Month: November 2020

Light in the Election Fraud Tunnel

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Maybe some light will shine into the election irregularities once blindfolds are removed.  Recent developments unreported in the MSM include

  1. Backup server for Dominion voting system has been seized to audit election transactions and vote transfers.

  2. Report that Biden did worse than Clinton everywhere except in four cities.

  3. Mountain of affidavits witnessing both “old-school” vote tampering and “new-school” electronic manipulations

 

  1. From Gateway Pundits  Did the US Raid European Software Company Scytl and Seize their Servers in Germany? — Company Refutes Claims?

From our source,  Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Tx): The US government, once they determined that this Dominion server was involved in switching votes, then the intelligence community began a search for the server and discovered that the server was in Germany. In order to get access to that server and have it available for use in a legal manner they had to have the State Department work in tandem with the Department of Justice. They had to request that the government of Germany cooperate in allowing this seizure of this server.

The appropriate documents required to affect that kind of seizure were put in place, signed off on, and it appears there was also US military support in this operation. The US military was not in the lead. But this helps explain why Esper was fired and Miller and Kash Patel were put in place — so that the military would not interfere with the operation in any way.

By getting ahold of the server they now are going to have the direct evidence of when they were instructed to stop counting. They will also discover who gave the direction to stop counting and who initiated the algorithm that started switching votes. The CIA was completely excluded from this operation.

2. Pollster: It’s Curious How Biden Underperformed Hillary Clinton In Every City…Except These Four. Excerpts from Town Hall article in italics with my bolds.

Richard Baris of Big Data Poll who noted something funny about Biden’s numbers in the cities, how it lagged behind Clinton’s numbers, but shot off to the moon in these four cities. Just take a look at the states in which these cities are located as well:

How curious that, as Baris notes, “Trump won the largest non-white vote share for a Republican presidential candidate in 60 years. Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major metro area around the country, save for Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia.”

Robert Barnes, the foremost election analyst, observes in these “big cities in swing states run by Democrats…the vote even exceeded the number of registered voters.”

Trump’s victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were on target until, in the middle of the night, counting was arbitrarily halted. Miraculously, several hundred thousand votes – all for Biden – were mysteriously ‘found’; Trump’s real leads subsequently vanished.

The protracted, eventual outcome will determine the contemporary relevance of Stalin’s observation. No matter who wins, most pollsters already have lost their credibility and influence.

3..Sidney Powell: ‘We’re Fixing to Overturn the Election Results’ with New Evidence. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Attorney Sidney Powell on “Sunday Morning Futures” said Trump’s legal team is gathering evidence of “election fraud” that allegedly took place in election-related software, like Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic. As it currently stands, Dominion is being utilized in 2,000 jurisdictions in 30 states. Texas decided not to use Dominion on three separate occasions because of fraud concerns.

According to Powell, the Trump campaign has enough evidence to launch a serious criminal investigation.

“We’re fixing to overturn the election results in multiple states and President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes but my millions of votes that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose,” Powell explained. “We have sworn witness testimony about why the software was designed. It was designed to rig elections.”

According to Powell, the witness that the Trump team has is someone who has seen elections rigged in other countries. Those same tactics and software were allegedly deployed to the United States.

“They did this on purpose. It was calculated. They’ve done it before,” she said. “We have evidence of 2016 in California. We have so much evidence I feel like it’s coming in through a fire hose.”

Is that light the end of the tunnel or an oncoming train?

Background from Previous Post Election Skimming Program Detected

Dr.SHIVA LIVE: MIT PhD Analysis of Michigan Votes Reveals Unfortunate Truth of U.S. Voting Systems

MIT professor Dr. Shiva and colleagues discovered a pattern in Michigan voter data whereby tens of thousands of Trump votes were taken away and added to Biden totals.  As the video describes the program was designed to skim more votes away from large pools of Trump votes and avoid small pools, in order to be less noticeable.  The proportion of straight ticket Republican voters serves as the indicator of precincts where larger numbers of Trump only votes can be switched to Biden only votes (only refers to a vote not part of a party line ballot.  The linear relationship is quite striking and abnormal.  The more voters in a precinct voted Republican party line, the more Trump only votes in that precinct were taken away.

