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December 2020

China deleverages while  the sun shines David Goldman

https://asiatimes.com/author/david-p-goldman/

Beijing’s warning to fintech and property firms to raise equity and pay debts will hit stocks now but lift their long term prospects
Beijing’s warning to fintech and property firms to raise equity and pay debts will hit stocks now but lift their long term prospects

China’s economy and stocks have outperformed Western counterparts during the Covid recession. Image: Twitter

China’s regulators are fixing the roof while the sun is shining. With the economy in full rebound from the second-quarter Covid recession, Beijing has warned fintech and property companies to raise more equity and pay down debt.

That’s good news for China’s financial system but mixed news for some of this year’s best-performing stocks, including food-delivery service Methuan and smartphone maker Xiaomi. Financial stocks, by contrast, turned in their best relative performance of 2020 during the past month.

Dominion contractor drops bombshell at Michigan hearing ‘They were rescanning, counting ballots 8 to 10 times’

https://www.wnd.com/2020/12/dominion-contractor-drops-bombshell-michigan-hea

UPDATE Dec. 2, 2020: This story has been updated to include comments from Chief Judge Timothy Kenny of the Third Judicial Circuit Court in Michigan who dismissed Melissa Carone’s claims in a Nov. 13 ruling, stating her “allegations simply are not credible.”

An IT worker trained and contracted by Dominion Voting Systems who worked at the tabulating center in Detroit on Nov. 3 claimed Tuesday she saw election workers illegally rescanning batches of 50 ballots for Joe Biden over and over to create more votes.

Melissa Carone, who spoke to the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee at a hearing in Lansing, Michigan, said she was at the TCF Center for a total of 27 hours, beginning the morning of Election Day.

“What I witnessed at the TCF Center was simply fraud the whole 27 hours I was there,” she said. “There were batches of ballots being run through the tabulating machines numerous times, being counted eight to 10 times.

“I watched this with my own eyes,” Carone said.

She said that the election official in charge of counting the mail-in ballots, Daniel Baxter, and at least 90% of the workers were “in on the whole thing.”

“There was not a single ballot the whole night, the whole 27 hours I was there, that I saw, that was for Donald Trump,” she said. “Not one. Not a single ballot.”

She also testified she was aware that ballots were being tabulated at the Department of Elections, where she originally had been scheduled to work.

Arizona Hearing Found Ample Election Fraud: Mathematically Improbable That Biden Won state. Fred Lucas

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/11/30/4-takeaways-from-arizonas-election-fraud-he

On the same day that Arizona certified former Vice President Joe Biden as the winner of the state’s 11 electoral votes, state lawmakers held a fact-finding meeting Monday on allegations of voter fraud that might have tilted the closely contested state.

Biden appears to have won the traditionally Republican-leaning state by just over 10,000 votes. However, witnesses told state lawmakers that mail-in voting fraud and problems with the Dominion Voting Systems machines could have skewed the results.

Dominion has vigorously defended its machines, stating on its website:

According to a Joint Statement by the federal government agency that oversees U.S. election security, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency: “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”  The government & private sector councils that support this mission called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”

The event was not a formal legislative hearing, since the Legislature is out of session, but Republican members of both the state Senate and the state House of Representatives participated in the panel, asking questions of witnesses.

The event, which began in late morning and ran well into the evening, wasn’t held at the state Capitol, but rather off-site at a Hyatt Regency hotel in Phoenix, with a “Stop the Steal” rally of supporters of President Donald Trump going on outside.

President Trump Gives an Election Update from the White House Katie Pavlich

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/12/02/president-trump-gives-an-update-from-the-white-house-on-the-election-n2580964

Speaking from the White House Wednesday, President Donald Trump gave an update on what he sees as the status of the presidential race.

“This may be the most important speech I’ve ever made. I want to provide an update on our efforts to expose the tremendous voter fraud and irregularities which took place during the ridiculously long November 3 elections. We used to have what was called Election Day. Now we have election days, weeks, and months and lots of bad things happened during this ridiculous period of time, especially since you have to prove almost nothing to exercise our greatest privilege, the right to vote. As president, I have no higher duty than to defend the laws and the Constitution of the United States. That is why I am determined to protect our election system, which is under coordinated assault and siege,” Trump said.

“The constitutional process must be allowed to continue. We are going to defend the honesty of the vote by ensuring every legal ballot is counted and that no illegal ballot is counted. This is not just about honoring the votes of 74 million Americans who voted for me; it’s about ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election and all future elections,” he continued.

