Tag: government

Arizona state legislators to hold public hearing on election fraud

3:48 pm

A group of legislators from the Arizona House and Senate have organized a public hearing on November 30, 2020 in Phoenix, open to the public, where they will allow experts as well as President Trump’s legal team to present evidence of election tampering in Arizona.

The President’s legal team will be present from DC to assist in a fact finding hearing with select members of the Arizona House and Senate and a panel of experts. The goal will be to gather the evidence that justifies calling a special session to contemplate what happened and take immediate action accordingly.

The hearing will be chaired by state representative Mark Finchem, who also happens to be my own representative. I have been in correspondence with him for the past week about the election, trying to find out if the Republican-controlled legislature was going to do anything to deal with the significant questions relating to the vote count. It appeared that though he and other conservative legislators were trying to get the Republican leadership to bring the legislature back into special session, those leaders were stalling.

From the second link:

“Since shortly before the 2020 election a number of my colleagues and I have been examining potential fraud pathways and illegal actions through which our 2020 election could become tainted. My worst fears have come to light in the process, and so far the evidence has been blocked from an official public forum.,” Rep Finchem said. “A few weeks ago I requested approval for the House Federal Relations Committee to hold a hearing on the integrity of the Arizona 2020 election. That hearing has not yet been approved by House leadership, and time is of the essence to show proof that our election has been compromised.” [emphasis mine]

It appears these conservatives have decided to do an end-around of their RINO leadership, and hold these hearings anyway. According to what Finchem has told me, the hearing will be live streamed, beginning at 9 am (Mountain) by both the One America News Network (OANN) and the Western Journal.

The goal is to make the evidence public, and thus apply some pressure on that leadership, which includes Republican governor Doug Ducey, to bring the legislature back into session. As Finchem himself noted in a Western Journal podcast on November 24th, the Constitution is very specific. To paraphrase his comments, it specifically puts the job of picking the electors in the hands of the state legislatures, not the voters or the courts. It is their duty therefore to act.

If you live in Arizona, you should be calling the offices Governor Ducey (602 542-5381) as well as House Speaker Russell Bowers (602-926-3128), demanding that they bring the legislature back into session and address the evidence, forcing a correct and careful audit of the vote, and if this cannot clarify and correct the count (no matter who wins), deny any candidate the state’s electoral votes.

I must also note something I wrote to Finchem, and is also evident in Pennsylvania. Republicans and Trump are not being well served by the state Republican leaderships in both these states. In both cases the leadership has been reluctant to do anything, washing their hands like Pontus Pilate, even though there is strong evidence that the Democrats may have stolen the election.

This is shameful, and incredibly foolish on their part. If they do not do something now, they guarantee that in coming elections they will be removed from office, by further fraud and election tampering. Do they not have instinct for survival? Or are they content to walk into the gas chambers with nary a protest?

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Problems discovered in new Japanese H3 rocket engine

10:07 am

Engineers at Mitsubishi have discovered technical problems in the engine for Japan’s new H3 rocket, forcing its first test launch to be delayed into 2021.

The Japanese space agency JAXA told SpaceNews that problems were found with the new LE-9 engine’s combustion chamber and turbopump. “Fatigue fracture surfaces were confirmed in the apertural area of the combustion chamber inner wall and the FTP blade of the turbo pump,” according to a JAXA spokesperson.

JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), the prime contractor for the H3, were aiming to hold the inaugural launch by the end of 2020 before the discovery of issues in May. However engineers testing the LE-9 cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen engine for the H3 first stage encountered a potential issue back in May. This led JAXA to announce in September that the first flight would slip to some time in Japanese fiscal year 2021, beginning April 1, 2021. The rocket’s second launch likewise slipped to Japanese fiscal year 2022.

The H3 is intended as a cheaper and more competitive version of Mitsubishi’s H2 rocket, which has failed to garner much business outside of Japanese government launches because of its cost. That the H3 isn’t being built to be reusable however means it will likely not achieve that goal, as it will not be able to lower it enough to compete with SpaceX.

This launch delay further weakens its ability to compete, as it gives more time for other cheaper alternatives to hit the market.

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Study: Absolutely NO excess deaths from COVID-19

4:15 pm

UPDATE: It appears the newsletter analysis that I linked to below was too hopeful for the authorities at Johns Hopkins, even though it was based on actual data. Mere minutes after I posted this they took it down, censoring this conclusion. Though I quoted a lot below, the article was much longer, included detailed graphs, and was thoughtful and thorough.

Positive news like this however must not be published. It must be squelched and silenced. We must live in fear, even if the thing we fear does not exist.

One of my readers below however found it on the Wayback Machine, here.

I have also embedded below the fold the webinar where the information censored was discussed in detail. In case Johns Hopkins or Youtube decides to censor this webinar also, another one of my readers below has downloaded it and made it available here. (It is very sad that a university now considers Orwell’s 1984 to be an instruction manual instead of a warning.)

Another reader has uploaded the file to Rumble, so I have embedded that video below as well.

Furthermore, another reader has provided me a high quality pdf of the original post, which I have uploaded and you can download here.

Original post:
——————————
A new analysis of the 2020 death statistics in the United States has revealed that despite the panic over COVID-19, the total number of deaths in all age groups — including the elderly — showed no change before or after the arrival of the virus.

