- Escobar: First Comes A Rolling Civil War
Escobar: First Comes A Rolling Civil War
Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/10/2020 – 00:00Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
Biden is on a double precipice of the worst-ever economic depression coupled with imminent explosions of social rage…
The massive psyops is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) knew how this would imperatively play out. I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.
US intel is very much aware of well-documented instances of election fraud. Among them: NSA software that infiltrates any network, as previously detailed by Edward Snowden, and capable of altering vote counts; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard app that hacks computers at the transfer points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults; the Dominion software system, known to have serious security issues since 2000, but still used in 30 states, including every swing state; those by now famous vertical jumps to Biden in both Michigan and Wisconsin at 4am on November 4 (AFP unconvincingly tried to debunk Wisconsin and didn’t even try with Michigan); multiple instances of Dead Men Do Vote.
The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next. They have weighed the pros and cons of placing as candidate a senile, stage 2 dementia, neocon warmonger and possible extortionist (along with son) as “leader of the free world”, campaigning from a basement, incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies, and seconded by someone with so little support in the Dem primaries that she was the first to drop out.
The optics, especially seen from vast swathes of the imperial-interfered Global South, may be somewhat terrible. Dodgy elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus. Yet only the Empire is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard.
Welcome to the New Resistance
The GOP is in a very comfortable position. They hold the Senate and may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House. They also know that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will have…consequences.
The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing. Why are they suddenly supporting Biden? Way beyond internal family squabbles worthy of the Successionsaga, Rupert Murdoch made it very clear, via the laptop from hell caper, that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family. So they will do whatever he wants. Murdoch does not need Trump anymore.
Nor, in theory, does the GOP. Former CIA insiders assure of serious backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris gang. Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP hates with a vengeance. The most important man in Washington will be in fact GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Still, to clear any lingering doubts, a vote recount would be absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI, MI, PA, GA, NV and AZ. Through hand counting. One by one. The DoJ would need to act on it, immediately. Not gonna happen. Recounts cost a ton of money. There’s no evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it.
While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “a torrent of misinformation” and “trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US election”, mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes.
Yet what really matters is the letter of the law. State legislatures decide whose electors go to the Electoral College to appoint the President.
Here it is – Article II, Section 1, Clause 2: Each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct.”
So this has nothing to do with governors, not to mention the media. It’s up to GOP state legislatures to act accordingly. The drama may roll out for weeks. The first step of the Electoral College procedure takes place on December 14. The final determination will only happen in early January.
Meanwhile, talk of a New Resistance is spreading like wildfire.
Trumpism, with 71 million + votes, is firmly established as a mass movement. No one in the GOP commands this kind of popular appeal. By sidelining Trumpism, the GOP may be committing seppuku.
So what will Deplorables do?
The always indispensable Alastair Crooke hits the nail on the head in a powerful essay: Trump is the President of Red America. And depending on how the scripted (s)election tragicomedy develops next, the Deplorables are bound to become The Ungovernables.
Crooke references a crucial parallel evoked by historian Mike Vlahos, who shows how the current American saga mirrors Ancient Rome in the last century of the Republic, pitting the Roman elite against the Populares – which today are represented by Red (Trumpist) America:
“This was a new world, in which the great landowners, with their latifundia [the slave-land source of wealth], who had been the ‘Big Men’ leading the various factions in the civil wars, became the senatorial archons that dominated Roman life for the next five centuries — while the People, the Populares, were ground into a passive — not helpless — but generally dependent and non-participating element of Roman governance: This sapped away at the creative life of Rome, and eventually led to its coming apart.”
So as much as the Dem machine had wanted it, Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus, whom the Greeks called Autokrator (autocrat), but was a de facto monarch. The American Augustus, Tiberius and most of all Caligula is still further on down the road. He will definitely be a benign, humanitarian imperialist.
In the meantime, what will imperial Big Capital do?
The West, and especially the American Rome, is on the edge of a double precipice: the worst economic depression ever, coupled with imminent, myriad, uncontrollable explosions of social rage.
So the Deep State is reasoning that with Biden – or, sooner rather than later, Supreme shakti and Commander-in-Chief Maa Durga Kamala – the path gets smoother towards the Davos Great Reset. After all, to reset the chess pieces, first the chessboard must be knocked over. This will be one step beyond Dark Winter – which not accidentally was evoked by teleprompter-reading Biden himself on the final presidential debate. The script gets ominously closer to the Rockefelller Foundation’s 2010 Lock Step.
Meanwhile, Plan B is kept in ready, steady, go mode: the lineaments of a global rampage, focused on “malign” Russia’s sphere of influence to satisfy a “revived” NATO and the military-industrial complex, which selected the now media-appointed President-Elect in the first place because he’s no more than a pliant cardboard figure.
- Climate 'Experts' Demand Tax-On-Meat To Fight Global Warming
Climate 'Experts' Demand Tax-On-Meat To Fight Global Warming
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 23:40The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC) urges the UK government to impose a climate tax on food producers by 2025 – unless private industry takes voluntary measures to limit their carbon emissions.
In the report published on Nov. 4, titled “All-Consuming: Building A Healthier Food System For People And Planet,” UKHACC outlines that the climate crisis cannot be resolved without reducing food that causes high emissions, such as red meat and dairy products.
“In particular, red meat consumption will need to be cut by half if the food system is to stay within sustainable environmental limits,” UKHACC wrote in the report.
Adding that, “changing our diets in this way will not only help to mitigate climate change but will also improve our health: there is also clear evidence that is replacing animal protein with plant-based protein results in lower rates of stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and overall death rates.”
UKHACC represents doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals from ten Royal Colleges of medicine and nursing, the British Medical Association, and The Lancet. The report makes several recommendations besides levies on food, such as ending buy-one-get-one-free offers for supermarket products that are harmful to the environment.
“If we are to hope to limit dangerous climate change and improve health outcomes, governments – including our own – will have to do far more to improve the sustainability of the food that we eat,” UKHACC said.
UKHACC said a future tax on meat and dairy products could easily work. They point to changing consumer behaviors that have been observed around a “Sugar Tax” to limit the consumption of junk foods.
Figures have it that food production is responsible for at least a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. What appears to become is that, in the name of climate change, a war on the food system will be waged and the foods we eat that are deemed too dangerous for the climate will either be taxed or banned completely.
“We can’t reach our goals without addressing our food system,” said Kristin Bash, who led the Faculty of Public Health’s food group and was a co-author of the UKHACC report, who was quoted by The Guardian.
Bash said, “the climate crisis isn’t something we should see as far in the future. It’s time to take these issues seriously now.”
The coronavirus appears to be ushering in a new world order to transition the old economic system into a more sustainable world economic order. As for this case, if we chose to follow down the path – we’re all going to be eating plant-based products from Beyond Meats.
- Iran's Rouhani Invites Biden To Return To Nuclear Deal Commitments
Iran's Rouhani Invites Biden To Return To Nuclear Deal Commitments
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 23:20Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,
In weekend comments, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on President-elect Joe Biden to return to fulfilling commitments under the P5+1 nuclear deal, saying Iran would continue its resistance to the US until they return to the deal.
There have been indications that Biden wants to return the US to the deal, though some other top Democrats suggested that the US intends to impose another tougher deal on Iran. It’s not clear that Iran is going to be interested in that.
Rouhani says he wants those nations sanctioning Iran to recognize their method has failed and try a new approach. That might include talks, but it’s key for the US to suggest that they really are looking for a break from the old strategy.
“We hope that the experience of these three years has been a lesson to them that will make the next US administration follow the law and return to all its commitments,” Rouhani said in televised comments.
With the defeat of Trump, FM Javad Zarif is urging all of Iran’s neighbors to cooperate, saying they could come together on their common interests going forward.
There is no word any of them has accepted this overture yet, but the election is still being processed by many, and nations will likely come through with reactions in the weeks to come.
Trump’s demand that the world reflect his own hostile stance on Iran clearly did fail, and the rest of the world will be looking for a new approach with or without the US. With Biden, the chances are that diplomacy is a realistic option.
