.

More at the site - this is the state of our republic and we need to make some drastic changes if it is to survive. Something to read this morning.

And see 'ya all tomorrow

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YouTube and bed.  Got a full day tomorrow through Wednesday and starting the last push on the condo from Thursday on. It is being listed in four weeks so need to get a few things taken care of.

Good news - Facebook

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From the United States Department of Justice:

Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against Facebook for Discriminating Against U.S. Workers
The Department of Justice announced today that it filed a lawsuit against Facebook Inc. for discriminating against U.S. workers.

The lawsuit alleges that Facebook refused to recruit, consider, or hire qualified and available U.S. workers for over 2,600 positions that Facebook, instead, reserved for temporary visa holders it sponsored for permanent work authorization (or “green cards”) in connection with the permanent labor certification process (PERM). The positions that were the subject of Facebook’s alleged discrimination against U.S. workers offered an average salary of approximately $156,000. According to the lawsuit, and based on the department’s nearly two-year investigation, Facebook intentionally created a hiring system in which it denied qualified U.S. workers a fair opportunity to learn about and apply for jobs that Facebook instead sought to channel to temporary visa holders Facebook wanted to sponsor for green cards.

“The Department of Justice’s lawsuit alleges that Facebook engaged in intentional and widespread violations of the law, by setting aside positions for temporary visa holders instead of considering interested and qualified U.S. workers,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric S. Dreiband of the Civil Rights Division. “This lawsuit follows a nearly two-year investigation into Facebook’s practices and a ‘reasonable cause’ determination by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Our message to workers is clear: if companies deny employment opportunities by illegally preferring temporary visa holders, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable. Our message to all employers — including those in the technology sector — is clear: you cannot illegally prefer to recruit, consider, or hire temporary visa holders over U.S. workers.”

Of course they hired H-1B's - they are almost as productive and cost a lot less.  A lot of times they are actually hired by a management company that provides dormitory style accommodations and food.  Cheap to implement and since the H-1B visa is linked to the company, the poor people cannot look for work elsewhere. They need to start hiring local talent - we have enough of it and FB has enough money.

A sobering look at our large cities

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Explains a lot about life in the Democrat-run urban wastelands - from al fin next level:

Why Election Fraud is So Easy in US Third World Cities
Rigged elections are routine in communist and third world countries. Election fraud has also become routine in US third world enclaves — such as the inner parts of Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Atlanta etc. In such broadly impoverished places the peculiar upbringing of children leaves them without the ordinary rules of behavior and order which have guided most of the rest of the US for almost two and a half centuries.

When the human substrate of a community is built upon average childhoods of illegitimate birth and a violent, neglectful upbringing, one cannot expect the rules of such communities to converge upon anything other than poverty, dysfunction, organized and disorganized crime, and civil disorder.

It is important not to blame the people themselves, who are simply being people as evolution and upbringing have made them. Rather it is the criminal kingpins at all levels of society who use these hapless beings as human shields, who are to blame. It is these lawyers, government officials, media operatives, and paid political operators acting under the orders of sinister persons at the highest levels of social control and manipulation, who are at the root of the wrong.

The author then links to this photo essay of Detroit past and present:

This is What Happens When Criminals Run Things

They continue:

Follow the link under the photo above to see the progression of decline after criminals take control of a city and suck it dry. It is a progression that has occurred not only in Detroit, but also in Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans, Newark, Gary, Indianapolis and wherever else the criminals take control, often by crooked means.

In the 2020 US elections, several of these cities were key to the rigging of the presidential election counts — which should not surprise anyone. In such cities, it is only a surprise when cheating does not take place.

The Democrat party - keeping its constituents as slaves on their plantation from the beginning. The narrative and the location may have changed but the reality has not. People in the third world shithole cities are modern day slaves to the Democrat machine.

Specifically - the United Nations' Great Reset: Build Back Better
Looks like the Pope is in on this too - his twitter account:

Build Back Better is a phrase that crops up in the damndest places.
Here are just a few of them: The latest talking point - Dark Winter
Here is some more - links to coroboration at each post: The Great Reset - just say NO!

Illegal walk in Los Angeles

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Actor and Super-spreader Nick Searcy - from his twitter account:

Heh - got to love the morons who crossed the street as he approached.