This bears repeating, in bold and italics: There have been no excess deaths in 2020.

Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same. “The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals,” Briand said.

Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.

These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.

And yet, there have been so many COVID-19 deaths! How can the total number of deaths not be higher? The researcher looked more closely, and discovered (surprise! surprise!) that there was an unreasonable drop in other causes, matching exactly the increase in coronavirus deaths.

When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths. However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.

This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years. Interestingly, … the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19. This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19. [emphasis mine]

In other words, COVID-19 is just another type of flu-like respiratory disease, that is only appearing terrible because doctors and hospitals are incorrectly labeling many deaths as COVID-19 when in past years they would have labeled them based on the existing chronic illnesses the patient already had.

It has all been a scam, a Chicken Little scam induced by some very evil people in government to cause fear and panic in the general population. I leave it to my readers to figure out why.

Regardless, it is time for people to come to their senses. Let the worry warts cower in mindless fear in their basements. Rip off that mask, go back to living your normal American life, free and open, pursuing your happiness.
» Read more

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Summary of mass voter fraud in Georgia

12:30 pm

Summary slide outlining Powell voter fraud allegations

Doug Ross has assembled a straightforward series of infographics clearly summarizing the allegations of voter fraud in Georgia that are described in the 104 page lawsuit [pdf] filed yesterday by Sidney Powell.

The allegations are well summarized by the slide to the right. Make sure you review the rest of his slides at the link (which provide details for each bullet point). Even more important, read the whole filing at the second link. I have. The allegations are extensive, well documented, consistently favor Biden, and justify entirely a careful, detailed hand recount (not the fake recount the state did last week). If this is not done, then the state legislature will be justified in refusing to certify the election for president, denying any candidate its electors.

Make sure you take a look. Whether you are a Trump or Biden supporter, these allegations must be dealt with and either dis-proven or fixed, before any vote in Georgia can be certified.

Any objections to a full review by anyone, especially partisan Democrats, will prove a disgusting hostility to the most basic premise of democracy, a fair and legal vote.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

9:44 am

Today is Thanksgiving, a truly American holiday, as unique to history as the United States. No nation before this one ever tried to establish by law a nation dedicated to “the pursuit of happiness” and the premise that sovereignty resides solely in the people, not in an elitist upper class of rulers. This holiday was established to celebrate and give thanks for these ideals, and the blessings of liberty they bestow to Americans.

Those ideals are now threatened by the progressives who dominate the Democratic Party and the weasels in the Republican Party too cowardly to resist. It therefore becomes imperative that, as we American citizens celebrate this holiday today with family gatherings often in defiance of the edicts of these petty dictators, we resolve to defy them in all ways, and to reclaim with courage our heritage of freedom and the individual sovereignty it gives to us.

No one has the right to give us orders. Give thanks for that, and tell those who try they risk terrible things for themselves by doing so.

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Russian company proposes new Russian space station post-ISS

9:27 am

Energia, the division in Roscosmos that manages the Russian manned program, including its share of ISS, has proposed that Russia build its own space station after 2025, and the reasons it gives strongly suggest they are worried about the condition of their 20-year-old and leaking Zvezda module.

The International Space Station’s systems are likely to keep breaking down after 2025, Energia company, which manages the Russian module, said and suggested building a national station instead. “Russia has commitments regarding the ISS through 2025. Several elements are already seriously damaged and about to stop functioning. Many of them are impossible to replace. After 2025, we expect many ISS elements to start breaking down en masse,” the deputy director-general of Energia, Vladimir Soloviev, said at a meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences. [emphasis mine]

They don’t mention Zvezda by name, but the highlighted words point to it. Assuming the persistent leaks in the module are related to stress damage and age, this statement is recognizing publicly that replacing Zvezda is very difficult, or impossible, and that it is on the verge of complete failure.

Whether Russia has the money or resources to get another station built soon after 2025 is questionable, however. If they do decide to go it alone, I doubt they could launch a replacement before 2030, at the earliest, and likely much later than that.

If they do end the partnership with the U.S., it is unclear what happens to ISS. If the Russians choose to undock their portion of the station it will leave ISS somewhat crippled. It has been my impression that without all of the environmental systems in the Russian half, ISS cannot function. This might no longer be true, and will likely not be true with the planned arrival of Axiom’s private modules by the mid-20s. Timing however of all this remains critical.

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The coming purge

1:54 pm

Hitler's purge in 1934, the night of long knives
Hitler’s violent purge of his opponents in 1934: The Night of Long Knives.

I have just finished reading The Memo: 20 years inside the deep state fighting for America first. Written by military intelligence and national security expert Richard Higgins, it described his long and mostly fruitless effort in Washington to make our foreign military policy more effective.

In 2016, in desperation, he allied himself with Donald Trump, hoping that a victory by this very unconventional outsider might finally put Higgins in a position of some control.

It did not work out that way. At first the established players in Washington blocked his appointment. Eventually he managed to get an assignment at the National Security Council (NSC), but at a lower ranking than initially promised. Worse, the make-up of that council remained largely controlled by Democratic Party holdovers. As Higgins described things at the NSC in the first year after Trump’s inauguration:
» Read more

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Regulators coming after SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility and Starship

9:05 am

Capitalism in space? New FAA documents suggest that government regulators are not happy with the rapid and spectacular development by SpaceX of its Super Heavy/Starship rocket at Boca Chica, Texas, and are eager to impose restrictions and delays.