- China CPI Tumbles To 11 Year Low After First Drop In Pork Prices Since Feb 2019
China CPI Tumbles To 11 Year Low After First Drop In Pork Prices Since Feb 2019
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 23:00In the latest confirmation that China can not be relied upon to reflate the world out of the covid crisis the same way it succeeded to pull the global economy out of the 2009 depression, moments ago Beijing reported that in October, China’s CPI inflation rose just 0.5% Y/Y in October, below the 0.8% market expectations, and declined 0.3% sequentially failing to post the expected 0.2% increase, primarily on lower food price inflation and in particular the rapid decline of pork prices which posted their first decline since 2019.
Meanwhile, PPI inflation – one of the core inputs for Chinese industrial profits – sank -2.1% Y/Y in October, also missing the -2.0% expectation, and unchanged from September. Lower price inflation in food processing related industry was offset by higher price inflation in other industries such as metal pressing and smelting and textile.
Looking at the component, in year-on-year terms, food inflation rose just +2.2% Y/Y in October from +7.9% Y/Y in September, driven by a 2.8% decline in pork prices, the first annual decline since February 2019, lowering year-over-year CPI inflation by 0.13%.
Egg prices tumbled by 16.3% Y/Y, lowering the headline CPI by 0.11%. Fresh vegetable prices rose but at a slower pace: in October, fresh vegetable CPI was +16.7% Y/Y vs 17.2% in September, adding 0.38% to headline CPI inflation. Meanwhile, non-food CPI inflation was unchanged at +0.0% yoy in October, driven by a 17.2% plunged in fuel costs vs -14.7% yoy in September.
Core inflation (headline CPI excluding food and energy) was unchanged at +0.5% yoy in October.
Looking at gate inflation, year-on-year PPI inflation was at -2.1% yoy in October, unchanged from September, and a modest improvement from the summer, but not nearly enough to explain the surging industrial profits which, at least according to the government, are trending far higher than where PPI suggests they should be.
In month-over-month annualized terms, PPI declined by 1%, vs -5% in September. Price declines narrowed for producer goods in October (-2.7% yoy vs -2.8% yoy in September) but price decline for consumer goods widened (-0.5% yoy in October, vs -0.1% yoy in September) mainly on lower food price inflation.
By major industry, PPI inflation declined on a year-over-year basis in agricultural food manufacturing (from 3.9% yoy in September to 1.9% yoy in October); on the other hand inflation rose in ferrous metal smelting and pressing, and deflation moderated in textile and telecom industries.
The latest numbers confirm that despite the recent surge in China’s credit impulse…
… this has to translate into a sustainable and benign increase in prices, one driven by higher wages not jumping commodity costs.
Looking ahead, Goldman predicts that headline CPI inflation will moderate further in coming months in our view, on continued decline of pork prices and a very high base in coming months.
Meanwhile, despite the continued decline in CPI and PPI, China bond yields rose to the highest level in a year just ahead of the price data and are poised to keep going according to Bloomberg. This is the result of today’s inflation scare following the Pfizer news, although judging by the sharp reversal in futures, the surge to all time highs may end up being the biggest reflationary headfake in recent history.
- Robert Gore: "It's Perfectly Clear…"
Robert Gore: "It's Perfectly Clear…"
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 22:40Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,
Making the vote irrelevant makes secession relevant.
If he gets anything approaching an honest vote count Trump will win in a landslide.
“The Corruptocracy,” Robert Gore, October 25, 2020
I stand by my statement. It’s obvious that Trump didn’t get “anything approaching an honest vote count.” One of the better crime scene investigations I’ve seen is “The 2020 Election: Fuckery Is Afoot,” by blogger Correia45, and I’ve posted others as well. As the litigation-filled days go by, we’re sure to find out more about the Democrats’ electoral fraud.
I won’t venture a guess as to whether such disclosure and litigation will ultimately lead to awarding Trump the election, but I have my doubts. The corruption runs too deep. If Biden wins, his camarilla will try to explain away the obvious with talk of glitches and anomalies, all of which mysteriously broke their way. They shouldn’t bother; they’ll be fooling no one and it just adds to the rage.
Good often emerges from even the worst situations. The good emerging from this one is that the veil is completely lifted, the election provides transcendent clarity. Many have already peaked under the veil. Those who refuse to grasp what is now appallingly obvious are too dense, deluded or corrupt to be of concern, and should be left to whatever ignominious ends fate has in store for them.
This election has made it made perfectly clear that we live in a corruptocracy. We can’t vote corruptocracy out any more than the people of the Soviet Union could have voted out communism (also a corruptocracy) and for the same reason: the vote itself is fundamentally corrupt. If Trump loses, it clearly discredits the notion embraced by the losers of every election: wait til next time. Next time is likely to be even more corrupt.
What’s clear to those of us who voted for Trump is if we want to get back what we cherish about America, we’re going to have to fight for it. Freedom is not free, and neither are individual rights, the rule of law, capitalism, peace, or the opportunity to build a better life.
Although I and others have suggested some sort of semi-amicable divorce for our bitterly divided country, that’s not going to happen because of the nature of the division. As I said in “The Corruptocracy,” the division is between the productive class and those it supports.
After this election there are undoubtedly millions of disgusted Trump supporters who would embrace a split in a heartbeat, but peaceful secession is precluded by the fundamental flaw at the core of every collectivist ideology: governments don’t produce, they steal. Leaches never desires separation. The blue needs the red; man cannot live on high tech, media, crony capitalism, and finance alone.
The battle is joined, collectivists versus producers. Tactically, there’s no dumber strategy than waging war against those who support you, but their pretensions notwithstanding, collectivists are never all that bright.
If Biden is declared the winner, Covid-19 restrictions are no longer necessary to hamstring the economy, discredit Trump, and justify mail-in voting fraud. The precedents have been set and a scary germ story can always be concocted when needed to frighten and subjugate those who are easily frightened and subjugated. If the collectivists have a brain in their collective head they’ll quickly lift all the restrictions to resuscitate economies so their collectivist governments will have something to steal. On any honest accounting for pension and medical liabilities, most of them are already bankrupt.
SLL reader SW Richmond recently commented:
if one looks at this map:
2016 Electoral Map by county. “Centralia” states are predominantly red.
…one can see the geographic answer to our problem: “Centralia”.
Centralia includes the entire South except Virginia, extends north and west to the mountain states, Midwest and Arizona. “Centralia” has copious access to ports and harbors, energy, food, internal transportation, manufacturing, fresh water, military assets including nukes. Centralia does not include VA, MD, PA, NY, etc, nor CA, OR, WA. MN, IL, WI and MI can choose. We may desire to include Jefferson. A not-so-great migration would ensue much like during the dust bowl. Voter registrations could be reviewed before migrants were accepted.
This is not a drill. It is about survival.
This most definitely is not a drill, it is about the paramount issue that defines human history and philosophy: who decides the terms of an individual’s survival, the individual or those who rule by violence in the name of divine right, the collective, some other vicious justification, or naked force?
The idea of individual rights protected by the government was the foundation of the American experiment. It was and has been imperfectly realized; it is an ideal and humanity rarely attains its ideals. Government is and always will be the antithesis of that still revolutionary ideal. The US government’s massive expansion has been at the cost of the people’s liberty and has destroyed most of their rights. That destruction has been ongoing since the beginning of the republic and Trump has done nothing to stop or reverse it. Philosophical insight and consistency are not among his virtues.
Nevertheless, a Biden administration will be worse, much worse. The Democrats now openly aspire to the collectivist ideal—the complete subjugation of the individual to the state. We’ve gotten a preview of coming attractions with coronavirus totalitarianism, which has obliterated the few freedoms and joys left to Americans. For the millions of Americans who voted for him, including me, Trump represented the last, best hope for what we consider the American way of life.
There’s no going back, and the way forward is for those who cherish the American ideals of individual rights, freedom, limited government, the rule of law, and equality before that law to break away from Washington’s and it’s aligned states’ corruptocracy and sunder the ties that bind us. Nations and governments are not cast in stone for time and all eternity.
Certainly the bankrupt dis-United States and its government aren’t. The bill is coming due for the debt orgy and an unprecedented and catastrophic global economic cataclysm will take down whomever is unlucky enough to be the president. A defeated Trump would dodge that bullet. The resulting chaos will be unmanageable by a government that produces only debt, can steal little or nothing from a bankrupt economy, cannot borrow at anything but ruinous interest rates, and which must cover its soaring budget deficits with scrip it either prints or creates via computer entries, whether or not it outlaws real money (gold) or forces its increasingly worthless scrip to stay in the banking system.