From True The Vote:

True the Vote Sends Letter to DOJ Reporting Serious National Security Matter and Breach Within Nevada Secretary of State’s Email System
While Accessing Nevada Voting Records, True the Vote Finds Pakistani Company with Ties to Pakistani Intelligence Copied on Email

While accessing the Nevada voting records database, True the Vote reported that it found an email address from a Pakistani Company with ties to Pakistani intelligence copied on the email records. In a letter on December 3, 2020 to the Department of Justice, True the Vote stated, “The fact that this company was cc’d on an email containing access to the Nevada voter registration database appears to be evidence of a breach within the Nevada Secretary of State’s email system. Obviously, the problems that such a breach may evidence include access to at least the voter registration information of Nevada residents. At worst it could reveal a breach that gives a foreign power access to not only the State of Nevada’s systems, but also to the email systems of anyone whom the State communicates with via email.”

The letter can be found at the site or here. The smoking email is also posted at the site or here.

Nothing about this fuster-cluck surprises me anymore. That they tried to cheat so egregiously and so stupidly shows that their operatives are lacking in basic intelligence. How could they honestly think that they would get away with it with the nation (and President Trump) watching them so closely.

Good to see - from The Epoch Times:

Coalition Groups Urges US to Designate the Chinese Communist Party a Transnational Criminal Organization
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently met with representatives of groups victimized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who urged the administration to designate the CCP a “transnational criminal organization.”

Washington-based advocacy group Committee on Present Danger: China organized the groups to come together under the banner of the “Captive Nations Coalition,” which included representatives from the Tibetan, Uyghur, Inner Mongolian, Hong Kong, and Falun Gong communities, as well as people negatively impacted by Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, a massive foreign investment project that aims to advance the regime’s political and economic interests around the world.

Committee vice-chairman Frank Gaffney said the victim groups hoped to convey to the State Department their experiences of being suppressed by the regime, in the hopes of bringing home the message that “all of us are under threat from the global, totalitarian ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The meeting marked the first time that state department officials met with these groups together, according to participants. The representatives met with Pompeo; Robert Destro, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; and Miles Yu, Pompeo’s policy advisor, on Dec. 3.

Very happy to see this.  The United States needs to send a big fat F*** YOU to the communist Chinese.  They can do whatever they want inside of their soveriegn nation but it is not their position in the world to meddle in the affairs of other nations. We Will Not Comply.

And out for a few

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Dog walk, coffee and up to Costco for some gas and some food. Back this afternoon.

Lots of boats out on the water. High overcast and warm - good visibility and minimal wind. Not a bad day to be on the water - all things considered.

Getting on with this day

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Woke up to gray skies - oh well, it is winter in the Pacific Northwet. Nice hot shower and fixing some breakfast.  Did a quick surf and didn't see anything.

Working at home today - setting up a heater for the garage and some basic housecleaning. Paperwork is needed as well. Heading out for coffee in a while.

Another boring day in paradise...

An interesting list

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From Steve Bigler writing at American Thinker:

10 traits to tell good from evil
Lately I've been thinking about defining characteristics of good and evil. I am a person of faith, so initially I might have been tempted to say simply that good adheres to the commandments of God, or at least to the tenets of a religion. But that's too easy. First of all, not everyone believes in God. In addition, concepts of God vary widely. And finally, I'm not sure all religions are uniformly good!

So I pondered, "What if I were not a person of faith? What if I didn't belong to any religion at all? Surely, I'd still recognize that some principles and behaviors are good and beneficial while others are destructive — even evil.

So I started reflecting on specific traits that I've observed to be good vs those I've found to be ultimately evil. They actually have little if anything to do with any specific religion. But I believe they're valid markers. So I'll offer a list of my "Top Ten Traits." Feel free to add some of your own in your comments.

Steve then lists his ten - some with corollaries.  Here are the first three:

1. Good builds and creates. Evil tears down and destroys.
1a. As a corollary, good has beneficial long-range goals and plans. Good aspires to accomplish something positive. Evil exists only to oppose, mock, and heap scorn.
2. Good has a sense of humor. Evil has little or no sense of humor. In other words, good finds joy and laughter in life. Evil may indulge in gloating, smirking, and gleeful derision, but it virtually never laughs at the delightful humor inherent in the human condition.
2a. As a corollary, good appreciates and often employs self-deprecatory humor. Evil never does.
3. Good doesn't stir others up to anger. Evil elevates that to an art form. Stirring up anger in others is the fundamental basis of how evil operates.

Simple but the wisest things usually are.

And that's it for now - videos and bed

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Fun day today - two good dog walks and had a great time at the friends farm. It was nice to skritch the critters (alpacas and goats), see all the beds put down for the fall, resting under their layer of rich mulch. Roots ready for a riot of growth next spring. Talked to some people.  Went out for Thai food for dinner and that is my day.

Nothing much happening online so brew a pot of tea and call it a night.

