Puppet MastersS


Colosseum

Here's our historical analogy menu: Rome, the USSR or Revolutionary France

faded flag
The core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large.

There's a definite end of days feeling to the euphoria that the world didn't end on November 3. And what better way to celebrate the victory of what passes for normalcy with a manic stock market rally?

It's as if everyone knows there is no returning to the good old days of a well-oiled Imperial machine chewing through any and all obstacles, and this realization is so frightening that the need to pretend everything is fine, just fine, overwhelms the last remaining ties to reality.

And since there's a brief intermission between gladiator battles while the Coliseum attendants remove the fallen heroes from the last entertainment, let's play the historical analogy game: which collapse will America track most closely? Rome circa 475 AD, the USSR circa 1989, or Revolutionary France circa 1789?

Comment: The author of the above article isn't the first to draw comparisons to other fallen empires, or to lay out the reasons why the US is headed in a similar direction:


Bad Guys

Best of the Web: No Matter The Liberal Metric Chosen, The Bush/Cheney Administration Was Far Worse Than Trump

bush cheney
© Image courtesy George W Bush/National Archives (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).President Bush and Former American Vice President Dick Cheney in the Presidential Limousine.
That the liberal belief in and fear of a Trump-led fascist dictatorship and violent coup is actually a fantasy — a longing, a desire, a craving — has long been obvious.

The Democrats' own actions proved that they never believed their own melodramatic and self-glorifying rhetoric about Trump as The New Hitler — from their leaders joining with the GOP to increase The Fascist Dictator's domestic spying powers and military spending to their (correct) belief that the way to oust The Neo-Nazi Tyrant was through a peaceful and lawfully conducted democratic election in which vote totals and, if necessary, duly constituted courts would determine the next president.


Comment: Lawfully conducted? We'll see about that.


The motives for concocting this Wagnerian fantasy about coups, dictatorship, concentration camps and civil war are numerous. Politics is boring, and your life unspectacular, if it's dedicated to a goal as banal and uninspiring as empowering a septuagenarian career-politician — the centrist-authoritarian author of the 1994 Crime Bill, the credit card industry's most loyal servant, and key Iraq War advocate — along with his tough-on-crime prosecutor-running-mate who always seems as if she just left a meeting of the Aetna Board of Directors where massive hikes in deductibles were approved.

Glory is available only if one can convincingly herald oneself as a front-line warrior risking it all to courageously battle unprecedented evil and a Nazi-like menace. But working to do nothing more than elect Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the rest of the painfully ordinary and mediocre corporatist and imperialist Democratic Party politicians through a standard American election? There's no glory residing in that, no courage needed for it, to put it mildly.

Posturing as a courageous soldier in an existential battle for freedom, democracy and the survival of the marginalized against Nazi despotism is far more exciting and psychologically satisfying (and financially profitable) than being an obedient liberal drone marching in perfect tune to the dreary, McKinsey-scripted musical theater produced by Tom Perez and the DNC. That is therefore the delusional storyline adopted by many.

Black Cat

Vote tabulation system responsible for 'glitch' in Antrim County, MI was in place in EVERY swing state

dominion voting system election fraud
© AP Photo/David GoldmanLast summer, a security expert came across a gaping hole in Georgia's election management system. The revelation prompted a lawsuit seeking to compel Georgia to toss all of its touchscreen voting machines and replace them with a system that provides a paper record of every ballot cast. Georgia is one of five states where no such record exists.
Officials from the Michigan Republican Party and the Republican National Committee held a press conference Friday morning to confirm that a glitch tabulating software in Antrim County, Michigan, had "caused a 6,000 vote swing against our candidates" and had been rectified after ballots were recounted by hand. (Our Nick Arama covered the original story, in which officials announced that announced vote totals didn't match the tabulators.)

When the discrepancy was first revealed Wednesday, it was believed that 32 other counties in Michigan used the same software that was used in Antrim County. According to the Michigan GOP chair, a total of 47 counties in Michigan use that same software.

Comment: And from NOQ Report:
Dominion Voting Systems, which claims to work with 1300 voting jurisdictions including nine of the 20 largest counties in the nation, produced the software used in Michigan that erroneously gave Democratic candidate Joe Biden a 3,000 vote advantage in Antrim County. After the glitch was fixed, it was discovered that President Donald Trump actually won the county by around 2,500 votes. According to WLNS:
An entire Michigan county has flipped back to it's [sic] historically republican roots after a manual recount of votes. Officials with Antrim County posted updated results showing President Trump won the county with 9,783 votes making up 56.46% of ballots cast. Joe Biden earned 7,289 votes or 42.07%. The county initially "went blue" and showed a win for Biden before the error was discovered.