At that time, an organized secession movement has a real chance. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Collapse will be freedom’s staunchest ally if the moment is seized. It won’t be easy and it won’t be without blood. Until it happens, prepare for the worst, it is assuredly coming and coming soon, but work towards a brighter future in a nation that does not yet exist.
For those who don’t want to wait, almost six years ago (January 7, 2015) I published “Revolution in America,” which presents a nonviolent way to take down the government by attacking it at its weakest point. It requires the collective action of millions of people and at that time I believed the recommended course of action would remain hypothetical. Things change. Although the hour is late, any significant fraction of Trump’s rightfully enraged 71 million voters could still put the plan into effect. The article merits a second look. Please pass it, and this article, on.
- "Transportation History" – First Humans Travel Through Virgin Hyperloop
"Transportation History" – First Humans Travel Through Virgin Hyperloop
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 22:20Virgin Hyperloop has completed a historic passenger ride of a levitating pod system that zoomed through the Nevada desert, the company said in a statement on Nov. 08.
Josh Giegel, CTO and Co-Founder, and Sara Luchian, Director of Passenger Experience at Virgin Hyperloop, were the world’s first humans to ride in the new form of transportation.
Here’s the video of Giegel and Luchian riding in a pod in a vacuum environment as it travels across a 500-meter test track in Nevada, reaching speeds around 100 mph.
The first hyperloop passenger test: https://t.co/nFohRHsZVt pic.twitter.com/CI4Sq7sghY
— Virgin Hyperloop (@virginhyperloop) November 9, 2020
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“I had the true pleasure of seeing history made before my very eyes,” said Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Chairman of Virgin Hyperloop and Group Chairman and Chief Executive of DP World.
Despite low speeds, Hyperloop envisions a future where the pods will allow people to travel across California, or even the country, at more than 600 mph. Hyperloop views the test as a significant milestone and another step towards commercialization.
The test comes one month after we reported a former coal mine in West Virginia would be the site of Hyperloop’s new Hyperloop Certification Center and test track. Construction of the facility will begin construction in 2022 on a former coal mine site in Tucker and Grant Counties, West Virginia, with safety certification by 2025 and commercial operations by 2030.
Sir Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group, said, “for the past few years, the Virgin Hyperloop team has been working on turning its groundbreaking technology into reality.”
Branson continued: “With today’s successful test, we have shown that this spirit of innovation will in fact change the way people everywhere live, work, and travel in the years to come.”
- It's Already Started: "We Have A List…"
It's Already Started: "We Have A List…"
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 22:00Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
On September 18 of the year 96 AD, a fairly obscure and elderly politician named Marcus Cocceius Nerva was proclaimed Emperor of Rome by the Senate.
Rome was in chaos at the time; the empire had suffered from years of turmoil, economic decline, and oppression.
Most of the last several emperors– going back before the suicide of Nero in 68 AD– had been extremely destructive… plundering the treasury, waging expensive wars, and dismantling individual liberty.
The government was also extremely unstable; it was not uncommon at that point for emperors to be deposed or even assassinated.
In fact, Nerva’s predecessor– the emperor Domitian– had literally been murdered that morning.
Nerva was seen by many Senators as the ‘safe choice’ to take over the government. He was old, frail, and sick… so he wasn’t expected to last very long.
Most of all, Nerva was completely unremarkable.
He had spent his entire professional life in the service of the Empire, yet his name is barely mentioned in any historical record or associated with any major achievement.
But ‘unremarkable’ was exactly what Romans felt like they needed at the time: Nerva would be a break from the chaos. Or so they thought.
We know now with the benefit of hindsight that Rome would never fully recover.
There would be a few ‘good’ emperors along the way– people like Marcus Aurelius who were able to temporarily hold back the decline.
But the long-term trends were unstoppable.
Rome was slowly going bankrupt, destroying its currency, and rejecting the basic principles of its civilization that made it so powerful and prosperous to begin with.
And no politician was able to put the brakes on those big trends and reverse the inevitable decline.
This is a common theme throughout history: empires rise and fall, not because of a single individual, but from decades of major trends that gradually cause an inevitable decline.
These same trends keep surfacing over and over again across the centuries.
Economic mismanagement is an obvious one: empires in decline almost invariably hold an arrogant belief that they are exempt from the natural laws of finance.
In other words, they believe they can spend as much as they want, accumulate infinite amounts of debt, and debase their currency without limit, and somehow there won’t be any consequences.
Another trend is that the empire abandons its core values. Integrity, civic-mindedness, and hard work give way to corruption and entitlement.
And perhaps the biggest trend of empires in decline is that society frequently turns on itself. Civility ends, and rage takes over.
It goes without saying that these trends are alive and well in the West today, especially in the Land of the Free.
US finances have been in disarray for decades. Just this year alone, the national debt has grown by $4 trillion and the Federal Reserve has conjured another $3 trillion out of thin air.
And even before Covid struck when the economy was firing on all cylinders, the government was still adding more than $1 trillion each year to the debt.
Now there are entire factions of politicians that want to take those numbers to the next level.
In fact, there’s an entire school of economics now called “Modern Monetary Theory” which poses that governments can simply print as much money as they want without consequence.
This is pretty classic empire arrogance.
But, again, the even more powerful trend now is the growing rage that’s so prevalent.
We’ve seen it unfold in front of our very eyes– violence, arson, assault, looting, vandalism, intimidation.
And if the this angry mob isn’t out in the streets causing mayhem, they’re on social media trying to destroy someone’s life who committed the thoughtcrime of intellectual dissent.
The election results last week proved that this angry mob is still a numerical minority.
Unfortunately they are a very powerful minority that has taken over a number of important institutions.
They already control the media. Objective journalism doesn’t exist anymore– it’s just activism and propaganda.
(And if anyone needs any proof, look no further than a prominent CNN ‘reporter’ weeping tears of joy over the weekend on live television. How can these people expect to be taken seriously as objective journalists??)
The mob has also taken over education too.
Schools and universities are now filled with enraged Marxists who spend dozens of hours each week indoctrinating our children with their new woke religion.
They’ve even reinvented science, history, and mathematics to conform to the principles of critical race theory.
The mob also exerts extreme influence over major corporations.
You can’t watch a Disney movie, or an NFL game, or even a commercial for men’s razors anymore, without having identity politics shoved down your throat.
They also hold extreme influence over Big Tech, whose one-sided censorship policies have become so absurd they’re starting to rival the Chinese Communist Party.
Over the weekend, for example, Twitter was ablaze with activists who launched an ‘accountability project’ to create a database archiving every supporter, donor, staffer, etc. who supported the current Presidential administration.
The project’s tagline is “Remember what they did,” and “We must never forget. . .”
And they’re targeting “those who elected him,” and “those who funded him,” referring, of course, to the President and the 70 million people who voted for him.
One reporter from the Washington Post deemed that everyone archived “should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position, or be accepted into ‘polite’ society.”
She concluded her thinly-veiled threat by saying, “We have a list.”
Twitter, of course, did not see fit to censor this shining example of objective journalism, which now has 40,000 likes.
It’s a pretty blatant sign of decline when people start keeping ‘lists’ of political opponents they want to punish. And this madness is just getting started.
* * *
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- Silence From China & Russia On Recognizing Biden Win
Silence From China & Russia On Recognizing Biden Win
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 21:40It’s been over 48 hours since Joe Biden was declared in a consensus of US media networks the president-elect of the United States, and amid a flurry of congratulatory messages from world leaders, there remains deafening silence out of Russia and China.
The Kremlin indicated Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to actually wait until the results are certified by courts, which wouldn’t be until at least after Dec. 8, also determinant on legal challenges.
“Anticipating your possible question about Putin’s congratulations to the US president-elect, I want to say the following: we consider it proper to wait for the official results,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during a press conference on Monday.
Via AP He further said Putin wishes to hold-off on any official pronouncements related to the next US president until results are official, as Politico summarized of his statements:
In his comments on Monday, Peskov cited “certain legal procedures” as the basis for Putin withholding his congratulations from Biden, unlike in 2016 when the Russian leader swiftly sent good wishes to Trump after his victory over Hillary Clinton.
“The difference is quite obvious,” Peskov said, according to Interfax. “You see that there are certain legal procedures ahead, which were announced by the incumbent president. This is the difference. Therefore, we consider it correct to wait for the official announcement.”
Peskov emphasized that “There are no official results yet.”