Clearing out the folder

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Three images:

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Not the rhetoric, the actual functioning of real-world Marxism. From Russia Today:

BLM gets a lesson in how ‘trained Marxism’ really works, as leader rakes in millions while chapters get nothing
While the Black Lives Matter Global Network, led by ‘trained Marxist’ Patrisse Cullors, embraced the windfall of donations following the George Floyd protests across America, local chapters say they were left holding the bag.

It was through the hard work of “radical black organizers” engaging in a “protracted struggle for our lives against police terrorism” that Black Lives Matter attracted millions of dollars in contributions this year, yet the BLMGN only recently invited selected chapters to apply for a $500,000 grant, ten chapters from across the US said in a statement this week.

“This is not the equity and financial accountability we deserve,” they declared.

Heh... Welcome to the revolution komrade. Now shut up or we will re-educate you with a bullet in the back of your head. Much more at the site. Trust a Russian media outlet to highlight all of the delicious irony in all this.

From the Dallas Business Journal - December 13th, 2018:

1,800 companies left California in a year — with most bound for Texas
A record number of companies are leaving California for states with a better business climate, and a new report shows that Texas remains their No. 1 destination.

The study estimates that 1,800 relocation or “disinvestment events” occurred in 2016, the most recent year available, setting a record yearly high going back to 2008. About 13,000 companies left the state during that nine-year period.

The loss to the tax base:

During the study period, 275,000 jobs and $76.7 billion in capital funds were diverted out of California. The departing companies acquired at least 133 million square feet elsewhere — and probably much more because such information often went unreported in source materials, Vranich said.

California is losing it - they are continuing to be led by idealogues and they are quickly running out of other people's money to fund these programs. 13,000 businesses and corportions lost in nine years. And this was written two years ago.

Quiet news day - heading out

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Gorgeous day - clear crisp weather but there is cloudiness in the forecast. The people at this farm are hosting a Christmas get-together so heading over there after running the dogs, get some coffee and my usual morning errands. No plans for the rest of the day - need to clean and refill the hummingbird feeders - made some more nectar yesterday.

Back in a few hours.

7:08 of calm rational truth - Huckabee

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The facts presented clearly:

The modern opium wars

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Of course the Chinese communist government would be in the thick of things. From Reuters:

Burner phones and banking apps: Meet the Chinese 'brokers' laundering Mexican drug money
Early next year, a Chinese businessman named Gan Xianbing will be sentenced in a Chicago courtroom for laundering just over $530,000 in Mexican cartel drug money.

Gan, 50, was convicted in February of money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transfer business that whisked cartel cash from U.S. drug sales offshore. Gan has maintained his innocence; his lawyers say he was entrapped by U.S. authorities. The trial garnered few headlines and little of the public fascination reserved for kingpins of powerful narcotics syndicates that U.S. federal prosecutors said Gan served.

Still, U.S. law enforcement officials told Reuters that Chinese “money brokers” such as Gan represent one of the most worrisome new threats in their war on drugs. They say small cells of Chinese criminals have upended the way narcotics cash is laundered and are displacing the Mexican and Colombian money men that have long dominated the trade.

More at the site - China is not our ally.  Not our friend.  They are a source for cheap gadgets but these come at too high a price.  Time to wean ourselves away.

Not for sale - Biden

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So true - bought and paid for:

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Speaking truth to power - L Lin Wood

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From his twitter account:

Inconvenient truth?  Show me where he is wrong.

From Seattle station KIRO:

‘Sovereign citizens’ claiming waterfront homes in Woodway, Edmonds
A group of people is walking up to families’ front doors in Snohomish County, saying they are the rightful owners of waterfront homes.

The group has taken over homes in different parts of the country, claiming legal ownership of the land beneath it.

In one case, they told a homeowner she was being evicted.

Edmonds detectives say the group knocked on doors in the most upscale neighborhoods in Woodway and Edmonds, identifying themselves as Moorish Sovereign Citizens. They carry official-looking documents, say they own the property and announce they’re moving in.

Curious group of people.  The Moorish Science Temple of America has been around since 1913 and it is interesting that Nation of Islam is a direct spin-off. Wallace Fard Muhammad claimed to be a reincarnation of the original MST founder. His claim was rejected and he split from the group and founded NoI.

Needless to say, should any of them show up at my door, my response would not be welcoming. Got to give them points for inventiveness and effort.

An elegy from Bon Apitit magazine:

I’m Afraid It's Too Late to Save Restaurants
“This is the end of the independent restaurant era, and I don’t know any chef in their right mind who feels hopeful right now. We have meal kits; we’re getting tents and heaters. But at the end of the day, I’m on the Titanic, trying to throw out buckets of water to stay afloat. I’m fighting to save my restaurants and chefs and farmers whom we’ve had relationships with for decades. But part of me is very pragmatic. We’re not getting a bailout from the federal government and we’re not getting leadership—state, federal, even local. We’ve been left to our own devices.

