Sunday, January 3, 2021

Patrick Byrne: China Is Taking Us Out From Within

Patrick Byrne on Dec. 15, 2020. (Samira Baoaou/The Epoch Times)

Patrick Byrne: China Is Taking Us Out From Within

BY LI HAI
 

Patrick Byrne, founder and former CEO of Overstock, said that China is “taking us out from within” during an interview with Dr. Jerome Corsi on Monday.

“The greatest way to fight a war, in the Chinese way of thinking, is not to have to fight at all. That’s what they’ve done here,” Byrne said.

Byrne studied Chinese history at Beijing Normal University from 1983 to 1984. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese studies from Dartmouth College.

“Though we spend a trillion dollars a year between our military and our intelligence, national security circles … that trillion dollars we have and we’ve built, you know, things that can stop all their planes and their missiles and all kinds of things. But we missed the one they use, which is not a fight at all, not firing a bullet or missile at all, but taking us out from within. And that’s what’s going on.”

Byrne pointed out that the Chinese regime is engaged in “a slow coup.”

“It’s a revolution. The stages of such a revolution are very well mapped out. We understand this. It’s demoralization, disorientation, crisis, then normalization: those four steps.”

“The demoralization is what happened this year with COVID,” Byrne continued.

“The disorientation is this kookiness we’ve been seeing for about six months,” Byrne said, referring to Antifa, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other things, such as buildings and police stations being lit on fire, and people being harassed for their political views while out dining.

“That’s all to disorient you. It’s to tell you, ‘You are not living in the America you thought you were living in,’” he said.

“The crisis is, clearly an imposter president has been stood up,” Byrne added in reference to the contested election results.

He asserted that Beijing only needed to secure six counties to steal the election.

“Political scientists can tell you, to steal the United States you don’t need to cheat in elections everywhere. You need six counties where you cheat the heck out of those counties. And you can flip the six states that they are in and thereby flip the Electoral College and steal the country.”

Epoch Times Photo
Paramilitary police officers wearing masks march next to the entrance of the Forbidden City in Beijing on Sept. 20, 2020. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

Byrne mentioned an election irregularity in Atlanta, Georgia, where a water main break was reported, and poll observers and media were told to leave. However, four people stayed and kept counting the ballots.

The water leak “was actually a urinal that had overflowed,” according to the chief investigator of the issue.

The last phase is normalization, Byrne said, in which the “media is just beating it into your head.”

“They’re violating every precept of journalistic integrity,” Byrne said, criticizing the media for ignoring the evidence that has been presented claiming election fraud.

Byrne pointed out that thousands of people risked their lives to testify in affidavits, telling of the fraud and irregularities they witnessed.

“So those are the four stages we’re going through, and it’s my assertion that the hand of China is behind this.”

Byrne made it clear that he loves Chinese people and Chinese history, but the Chinese regime “has proven to be as treacherous and ungrateful as anyone could have imagined.”

“What the Chinese did is they studied us, and they saw that corruption is our weakest point. And they infiltrated us, and they corrupted exactly institutions that they needed to corrupt in order to allow what’s going on now to happen.”

“In 10 years, there’ll be prison camps with organs being harvested just as there are in western China,” Byrne went on to say. “So we cannot bend a knee to this under any circumstance.”

The Chinese regime has been killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs for more than 20 years, according to a panel of experts who attended a virtual conference hosted by the advocacy group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) on Nov. 19, and independent investigations.

Talking about the upcoming Jan. 6 rally in Washington, Byrne said that “this is your last chance.”

“If you bend the knee to this rigged election, they have corrupted the most elementary concept of our tradition, consent of the governed, and you never will get another chance.”

Byrne studied the Constitution’s principles when he was young. He has a master’s degree from Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar and received his doctorate in political philosophy from Stanford University. He indicated that the “core atomic concept” in the United States’ liberal tradition is the consent of the governed, which is determined by free, fair, and transparent elections.