The issue revolves around revisions to SpaceX’s original FAA approval for its work at Boca Chica because the company has switched from flying Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets to developing and flying Starship and Super Heavy. While the FAA has been cooperative in issuing the necessary revisions, other agencies have raised red flags.

But the most important document of the bunch is the written reevaluation signed by the FAA on May 22. The file spans 26 pages, was required for SpaceX to receive its suborbital launch license from the FAA on May 28, and incorporates concerns from state and federal environmental agencies.

In the reevaluation, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Service took issue with several aspects of SpaceX’s plans and ongoing activities. Those criticisms targeted the “fluid nature” of the company’s construction projects, excessive road closures to Boca Chica Beach (which Brownsville locals prize), around-the-clock work that may affect nocturnal threatened or endangered species, prototype explosions, and sprawling wildfires the company has triggered.

The FAA responded to each concern in the document, ultimately determining “there are no significant environmental changes, and that all pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval have been met or will be met” with SpaceX’s suborbital test-flight plans.

However, SpaceX does not yet have the FAA’s go-ahead to launch any Starships to orbit from Boca Chica.

In its replies to concerns noted by other agencies — some of which call for a new EIS [environmental impact statement], which could take years to complete (an eternity in Musk time) — the agency repeatedly noted it is working with SpaceX to draft an “environmental review” of those plans.

Should Joe Biden and the power-hungry and controlling Democrats take control of the executive branch of the federal government, expect the FAA’s desire to help SpaceX to quickly end.

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Faulty valve on one Soyuz causes Russians to delay second Soyuz launch

8:44 am

Due to the discovery of a faulty valve on a Soyuz rocket being prepared for launch in French Guiana, Roscosmos has delayed today’s Soyuz rocket launch from Plesetsk, Russia, until December 3rd to allow engineers to inspect similar valves on that rocket.

This quote from Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, from the first link, describing the problem, is somewhat amusing:

“The ‘faulty valve’ would be launched with the rocket, and it would return to Earth being just a heap of mishap metal, that would be the problem. There are always some flaws, but in our case, they cost too much. Happily, the low-quality detail was timely detected by the quality control system. However, in general, I do note a sharp decline in our suppliers’ responsibility and quality of their work,”

It appears the quality control problems with Russia’s aerospace industry are continuing. No one, including the Russians, should be surprised by this, as that industry has no competition to stimulate quality work and force bad companies out of business. Instead, everything is managed by Roscosmos from on top, with much of that management designed to eliminate competition entirely and protect the companies that presently exist..

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China successfully launches its Chang’e-5 lunar sample mission

2:45 pm

screen capture at Long March 5 launch of Chang'e-5
Screen capture from launch live feed

The new colonial movement: China today successfully used its Long March 5 rocket to launch its Chang’e-5 on the first lunar sample return mission since the 1970s.

If all goes well, the return capsule will return to Earth with its sample on December 15th.

China provided a live stream, in English, which I have embedded below the fold.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

31 China
21 SpaceX
12 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 34 to 31 in the national rankings.
» Read more

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New York: Oppression imposed because of almost no COVID-19 deaths

2:09 pm

In the last few weeks the Democratic Party governments that control the state and city of New York imposed new and incredibly oppressive new rules, clamping down hard on the freedoms of their citizens, as well as the ability of visitors and tourists to come there.

The justification used by Democrats Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio for these new edicts against freedom? Both claimed that an increase to 3% of what they called “the positivity rate” required more restrictions. This increase comes from increased detection of COVID-19 due to increased tests, but it does not mean there has been a significant rise in actual illness.

You need only look at the graph below to understand how unnecessary these new restrictions are.
» Read more

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Israel’s Netanyahu meets with Saudi Arabia’s bin Salman

8:53 am

In a meeting that is essentially unprecedented, the leaders of Israel and Saudi Arabia met yesterday evening in Saudia Arabia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Saudi Arabia Sunday night to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The meeting is the first known encounter between senior officials from the enemy states. Yossi Cohen, Israel’s chief spy and head of the Mossad, also attended the meeting, as did U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Netanyahu reportedly kept his trip a secret from alternate Israeli Prime Minister Benny Gantz and foreign minister Gaby Ashkenazi.

Prior to the election, and at about the time that the UAE and Bahrain had signed peace accords with Israel, there were rumors that Saudi Arabia would follow suit, but only after the re-election of Trump. While the Arab country’s covert relations with Israel in recent years have been generally improving, such a public agreement would have signaled a major change, including a public admission that the Saudis were no longer tying their diplomatic relations to Palestinian demands.

I suspect the two leaders met to discuss whether that a public agreement now makes sense, given the strong possibility of an anti-Israeli and anti-Saudi American government under Joe Biden (who has already said he wishes to reinstate the Iran deal and reopen ties with that country).

In other words, as expected, a Joe Biden victory might very well cause the cancelling of this major peace deal. I hope not, but it would be understandable for Saudi Arabia, faced with an invigorated hostile Iran to the north, now getting aid from the U.S..