The options for restaurants right now are to go further into debt or to close. If we make 80 percent of our income now, that’s a great day. It’s like a Saturday night with all the tables booked. But then there are days when we’ve done 15 percent of our normal revenue. Those are days where it’s actually cheaper for me to keep the lights off and close the doors.

It’s the fluctuations that really hurt us. We rely on patterns and predictability for inventory, for staffing, for everything. Now we don’t have a clue. Some of it is COVID-related; some of it is related to the protests; and some of it related to consumer fears about eating out at restaurants. Sometimes it’s just a viral article on Facebook that affects consumer confidence. 610 Magnolia has weathered recessions. Revenue-wise, last year was our best year ever. And we were on pace to beat that in 2020. There’s cold comfort in knowing an entire wave of restaurants will have to close.

Some local places have been really hit hard. Again, this is not a public health crisis, this is a power and control crisis.

From the Archbishop of Philladelphia - a very smart cookie -  Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. writing at First Things:

MR. BIDEN AND THE MATTER OF SCANDAL
Readers may recall that during the 2004 presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry led the Democratic ticket. As a Catholic, Kerry held certain policy views that conflicted with the moral beliefs of his Church. This led to internal tensions among U.S. bishops about how to handle the matter of Holy Communion for Catholic public officials who publicly and persistently diverge from Catholic teaching on issues like abortion. At the time, Washington’s then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, along with Pittsburgh’s Bishop Donald Wuerl, had very different views from my own regarding how to proceed.  

I believed then, and believe now, that publicly denying Communion to public officials is not always wise or the best pastoral course. Doing so in a loud and forceful manner may cause more harm than good by inviting the official to bask in the media glow of victimhood. What I opposed in 2004, however, was any seeming indifference to the issue, any hint in a national bishops’ statement or policy that would give bishops permission to turn their heads away from the gravity of a very serious issue. At the time, fortunately, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith resolved any confusion about correct practice in these matters with its July 2004 memorandum to then-Cardinal McCarrick, Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles. It includes the following passage:

5. Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.

Much much more at the site - Chaput is always thoughtful and good to read. I doubt that Biden would be aware of what this would be about - the guy is drugged to the gills and is serving as a meat puppet for the communist wing of the democratic party. Still, this would be interesting if he tried.

And another one bails - California

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California is losing tax revenue hand over fist. From CNBC:

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has told friends and associates he plans to move to Texas
Tesla CEO Elon Musk put his California houses on the market this year while he was sparring with state lawmakers over Covid-19 restrictions. He’s simultaneously been expanding operations in Texas and cozying up to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Now, several of his close friends and associates say that Musk has told them he’s planning to move to the Lone Star State. The people with knowledge of his plans asked not to be named because their conversations were private.

California has the highest state income tax in the nation.  Texas has no income tax at all. Tesla is not the first.
From FOX Business:

Hewlett Packard leaves California for Texas in headquarters jump
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is kissing California goodbye as it prepares to move its headquarters to Houston, Texas.

And this report from Business Journals:

Bay Area exodus accelerates at year-end as some seek to avoid tax hikes in 2021
The Bay Area exodus, which accelerated amid Covid, appears to be gaining more steam in the final months of 2020. Moving out of the state by year-end could help those leaving avoid being hit by a California income tax increase next year that might be retroactive to the start of 2021.

“I’m seeing an acceleration of clients — not to mention friends and neighbors — leaving California,” Paul Bleeg, a partner with accounting firm EisnerAmper in San Francisco, told me Tuesday. “The destinations vary: Montana, Nevada, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Utah and elsewhere.”

The ruling class is unaware of the basic facts - raising taxes results in less revenue.  Art Laffer had this down to a science 46 years ago. Basic economic fact.

But of course

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Being 2020 and all:

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Fox watching the hen house - Georgia

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From The Epoch Times:

Firm That Conducted ‘Audit’ of Georgia Voting Machines Has Long History With Dominion
The firm hired by Georgia’s secretary of state to conduct an “audit” of Dominion Voting Systems technology used during the 2020 elections is the same one that previously certified the Dominion systems and also approved a last-minute system-wide software change just weeks before the election.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger failed to disclose that the company, Pro V&V, had a preexisting relationship with Dominion that dated back years, in his Nov. 17 statement announcing the results of the audit.

Raffensperger also failed to disclose that Dominion had used technical conclusions from Pro V&V in a pre-election Georgia lawsuit that questioned the reliability of Dominion’s systems during a last-minute software fix before the Nov. 3 election. The testing from Pro V&V had been characterized as “superficial” and “cursory testing” by an expert cited in court documents.