“We do not bend the knee. This is what makes us different. And all over the world, there are people looking to us, hoping we show that we are the exceptional country. This is our chance.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/patrick-byrne-china-is-taking-us-out-from-within_3637007.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-30-1

Saturday, January 2, 2021

Newly Recorded COVID-19 Cases and Deaths Are Falling in the U.S.

Newly Recorded COVID-19 Cases and Deaths Are Falling in the U.S.

It's not clear how long those hopeful trends will continue.

| 

Newly recorded COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States, which rose dramatically this fall, now seem to be declining. According to Worldometer's numbers, the seven-day average of daily new cases fell by 18 percent between December 18 and yesterday. The seven-day average of daily deaths has fallen by 19 percent since December 22.

Daily new cases in the U.S. are still five times as high as they were in mid-September, while daily deaths are three times as high as they were in mid-October. But the seven-day average of daily deaths, about 2,200 as of yesterday, has dropped slightly below last spring's peak after exceeding it for several weeks. The recent trends, assuming they continue, are a hopeful sign that the winter might not be quite as deadly as many people feared.

Back in October, for instance, Joe Biden said "the expectation is we'll have another 200,000 Americans dead [from COVID-19] between now and the end of the year." That implied a total U.S. death toll of about 423,000 by January 1. Per Worldometer, the current death toll is about 342,000. With four days to go in the year, it looks like Biden's projection will be off by 70,000 or so.

Allowing for the lag between laboratory confirmation and death, the recent drop in fatalities corresponds with a decrease in daily new cases recorded in late November. Since newly identified infections are falling again, it is plausible that daily deaths will continue to fall as well.

But for how long? Since COVID-19 symptoms that might prompt someone to seek testing appear two to 14 days after infection, the increase in confirmed cases following the dip in late November is consistent with the fear that gatherings over Thanksgiving weekend would boost virus transmission. The impact of Christmas and New Year's Eve gatherings may not be fully apparent until mid-January or later.

The pessimistic take on the recent dip in daily new cases is that it simply represents a falloff from the surge associated with Thanksgiving, which suggests that cases and deaths will rise again as infections tied to Christmas and New Year's Eve celebrations show up in the official tallies. A more optimistic interpretation is that the dramatic increases in cases and deaths have encouraged wider and more consistent compliance with COVID-19 precautions.

Did the new legal restrictions imposed by many states also play a role? Maybe, although a comparison of the two most populous states seems inconsistent with that hypothesis. California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has imposed a raft of new restrictions, has seen a smaller decline in daily deaths than Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a more lenient approach.

However you interpret current trends, they show that continued increases in new cases and deaths are not inevitable. The way Americans choose to behave in the months until vaccines are widely available will determine exactly how deadly the pandemic proves to be.

 https://reason.com/2020/12/28/newly-recorded-covid-19-cases-and-deaths-are-falling-in-the-u-s/

Joe Biden Urges America to ‘Unite’ and ‘Heal.’ Actor David Cross Says ‘F**k That. I Want Blood’

Joe Biden Urges America to ‘Unite’ and ‘Heal.’ Actor David Cross Says ‘F**k That. I Want Blood’

BEVERLY HILLS, CA - FEBRUARY 16: Comedian David Cross hosts the 63rd Annual ACE Eddie Awards held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 16, 2013 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Paul A. Hebert/Getty Images)
Paul A. Hebert/Getty Images
1:40

Joe Biden has stated that he wants to see America “unite” and “heal.” But some of his supporters on the left have the opposite idea and want to see Trump supporters suffer — violently so. Actor-comedian David Cross is the latest Hollywood figure to call for retribution, apparently against President Trump and the people who supported him.

The Mr. Show and Arrested Development star is calling for “blood” in a tweet on Saturday.

Cross joins a host of left-wing Hollywood celebrities who have rejected Joe Biden’s call for healing. Actress Rosanna Arquette called the Republican Party the “Nazi Gestapo” while comedian Wanda Sykes claimed that all Trump voters are racists.