Up to 280,000 Ballots ‘Disappeared’ Overnight Along with Trailer, USPS Whistle blower Alleges Leah Barkoukis

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/12/02/usps-whistleblowers-n2580920

Though the mainstream media has declared the 2020 election over, disturbing allegations of fraud and Election Day irregularities continue to come to light.

Phill Kline, director of Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project and former Kansas attorney general, said he received evidence that somewhere between “130,000 to 280,000 completed ballots for the 2020 general election had been shipped from Bethpage, New York, before the ballots and the trailer in which they were shipped disappeared” on Oct. 21. 

The former district attorney was referring to statements by Jesse Morgan, a USPS subcontractor and truck driver.

The truck driver explained he was transporting the ballots to Harrisburg. “Usually I offload in one of the seven docks every day but not on Oct. 21. I wasn’t allowed to offload. That’s different. … Instead, I was made to wait for roughly six hours in the yard. … All of this was weird. …”

When he finally went in to figure out what was going on, he was told to wait to speak to the transportation supervisor, which he described as very unusual because he never deals with that level of management. He recalled telling the supervisor he wanted a ticket, which he said is standard protocol to show a driver arrived at a USPS facility to prove they were there, and that he wanted a late slip as well so he would get paid for sitting there for six hours. The supervisor refused both of his requests. “He was kind of rude and wouldn’t explain anything to me, he just told me to go to Lancaster.”

Delusional Never Trump Losers Think We’re Going to Take Them Back Kurt Schlichter

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/12/03/delusional-never-trump-losers-think-were-going-to-take-them-back-n2580938?utm_campaign=inarticle

I’m not sure what is the most distinguishing characteristic of the Never Trump sissies. Sure, they are contemptible worms who care about nothing but extending their pathetic grifts – and it’s not like the Grima Wormtongues of conservatism have any saleable skills other than treachery. This is, of course, why these grody creatures are naturally drawn to D.C., where their loathsome skills are appreciated.

But scumbags are a dime a dozen – what truly distinguishes these geebos is their bizarre confidence that someday us conservatives are going have an epiphany that we need them back and come begging them to return to their former glory as the Republican establishment’s managers of America’s decline.

Check out John Bolton, who never met a war he wasn’t happy to have your kids fight, on Twitter presuming to tell us how things are going to be: “Longer term, there must be a broad ‘conversation’ about the direction of the conservative movement and the Republican party. More from me in [link to lame weasel-blog deleted]”

Yo John, we’ve already had a conversation. You just weren’t invited to it. Here’s how the conversation went: 

“You know who sucks? People like John Bolton.”

Walter E. Williams 1936-2020 by Thomas Sowell

https://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2020/12/02/walter-e-williams-19362020-n2580965

Walter Williams loved teaching. Unlike too many other teachers today, he made it a point never to impose his opinions on his students. Those who read his syndicated newspaper columns know that he expressed his opinions boldly and unequivocally there. But not in the classroom.

Walter once said he hoped that, on the day he died, he would have taught a class that day. And that is just the way it was, when he died on Wednesday, December 2, 2020.

He was my best friend for half a century. There was no one I trusted more or whose integrity I respected more. Since he was younger than me, I chose him to be my literary executor, to take control of my books after I was gone.

But his death is a reminder that no one really has anything to say about such things.

As an economist, Walter Williams never got the credit he deserved. His book “Race and Economics” is a must-read introduction to the subject. Amazon has it ranked 5th in sales among civil rights books, 9 years after it was published.

Another book of his, on the effects of economics under the white supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa, was titled “South Africa’s War Against Capitalism.” He went to South Africa to study the situation directly. Many of the things he brought out have implications for racial discrimination in other places around the world.

I have had many occasions to cite Walter Williams’ research in my own books. Most of what others say about higher prices in low income neighborhoods today has not yet caught up to what Walter said in his doctoral dissertation decades ago.

Despite his opposition to the welfare state, as something doing more harm than good, Walter was privately very generous with both his money and his time in helping others.

Making John Durham a special counsel will cause problems for Biden Now Democrats’ Trump administration arguments will come back to haunt them. Jonathan Turley

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/12/02/durham-special-counsel-give-biden-problems-column/3793099001/

Over the last few months, Democrats appeared to be laying the foundation to scuttle the Durham investigation as well as any investigation into the Hunter Biden influence peddling scheme. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) denounced the Durham investigation as “tainted” and “political.” On the campaign trail, Biden himself dismissed the “investigation of the investigators.” Over in the Senate, Democrats joined in the mantra with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and others denouncing the continued investigations. 