In the widely quoted statement, Raffensperger said that the audit of Dominion machines was complete, there was “no sign of foul play,” and that “Pro V&V found no evidence” of tampering with the machines.

Much more at the site - this is not even close to being ethical.

An interesting move - Arizona

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Mark Finchem is an Arizona State Representative. Chaired the #ArizonaHearing on Election Fraud. Standing up for Limited Government, Limited Taxation & the Rule of Law. From his twitter account:

And also, this tweet:

They must not get away with this. The deep state needs to be put down.

Another day on this glorious island

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Nothing much happening out there in the "real world"  Gorgeous clear crisp day so out for a dog walk, coffee and working outside.

Time for YouTube

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Done for the day - dinner was some oven roasted veggies with noodles. Busy couple of days so early bedtime.

So classy - China

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The tweet has since been deleted but the internet is forever. DJHJ Media has the story and a screen-cap:

Head of Communist State-Owned Media in DC Slams US Senator and Calls her a Very Nasty Name over her Point of View
It a vite exchange on Twitter a member of the Chinese Community Party owned media Chen Weihua, the Chief Washington Correspondent of China Daily and Deputy Editor of China Daily USA slammed a female US Senator with the most sexist and brute reaction to her tweeting her point of view.

Chen says he has a “particular focus on US politics”, while he attacks a female Senator online for her unfavorable point of view on very common notion that China has a stealing problem.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn wrote: “China has a 5,000-year history of cheating and stealing. Some things will never change…” and Chen Weihua responded: “Bitch”.

Chen describes himself as: “China Daily EU Bureau Chief, columnist. Fmr DC, NY chief correspondent. Knight Fellow Stanford, WPI Fellow Macalester, Freedom Forum Fellow UH. Views my own”

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And the good Senator had the last word:

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True - every last word.  Inconvenient but true.

The third tape has been released from Project Veritas:

Zucker ATTACKS Giuliani: ‘From America’s Mayor to Useful Idiot…[Trump] is the One Who is Directing the Crazy Legal Team’ … ‘The Filth That They're Spreading, the Child Pornography[Allegations]. I Do Not Believe That We Should Be Covering Those Allegations'

    • CNN President Jeff Zucker: “There is a term for what Rudy Giuliani is suspected of being which is ‘useful idiot.’”
    • Zucker: “On the Rudy Giuliani story, this is a really important story. It gets tied to the Hunter Biden email disinformation campaign.”
    • Zucker: “With regards to the filth that they're spreading, the child pornography [allegations] and all of that. I do not believe that we should be covering those allegations even if they're out there on Newsmax.”
    • CNN call participant: “If the NFL was running the government, then things would probably be in much better shape than they are.
    • James O’Keefe: “These tapes further prove that CNN’s executives are partisan hacks and not real journalists.”

Three videos at the site - cannot embed them but they are well worth watching.  This is the president of CNN acting as a partisan hack and trying to re-write the news to fit the Democrat agenda. Disgusting.

Heading to the food coop and to Costco for a few things. Probably stop for Thai food on the way home.
Take the pups for a second walk.

Excuse me but...

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Hell no.  No fscking way:

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Proof of fraud - Nevada

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From the Washington Examiner:

Pro-Biden effort offered Native Americans $25-$500 Visa gift cards and jewelry to vote
Key Native American leaders working with the Biden campaign offered tribal members and associates Visa gift cards, jewelry, and other “swag” to vote in the presidential election, according to several videos being used by the Trump campaign’s effort to challenge Nevada’s vote.

In one long video, officials from the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony are shown offering a raffle for gift cards in values of $25, $100, $250, and $500 to those who can prove they voted.

Other gifts for voting include bracelets, necklaces, earrings, T-shirts, and masks.

More at the site - and, of course, they have videos.

Proof of fraud - Georgia

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From the Team Trump twitter feed:

Hard to argue with this video.

An inconvenient truth - St. Louis

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From Paul Kersey at The Unz Review:

Black Lives Matter? Courtesy of Record Rates of Black on Black Homicides, St. Louis Has More Murders in 2020 Than COVID-19 Deaths...
Somehow this is still the fault of white people/white flight/gentrification/redlining/white privilege/systemic racism/implicit bias and don’t forget, the legacy of slavery.

As the St. Louis Metro Police Department website makes clear, 91 percent of the suspects in the homicides (well… known suspects, because the city has such a horrendous clearance rate for murder) in 2020 are black. As suspects are identified, the percentage of black suspects will only tick closer to 100 percent.