China meanwhile has taken a similar position, with its foreign ministry on Monday saying it had “taken note” of Biden’s declaration of victory yet President Xi will wait for “US laws and procedures” to finish before issuing a formal congratulations.
While congratulations have poured in for Biden, some world leaders have been conspicuously quiet.
Here’s how 🇨🇳China, 🇮🇳India and 🇷🇺Russia have reacted pic.twitter.com/OO0p9FJb9q
— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) November 9, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“I noticed that Mr Biden has declared victory of the election,” Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing. “We understand that the presidential election result will be determined following US laws and procedures.”
However, during the 2016 election President Xi Jinping had sent Trump a formal message of congratulations by November 9.
Though Beijing officials are hoping for restoration of greater stability under a future Biden presidency, it’s not expected a new administration will “go soft” on China, thus Beijing is bracing for more tumultuous relations to come.
Additional countries like Mexico and Brazil have lately said they plan to hold off on issuing any messages to the Biden camp before results are made official.
- Senators Ask DOJ To Investigate Segregation At Colleges
Senators Ask DOJ To Investigate Segregation At Colleges
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 21:20Authored by Ben Zeisloft via Campus Reform,
Senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Georgia) sent a letter to US Attorney General William Barr, asking him to investigate instances of racial segregation on college campuses.
Citing numerous examples of an “alarming trend of apparent racial segregation” at American universities, the Senators asked Barr to “investigate these and similar cases.” Sen. Cotton and Sen. Loeffler note that the incidents appear to violate Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in federally funded programs or activities.”
The Senators mentioned the University of Michigan’s “virtual cafes,” whichsplitparticipants and moderators on the basis of race. Participants were encouraged to view the world as “members of a particular racial group.” The authors compared this phenomenon to instances addressed by the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.
The authors also mentioned an RA training at the University of Kentucky, which segregated trainees into white and non-white groupings. Campus Reform reported on the incident in October.
One individual who was subjugated to the training told Campus Reform that trainees “were told how privileged we were and how we needed to do everything we could to make the staff of color feel accepted and welcome.” However, the training “never mentioned racism towards White people.”
Campus Reform has reported on the incidents at the University of Michigan and the University of Kentucky, as well as several others. The authors referred Barr to a report by the National Association of Scholars, which noted hundreds of similar incidents.
“Racial segregation is antithetical to our nation’s creed, expressed in the Founding documents, that ‘all men are created equal,’” concluded the Senators.
Campus Reform has reached out to Sen. Cotton but did not receive a response.
- Here Is How Biden Plans To Move Ahead With Mandatory Mask Order
Here Is How Biden Plans To Move Ahead With Mandatory Mask Order
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 21:00President-elect Joe Biden apparently wrapped up public appearances for the day pretty early (there’s a lot to get to in those 5 or so hours of lucidity he gets per day), neglecting to say if he plans on mandating mask-wearing, though he has said he would be open to doing so in the past.
But how exactly is Biden going to make sure Americans, weary of following all these social distancing rules after nine months, toe the line? By doing what Europe did: Imposing onerous fines and penalties.
And Dr. Marc Siegel, a frequent Fox News contributor who has both examined and interviewed President Trump, said during an interview that a punitive approach to masks might have an adverse impact on wearing, stoking more public anger, rather than more compliance.
“I think masks are quite useful, but they have a place and they’re not the be all and end all,” Siegel said. “I’m worried that mandating this with fines and such may actually lead to more of a rebellion against it.”
Dr. Siegel added that deciding when and where masks are necessary is often a judgment call for people following the CDC guidelines, and while masks should be worn properly, both inside and, when necessary, outdoors, they are not the end-all, be-all of proper COVID-19 prevention.
Rather than placing the focus on wearing masks, Dr. Siegel said limitations on people standing or shopping in close proximity indoors would be a more sensible approach.
As for social distancing, Biden’s plan says it will be used as more of a “dial” approach that will determine the risk of spread using evidence-based guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a move Siegel says is a mistake.
“I don’t think social distancing is dial. I think masks are a dial,” Siegel said. “Social distancing is something we should just be doing right now. You never know how much virus was in the community.”
He believes physical distancing is actually more important to curbing the spread than masks are.
“I think physical distancing is more important than masks,” Siegel argued. “If you’re 10 feet away from someone, you’re not going to get the virus. If you’re one foot away with a mask, you might.”
Dr. Siegel’s comments come just a day after millions of Americans flooded into the streets of cities like NYC to celebrate the end of President Trump’s “fascist” rule (though the process isn’t quite over, as Sen Susan Collins noted earlier).
While many still wore masks, the lack of social distancing raises serious concerns about encouraging spread. Meanwhile, Biden’s coordinated rollout of the Pfizer-BioNTech trial results with WSJ and the rest of the media serving as the main conduit shows that he’s already working to to convince the American people to trust the government when it comes to vaccines. And moving ahead with a dramatic shift in the strategy at this point wouldn’t exactly instill confidence in the people with their hands on the wheel.
- Ken Starr: Pennsylvania Ballot Extension A "Constitutional Travesty"
Ken Starr: Pennsylvania Ballot Extension A "Constitutional Travesty"
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 20:40Authored by Simon Veazey via The Epoch Times,
Former independent counsel Ken Starr has described the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision to allow late-arrival mail-in ballots as a “constitutional travesty,” saying that only the state legislature has the authority granted by the Constitution to set such terms.
Starr, a former circuit judge and former solicitor general of the United States, told Fox News’ “Life Liberty and Levin” that he believes the federal Supreme Court would now “do its duty.”
The federal Supreme Court last month declined a plea to suspend the decision by the state Supreme Court prior to the election and is currently considering a petition to review the merits of the case.
In total over 2.6 million mail-in and absentee ballots have been received in Pennsylvania at the time of writing—out of 6.5 million total votes tallied in the state. The ratio of Democrat to Republican votes in mail-in and absentee ballots is around three to one.
Starr said that the actions of the Pennsylvania court in allowing mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day contradicted the demands of the Constitution which bestows only state legislatures with the right to set the terms for gifting their electoral college votes, not courts.
The Democratic Party filed a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth, and all 67 county boards after the state legislature rejected proposals by Gov. Tom Wolf on the processing of ballots. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Democratic majority, ruled on Sept. 17 in their favor, saying that election officials can accept all mail-in ballots, including absentee ballots, up to three days after the election.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf speaks on stage during the Geisinger National Symposium in Danville, Penn., on Nov. 9, 2017. (Lisa Lake/Getty Images for Geisinger Symposium)
“What happened in Pennsylvania over these recent weeks is a constitutional travesty,” said Starr.
“Governor Wolf tries to get his reforms, his vision—as he was entitled to do—through the legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He failed. He then goes to the state Supreme Court, which by a divided vote, accepted the substance of what Governor Wolf was doing, and then added thereon nooks and crannies as well.”
Starr was one of the lawyers to represent Trump during impeachment hearings. He also headed the Whitewater investigation into then-President Bill Clinton. Starr says that the words of the Constitution, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,” make clear that only the state legislature can set such terms of the election.
Former independent counsel Ken Starr on May 8, 2014. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“What the state Supreme Court did was utterly unconstitutional, so it’s a lawless act,” he said. “At this stage, the Supreme Court has a solemn duty—in light of the nature of the issue and the stakes at hand—to take the case.”
Starr said he agreed that the Pennsylvania court may have disenfranchised voters.
“In fact, to count every vote may be a crime … under federal law,” he said. “It’s definitely a crime under state law, if—and here’s the keyword—illegal.”
The U.S. Supreme Court had previously rejected two requests by Republicans in this case, one to hold the state Supreme Court decision, and the other to expedite consideration of a petition to review the merits of the case.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito late Friday ordered Pennsylvania election officials to segregate ballots that arrived after Election Day.
Alito granted a request by the state’s Republican Party to separate mail-in ballots received between 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 and 5 p.m. on Nov. 6 from those that arrived by 8 p.m. on Nov. 3, in accordance with state guidance.
The justice, however, did not order the counties to stop counting but instead ordered that “all such ballots, if counted, be counted separately.”
The September Pennsylvania court ruling said that ballots received on or before 5 p.m. on Nov. 6 that lack a postmark, a legible postmark, or other proof of mailing can still be counted and “will be presumed to have been mailed by Election Day unless a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that it was mailed after Election Day.”
Last year, Pennsylvania passed legislation that opened up mail-in voting to all-comers for the first time. However, it did not offer any extension.