Antrim County officials have blamed the county's election software saying totals counted did not match tabulator tapes. 6 News has learned the "Dominion Voting System" is used Antrim County. That system is also used in 64 other counties across the state including, Ingham, Jackson, and Shiawassee, locally.
This wasn't the only known error attributed to software provided by Dominion Voting Systems. In hotly contested Georgia, two counties had to extend their voting deadlines to accommodate for delays produced by a last-minute software update. This was called "unprecedented" by local election officials.

In Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Nevada, the vote counts are being closely watched. Members of the Trump campaign have called for transparency and monitoring of the ongoing vote tallies while the Biden campaign has called for "all votes to be counted." But with questions about the software that is counting millions of the votes, it's likely the Trump campaign will want further scrutiny placed on numbers coming out of jurisdictions that work with Dominion Voting Systems.

Editor's Note:

This is beyond suspicious. With reports of "The Hammer" and "Scorecard" being used to steal the election, additional attention needs to be put on Dominion Voting Systems. If the fix is in, this company may be involved.
The World Tribune reports that suspect voting tabulation company Dominion Systems has ties to Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and various other Democrats:
Dominion Voting Systems has ties to prominent Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Bloomberg reported in April of last year that Dominion Voting Systems hired a high-powered lobbying firm that includes a longtime aide to Pelosi. They hired Brownstein Farber Hyatt & Schreck. Nadeam Elshami, Pelosi's former chief of staff, is one of the lobbyists on the account.

In 2014, Dominion was listed in the Washington Post table as having donated between $25,001-$50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Voting machine manufacturers have acknowledged that some of their equipment allows for the transmission of election-night vote counts via modem, a vulnerability security experts say hackers could easily exploit.

In Georgia, glitches with software updates on Dominion Voting Systems equipment were reported in contested polling locations in Morgan and Stanley counties.

Due to the glitches, Superior Court Judge W. Fletcher Sams extended voting until 11 p.m. on election night. The counties use voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems and electronic poll books — used to sign in voters — made by KnowInk.

The companies "uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a glitch," said Marcia Ridley, elections supervisor at Spalding County Board of Election, Politico reported. That glitch prevented pollworkers from using the pollbooks to program smart cards that the voters insert into the voting machines.

Ridley said that a representative from the two companies called her after poll workers began having problems with the equipment Tuesday morning and said the problem was due to an upload to the machines by one of their technicians overnight.

"That is something that they don't ever do. I've never seen them update anything the day before the election," Ridley said.

Neither Dominion nor KnowInk responded to Politico's request for comment. A spokesperson for the Georgia secretary of state's office also did not respond to follow-up questions about who uploaded the dataset and whether it had been reviewed and tested by anyone beforehand.



Quenelle - Golden

Like a boss: Mexico's president AMLO refuses to congratulate Joe Biden

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has refused to congratulate Joe Biden on his potential victory in the US 2020 Elections, breaking ranks from his counterparts in the United Kingdom, Canada, and France.

Earlier today, the leaders of the UK, Canada, and France offered their congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for their apparent victory at the polls after the Associated Press, CNN, and other mainstream news outlets called the race for the Biden-Harris campaign against President Donald Trump.

Speaking to the press, the Mexican president said that he was unable to offer his congratulations until all legal proceedings are concluded, calling his decision "politically prudent."

According to the AP, Joe Biden won the election on Saturday after they called the hotly contested state of Pennsylvania in his favor, claiming that it put him over the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes. President Trump, his campaign, and the Republican Party are currently contesting the results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona.

"With regard to the U.S. election, we are going to wait until all the legal matters have been resolved," Lopez Obrador said at a news conference, adding that he enjoyed a good relationship with President Trump and with former VP Joe Biden, whom he had known for a decade.

Comment: Guess what? AMLO supporters tend to like Trump. Whodathunkit? Certainly not the US establishment Borg.


Chart Pie

Ivory Coast opposition leader arrested after disputed election

Pascal Affi N’Guessan
© Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty ImagesPascal Affi N’Guessan served as Ivory Coast’s prime minister from 2000 to 2003.
The Ivorian opposition leader and former prime minister Pascal Affi N'Guessan has been placed under arrest for creating a rival government after President Alassane Ouattara's election victory, his wife and a spokeswoman have said.

Prosecutors in Ivory Coast are pursuing terrorism charges against more than a dozen opposition leaders who boycotted the 31 October vote in which Ouattara won a third term in office and announced they were creating a transitional council.