By converting Durham into a special counsel, Barr makes it harder to fire him. It is not uncommon for presidents to replace all U.S. Attorneys with political allies. Durham however is now a Special Counsel and his replacement or the termination of his investigation would be viewed as an obstructive act. Indeed, when Trump even suggested such a course of action, he was accused of obstruction by a host of Democratic politicians and legal experts. 

Biden’s choice for AG:Biden needs attorney general with integrity, proven record on civil rights

The appointment also makes a public report more likely. While Durham already secured a conviction, prosecutors do not ordinarily prepare reports. Special counsels do.  Moreover, with the Mueller report, virtually every Democratic leader demanded that the report be released with no or few redactions. The Trump administration waived most executive privileges and released most of the report except for grand jury information. Even that was not enough for figures like Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have said, and I’ll say again, no thank you, Mr. Attorney General, we do not need your interpretation, show us the report and we can draw our own conclusions.” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler demanded the release of the “full and complete Mueller report, without redactions, as well as access to the underlying evidence.” The Durham appointment will now force Democrats to answer why they do not support the same public release of the report so that voters can “draw our own conclusions.”

Whistleblowers allege ballots illegally crossed state lines, ballot backdating, digital manipulation Testimony provides “powerful eyewitness accounts of potential ballot fraud on a massive scale,” said Amistad Project Director Phill Kline. By Daniel Payne

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/whistleblowers-allege-thousands-vanished-ballots-allegations-backdating

Sworn testimony of several whistleblowers on Tuesday alleged what one election integrity activist is calling “potential ballot fraud on a massive scale,” with multiple eyewitnesses testifying to alleged suspicious behavior in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

In a press conference in Arlington, Va., the Amistad Project — a civil liberties initiative of the Thomas More Society — presented the testimony of three individuals who claim to have witnessed apparent voting malfeasance during the 2020 election. 

One, Jesse Morgan, a truck driver for a subcontractor with the United States Postal Service, claimed that a trailer he was driving, one full of potentially upwards of 288,000 ballots, disappeared from its parked location at a Lancaster, Pa. USPS depot after Morgan dropped it off there. Morgan had transported those ballots from Bethpage, N.Y. 

The subcontractor also reportedly experienced “odd behaviors” from USPS personnel, behaviors which postal experts have said in sworn statements “grossly deviate[d] from normal procedure and behavior,” according to a press release from the Amistad Project.

Another whistleblower, Nathan Pease of Madison, Wisc. — himself also a subcontractor for USPS — alleged that he was told the postal service was planning to backdate tens of thousands of ballots in the days after the Nov. 3 election in order to circumvent the ballot submission deadline. 

A third witness, Gregory Stenstrom — who testified at a Pennsylvania legislature hearing in Gettysburg last week — claimed to have witnessed a Dominion Voting Systems vendor inserting jump drives into voting aggregation machines in Delaware County, Pa. Election officials also reportedly commingled various jump drives from aggregation machines, potentially frustrating the ability of auditors to properly certify the election results. 

The Georgia Runoffs and Our Embattled Constitution By Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/12/02/the_georgia_runoffs_and_our_e

If Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win Georgia’s Jan. 5 Senate runoffs, Democrats will control both houses of Congress as well as the presidency. The Republican Party, which won nearly half the national vote, will have no check on the Democrats, aside from the Senate’s filibuster rule. Although that rule requires a supermajority to pass some legislation and appointments, it can be abolished by a simple majority when the new Senate convenes.

Preventing one-party rule is one of the strongest arguments advanced by Republican incumbent Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. They are reminding voters of the threat posed by Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who proudly announced: “Now we take Georgia, then we change the world.” That might be a winning line for national fundraising, but it’s more problematic for the Georgia electorate. Not many voters there want to “change the world,” so Warnock and Ossoff are downplaying it. Don’t expect to seek to see Schumer on the stump in Atlanta, Augusta, or Macon.

It’s understandable that the national debate should focus on which party will control the Senate and just how radical the Democrats’ program will be if they do. But just beneath the surface lurk potential constitutional issues, which have received almost no attention. The basic problem is this: although America’s Founders were deeply concerned about tyranny, centralized power, and the suppression of individual rights and constructed institutional barriers to prevent those abuses, they never envisioned the mechanisms that pose serious threats today.