David Cross attends the premiere of Netflix’s “Arrested Development” Season 5 at Netflix FYSee Theater on May 17, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Rich Fury/Getty Images)

Actors Alec Baldwin and Debra Messing have both fantasized about physical violence against the president.

Rob Reiner has called for the creation of a “non-partisan commission” to investigate President Trump after he leaves the White House, saying that it is necessary to “restore faith in our Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

Last month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) urged the creation of lists of Trump supporters to be held “accountable” for supporting the president after the election. Some of her allies created The Trump Accountability Project, which would serve as a blacklist of people who supported or had ties to the Trump administration, even federal judges appointed by the president.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/12/28/joe-biden-urges-america-to-unite-and-heal-actor-david-cross-says-fk-that-i-want-blood/

A Supreme Court in Hiding is Dangerous for Our Country

A Supreme Court in Hiding is Dangerous for Our Country

In accordance with Art VI of the Constitution, every sitting Supreme Court justice has taken an oath swearing that he or she will “support this Constitution.” The Constitution the justices have sworn to protect is predicated upon free and fair elections so that the government reflects the will of the People. When the justices refuse to protect election integrity, they are violating their sworn oath and putting our constitutional republic at grave risk.

I recently wrote a suggested Supreme Court opinion. It said the Court must decide “credible and significant” claims of election wrongdoing on their merits before elected officials are sworn in—-except for the President, where the Constitution provides a fallback political method of election. My article suggested what the Supreme Court should do. This article discusses their inaction and warns of the consequences if the justices continue to run and hide.

Americans paying attention to the 2020 Election must be baffled by our courts. A thousand sworn statements about election wrongdoing, bizarre 4 a.m. “vote spikes” for one candidate, hundreds of thousands of ballots driven from one state to the another, counting machines with 68% error rates, etc., etc. Such claims should at least get a day in court.

Yet so far, they can’t get a sniff. With few exceptions, no state or federal court in our country has had the courage to look at the merits of these claims. The most significant challenge to our Constitutional Republic since the first Civil War can’t get a parking ticket.

The Pennsylvania Supremes liked “laches” or simply put, “you waited too long.” The claim asserted was simple—- the Pennsylvania Constitution does not authorize mail-in voting so the legislature can’t do it. (One brave judge said “good point” and was promptly swept away by her betters). The Pennsylvania Supremes said you had to sue before the election. Of course, if you had, they would have said “go away you haven’t been injured.” Welcome to the legal Land of Oz.

The Michigan Federal Court liked a different spin on “too late.” They used “mootness” which means “too late because the thing you feared already happened and this court can’t fix it now.” While the Plaintiff had been frantically waving his arms begging the courts to stop certification, the political forces in Michigan went ahead and certified anyhow as the courts snoozed. Sorry, bub -- too late.

The free and fair election crowd went for a positive spin -- “No problem; doesn’t matter.” The newly minted, conservative Supreme Court is the main game. Lower courts getting out of the way is much like the Chicago Bulls clearing the other kind of court so Michael Jordan could take the last shot.

In a stroke of brilliance every non-brainwashed citizen could see, the State of Texas stepped up with the answer. An original complaint to the Supreme Court where the States that followed their election laws sued the States that violated theirs. The claim was also simple -- we jointly elect the President as a group of 50 States and our vote is being nullified since four States cheated. The argument was especially strong because if results from the four cheating States were reversed the election result changed.

Since State vs. State is an original complaint to the Supreme Court (not an appeal) the Court had the flexibility to handle it any way they wanted. Twenty-three other States and the campaigns joined in, making it a perfect solution because almost all the players were present and the Court could do whatever was right.

Well, the Supreme Court justices decided to do the one thing that wasn’t right -- they ran and hid. “Texas, you have no standing to complain about another State violating its own laws.” What?