The state Supreme Court said in the ruling there was a risk of voters being disenfranchised due to the postal service being swamped.
Justice Max Baer, writing for the majority, in the 63-page opinion said the primary elections earlier this year were rife with threatened disenfranchisement of thousands of voters as several county election boards struggled with the unprecedented volume of mail-in ballot applications.
- Multiple States And FDA Warn Of "Careless" Rapid Antigen Testing In Asymptomatic COVID Cases
Multiple States And FDA Warn Of "Careless" Rapid Antigen Testing In Asymptomatic COVID Cases
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 20:20As if there wasn’t enough confusion and broad misunderstanding going around about Covid, the states of Louisiana and Oregon are now warning against using rapid, low cost antigen tests in asymptomatic people to try and determine whether or not they are positive with coronavirus. Oh, and so is the Food and Drug Administration…
The appeal of these tests is that they can be spread widely and cheaply, giving the illusion of control over the virus to individuals and organizations that use them for quick blanket testing.
But these tests could “miss some infections that can be picked up by costlier gold-standard assays, and can incorrectly return positive results,” according to Bloomberg.
As a result, the state is not recommending the tests to people without symptoms, who have not been exposed to someone with a positive test. The Louisiana Department of Health also says that people who undergo antigen tests should be made aware of its limitations.
Joseph Kanter, interim assistant secretary for the state’s Office of Public Health, said: “On the one hand, we have technology and testing platforms like this one which are new and likely valuable. And everybody has an interest in getting them to people that could benefit from them as quick as possible. On the other hand, we don’t have great data on them yet.”
The Oregon Health Authority has also warned against using the tests in asymptomatic people without confirmed Covid-19 exposure.
Mark McClellan, director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University, commented that antigen tests for one time use risks the chance of missing infections: “For people looking to one-time use of Covid antigen tests as a way to go back to normal, we’re not in that situation now. This is one more layer of protection as we try to reopen and get through the rest of the pandemic.”
On Tuesday, the FDA also warned about the tests, saying they can produce “incorrect positive results”. Nursing homes and other care settings have reported false positives from antigen tests, the FDA noted.
These warnings apply to tests like Abbot’s $5 BinaxNOW test that the U.S. government is spending $750 million on. Now, state health officials are reportedly “increasingly concerned that people without symptoms should be screened with more costly but more reliable polymerase chain reaction assays”.
Jeff Engel, a senior adviser at the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, said: “HHS made this purchase without any studies on the novel use in which they’re deploying these tests. I think that’s careless.”
It’s also one of the infinite reminders that government is not only an abhorrent allocator of other peoples’ capital, but is also flailing wildly in trying to control a virus that is casually making its way across the globe regardless of what preventative measures we take.
HHS official Brett Giroir responded: “We do support asymptomatic testing being used. That is the only way that you’re going to screen millions of people a month.”
Abbot responded: “Widespread, affordable rapid antigen testing helps slow the virus’s spread, and tests like BinaxNOW, when used as intended, can detect those most likely to be infectious.”
- Top DoJ Voter Fraud Investigator Quits After AG William Barr Authorizes Probe
Top DoJ Voter Fraud Investigator Quits After AG William Barr Authorizes Probe
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 20:01Update (2140ET): In response to AG Barr’s decision, NYTimes reports that Richard Pilger – who oversees voter fraud investigations – has quit:
“Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications… I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch.”
Does it not seem odd that when asked to investigate voter fraud, the gentleman who is in charge of investigating voter fraud chooses to resign rather than do his f**king job?
Perhaps it was his alleged involvement in the Lois Lerner IRS targeting Tea Party groups debacle that triggered this resignation?
* * *
In a day when numerous lawsuits were filed challenging the outcome of the presidential election, and when prominent Republicans such as Mitch McConnell finally came out in support of Trump’s contention that the election was rigged, late on Monday Attorney General William Barr authorized the Justice Department to launch a probe into “substantial allegations” of voter fraud in the 2020 election, the AP first reported.
In a letter to US attorneys across the country, Barr said they could conduct investigations “if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state.”
According to the Washington Times, this is an unusual move, since Justice Department policy prohibits any action that could influence the outcome of an election until the vote is formally certified. But the Justice Department is responsible for ensuring the integrity of federal elections.
Barr’s memo comes days after presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden was declared the winner by several media outlets in the 2020 presidential election. President Trump has not conceded and has launched several legal efforts challenging the results in states where the voting margins are razor-thin. By granting prosecutors the power to pursue such cases, U.S. attorneys around the country could give Trump more ammunition for his lawsuit.
The DOJ’s action, which many republicans will claim is long overdue, comes after Republicans in recent days turned up the heat on Barr to take some action in response to the voter fraud allegations. Earlier on Monday, Barr reportedly met with McConnell on Monday.
On Friday, nearly 40 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to the AG asking him to get to the bottom of the voter fraud claims.
“What are you doing to ensure the integrity of the voting and counting process right now?” the Republicans asked Mr. Barr in their letter. The lawmakers also called on the attorney general to commit to “using all the resources” at his disposal to ensure only legal votes are being counted “in a fully transparent manner.”
Also last week, the Nevada Republican Party sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department claiming they have received reports of at least 3,062 instances of voter fraud in the battleground state.
“We expect that number to grow substantially,” the party said in a tweet. “Thousands of individuals have been identified who appear to have violated the law by casting ballots after they moved from NV.”
The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in several key battleground states that Biden won, asking local judges to either invalidate or stop counting mail-in ballots, a record number of which were cast this year amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier in the day several prominent Republicans backed Trump’s claims of voter fraud or his right to challenge the count, including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell: “Obviously no states have yet certified their election results. We have at least one or two states that are already on track for a recount and I believe the president may have legal challenges underway in at least five states,” McConnell said during a floor speech Monday.
The Trump admin has also accused local election officials of not allowing their representatives to watch vote counts and claiming illegal votes were cast in states including Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
“You don’t take these positions because you want an honest election,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said during a press conference on Monday. “What we are asking for right now is patience as we explore these equal protection claims among others.”
As a reminder, states have until Dec. 8 to resolve election issues, including recounts and legal battles. The Electoral College members meet on Dec. 14 to finalize the outcome.
- Silicon Valley & 'Smart Money' Behind This Bitcoin Rally, Data Suggests
Silicon Valley & 'Smart Money' Behind This Bitcoin Rally, Data Suggests
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 20:00Authored by Joseph Young via CoinTelegraph.com,
The Google Trends interest is relatively low for the keyword “Bitcoin” while on-chain data shows smart money is accumulating BTC…
image courtesy of CoinTelegraph
Bitcoin (BTC) is continuing to show strong momentum even after a major rally. Key data points show that the uptrend has likely been fueled by smart money in recent months. This means retail or mainstream investors have been largely on the sidelines as BTC price surpassed $15,000 this month.
In 2017, when the price of Bitcoin hit an all-time high at $20,000, the retail demand was at its peak. Google Trends data soared, mainstream media coverage noticeably increased, and spot exchange volumes exploded across major markets, especially in South Korea and Japan.
This time, the Google Trends interest is relatively low for the keyword “Bitcoin” while on-chain data shows smart money is accumulating BTC.
High-net-worth investors are buying Bitcoin
Moreover, according to on-chain analyst Willy Woo, it has been mostly high-net-worth investors who have been purchasing Bitcoin.
Bitcoin mean transfer volume. Source: Glassnode
When whales buy Bitcoin, they mostly facilitate the deals through the over-the-counter (OTC) market. Over time, spot and derivatives markets trail the OTC market as whales lead the upsurge. Woo said:
“Who has been buying this rally? It’s smart money… High Net Worth Individuals. You can see the average transaction value between investors taking a big jump upwards. OTC desks are seeing this too. Bitcoin is still in it’s stealth phase of its bull run.”
The trend of whales frontrunning retail investors is optimistic because it shows Bitcoin is still in its nascent bull phase. Large capital from new retail and mainstream investors is yet to enter the cryptocurrency market.
Another Glassnode metrics paints a similar trend. The number of Bitcoin addresses holding more than 100 BTC hit a seven-month high at 16,271.
The number of addresses holding over 100 BTC. Source: Glassnode
New money is pouring in
Whales consistently buying Bitcoin over the past few months is optimistic in itself. But, Woo emphasized that the number of new whales has also increased.