The standoff has raised fears of protracted instability in the world's top cocoa producer, whose disputed 2010 presidential election led to a brief civil war. More than 40 people have died in clashes before and since the latest vote.

N'Guessan was arrested overnight after the public prosecutor confirmed on Friday that he was being sought by the police, his wife, Angeline Kili, told Reuters.

"I confirm that my husband was arrested during the night, but I don't know where he is right now," she said.

Comment: Coming soon to the USA?


Footprints

How a wise decoupling may be a good thing for both China and the West

Deng Xiaoping
© ShutterstockDeng Xiaoping
Imagine a bird was led to believe that it was a fish. For a while it might get used to living under water, but it wouldn't take long before it could sense that something was wrong. If the bird didn't realize that its nature is to fly and breath the air in time, then its fate would be bleak indeed.

Since the world was taken off the gold reserve system way back in 1971, a new age of "post-industrialism" was unleashed onto a globalized world. Humanity was given a new type of system which presumed that both our nature and the cause of value itself were located in the act of consuming. The old idea that our nature was creative, and that our wealth was tied to producing, was assumed to be an obsolete thing of the past... a relic of a dirty old industrial age.

Under the new post-1971 operating system, we were told that the world would now be divided among producers and consumers.

The "have-not producers" would provide the cheap labor which first world consumers would increasingly rely on for the creation of goods they used to make for themselves. "First world" nations were told that according to the new post-industrial rules of de-regulation and market economics, that they should export their heavy industry, machine tools and other productive sectors abroad as they transitioned into "white collar" post-industrial consumer societies. The longer this outsourcing of industries went on, the less western nations found themselves capable of sustaining their own citizenries, building their own infrastructure or determining their own economic destinies.

In place of full spectrum economies that once saw over 40% of North America's labor force employed in manufacturing, a new addiction to "buying cheap stuff" began, and a "service economies" took over like a cancer.

Comment: A thank-you to this author for both background and vision, explored and projected. The implications of this election outcome couldn't be more crucial to the future of the USA and its way forward.


Briefcase

New lawsuit alleges Pennsylvania Democrats broke election laws

Boockvar/Marks
© Alexandra SteinSecretary of State Kathy Boockvar and Deputy Secretary of State Jonathan Marks
In the latest of several lawsuits against Pennsylvania election officials, Republicans say deputy elections secretary Jonathan Marks violated state code by notifying Democrat Party representatives of ballots that were rejected before the polls closed.

In a process called "curing" ballots, officials note which ballots are set to be rejected and reach out to the voter to allow him to cast a new provisional ballot. Election officials in Pennsylvania allegedly told Democrat operatives the names and contact information of voters whose ballots were rejected before the end of Election Day, which Republicans say violates state election laws.

Pennsylvania code mandates that "No person observing, attending or participating in a pre-canvass meeting may disclose the results of any portion of any pre-canvass meeting prior to the close of the polls." Pre-canvassing is the process of opening and counting votes before reporting them.

Comment: The Supreme Court responded to the issue of late arrivals of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania:
Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ordered all of the county election boards in Pennsylvania to segregate all late-arrival ballots from the rest of the mail-in ballots and to keep them separated when the voting is conducted in a Friday night ruling.

Earlier Friday, the Pennsylvania Republican Party had called upon the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case related to Pennsylvania's own Supreme Court, allowing the extension of the counting of mail-in ballots to three days after Election Day.

Judge Alito responded:
"All county boards of election are hereby ordered, pending further order of the Court, to comply with the following guidance provided by the Secretary of the Commonwealth on October 28 and November 1, namely, (1) that all ballots received by mail after 8:00 p.m. on November 3 be segregated and kept 'in a secure, safe, and sealed container separate from other voted ballots,' and (2) that all such ballots, if counted, shall be counted separately.

"Until today, this Court was not informed that the guidance issued on October 28, which had an important beating on the question where to order special treatment of the ballots in question, had been modified. The application received today also informs the Court that neither the applicant not the Secretary has been able to verify that all bards are complying with the Secretary's guidance, which, it is alleged, is not legally binding on them.
Trump campaign lawyers have repeatedly urged the Supreme Court to take up the Pennsylvania case this week. The GOP told the Supreme Court on Friday:
"Republican Party of Pennsylvania has filed a petition for a writ of certiorari asking this Court to resolve the important questions of federal law implicated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's 4-3 decision extending the General Assembly's Election Day received-by deadline and mandating a presumption of timeliness for non-postmarked ballots.