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Study: Asymptomatic and secondary infected individuals do not infect others

1:00 pm

A new study published in the journal Nature has found that people who are either asymptomatic or undergoing a secondary illness of COVID-19 are simply not infectious, and don’t give the virus to others.

In other words, it appears that the only time people can infect others is when they have the virus for the first time, and only when they are symptomatic. Lock downs and the use of masks by the healthy accomplish nothing. All you need to do is quarantine the symptomatic patient, as human societies have been doing for centuries and centuries.

To once again emphasize this point, wearing masks if you are healthy and not sick protects no one. Social distancing if you are not sick protects no one. Shutting down businesses, such as reducing capacities at restaurants so they can’t make a profit, protects no one. Curfews protect no one.

When you see someone on a hiking trail, it is not necessary to run ten feet off the trail, put a mask on, and bow your head away in fear and terror of that other person. That they are on the trail guarantees they are not sick. They can’t infect you. And that you are there also means you can’t infect them.

Burn the mask. Smile. Live like a human again. And most of all, stop being afraid all the time.

This very long quote from the study’s discussion section, with the important points highlighted, makes these conclusions very clear:
» Read more

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“I’d rather die from COVID than loneliness.”

5:53 pm

The toll on the elderly caused by the COVID-19 panic rises, and not because they have caught COVID-19.

According to an Associated Press story this week, an estimated 40,000 nursing home residents have died prematurely since March, resulting in a 15 percent increase in “excess deaths” at those facilities. “Nursing home watchdogs are being flooded with reports of residents kept in soiled diapers so long their skin peeled off, left with bedsores that cut to the bone, and allowed to wither away in starvation or thirst,” the AP reported. Adult children are shocked to find their once-healthy, active parents near death and in excruciating pain due to neglect.

One Tennessee woman recounted her heartbreak at seeing her mother for the first time in months: “The 79-year-old had dropped about 20 pounds, her eyes sunken and her legs looking more like forearms. Doctors at the hospital said she was malnourished and wasting muscle. There were bedsores on her backside and a gash on her forehead from a fall at the home. Her vocabulary had shrunk to nearly nothing and she’d taken to pulling the blankets over her head.”

Tens of thousands of similar accounts flood social media; a group of senior citizens staged a protest last month outside their Colorado nursing home, begging for permission to see their loved ones. One sign read, “I’d rather die from COVID than loneliness.”

I am sorry, but I am of same mind. When I am very old I would want to be able to see my loved ones, even at the risk of getting sick. But then, that has always been the case. The elderly are very vulnerable to any contagious disease. Yet, until this madness, we recognized that life must go on, and that the family must come first.

Not seeing relatives and keeping these helpless old people in the equivalent of solitary confinement is not kind, and in fact is downright cruel. And apparently it has led to a reduced level of care in many institutions, because no one from the family has been present to make sure that care is proper. (From experience with both our parents, if you don’t make your presence felt with the long-term care facility, your parents will not get proper care. They will get ignored.)

But no, we need to cancel Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and all family gathering. And we need to now close restaurants early, at 10 pm, because it is in that specific hour that COVID-19 becomes truly contagious and dangerous.

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The left is now reaping what it sowed

2:39 pm

A Democrat literally responds to Trump's 2016 victory
This is an actual Democrat’s
respond to Trump’s 2016 victory

For four years, since his election, Donald Trump has been met with a never-ending wave of hatred, hostility, and downright total opposition by the Democratic Party and its many very partisan supporters in the mainstream press, the academic community, and in the general public.

If you are conservative, I am sure you’ve all seen it. Not only has it been impossible these past four years to have a reasonable conversation with Democrats about Donald Trump, your opinions and thoughts are routinely treated with insulting contempt and scorn when you tried. Trump was a racist and evil, despite there being no credible evidence to that effect, and if you tried to find out what the evidence was for such a slander you were immediately slandered and called the same.

Trump himself has faced this same level of irrational hate continuously since his election. And it is irrelevant that he often descends to the same tactics. In the climate created by the left since the Obama administration legitimized the use of slander in political discourse, what other choice did he have if he wished to survive?

Lies in fact has too often comprised the only tactic used by the Democratic Party and the left since Trump’s arrival. » Read more

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Despite permanent repair of crack, air still leaking from Zvezda

10:11 am

According to a Russian news report yesterday, air is still leaking from the Zvezda module of ISS, despite the permanent repair of the crack earlier this week.

Earlier, the crew locked the hatches into the intermediate chamber. The Mission Control asked whether the crew had measured the pressure before the hatch into that chamber was opened. The crew reported that the pressure went down considerably in the smaller part of the compartment while it remained isolated from the rest of the station by an airtight hatch. “The pressure in the intermediate chamber went down from 723 mm of the mercury column to 685 millimeters,” Ryzhikov said.

The report is poorly written, and is unclear on the exact date this air test was done. It is therefore possible the test was done prior to the permanent repair.

If however the air is still leaking, this suggests there might be more than one leak point in that part of Zvezda. According to this same story, the two Russian astronauts during their spacewalk on November 18th took pictures of the exterior area of Zvezda where the leak is located, and noted no exterior damage.