If the number of addresses containing large amounts of Bitcoin increases, analysts consider it as an overall spike in new whales.
The rise in more high-net-worth individuals accumulating Bitcoin coincides with the start of the recent institutional frenzy around BTC.
Following Square’s BTC purchase worth $50 million, the number of high-net-worth investors in the Bitcoin market noticeably increased. Woo explained:
“Best of all we are not just seeing smart money flow in, it’s NEW smart money. Orange line is the rate of new investors coming in per hour previously unseen before on the blockchain. It’s seriously bullish.”
Google Trends data shows relatively low retail interest
Google Trends data is indicating a similar narrative as on-chain data points. The search volume for the keyword “Bitcoin” is currently less than 10% compared to the 2017 top.
Bitcoin search volume on Google. Source: Google Trends
Nevertheless, while the search volume for Bitcoin remains low, there is a particularly high interest coming from states like Hawaii, California, Nevada and Washington.
Bitcoin search interest by subregion in the U.S. Source: Google Trends
Interestingly, California and Hawaii rank as the third and fourth highest in per capita income by state in 2020.
Moreover, San Jose/San Francisco in California i.e. Silicon Valley is ranked as the top metro region for Bitcoin interest. Silicon Valley is, of course, home to many high-net-worth investors and entrepreneurs.
- ESPN Cutting 500 Jobs: Network Blames COVID, Fails To Mention Ratings Plunge Due To "Woke" Messaging
ESPN Cutting 500 Jobs: Network Blames COVID, Fails To Mention Ratings Plunge Due To "Woke" Messaging
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 19:40ESPN is cutting another 500 jobs as pressures from the Covid-19 pandemic are weighing on the sports network. Apparently, the restart of almost all major sports – albeit draped in political messaging for the last 6 months – hasn’t been enough to save the network from a fresh round of layoffs.
The network is blaming the coronavirus, naturally, because it certainly can’t blame its own politicized discussions during almost every major sporting event it has broadcast over the last few months.
A memo circulated on Thursday from Jimmy Pitaro, the head of ESPN, said the cuts will include 300 layoffs and the elimination of another 200 open positions. The company has 5,000 employees worldwide, according to the LA Times.
The memo said: “Prior to the pandemic, we had been deeply engaged in strategizing how best to position ESPN for future success amidst tremendous disruption in how fans consume sports. The pandemic’s significant impact on our business clearly accelerated those forward-looking discussions.”
The cuts are reportedly occurring across several departments and employees will “learn about their future” at the network next week. During the beginning of the pandemic, ESPN had lost a fair amount of its programming when Major League Baseball and the NBA both upended their seasons early.
Since the leagues have decided to “get woke”, embracing the political “Black Lives Matter” messaging before coming back on the air, they have seen their ratings plunge.
The cuts come right after ESPN’s parent company, Disney, also announced a sweeping round of more than 25,000 job cuts days ago. Recall, back in early October we reported that the network was planning “sweeping layoffs”. We noted then that the network was trying to cut “tens of millions” in salary.
Days prior to that, we pointed out that amidst a ratings plunge, the NBA is likely going to be pulling its BLM messaging from its courts and jerseys next season.
Here is the full text of the memo that went out to ESPN employees, per CNBC:
Dear colleagues,
As you know, we value transparency in our internal dialogue, and that means in both good and challenging times. After much consideration, I have some difficult organizational decisions to share. We will be reducing our workforce, impacting approximately 300 valued team members, in addition to 200 open positions.
Today is hard because ESPN has always been — and will always be — fortified by its fantastic people. Teamwork, dedication, spirit and grit have built this place and are what make ESPN special. Prior to the pandemic, we had been deeply engaged in strategizing how best to position ESPN for future success amidst tremendous disruption in how fans consume sports. The pandemic’s significant impact on our business clearly accelerated those forward-looking discussions. In the short term, we enacted various steps like executive and talent salary reductions, furloughs and budget cuts, and we implemented innovative operations and production approaches, all in an effort to weather the COVID storm.
We have, however, reached an inflection point. The speed at which change is occurring requires great urgency, and we must now deliver on serving sports fans in a myriad of new ways. Placing resources in support of our direct-to-consumer business strategy, digital, and, of course, continued innovative television experiences, is more critical than ever. However, building a successful future in a changing world means facing hard choices. Making informed decisions about how and where we need to go – and, as always, in the most efficient way possible – is by far the most challenging job of any leadership team.
And, while it must be done looking through a business lens, it also must be done with great respect and genuine concern for people. We are parting ways with some exceptional team members – some of whom have been here for a long time – and all of whom have made important contributions to ESPN. We’re very grateful for all they’ve meant to us, and I assure you we are taking steps to make their transitions easier. I am proud of the people at ESPN.
Together, we have overcome tremendous challenges and adversity over these past several months and please know that the decisions and plans executed today were not made lightly. They are, however, necessary and I am convinced that we will move forward and effectively navigate this unprecedented disruption. Our Human Resources and Communications teams will continue to keep you posted on any updates, and you’ll be hearing more detail about our future direction in the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you have questions about anything outlined in this note, please do not hesitate to raise them with your leadership team or HR Business Partner.
With gratitude,
Jimmy
- Scientists Find "Hell Planet" With Lava Oceans, Supersonic Winds, And Rain Made Of Rocks
Scientists Find "Hell Planet" With Lava Oceans, Supersonic Winds, And Rain Made Of Rocks
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 19:20Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,
Life here on planet Earth often seems harsh, especially in 2020 with a pandemic, tornados and tropical storms, and out-of-control wildfires. However, none of those problems can hold a candle to the ultraviolent conditions of planet K2-141b.
On this brutal exoplanet hundreds of light-years away, oceans are filled with lava, rocks literally rain down on the surface, and howling winds break the sound barrier at thousands of miles per hour – making the hellish planet easily the most extreme ever discovered.
Such are the infernal conditions depicted in a new study by scientists from McGill University, York University and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata published on Tuesday in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
According to the study, K2-141b is one of the latest “lava planets” discovered, where this world orbits so closely to its sun that it almost grazes the star’s surface as it completes its revolution in only six to seven hours. Mercury, which is the closest planet to the sun in our own solar system, takes about 87 days to orbit the sun.
Meanwhile, the oceans of K2-141b are comprised of pure, heaving lava steams.
The atmospheric conditions and weather cycles of the exoplanet are unlike anything seen in our own solar system. While K2-141b is roughly the size of Earth, its surface, ocean and atmosphere are entirely made of rock –molten or otherwise.
“The study is the first to make predictions about weather conditions on K2-141b that can be detected from hundreds of light years away with next-generation telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope,” said lead author Giang Nguyen in a press release.
The scientists found, when analyzing illumination patterns of the planet, that two-thirds of K2-141b never see nightfall and are constantly exposed to daylight – meaning that that side of the planet is always facing its sun.
To call that part of the planet “scalding” hardly does justice to its high temperatures that exceed 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) – a temperature hot enough to not only melt rocks into lava, but also to vaporize them and create a brutal, unsparing atmosphere.
While the Earth’s water cycle sees water evaporate before it rises up into the atmosphere, condenses, and falls back to the surface as rain, K2-141b only has rocks to work with – hence the constant torrential downpour of stones.
“Our finding likely means that the atmosphere extends a little beyond the shore of the magma ocean, making it easier to spot with space telescopes,” said Nicolas Cowan, a co-author of the study.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the planet never sees light and is constantly experiencing frigid temperatures of minus 392 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 200 degrees Celsius.
To make matters worse, exoplanet K2-141b has winds that reach 3,100 miles per hour (5,000 km per hour), while its ocean of magma reaches depths of 86 miles (140 km), according to the study’s calculations.
On the dark side of the planet, these horrific winds dominate the environment. On the hot side, however, the winds are completely absent. However, the winds carries the rocky “rain” into the deep magma ocean, which then flows back to the bright side to keep the cycle going.
However, this cycle is nowhere near as stable as our own rain cycle.
“It’s a planet that doesn’t make much sense at all. There’s nothing like it in our solar system,” said Cowan.
The scientists hope that they can gain some insights on the formation of planets like our own that also had brutal conditions in their primeval state.
“All rocky planets, including Earth, started off as molten worlds but then rapidly cooled and solidified. Lava planets give us a rare glimpse at this stage of planetary evolution,” Cowan said.