Oh, and 90 percent of the victims in the 242 homicides in 2020 St. Louis are black… Black Lives Matter, right? [Perspective: St. Louis Has 239 Homicides this Year and 238 Coronavirus Deaths – At Least 50 Children Shot So Far This Year, The Gateway Pundit, November 30, 2020]

Doesn't fit the narrative but it is still true and until we recognize this, the problem will continue.  Wake up.

Reverse racism

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Someone stood up to the diversity gods and they did not like it. From Vice:

Prominent Global News Host Quits Alleging On-Air Climate Increased Racist Threats
A prominent Global News radio host has quit the station and filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, alleging that the company’s refusal to enforce journalistic standards on talk radio resulted in her receiving an increase in racist comments and violent threats.

In her resignation letter, Supriya Dwivedi said she is leaving because the outlet failed to act on her repeated complaints about the alleged misinformation being spread by her talk radio colleagues, including “false narratives about refugees, Muslims, Sikhs, and other targeted groups.” This led to her being trolled more when she fact-checked them on her show, she said in the letter addressed to Ward Smith, senior vice president of Global News, viewed by VICE World News.

And of course, Global says this:

But in a letter from its lawyer Howard Levitt, Global News’ parent company Corus Entertainment told Dwivedi that her concerns are “fundamentally misinformed” and that it “did everything possible to protect her and others from racism and misogyny.”

But, in an independent study:

In August, VICE World News published an investigation in which 12 current and former Corus employees alleged the company had a culture of racist microaggressions, problematic coverage, and retaliation for speaking out. Several of the most outspoken employees were laid off in July after voicing their concerns; at the time, Troy Reeb, the executive vice president of broadcast networks at Corus, said the company was returning to “objective… fact-based journalism.”

Dwivedi’s resignation comes just a few weeks after Corus announced the firm Diversipro had completed a review on systemic racism at the company. As a result, Corus will be increasing diversity training and race-based data collection, said Doug Murphy, chief executive officer of Corus, in an November 12 email to staff committing to “meaningful and lasting change.” Murphy also shared a quote from a Diversipro lead praising the company for its “courage and foresight” to have undertaken the review.

The cries from BLM and the liberals about racism is simply the psychological projection of their own malformed thought processes. Liberalism is a mental illness. Nothing less, nothing more.

Just wow - Aricebo collapse

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It turns out that the observatory crew were flying a drone to inspect the cables at the moment they snapped. 
Scott Manley has the video - from his twitter account:

Scott also has an excellent YouTube channel - check it out.

It is what they do - Democrats

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From Major Patriot's twitter account - from the Michigan voter fraud hearings:

So very true

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Pull quote from President Trump's excellent speech last night:

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Good - got some more

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Local busts this time - from the Everett, WA Herald

16,000 fentanyl pills, pounds of meth, heroin seized in bust
Federal agents have made another series of arrests in a drug pipeline that stretches from Mexico to Snohomish County — and that is active even in the midst of a global pandemic.

In all, authorities seized what they believed to be 16,000 fentanyl pills, 30 pounds of meth and 6 pounds of heroin, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Eight suspects, including five from Snohomish County, were indicted Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Great news - get this crap off the streets and out of people's lives.

Of course - Georgia voting

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I would expect no less - from FOX News:

Georgia group founded by Stacey Abrams under investigation for seeking out-of-state, dead voters
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has launched investigations into several groups, including one founded by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, for seeking to “aggressively” register “ineligible, out-of-state, or deceased voters” before the state’s Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections.

Raffensperger’s office on Wednesday said the investigations are into groups including America Votes, Vote Forward and The New Georgia Project — which was founded by Abrams and previously chaired by Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock.

More at the site. Democrats doing what Democrats do.  They have nothing to offer that people actually want so they cheat to stay in power. This is why they hate President Trump so much - he is going to clean that up.

They would have no standards at all - from The Federalist:

While Lecturing Americans On Racism, Big Business Opposes Ban On Using Foreign Slave Labor
Some of the largest American companies — including Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola — are actively lobbying the U.S. Congress to weaken legislation that would bar the import of products made with Uighur forced labor in Xinjiang province, China.

These corporations are opposing the bipartisan Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed the House of Representatives 406-3 in September and is now under consideration in the U.S. Senate. The goal of the bill is to ensure “that goods made with forced labor in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China do not enter the United States market.”

Since Beijing has so far ignored international condemnation of its treatment of Uighur Muslims, the bill hopes to use economic pain to force Beijing to change its behavior. It also includes a provision to hold publicly traded companies accountable by prosecuting for securities violations the companies found to use forced labor from Xinjiang in their supply chains.

I had written about this before - here, here and here - I did not realize that it was still pending before the Senate.  That will be an interesting vote to see. See who is owned, see who is their paymaster, see if they represent We The People or represent a foreign power.