All these facts point to a very serious problem. If there was no exterior damage, it means the leak was probably not caused by a micrometeorite hit (though closer more extensive observations as well as a review of the photos might still conclude otherwise). The fact that the leak is continuing after the permanent repair suggests there is another leak, in the same part of Zvezda. That section is also a docking port, and would have experienced the most stress during the several dozen dockings that have occurred since Zvezda was launched in 2000.

These facts therefore suggest stress damage and aging as the cause, which means the problem will only get worse no matter what method is used to seal any future leaks.

One quick solution that would work, at least for awhile, would be to close the hatch on this intermediate chamber, and do no more dockings to it. This at least would seal the station from atmosphere loss, and reduce the stress on this section of Zvezda. Whether Progress freighters, which use this port, can use another port, or will have a more limited ability to dock, is not clear, however.

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Arizona gov says he will not certify results until all lawsuits are settled

3:36 pm

Arizona’s Republican Governor Doug Ducey today announced that he will not certify the results of the state’s presidential election until all the lawsuits involving issues in the count are settled.

In Arizona specifically, the Trump campaign and state GOP filed lawsuits in Maricopa County in a bid to block officials from certifying the election results due to alleged voter irregularities and improprieties.

“There are legal claims that are being challenged in court and everybody on the ballot has certain access rights and remedies and if they want to push that they are able. Once those are adjudicated and the process plays out, I will accept the results of the election,” the Republican governor said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Based on Ducey’s generally spineless leadership, I have no confidence in his announcement. I think he is playing us. He has done less than nothing to really make sure the vote is accurate, even though it is in his power to do so. For example, he could call the legislature back in session so that its Republican majority could get involved. He has refused to do this, keeping them out of the game. Moreover, his administration apparently chose the questionable Dominion election software used to count the vote, despite questions raised about it from many sources for years.

What I think he is doing is making it seem he cares. Then, when he folds like a house of cards to an untrustworthy recount, he can claim he was there for us. All hogwash.

The only saving grace to his announcement is that if no certification occurs before December 14th, the lack of Arizona’s electoral votes might force the decision into the House of Representatives, where the Republicans will have the votes to keep Trump president. If the Democrats wish to avoid this, they should be moving heaven and Earth to clear up any issues and thus settle the lawsuits.

Not surprisingly, I do not see the Democrats doing this. Instead, they are working to block any audits or proper recounts. Makes one wonder what they might be trying to hide.

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Trump lawyers detail extensive election fraud

12:59 pm

The lawyers for the Trump campaign today held a press conference outlining in extensive detail the evidence they have gathered pointing to election fraud in multiple states, all designed to manufacture fake votes for Joe Biden or to disenfranchise Trump voters.

Yes, I know, it is a press conference. And yes I know, it is run by only one side. To simply dismiss what that side said however is to put one’s head in the sand. Two allegations struck me as particularly damning:

Giuliani offered evidence to show that 15,000 voters in Pittsburgh alone were disenfranchised of their vote, and forced to vote via provisional ballot when they arrived at their polling place. These voters allegedly were told that they had already voted by mail.

Giuliani alleged as well that ballots were trucked into Detroit at 4:30 am on election night to be counted after poll workers believed that Republican observers to the count had left. He claimed that workers said that these were Biden ballots, improperly packaged, and without votes for any of the additional races. He said that the votes were counted three times.

In the first case the allegations apparently came from the voters themselves. If based on actual legal affidavits, the allegations have real merit, and suggest massive fraud in Pittsburgh alone.

In the second case, more details are found here.

Guiliani went on to cite testimony from witnesses to bolster his case, ripped the media for falsely reporting there is “no evidence” of fraud and argued proper oversight was not executed while mail-in ballots were counted.

“Do you know how many affidavits were have in the Michigan case? Two hundred and twenty affidavits,” he said. “What they swear to is that at 4:30 in the morning, a truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were counting ballots. The people thought it was food so they all ran to the truck. It wasn’t food, it was thousands and thousands of ballots and the ballots were in garbage cans, they were in paper bags, they were cardboard boxes and they were taken into the center. They were put on a number of tables. At that time they thought all of the Republican inspectors had left, all but two had.”

“Here’s what they jointly swear to: that every ballot that they could see, everything that they Ould hear, these were ballots for Biden. When they saw a ballot, these were ballots only for Biden, nothing down ticket,” Guiliani continued. “Many of them were triple counted.”

“Why would you not allow inspections of those ballots? Because you knew you were going to use those ballots to catch Biden up,” Guiliani said, adding that the recount in Georgia will be worthless due to a lack of signature [emphasis mine]

The highlighted text puts the lie to the claim that no evidence of election fraud exists. An affidavit is a legal document that carries I think penalties if found to be a lie. Moreover, when you begin to get a lot of them, all confirming each other, their reliability is strongly reinforced.

The election count in the disputed states needs to be completely reviewed, carefully, by going back to the actual ballots. The computer data is untrustworthy and must be put aside.

If that review finds Joe Biden won, so be it. It would mean the country favored the Republicans overall, but preferred a change in president.

If that review instead shows Trump did win, and that a large amount of voter fraud occurred, then major investigations are in order to find the perpetrators. It must also be the number one priority of Republicans in every one of these states (all controlled at the legislative level by Republicans) to overhaul the election system to prevent such fraud from reoccurring. Better to go back to simple paper ballots that are counted by hand, than the unreliable computer systems we have now.