The Constitution specifically says States suing other States can file Original Complaints with the Supreme Court. And while, generally, it may be true one State can’t complain about another State violating its own laws—-what in the world does that have to do with a situation where the 50 States jointly elect a President? With all due (rapidly diminishing) respect, what the Supreme Court said is utter nonsense. In the most important game in history, Michael took the ball, put it down on the court, and walked away as time ran out.

So, what are we seeing and where is this going? Simply put, judges are meek by nature and we are seeing the biggest “judicial deer in the headlights” in our history. It’s the nature of the beast. After all, who become judges? Former lawyers. Lawyers fight for a living. They fight for clients, they fight with partners, and they fight each other in cases.

When these lawyers have had enough fighting (or are not very good at it) they become judges. Once ensconced on that raised podium, a judge tries like crazy to avoid the fighting.

Ninety-plus percent of cases settle. Why? The judges and the system browbeat parties and their attorneys to avoid the fight with forced mediation and mandatory settlement conferences. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it does reflect the judges’ desire to be left alone. The “RBG as a crusading force for good” image is either a fantasy or a rare exception.

Make no mistake—-the American court system is terrified by the 2020 Election lawsuit claims. Think about it. If substantially proven, the claims establish that one of the major political parties mounted a coordinated effort to illegally steal a Presidential election. The courts are hiding under their collective beds and hoping the bad orange man will just go away. To reinforce this natural fear of conflict, the Left has seeded this ground with doxxing, cancel culture, and riots by Antifa and BLM.

With the 2020 election, there will be grave consequences following the Supreme Court’s insistence on being left alone. Earlier, I focused on the beginning section of the Declaration of Independence, the part saying a just government only exists with the consent of the People through free and fair elections.

The next part of the Declaration has a much darker side which the Supreme Court may bring into play if it stays in its rabbit hole. The Declaration is plain: The People have a duty to overthrow the government if it is not justly based on their collective consent. That duty reaches a critical stage when all the institutions fail them. The Supreme Court may have been our last hope. So far, the justices have utterly failed us.

Assuming the Supreme Court continues to avoid its primary reason for living -- protecting the Constitution -- can we expect a Second Declaration of Independence, followed by conflict, to address this fundamental failure? I hope not. That is the last thing any of us should wish.  

Fortunately, the Supreme Court has the power to avoid such an outcome by protecting election integrity. If it does not and, instead, completes the failure of our political and judicial institutions, history will record that the Supreme Court’s dereliction was a major cause of any conflict that follows. At the moment the People need them most, the Justices are running and hiding. Disgraceful. They must step up to keep the future of our Country safe and whole.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/12/a_supreme_court_in_hiding_is_dangerous_for_our_country.html

Friday, January 1, 2021

GOP Lawmaker Sues to Give Pence ‘Exclusive Authority’ to Overturn Election Results

2020 ELECTION

GOP Lawmaker Sues to Give Pence ‘Exclusive Authority’ to Overturn Election Results

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) filed a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence in a bid to overturn the presidential election results, asking a court to give Pence “exclusive authority” to decide which Electoral College votes should be counted.

According to the lawsuit (pdf), Pence has a role in the upcoming Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress to count all 50 states’ Electoral College votes. Gohmert’s lawsuit, which was filed against Pence in his capacity as vice president, is asking a federal judge to strike down the 1887 Electoral Count Act and to grant Pence the authority to overturn the election results in favor of President Donald Trump.

Gohmert’s lawsuit is claiming that any action taken by Pence on Jan. 6 to certify the Electoral College results to secure a win for Joe Biden will be fraudulent. Gohmert is also asking Judge Jeremy Kernodle, a Trump appointee, to determine that Pence is authorized to pick GOP electors who cast votes for Trump during the Joint Session of Congress.