James released another tape today - from the Project Veritas twitter account:

Perfect role model - education

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From The Washington Free Beacon:

Biden Education Lead: Chinese Communist Party Has Done ‘Magical Work’
Joe Biden's education transition team lead has a long history of praising China's school system—a system the Chinese Communist Party designed to indoctrinate students.

Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor and the president of the California State Board of Education, has praised the Chinese Communist Party's education system for its "magical work" in establishing a strong teacher-government presence in student life. In her 2017 book Empowered Educators: How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality Around the World, she explained the centrality of the teacher to Chinese students' lives.

"Teachers in China are revered as elders, role models, and those whom parents entrust to shape the future of their children," Darling-Hammond wrote. "In the Tao traditions of ritual, the phrase ‘heaven-earth-sovereign-parent-teacher' is repeated and becomes ingrained in how people see themselves holistically governed and supported."

The Stanford educator failed to mention that any other teacher-student "relationship" could result in imprisonment. The Chinese government continually cracks down on "Western values" in the classroom by sending state-sponsored inspectors to monitor teachers—particularly in higher education—for "improper" remarks. Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has said that China's schools and teachers must "serve the Communist Party in its management of the country."

Chilling - a loyal follower of the narrative.

#NOTMYPRESIDENT

Corruption - San Francisco

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Tip of the iceberg - from the San Francisco Examiner:

Harlan Kelly, head of SFPUC, charged with fraud in widening Nuru scandal
Harlan Kelly, the general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, stepped down from his role Monday after being charged with fraud for allegedly trading insider information about a lucrative city contract for a paid family vacation.

The March 2016 trip to China is just one of the bribes Kelly is alleged to have accepted from permit expediter Walter Wong, who agreed to cooperate with the FBI investigation into City Hall corruption when the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged him in June.

Kelly is also alleged to have underpaid for repair work done by Wong’s construction company on his Inner Sunset home, according to the newly filed complaint against him.

And of course:

“I am not guilty of these allegations,” Kelly said. “It is painful for me to end a 35-year career as a result of false allegations, but it is simply not possible for me to do my job to the best of my ability while also defending myself.”

Guilty as hell and lying about it too. Classic case of Honest services fraud.

Someone needs to put this guy out to pasture. From Seattle station KTTH:

Gov. Inslee’s coronavirus power trip is killing representative democracy
Governor Jay Inslee is on a coronavirus-fueled political power trip. It shows a weakness in Washington’s supposed representative democracy. In fact, we’re not being represented at all right now.

The governor is mad with power. He’s enabled by enough Democrats too cowardly to go on the record with their stances on economy-killing mandates. So why have a government at all if we’re going to give one power-hungry, incompetent politician so much power?

Like so many problems facing Washington, this one is also self-imposed.

So true - the guy is probably a very nice person, he is just the embodiment of The Peter Principle - that a person will advance in a hierarchy until they reach their level of incompetency. Inslee has surrounded himself with yes-men and he has no idea what is happening in the real world.  He is operating on a level of incompetency that is staggering.

And nothing this morning

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Surfed the net but nothing substantive popped out at me.

Barr is attempting to walk-back his comments on the election.  Put up or shut up. Simple as that.

Busy day - grocery deliveries and meeting of the arts group tonight.

Sayonara for now

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YouTube is calling my name

Spent a good bit of the day working outside so feeling nice and sleepy.

Be obedient - with JP

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Word to the wise:

From our President's twitter account:

They do not need this protection. Never have. It allows them to dodge responsibility for what they allow to be displayed and for what they choose to censor. Time for it to go away - should never have been put there in the first place.

Not surprised at all - from The Washington Free Beacon:

California’s Highest-Paid Govt Employee Worked for Org Tied to Chinese Espionage
California taxpayers shelled out more than $1 million to a man linked to a Chinese espionage program, making him the state government’s highest-paid worker.

Meng Yu, former chief investment officer of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), received more than $1.7 million in total pay and benefits in 2019, according to the latest financial disclosures obtained by Transparent California, a taxpayer watchdog group. Under Meng's leadership the pension fund, which covers two million members in the retirement system and 1.5 million members under its health program, has been subject to federal inquiries into its investments in Chinese government entities.

Meng took the lead at the pension fund after China's Thousand Talents Program recruited him to serve as the deputy CIO of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), a state-controlled entity. The FBI considers the Thousand Talents Program an example of "China's non-traditional espionage against the United States" that seeks to recruit people to transfer U.S. trade secrets and taxpayer-funded research into the hands of the Chinese government. Meng told the propaganda outlet People's Daily that he worked for SAFE out of patriotic commitment to "the motherland."

Neither CalPERS nor Governor Gavin Newsom's (D.) office responded to requests for comment.