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Republicans in Wayne County rescind their votes certifying Detroit results

12:05 pm

In a dramatic turn, the two Republicans on the Wayne County election board (which covers Detroit) last night rescinded their votes yesterday certifying the Detroit results, claiming in legal affidavits that these votes were obtained through coercion and false promises.

Their pronouncements come just 24 hours after a chaotic meeting in which the county’s election board initially failed to certify the Nov. 3 election results during a 2-2 deadlocked vote when both Palmer and Hartmann voted against certification. But after hours of contentious public comment and criticism — including Democratic allegations of racism and threats against their safety — the two GOP members struck a deal to certify the elections in return for a promise of a thorough audit.

Palmer and Hartmann said Wednesday they learned that state officials had reneged or would not honor the audit, leaving them no recourse but to oppose certification until more investigation could be performed.

It is now presently unclear what happens next, including which of their votes will be considered legal.

Note however how the Democrats appear totally opposed to even addressing the vote count concerns expressed by these two election board members. No, rather than in good will trying to show the concerns are unmerited, Democrats have instead threatened, slandered, and doxed the Republicans, while apparently reneging on an agreement that would have looked into the issues.

As I have written, if the problems with this election are not resolved, or the Democrats refuse to cooperate in fixing them, then it will strongly imply that a Biden victory is tainted and was stolen. The consequences to the country then will be quite bad.

The best course must be an aggressive effort by both parties to address and fix the concerns, with both parties accepting the results no matter what. It does not appear the Democrats desire this.

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Stratolaunch begins construction of hypersonic plane

11:46 am

Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch, continuing its shift from an orbital launch company to one providing a flying hypersonic testbed, has begun construction of its first hypersonic plane, dubbed Talon-A.

Talon-A will be air-launched from the bottom of Roc, the world’s biggest airplane, that the company initially built to serve as a launch platform for an orbital rocket.

It appears they have the financing to build Talon-A, and it also appears there is ample interest in both the military, NASA, and the aviation industry for this capability. If it works it will make testing hypersonic technology far easier and more affordable, issues that have acted to slow its development.

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NASA fixes SLS issue, prepares for full hot fire engine test of core stage

11:32 am

My heart be still! NASA engineers have successfully fixed a valve on the inside of the core stage of the agency’s SLS rocket, making it possible for the continuation of the ongoing test program leading up to its first and only full static fire test on December 21st of the rocket’s core stage, prior to the rocket’s first launch.

Over the weekend, engineers at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, successfully repaired a valve inside the core stage of the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The team designed an innovative tool to remove and replace the valve’s faulty clutch while the core stage remained in the B-2 test stand, and without removing the entire valve. Subsequent testing of the repaired valve confirmed that the system is operating as intended.

If that static fire test fails for any reason, it will likely delay the first Artemis launch by at least a year, if not longer. Right now there is a slim chance that SpaceX’s Starship will complete its first orbital launch before SLS (which NASA has been developing for only seventeen years). Further delays would almost guarantee it.

Such an event will make the entire SLS program appear kind of stupid, irrelevant, and an utter waste of money. But then, SLS is exactly that, a wasteful boondoggle designed not to get American astronauts into space but to spend money in Congressional districts and states. These corrupt legislators actually like the delay and failure, because it extends the contracts and funnels more money to their constituents over a longer period of time. Who cares if anything ever really gets accomplished, or the interests of the U.S. are advanced? What really matters is making sure Congressmen get photo ops, and their big space backers get contracts so they can continue to make campaign contributions.

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Russian astronauts complete spacewalk to prepare ISS for Nauka

10:37 am

Two Russian astronauts yesterday successfully completed an almost seven-hour spacewalk removing and repositioning equipment to prepare ISS for the arrival of Nauka next year, Russia’s next module for ISS.

The Pirs module will be removed and junked next year to make room for the research lab Nauka — Russian for “science.” Several Russian-directed spacewalks will be required to deal with all this. The plan calls for attaching a cargo ship to Pirs in order to guide it to a fiery reentry.

The new 22-ton lab — stretching 43 feet (13 meters) long — is so big that it will be launched from Kazakhstan by a powerful Proton rocket. Once at the orbiting outpost, it will double as an air lock and docking port.

Earlier it had been announced that they would also do an inspection of the area on Zvezda where they had also discovered a small crack, the cause of the longstanding leak on the station. It appears they did not do this. probably because astronauts inside the station had placed a new permanent patch on the leak, and the work they were doing during the spacewalk carried a higher priority.

Expect that inspection to eventually occur, but for now the cause of that crack remains unknown.

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Arecibo Observatory to be shut down permanently

10:27 am

The arriving dark age: Due to the extent of its recent cable failures and the risks they pose to works, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has decided to shuttered and dismantle it permanently.

Ralph Gaume, director of NSF’s astronomy division, said at the briefing the agency wants to preserve other instruments at the site, as well as the visitor and outreach center. But they are under threat if the telescope structure collapses. That would bring the 900-ton instrument platform, suspended 137 meters above the 305-meter wide dish, crashing down. Flailing cables could damage other buildings on the site, as could the three support towers if they fell, too. “There is a serious risk of an unexpected and uncontrolled collapse,” Gaume said. “A controlled decommissioning gives us the opportunity to preserve valuable assets that the observatory has.”