"In particular, RPP asks the Court to order Respondents Secretary of State Boockvar and the county boards of elections to log, to segregate, and otherwise not to take any action related to any ballots that arrive after the General Assembly's Election Day received-by deadline but before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's judicially extended deadline. Given the results of the November 3, 2020 general election, the vote in Pennsylvania may well determine the next President of the United States — and it is currently unclear whether all 67 county boards of elections are segregating late-arriving ballots."
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, had filed a response on behalf of Kathy Boockvar, the secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on Thursday related to Trump campaign efforts:
"Because the Trump Campaign cannot satisfy the standard for intervention as of right or by permission, the motion should be denied. This matter has been pending before this Court for nearly six weeks. One day after Election Day, and for the second time in this case, the Trump Campaign has filed a motion for leave to intervene. The Trump Campaign's first motion was properly denied by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court because its generalized grievance in maintaining the electoral status quo was insufficient to justify standing or intervention. That defect has not been cured by the passage of time.

"In an effort to obviate the need for further proceedings before this Court, counsel for RPP contacted counsel for county boards of elections to request confirmation that the boards would segregate any late-arriving ballots" and that 42 counties "affirmatively responded that they would do so, and no county indicated that it would not" while the Pennsylvania Secretary of State "requested such confirmation and received it from 33 of those counties.

"To date, a total of 25 Pennsylvania county boards of elections have not indicated whether they are segregating the late-arriving ballots."
In late October, Pennsylvania's secretary of state issued an order to county election boards saying that "all mail-in and civilian absentee ballots delivered by the USPS and received between 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3, 2020 and 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 6, 2020 shall be kept separate and segregated from all other voted ballots" and that "the county boards of elections shall not pre-canvass or canvass" any of those ballots "until further direction is received."

But the GOP said the Supreme Court should issue an order to make sure of that.
"In short, an order from the Court is badly needed. But given some county boards' refusal to confirm that they are segregating ballots and the Secretary's changing guidance, an order requiring segregation of ballots may not suffice to preserve RPP's appellate rights. An order at this juncture is necessary to preserve this Court's jurisdiction to resolve this matter on the merits, as well as its ability to enter an appropriate remedy for this general election."
The Trump campaign argued this week that the Supreme Court should be the final arbiter after the high court decided late in October that it would not expedite its review of the matter before Election Day.
"The United States Constitution is clear on this issue: the legislature sets the time, place, and manner of elections in America, not state courts or executive officials. As the President has rightly said, the Supreme Court must resolve this crucial contested legal question, so President Trump's Campaign is moving to intervene in the existing Supreme Court litigation over the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's unlawful extension of the mail-in ballot receipt deadline."
Pennsylvania's Act 77 allowed its voters to cast their ballots by mail but required that all mailed ballots be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted. It had not changed that deadline during the coronavirus pandemic. But Pennsylvania's Supreme Court said in a 4-3 ruling that mail-in ballots would not need to be received by Election Day, instead deciding that ballots could be counted so long as they were postmarked on or before Tuesday and were received within three days. The Pennsylvania Democratic Party told the high court on Thursday:
"There is no reason for the Court to reverse course now, mere days after Election Day. If anything, the need for immediate review has diminished, because any interest in providing clear pre-election guidance has evaporated.

"The Court's handling of the important constitutional issue raised by this matter has needlessly created conditions that could lead to serious post-election problems. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has issued a decree that squarely alters an important statutory provision enacted by the Pennsylvania Legislature pursuant to its authority under the Constitution of the United States to make rules governing the conduct of elections for federal office.

"This is not a denial of a request for this Court to order that ballots received after election day be segregated so that if the State Supreme Court's decision is ultimately overturned, a targeted remedy will be available."
To view on SCRIBD, go here.
Boockvar's 2012 video surfaced:

Along with Pennsylvania's Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf and Democrat Secretary of State Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar publicized her opposition to the president in a tweet shared in 2017.


Some think the Dem's subterfuge to hide their corruption will lead to a Trump win:
Corey Lewandowski from the Trump team spoke yesterday on how the Trump team had to get a court order to be allowed to review the ballot counting process in the state of Pennsylvania. When they were finally given access, they were denied entry.


By hiding their activities the Democrats have prevented the proper review of the 1.3 million ballots counted in Pennsylvania. Democrats broke the law in not permitting a review of their process in awarding 1 million of those ballots counted since the election for Biden which helped Biden overcome the President's 700,000 vote lead.

Now this evening Justice Alito issued an order for Pennsylvania to set aside all ballots received after 8pm on election day in PA.