Of course neither of them responded to requests. Stonewalling your way through life is the standard Democratic passtime. Not surprised at all.

Nothing surprising - CNN bias

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As promised, James O'Keefe released a huge tranche of audio recordings from the CNN morning briefing telephone calls with CNN President Jeff Zucker. Some bullet points:

    • CNN President Jeff Zucker: “This is a president who knows he's losing, who knows he's in trouble, is sick, maybe is on the aftereffects of steroids or not. I don't know. But he is acting erratically and desperately, and we need to not normalize that.”
    • Zucker: “You know, this is what we've come to expect for the last three and a half years, four years, but it clearly is exacerbated by the time that we're in and the issues that he's [Trump] dealing with. I think that we cannot just let it be normalized. He is all over the place and acting erratically, and I think we need to lean into that.”
    • Zucker: “Frankly, if we've made any mistake, it's been that our banners have been too polite, and we need to go well after Lindsey Graham.”
    • Zucker: “There's a ton going on. Let’s stay strong. Let's stay newsy. Let’s stay urgent. Let’s be smart. There is a lot of news out there, and Lindsey Graham really deserves it.”
    • Marcus Mabry, CNN digital VP of global programming: “Yeah, I was just going to say, if you're going to talk about the story, I think it's unavoidable that you have to talk about the naked racism of Tucker Carlson. Because that's really what drove this anti-diversity push, you know, Trump watches Tucker Carlson's show and then reacts. And just as sort of the white supremacy hour they have on Fox News every night, I think it's the --- You can't disconnect the two.”
    • Stephanie Becker, CNN field producer: “On the issue of why it's important to get the transition going right, the 9-11 report talks about one of the problems was that the trouble that was brewing that lost during the transition. So, if you want a good, concrete example of what happens when you don't have a good transition, well, look at the Twin Towers.”

Next couple of days will be interesting - O'Keefe has this vexing habit of releasing some mild stuff first, waiting for the outlets to poo-poo it, then releasing some worse stuff and he keeps going until that particular organization suffers a melt down. Saving the most egregious stuff for last.  He also releases the full media records so nobody can claim that he is cherry picking or editing out of context.

Thirty pieces of silver

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Seems to be the popular thing these days in the swamp. A three-fer - first from Associated Press:

Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud
Disputing President Donald Trump’s persistent, baseless claims, Attorney General William Barr declared Tuesday the U.S. Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.

Barr’s comments, in an interview with the The Associated Press, contradict the concerted effort by Trump, his boss, to subvert the results of last month’s voting and block President-elect Joe Biden from taking his place in the White House.

Barr told the AP that U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

Despite this - Associated Press, September 2nd, 2020:

Barr raises voter fraud specter, China threat
As the 2020 presidential race between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden heats up, Attorney General William Barr warned of the potential of substantial fraud in voting by mail — but he omitted necessary context, and states that rely on the process say there is little evidence of such activity.

He also suggested that China poses more of a threat to election security than Russia, even though that was not the conclusion of an official intelligence assessment last month.

What changed Billy-boy? Who got to you? Who paid you off and how much was your price?

The Trump Legal Team's response - from twitter:

Got to love the line:"With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn't been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation." Fraud on an epic scale and the Democrats got caught with their knickers down. Throw the book at them.

Heading out for a couple of hours

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Running some errands - the testimonies coming out of the election hearings are staggering.  Heads need to roll.

A call to arms - Lin Wood

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Quite the tweet:

Interesting given this revelation from Disclose.tv:

Here is the link from the Securities Exchange Commission documenting the "investment" of $400,000,000 dated October 8th.

Time to get on with the day

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Clear skies and frost on the ground. Great day for working outside. Doing some paperwork too - bills...

2020: My work here is done

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The final straw. The great telescope at Arecibo collapsed last night - from Florida's Orlando Sentinel:

Massive UCF-managed Arecibo telescope collapses in Puerto Rico
Scientists and Puerto Ricans lamented on Tuesday morning the collapse of one of the most powerful telescopes on the Earth, managed by the University of Central Florida and owned by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The 1,000-foot wide Arecibo Observatory radio telescope platform collapsed in Puerto Rico ending an era of space exploration, officials told the Associated Press. It was the second largest telescope on the planet.

Yes, the Chinese telescope is bigger but it can not transmit.  Arecibo was unique in that it can operate as a radar.  Perfect for looking for astroids that can potentially impact the Earth. A sad day for Science and proving once again that 2020 has been a horrible year.

Now this will be fun - CNN

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James O'Keefe from Project Veritas is going to release this at 7PM Eastern today.
From his twitter account:

I love that he quotes Noam Chomsky - manufacturing consent.

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