Over the next few weeks, engineering firms will develop a plan for a controlled dismantling. It may involve releasing the platform from its cables explosively and letting it fall.

The radio telescope was built in the early 1960s, and for many years was the world’s largest single dish radio telescope. It has struggled however in recent years with both financial and infrastructure problems, the latter initially caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

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ESA completes new parachute test for its 2022 Mars rover

9:58 pm

On November 9, 2020 the European Space Agency finally conducted the high altitude parachute test of the landing system for its 2022 Mars rover Rosalind Franklin that had been planned for March but had been delayed due to the Wuhan flu panic.

The timeline of the latest test, including extraction and deceleration, went exactly to plan. However, four tears in the canopy of the first main parachute and one in the second main parachute were found after recovery. The damage seemed to happen at the onset of the inflation, with the descent otherwise occurring nominally.

The team are now analysing the test data to determine further improvements for the next tests. Planning is underway for future tests in the first half of next year, to ‘qualify’ the complete parachute system ready for launch in September 2022.

Overall they consider the test a success, though the damage issues must be solved before the ’22 launch. Based on this test it also appears that the ESA made a very wise choice delaying the mission from launch this year, as its parachute system was clearly not ready.

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Study: Cloth masks provide “statistically insignificant” protection

12:23 pm

The certainty of the COVID-19 panic: A large Danish study involving about 6,000 people has found that cloth masks provide “statistically insignificant” protection from infection.

From the paper’s conclusion:

The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection. [emphasis mine]

I highlight the last sentence to nip in the bud the claims I expect from the Chicken Little crowd that will point to that “50%” number as proof that masks work. The last sentence points out that a 50% reduction in infection rate is what you also get by washing your hands and avoiding already infected individuals. The masks themselves make no difference.

The study found that 42 people in the in the mask group got infected, compared to 53 in the non-mask group. Since both groups contained 3,000 people, the percentage infected for both groups was about 2%, with the mask group having slightly less infections.

It is important to note the real scale of the virus as demonstrated by this study. Out of 6,000 participants, all older than 18 with no current or prior symptoms, very few people got infected. No one apparently died.

The study notes that it did not look at the effectiveness of masks worn by sick people. It is possible that in that circumstance the mask could prevent the infected person from transmitting the virus to others, but that requires more study. However, having people wear masks in the presence of a sick person had been the practice where masks were used for decades. And it certainly makes more sense than making millions of totally healthy people mask themselves wherever they go, twenty-four hours a day.

Either way, this study illustrates again that the mask mandates being imposed by edict by political leaders have no basis in science. The mandates do not require proper use, and even if they did it is unrealistic to expect that proper use. And even if the use was proper globally, this study shows that the mask would accomplish nothing.

But hey, it is important to make feel-good gestures, even if those feel-good gestures are pointless and cause our focus to shift away from more important tasks, such as immunizing children from measles. So what children will die unnecessarily from the measles and rubella! We will feel safe.

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Scientists: Major measles outbreaks likely because of COVID-19 lockdowns

10:38 pm

According to a paper published in the peer review journal Lancet, there is a very high likelihood of major measles outbreaks among children worldwide in 2021 — resulting in many unnecessary deaths — due to the shut downs imposed because of the panic over COVID-19.

Lead author Professor Kim Mulholland, from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Chair of the World Health Organization’s SAGE Working Group on measles and rubella vaccines, said that many children have missed out on measles vaccination this year, making future measles outbreaks inevitable. …”The coming months are likely to see increasing numbers of unimmunised children who are susceptible to measles. Many live in poor, remote communities where health systems are less resilient, and malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency are already increasing.”

Professor Mulholland said the COVID-19 pandemic had also had a profound effect on the control of vaccine preventable diseases, with vaccination campaigns paused in the early months of 2020 and routine immunisation services greatly disrupted in many countries.

The WHO estimates that by the end of October, 2020, delayed vaccination campaigns in 26 countries have led to 94 million children missing scheduled measles vaccine doses. [emphasis mine]

Think about it. Because we and our governments panicked and shut down society to protect children from a virus that is not only not contagious among children, it also is practically harmless to them, many children will now die from diseases we know are highly contagious and we know can kill them.

And people accuse me of being heartless because I say the lock downs are senseless, irrational, and a bad idea.

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Arianespace: Cause of Vega launch failure “human error”

10:18 pm

According to Arianespace officials, today’s failure of their Vega rocket likely occurred because of “human error” in the installation of cables.

Engineers concluded that cables leading to thrust vector control actuators on the upper stage were inverted, apparently a mistake from the assembly of the upper stage engine, according to Roland Lagier, Arianespace’s chief technical officer. The thrust vector control system pivots the upper stage engine nozzle to direct thrust, allowing the rocket to control its orientation and steering.

The cabling problem caused the engine to move its nozzle in the wrong direction in response to commands from the rocket’s guidance system. That resulted in the rocket losing control and tumbling just after ignition of the upper stage engine around eight minutes after launch.

Lagier characterized the inverted cables as a “human error,” and not a design problem.