The White House and Pence’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

“Vice-President Pence determines which slate of electors’ votes count, or neither, for that State,” Gohmert’s lawsuit states. “If no candidate has a majority of 270 elector votes, then the House of Representatives (and only the House of Representatives) shall choose the President.”

It adds that the 12th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution “contains the exclusive dispute resolution mechanisms” over elections.

The court should render a judgment on whether “Vice President Pence, in his capacity as President of Senate and Presiding Officer of the January 6, 2021, Joint Session of Congress under the Twelfth Amendment, is subject solely to the requirements of the Twelfth Amendment and may exercise the exclusive authority and sole discretion in determining which electoral votes to count for a given State, and must ignore and may not rely on any provisions of the Electoral Count Act that would limit his exclusive authority and his sole discretion to determine the count, which could include votes from the slates of Republican electors from the Contested States,” Gohmert’s lawsuit says.

Gohmert noted that GOP-selected electors in several key states being contested by Trump have cast votes for Trump and Pence. The Republican parties in the states said they did so to preserve lawsuit options for the president. Electors that were certified by the key states’ executive branches cast votes during the Dec. 14 Electoral College vote, giving Biden 306 votes to Trump’s 232 votes.

Meanwhile, Gohmert said in the suit that he’s joining a GOP-led effort to challenge the Electoral College vote-count efforts on Jan. 6. The bid, which is being led by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), has dozens of supporters in the House, Brooks told Fox News on Dec. 28.

Trump has supported the effort led by Brooks and the other Republican lawmakers to challenge the counting. But so far, it’s not clear if any senators have joined, which is needed to carry out the challenge of the electoral votes.

Gohmert filed the suit in the Eastern District of Texas. Tyler Bowyer, Nancy Cottle, Jake Hoffman, Anthony Kern, James R. Lamon, Sam Moorhead, Robert Montgomery, Lorain Pellegrino, Greg Safsten, Kelli Ward, and Michael Ward also joined the lawsuit.

The case is Gohmert v. Pence, and the case number is 6:20-cv-00660.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/gop-rep-sues-pence-to-give-him-exclusive-authority-to-overturn-election-results_3634980.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2020-12-29

Delingpole: Lockdowns Were Inspired by the CCP, admits Professor Pantsdown

Delingpole: Lockdowns Were Inspired by the CCP, admits Professor Pantsdown

Neil Ferguson
Wikimedia Commons
3:26

Professor Neil Ferguson, the discredited Imperial College computer modeller behind Britain’s draconian lockdown policies, has come clean about his inspiration: none of it would have been possible without the shining example of the Chinese Communist Party.

In an extraordinary interview with the Times (of London), Ferguson admits that if it hadn’t been for China’s example, no Western country would ever have dreamed of putting its populace under house arrest.

Back in 2019, about the time someone was getting infected by a bat, no European country’s pandemic plans seriously entertained the prospect of putting a country on pause.

Then, that’s what China did. “I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March,” Professor Ferguson says.

Ferguson appears to find the idea of emulating a totalitarian state exciting rather than embarrassing or shaming because he boasts about it again later in the interview.

In January, members of Sage, the government’s scientific advisory group, had watched as China enacted this innovative intervention in pandemic control that was also a medieval intervention.

“They claimed to have flattened the curve. I was sceptical at first. I thought it was a massive cover-up by the Chinese. But as the data accrued it became clear it was an effective policy.”

Then, as infections seeded across the world, springing up like angry boils on the map, Sage debated whether, nevertheless, it would be effective here. “It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought.” In February one of those boils raged just below the Alps. “And then Italy did it. And we realised we could.”

That phrase ‘get away with it’ is instructive. It implies that, at least on a subconscious level, Ferguson is aware that copying Communist China’s lockdown policy was not a morally acceptable act, merely one that peculiar circumstances made possible.

Though the lockdowns are unprecedented in modern history and have, in the UK, been responsible for the biggest collapse in GDP in 300 years, as well as the destruction of many thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs, Ferguson shows zero contrition for having provided the computer modelled doomsday scenarios responsible for all this misery.