- FDA Approves Eli Lilly Antibody Drug For Emergency Use; COVID-19 Outbreak Interrupts SEC Football Schedule: Live Updates
FDA Approves Eli Lilly Antibody Drug For Emergency Use; COVID-19 Outbreak Interrupts SEC Football Schedule: Live Updates
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 19:15Summary:
- SEC forced to change up schedule due to virus
- Eli Lilly’s antibody Bamlanivimab granted EUA by FDA
- Dr. Fauci says he wants to stay in current role
- Cali hospitalizations spike
- California gov hints at more restrictions
- Trump campaign advisor David Bossie tests positive
- Illinois reports 10k+ new cases for fourth day
- Hospitalizations climb in the mountain west
- Deaths drop in Illinois
- Nebraska issues mask order
- US cases top 10 million
- Italy tightens restrictions
- Joe Biden warns of “dark winter”, unveils task force members
- NJ imposes new restrictions
- NYC on verge of 2nd wave, mayor says
- Shanghai reports first case in months
- US hospitalizations back to July highs
- Ukrainian president tests positive
- Dr. Fauci hails Pfizer-BioNTech news
* * *
Update (1900ET): In yet another critical update involving a closely watched COVID-19 vaccine or therapeutic, the FDA on Monday granted emergency-use approval for Eli Lilly’s Bamlanivimab, an antibody therapy that has shown to be somewhat effective in treating mild-to-moderate COVID-19.
Eli Lilly’s shares popped in after-hours trading on the news, which comes after a spectacular trading session where early reports about the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine candidate helped spark a massive shift back into value.
It’s also another surprisingly timed development that again hints at some level of coordination in Monday’s post-election deluge of positive headlines about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Aside from the Pfizer news, the FDA also granted fast-track designation to Novavax’s vaccine candidate, as the company’s project is set to become the fifth to enter Phase 3 clinical trials in the US.
The treatment gives doctors an important alternative to treating high-risk patients before they become seriousl ill. These types of treatments are also being studied as short-term treatments that could be given to people – say, a nurse – who was potentially exposed to the virus.
In other news, a COVID-19 outbreak has impacted the SEC’s season schedule, now that Saturday’s game between Auburn and Mississippi State has been postponed due to COVID-19 outbreaks, with other games likely to be impacted by isolated campus outbreaks.
* * *
Update (1800ET): Seaking on – where else? – CNN Monday evening, Dr. Anthony Fauci one again chimed in to praise today’s Pfizer-BioNTech research, claiming we “would be giving vaccine to people very likely before the end of the year.”
The findings from the trials of the mRNA vector vaccine bode well for other vaccine projects in the works, Dr. Fauci said. He also threw in a few supportive comments about his favorite Biotech company, Moderna (a company that received $1 billion upfront from the federal government to run its trials).
“This shows that the mRNA platform actually does work. And there’s another vaccine candidate, Moderna, that’s using the same platform,” Fauci told CNN in a telephone interview.
Later this evening, Dr. Fauci spoke to another reporter, offering praise for Biden’s still-vaguely defined plan, and affirming that he would like to stay on in his current role in the new administration.
In some other troubling news from Monday afternoon, California saw its hospitalizations due to COVID-19 spiked 28.6% over the past two weeks.
* * *
Update (1520ET): California Gov. Gavin Newsom has just become the latest governor to hint at, or announce, more COVID-19-related restrictions in the neaer future.
* * *
Update (1450ET): Trump campaign senior outside advisor David Bossie has reportedly tested positive for COVID-19, joining Mark Meadows and Ben Carson in the growing number of TrumpWorld figures testing positive for the virus.
* * *
Update (1430ET): After the US topped 10 million confirmed cases on Monday…
…we’ve gotten some mixed news out of the mountain west and midwest. Wyoming reported a new record hospitaliztions Monday, while warning that 17 of 19 ICU beds at the state medical center were full. In neighboring Montana, 470 virus-linked hospitalizations were reported on Monday, a third of the total since March. 7 of 10 large hospitals in the state reported limited availability for emergency beds.
Meanwhile, Nebraska has joined Utah in issuing a mandatory mask order. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts announced the new health order Monday including a requirement that masks be worn when people are in close contact for at least 15 minutes at usinesses in the state, according to reports in the Nebraska local press. The reports come after the governor’s owne chief spokesman criticized the
Illinois, meanwhile, saw daily deaths decline day over day, from 42 on Sunday to just 14 on Monday, while it exceeded 10k new COVID-19 cases for the fourth straight day.
* * *
Update (1330ET): Italy’s Health Minister has tightened coronavirus restrictions on six new parts of the country, bumping up the Province of Bolzano to a “red zone”, while the regions of Abruzzo, Umbria, Tuscany, Liguria, Basilicata became orange zones. The news, which comes via Italy’s ANSA newswire, comes as Reuters publishes a story noting Italians’ reluctance to abide by restrictions on movement and business like they did in the spring, when the nation “stoically accepted” a massively restrictive lockdown to beat back one of the first major outbreaks in Europe.
Last week, Italy became the sixth country to top 40k COVID-19 deaths (confirmed deaths, at least). Northern Italy, including Lombardy and Piedmont, have been hit by the most restrictive measures involving bars, restaurants and shops (they’re in so-called “red zones”). PM Giuseppe Conte has been slowly tightening restrictions to different degrees nationwide.
Italy, like the US and many other European countries, is seeing an alarming surge in hospitalizations as well, as some scientists warn about the second wave of the virus overwhelming the health-care system.
Unlike the first time around, protests against the new measures have been widespread across the worst-hit areas of the Italian peninsula.
Meanwhile, in the US, Johns Hopkins just confirmed that the total case count has passed the 10 million mark, as expected, meaning the US currently accounts for roughly 20% of the global confirmed COVID-19 tally.
* * *
Update (1200ET): After spending the morning with the co-chairs of his newly announced coronavirus task force, Joe Biden delivered an update where he expanded on his statement from earlier, warning Americans about the “dark winter” ahead’, as he prepares to impose mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing rules.
“There’s a need for bold action to fight this pandemic. We’re still facing a very dark winter…infection rates are going up, hospitalizations are going up, deaths are going up,” Biden said during the video briefing, after which he did not take questions.
I spent the morning with the co-chairs of my COVID-19 Council discussing the status of this pandemic and how we move forward. Tune in as I provide an update on how we’re going to beat this virus. https://t.co/VVGHZNnUFY
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 9, 2020
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Biden also laid out his 13-member advisory panel, which is made up of doctors and other “health experts”, including Dr. Rick Bright, a former top vaccine official who was fired from the Trump administration, as a member of his COVID-19 advisory panel, which he announced on Monday.
Biden’s task force will have three co-chairs: Vivek H. Murthy, surgeon general during the Obama administration; David Kessler, Food and Drug Administration commissioner under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; and Marcella Nunez-Smith, associate dean for health equity research at the Yale School of Medicine. Murthy and Kessler have briefed Biden for months on the pandemic.
As the Washington Post pointed out, Biden’s picks for the panel intend to communicate to the public that he’s embracing a “science-backed” approach, which essentially means doubling down on economically harmful restrictions on business and movement, in addition to the social distancing, as New Jersey showed us earlier.
Other members include (text per WaPo):
Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School who is a prolific author.
Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Eric Goosby, global AIDS coordinator under President Barack Obama and professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine.
Celine R. Gounder, clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropy focused on health issues.
Loyce Pace, president and executive director of the Global Health Council, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to global health issues.
Robert Rodriguez, professor of emergency medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine.
Rebecca Katz, director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center, and Beth Cameron, director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration, are serving as advisers to the transition task force.
Biden also plans on working closely with local officials, calling both Republican and Democratic governors to get their input.
We imagine NJ’s Phil Murphy and NY’s Andrew Cuomo will have quit a bit of input.
Biden’s comments come as US cases have soared to new daily records in recent days, including the 128,000 cases reported on Saturday, a daily record.
* * *
Update (1110ET): Phil Murphy just announced that among the latest batch of restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the Garden State, will be an order barring indoor dining between 2200 and 0500, a strategy that has also been implemented in Asia and Europe.
Importantly, the halt comes just after the FDA approved more rapid antigen tests for COVID-19. Manufacturers and many scientists argue the tests could be used by restaurants to safely serve customers, since they’re cheap (only a few dollars per customer).