The next obvious question is the source of the error. The answer was not revealed, I think partly because of the number of contractors involved in building that upper stage:

The AVUM upper stage’s structure is produced by Airbus, and the Ukrainian rocket contractors Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash supply the AVUM stage’s main engine, which consumes hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants. Avio, the Vega rocket’s Italian prime contractor, oversees final integration of the AVUM upper stage.

The goal of the investigation that will now follow will be to point that source among these contracts, and how their interaction might have contributed to it.

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If election issues are not fixed, elected state Republicans must refuse to certify

4:49 pm

The Preamble to the Constitution

The Constitution is very clear: The actual decision on who should be elected President of the United States every four years is actually made by the state legislatures.

Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled to the Congress.

12th Amendment: The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President. … The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.

In other words, the state legislatures choose the Electors, and only when they are chosen can they vote for President. Furthermore, the winner must win a majority from the expected number of total Electors from all the states, which is presently 270. If not, the vote then goes to the House of Representatives in Congress, which votes not by each representative but by state, with each state’s caucus voting separately to determine the state’s vote (as per the 12th Amendment).

American tradition however for almost two centuries has been for these legislatures to let the popular vote of the state guide them on who to pick as Electors. If their citizens choose the Republican candidate, they picked Republican Electors so their states Electoral votes go to that candidate. If the citizens choose a Democrat, they did the same.

It is because of this tradition that we all assume the popular vote makes the choice. It really does not.

For two centuries, this system worked because everyone trusted the election process. While some fraud has always occurred at some level, at the federal level the counts have generally been carefully done and reliably tabulated. Even in the difficult election battle in 2000 it was clear that the effort was to get the actual count right, by both sides.

This trust is now gone. The number of errors, suspicious actions, and indications of fraud, all designed to steal votes from Donald Trump and give extra votes to Joe Biden, makes every single one of the contested elections in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin unreliable. Let’s take a look a just a small sampling of recent stories from each state, detailing rampant election fraud.
» Read more

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COVID-19 deaths plummeting worldwide

10:36 am

Chicken Little is wrong! From the journal Nature: The death rate from COVID-19 continues to plummet worldwide, for reasons that baffle some scientists.

As a result, it has taken researchers some time to determine whether the number of deaths per SARS-CoV-2 infection is really falling, particularly for older people, says epidemiologist Ali Mokdad at the University of Washington in Seattle. Mokdad and his colleagues have been monitoring global data, with a focus on the United States and Europe. A provisional analysis, he says, which includes data from the American Hospital Association, now suggests that the number of fatalities per infection might have fallen by 20%.

Intensive-care physicians say that treatment has improved, but not always in ways that are easy to pinpoint. Vijayaraghavan and others credit a shift in mindset. In the early days of the pandemic, COVID-19 was viewed as something frightening and new — and worthy of resorting to unproven interventions in a desperate act to save patients. “Unfortunately, a lot of the initial discourse was complicated by noise about how this disease was entirely different or entirely new,” says Vijayaraghavan. “This distraction caused more harm — we were all probably poised to go off track.” [emphasis mine]

The article, from this leftist-leaning science journal, is somewhat amusing in that it wrings its hands almost in despair at these encouraging numbers. It is like watching a group of people who refuse to see the elephant in the room. This quote from the article is especially revealing:

Vijayaraghavan credits the improvements in mortality at his institution to hard-earned experience, a better understanding of how to use steroids and a shift away from unproven drugs and procedures.

Marcus Schultz, an intensive-care specialist at Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, agrees, adding that it took time to realize that standard treatments were among the most effective. “In just half a year, I think we repeated 20 years of research in acute respiratory distress,” he says. “Everything was done again, and everything came with the same result.” [emphasis mine]

The virus is not nor ever was the deadly plague that journals like this sold it as. From the very beginning, the data showed it would be variation of all other respiratory illnesses, and that to panic over it was a big mistake. The virus is now doing what some reasonable but ignored scientists correctly predicted: it is dissipating and weakening with time, as such viruses always do.

But panic we did, and as a result many more died than was necessary, even as we destroyed the livelihoods of millions and reshaped our society from one that celebrates freedom and boldness to one that demands obedience and encourages fear.

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Long March 5 moves to launchpad for Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission

9:54 am

The new colonial movement: China has transported its biggest rocket, the Long March 5, from its hanger to its launchpad in preparation for the scheduled November 24th launch of Chang’e-5, planned to be the first lunar sample return mission since the 1970s..

The linked article above, from the Associated Press but published at ABC news, appears to have been tweaked by China’s propaganda department. Consider for example this quote of the article’s last paragraph:

[China’s] space program has progressed cautiously, with relatively few setbacks in recent years. The Long March-5, nicknamed “Fat 5” because of its bulky shape, failed on a previous launch attempt, but China’s enormous pool of technical and engineering talent appears to have allowed it to overcome most obstacles. [emphasis mine]

My heart be still. China has an “enormous pool of talent”. How amazing! It is a interesting the AP and ABC didn’t also note China’s enormous pool of computer hackers, who hacked into the JPL database over a period of ten years and stole its U.S. designs for rovers and unmanned probes, which were then used as a template for all their own planetary missions.

Be warned. China has many allies within the U.S., many in academia and in the press. These Americans have no loyalty to this country, and in fact if asked might actually express a greater support for China.

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