Nor does he apologise for the incident during the first lockdown when he was caught breaking the rules he helped create by bonking his mistress at her place (not, obviously, at the home he shares with his wife). This earned him the soubriquet ‘Professor Pantsdown’ – as well as a reputation as a prize hypocrite.

“I made some mistakes. I’ve been completely open in terms of saying they were mistakes. But, nevertheless, the fact that journalists were digging into my private life at that level of detail was not something I could ever imagine. That’s not something you want to be on the end of.

“My wife and son and my partner had journalists on the doorstep. I was actually in my flat in London, they didn’t know where I was. It was a very difficult time.”

In other words, Professor Pantsdown’s line is that when you break the lockdown rules you yourself have invented and pop off down the road to have a shag with your bright-red-lipsticked, hard-left activist girlfriend, you are nothing but a blameless victim.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/12/27/lockdowns-were-inspired-by-the-ccp-admits-professor-pantsdown/

Supreme Court Requires Lower Courts to Exclude Illegal Aliens From Census Count

The U.S. Census logo appears on census materials received in the mail with an invitation to fill out census information online in San Anselmo, California, on March 19, 2020. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Supreme Court Requires Lower Courts to Exclude Illegal Aliens From Census Count

Following its ruling earlier this month that allowed the Trump administration to remove illegal aliens from the 2020 Census count, the Supreme Court on Dec. 28 threw out two lower court decisions that went the other way, that barred the government from eliminating that population from the process of allocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes that officially determine the presidency.

In the cases Trump v. Useche from Maryland and Trump v. City of San Jose, California, the Supreme Court vacated the judgments of the lower courts, sending the cases back to those courts “with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.”

The unsigned order didn’t explain why the court acted at this time, but referenced its 6–3 decision on Dec. 18 in Trump v. New York.

In Trump v. New York, the Supreme Court punted on some of the legal issues raised, allowing the Trump administration to try to implement its counting policy for now, even though processing of 2020 Census data is expected to wrap up in coming weeks. Existing law requires the president to file a mandatory reapportionment report with Congress, which could lead to reduced federal funding in states with large illegal-alien populations.

The Trump administration wanted illegal aliens removed from the decennial census count to prevent them from having an impact on the apportionment of political power among the states.

States and local governments, including so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, which refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials, sued to prevent the administration’s plan from moving forward. They argued that President Donald Trump was attempting to interfere with the count and prevent Democratic-leaning areas with large illegal-alien populations from gaining congressional seats.

But in the Dec. 18 decision, the high court found that their challenge was premature because they couldn’t demonstrate any so-called concrete injury they might suffer. And it left open the possibility of further challenges in the future, acknowledging the Trump administration may have difficulty implementing its policy.

“At present, this case is riddled with contingencies and speculation that impede judicial review,” the court stated.

The three liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, dissented in the two rulings on Dec. 28 for the same reasons they dissented from the court’s ruling in Trump v. New York.

In that dissent, Breyer wrote, “The plain meaning of the governing statutes, decades of historical practice, and uniform interpretations from all three branches of Government demonstrate that aliens without lawful status cannot be excluded from the decennial census solely on account of that status.”

After the court acted on Dec. 28, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said he disagreed with the new ruling in Trump v. City of San Jose.

“A complete, accurate census is about ensuring all our voices are heard and that our states get their share of resources to protect the health and well-being of all of our communities,” he said in a statement.

“We remain committed to the core principle that everyone counts. Here in California, we’ll continue to stand up for each and every person who calls our state home.”

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who has declared victory in the still-contested presidential contest, has said he plans to nominate Becerra, a Democrat, to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

P. Benjamin DeWitt Duke of Covington & Burling, the counsel of record for litigant Natalia Useche in the other case, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/supreme-court-requires-lower-courts-exclude-illegal-aliens-from-census-count_3635425.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-28-6