If and when this is addressed in front of a court, those votes which were counted during the period of spoliation [destroys or withholds information] may be excluded, thereby giving the President the victory in Pennsylvania and perhaps other states where this occurred, since the President was way ahead in the election on election night in these states.
Caught on camera? Penn officials say video of 'crooked' ballot workers is 'altered' and false:
Viral video footage shared on social media showing election workers in Delaware County, Pennsylvania filling out blank ballots sparked accusations of fraud. However, officials there say they were just transcribing damaged votes. WATCH THIS:

Delaware County officials have called these videos "manipulated." In a press release on Friday, county officials said that while the videos are genuine, and taken from a live stream of the counting room, they are zoomed in and don't show the "bipartisan observers a few feet away at each end of the table." According to the press release, the staff were transcribing ballots damaged by an extracting machine, as instructed by the Delaware County Bureau of Elections.
See also:


Arrow Down

House Dems brace for more losses

Pelosi
© J. Scott Applewhite/APHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi, November 6, 2020
The House is on track to have its thinnest majority in about two decades next year — and it could get worse for Democrats.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has so far lost seven incumbents in Tuesday's election, and that number could increase to about a dozen as more votes are tallied in New York, California and Utah. That would leave Democrats with a razor-thin margin — and an even more emboldened GOP minority — as the party looks to govern under a potential President Joe Biden.

The most likely scenario for Democrats is a net loss of between seven to 11 seats, according to interviews with campaign officials and strategists from both parties. That toll has prompted some tense discussions within the Democratic caucus about its message, tactics and leadership, with an internal race intensifying to succeed Democratic Congressional Campaign Chair Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.).

And the fallout means the House is indeed in play in 2022, and the battle will be fought on a whole new set of district lines, most of which will be drawn by Republicans who maintained control of key statehouses.

Comment: See also:

Democrats already blame each other for failed house races and Republican gains


Cards

Crucial provisional ballots: Why Pennsylvania - and this election - isn't over!

hand and ballot
© Lacey Gregory/KANSAN/KJN
There's big news breaking here in Pennsylvania, and most of the national media seems to be unaware. It's the matter of Pennsylvania's crucial (but heretofore largely ignored) provisional ballots, which could be decisive in pushing Donald Trump back into the lead in the state, or at least triggering a statewide recount.

Before considering those details, I want to respond to the many inquiries I've received from readers wondering how it's possible that Joe Biden could have pulled into the lead in Pennsylvania. It's an excellent question, and they're right to be dubious of what has transpired.

Yes, Joe Biden has somehow surpassed Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, but don't blame voters in Pittsburgh, nor maybe even voters in Philadelphia. Frankly, it's hard to figure who to blame. It's somewhat baffling. Of those mail-in ballots that started to be counted on Wednesday, and that allowed Joe Biden an astonishing comeback after being down to Donald Trump by a massive (and seemingly insurmountable) margin of roughly a half million votes, Biden would have needed probably at least 80% of those remaining mail-in ballots. That was my own estimate, which I wrote about here on Thursday. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien estimated on Wednesday afternoon that Biden would have to get 78% of outstanding votes to win Pennsylvania. He noted (as I did) that while there were outstanding votes in Biden counties like Philadelphia and Montgomery, there were also many votes left in York, Butler, and various Trump counties. Stepien thus confidently asserted, "we are declaring a victory in Pennsylvania." So did Donald Trump, and understandably so.

Comment: If there are truly 100,000 outstanding provisional ballots, anything can happen. And this is just Pennsylvania.


Target

NATO says Biden victory will help with 'assertive Russia,' as influential Moscow MP warns Democrat sees country as 'main enemy'

Stoltenberg
© Reuters/Francois LenoirNATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg
After Joe Biden declared victory in the US presidential election on Saturday, there are fears that tensions between Russia and the West could escalate under his leadership.

Congratulating the Democratic candidate on his projected win, which incumbent President Donald Trump continues to allege is the result of electoral fraud, the secretary general of NATO singled out Moscow as a priority for the incoming American leader. In a statement on the US-led military bloc's website, Jens Stoltenberg wrote,
"I warmly welcome the election of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. I know Mr. Biden as a strong supporter of NATO and the transatlantic relationship. We need this collective strength to deal with the many challenges we face, including a more assertive Russia, international terrorism, cyber and missile threats, and a shift in the global balance of power with the rise of China."

Comment: Does Stoltenberg realize Biden would be handling the concerns of NATO from his mental basement? Or (if by some diabolical default) they short-shift to Kamala Harris? Either way, these are mighty underwhelming assurances. Lucky for Stolenberg, Biden so far has not won the election, no matter what MSM pronounces.