Of course, most family restaurants in the state won’t be impacted, it’s the nightlife industry, which, in theory, leads to more spread, that will suffer the bulk of the impact.
It’s notable in that the bounce-back in restaurant spending was a major contributor to last quarter’s GDP print. NJ is officially back ahead of the pack in its efforts to curb the latest round of the virus.
* * *
Monday’s torrent of optimistic vaccine-related news, sparked early this morning by a WSJ report previewing the first batch of results from the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine candidate, has, predictably, been followed by a statement from the Biden campaign (which, curiously, got a preview of the results around the same time as Pfizer’s own top executives, and possibly even before the sitting president himself) warning Americans that masks remain the best tool to prevent spread of the virus.
It began Sunday evening, when Utah Gov. Gary Herbert declared a state of emergency and ordered a statewide mask mandate, blaming a surge in coronavirus hospitalizations that he said was threatening hospital capacity, CBS News reported.
Herbert and the Utah Department of Health issued executive and public health orders requiring residents to wear face coverings in public, at work and when they are within 6 feet of people who don’t live in their households. Herbert, a Republican, had resisted a statewide mandate, even as several counties in the state went ahead with more restrictive mask rules. But apparently the election results, combined with the latest data, have been convincing enough to sway them.
Across the US, hospitalizations have returned to their highs from late July, with 56,768 patients in the hospital, 11,108 of those in the ICU and 2,959 on ventilators.
On Monday morning, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy suggested that he would revive some restrictions in the wake of the state reporting about 5,000 new COVID-19 cases in two days.
New restrictions might impact the state’s bars, restaurants and indoor youth sports may be reined in, Murphy said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Though notably the limits wouldn’t be extended to include college sports as part of measures he said would likely be announced Monday.
“If you sit at a bar there’s a much higher likelihood of a transmission,” he said.
Across the river in NYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that the city was coming “dangerously close” to a second wave. His warning comes as cases and hospitalizations rise, and the city health department, which has caught a lot of flack for its dysfunctional relationship with city hall (or rather, city hall has caught flack for its dysfunctional relationship with the health department, and decisions to delegate tasks like organizing the city’s contact tracing effort to others outside the department) releases a “real time” breakdown of zip-code by zip-code data.
While daily case numbers remain uncomfortably elevated, and deaths and hospitalizations continue to climb, the number of confirmed cases is currently at 50,550,062, while 1,258,321 deaths have been recorded.
Here’s some more COVID-19 news from Monday morning and overnight:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says he tested positive for Covid-19 and is self-isolating. Zelenskiy is feeling fine and will continue to work remotely, according to a statement from his office (Source: Bloomberg).
Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease expert, said the Covid-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer will have a “major impact” on the battle against the coronavirus. The efficacy of the Pfizer drug candidate being over 90% “is just extraordinary,” Fauci said Monday on a call with reporters. Separately, he said Moderna may have similar results to the Pfizer vaccine because it is also based on mRNA technology (Source: Bloomberg).
Shanghai reported a single domestic case of Covid-19 on Monday, according to the municipal government. The confirmed case works as a porter at Shanghai Pudong International Airport. The Chinese financial hub hasn’t reported any local cases in months, although it has seen a steady stream of imported cases (Source: Bloomberg).
- Hedge Fund Groups Have Immediately Started Lobbying President-Elect Biden
Hedge Fund Groups Have Immediately Started Lobbying President-Elect Biden
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 19:00Hedge funds, who have spent the last 4 years in a paradise of sorts with President Trump slashing regulations, are now opening their arms and are eager to try and embrace what will likely be a far stricter President Biden.
The Managed Funds Association, which calls itself “The Voice of the Global Alternative Investment Industry”, issued a statement last week after Joe Biden was declared President-elect – to congratulate him, of course, but also to remind him exactly how important hedge funds are to the average American (pause for laughter).
“The hedge fund and alternative investment industry congratulates President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their election victory. Hedge funds are a critical component in the global financial ecosystem, managing more than $3.3 trillion in assets,” the letter says.
It continues, hilariously trying to remind Biden how important hedge funds are to teachers and fire fighters: “In all 50 states, institutional investors like pension funds, charitable foundations, and university endowments rely on investments in hedge funds, credit funds, and other alternative investment funds to diversify their investments, manage risk, and generate attractive returns in all market conditions. Their investments help support the retirement security of more than 26 million teachers, fire fighters, and other public employees, fund college education, and enable the vital work done by foundations and charities.”
And concludes with obligatory olive branch: “The hedge fund industry looks forward to working with the Biden administration on public policies that promote fair, efficient, and transparent capital markets.”
As Michael Bodley noted on Twitter, there are two notable issues on the table for hedge funds with Biden at the helm of the country. The first is potential updates to an SEC advertising rule that could change how hedge funds market. It’s the first time in 60 years this rule has been looked at. Second is the potential for loosening broker-dealer registration, which could create more competition for raising money.
No detail from MFA on what those policies are. But lots on the table.
1) Updates to the SEC’s advertising rule for the first time in 60+ years. Could move the needle on how HFs can market.
2) Loosening broker-dealer registration = more competition for raising HF $.
— Michael Bodley (@michael_bodley) November 8, 2020
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Recall, Biden has a checkered history with hedge fund managers. Back in 2017 it was reported that hedge fund manager Bill Ackman tried to make an off-color joke about Biden’s deceased son at the SALT Conference, to which Biden replied: “Who is this asshole?”
OK, well that’s kind of funny, actually.
“Look, I don’t know who you are, wiseass, but never disrespect the memory of my dead son!” Biden is reported to have said.
Regardless, the group lobbying Biden now claims it “represents the global alternative investment industry and its investors by advocating for public policies that foster efficient, transparent, fair capital markets, and competitive tax and regulatory structures.”
It has more than 140 member firms that “collectively manage nearly $1.6 trillion across a diverse group of investment strategies.”
The only thing not diverse about these strategies is that they all take a fee.
- McConnell Backs Trump In Push For Recounts, Says Shouldn't Accept Election Results "From The Media"
McConnell Backs Trump In Push For Recounts, Says Shouldn't Accept Election Results "From The Media"
Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/09/2020 – 18:49Although you probably won’t read much about it in the New York Times or Washington Post, support for President Trump pressing ahead with demands for recounts, or otherwise contesting the outcome of last week’s election, appears to be growing among top-ranking Republicans.
Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and others raised questions about various irregularities (which actually aren’t all that uncommon in American elections) earlier, and the GSA, the component of the federal government bureaucracy that oversees transfer of power and all that comes with it (moves in and out of the White House etc), said earlier that there would be no transfer of power until a “clear winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.”
Now, Sen Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, arguably the most powerful Republican in Washington (perhaps even moreso than President Trump), has finally spoken up, and he’s backing President Trump.
Sen. McConnell said Monday that Trump has every right not to accept the final results based on little more than media reports, and that President Trump is within his right to request vote recounts and file legal challenges to address irregularities, he said in opening floor comments.
The Kentucky Republican, who fended off a well-financed Democratic challenger, added, with perhaps a touch of sarcasm, that last week’s election “appears to have been free from meaningful foreign interference”.
Earlier, McConnell said before the vote that “all legal ballots must be counted, all illegal ballots should not be counted,” and McConnell said again Monday on the Senate floor that “the process must be transparent.”
The implications of these comments are momentous, and they drive home the fact that, as we wait to hear more from President Trump and the rest of the GOP establishment, this happy-go-lucky straightforward transition being priced in by the market hasn’t been finalized quite yet. The markets now appear to agree, as US equities slipping headed into the close after what has been a wild ride higher since this morning’s vaccine news. With minutes to go, the VIX is green for the day, and small caps might be headed for one of their biggest intraday reversals ever.
Meanwhile, the MSM is already explaining away McConnell’s comments as more aggressive rhetoric meant to fire up the base in Georgia ahead of the Jan. 5 runoffs, where two GOP stalwarts will again defend their seats.
Based on my convos with Rs over wknd, most everything McConnell does from here on isn’t about January 20th (inauguration day & working with Biden) but January 5th (the Georgia run-off elections). To win the latter, Rs believe the base must be stoked, esp in a fast-changing state.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) November 9, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
McConnell needs those seats to preserve his majority, and President Trump’s legacy. All the more reason to put up a fight.
After all, with more Republicans stepping up with criticisms and complaints, perhaps there’s more “‘there’, there” than the American people were led to believe.
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