From Jo Nova website:

A “Transistor Function” algorithm has been used to alter voting patterns in Michigan. It has a “Weighted Race” feature.

Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an MIT engineer and Fulbright Scholar, with Phil Evans B.S.E.E. and Benny Smith (election commissioner and data analyst) have back-analyzed the pattern of voting in Michigan and figured out the electronic algorithm used to alter votes. Voting patterns are distorted in a way that can only be explained by a linear transformation (an algebraic equation) and he can approximate that equation and slope of the line. This means he can calculate how many votes were flipped and he does, and it’s massive.

This one form of fraud alone is enough to flip the election to Biden. That’s without all the postal vote backdating, the dead people voting, the out of state votes, the discarded ballots, the crooked media coverups, the pollsters fakery and the Pfizer hiding of the Covid Vaccine news. Trump won the election despite all the other trickery. If there had been real media coverage, honest vaccine headlines, exposure of Hunter Biden and honest polling the election probably could have been called by 8pm on Election day.

The action analysis starts at 13:30 minutes.

In disconcerting news, votes are stored as a decimal fraction. They are not even trying to record votes as whole numbers, as individual choices.

The dashed orange line should be a flat line, instead the downward slope “cuts in” and votes are increasingly distorted in precincts where more Republicans vote.  The ratio depends on the percentage of Republican voters in a precinct. The more Republicans there are, the more likely they are to abandon Trump and vote a Biden-then-Republican ticket.

The slope of that line is “too perfect” — it’s almost perfectly linear. The transistor effect kicks in and shows that the same algorithm was used in different counties across all precincts. The pattern is non-random. Even if you wanted to believe that Rep voters were tired of Trump it would not happen in a perfect line that depended on the number of Rep voters around you. (45 mins.)

Update Nov. 13, 2020


Paul Sperry writes at RealClearInvestigations, Pro-Biden Bug Also Suspected in Georgia’s Vote-Counting Software. Excepts in italics with my bolds.

A curious thing happened as Fulton County, Ga., election officials counted mail-in ballots at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena in the days after the election. In the early hours of Nov. 5, a surge of some 20,000 mail-in votes suddenly appeared for Joe Biden, while approximately 1,000 votes for President Trump mysteriously disappeared from his own totals in the critical swing state, where Biden holds a razor-thin lead.

A poll watcher noticed the suspicious shift in votes while monitoring the interim election results on the Georgia secretary of state website.

“I concluded from looking at these results that this was an irregularity, since there was no obvious reason for President Trump’s totals to have decreased while former Vice President Biden’s totals increased dramatically,” Voter GA co-founder Garland Favorito swore in an affidavit he filed this week with the secretary of state’s office.

Favorito suspects a variety of factors, including that votes were “artificially inflated” for Biden while using the same Dominion Voting system used by Antrim County, Mich., which erroneously transferred 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Last year, Georgia contracted with Dominion to automate vote tabulations in all 159 of its counties.

“The software appears to have thrown votes from Trump to Biden here too,” he said in a RealClearInvestigations interview. “Or Biden ballots were manufactured.”

The large disparity of gains between the two candidates “was something I had never witnessed before in my years of election monitoring,” said Favorito, a career IT professional who has been a leading advocate for election integrity in the state over the past two decades. He says he is not a Republican or Trump supporter.

On Nov. 10, Favorito sent his affidavit to Georgia Secretary of State recommending a full, by-hand ballot recount. The next day, his office announced it will conduct such an audit for the presidential race. Biden currently leads Trump by more than 14,000 votes in the state.

In addition to helping certify the presidential race, he said it’s imperative investigators identify the source of the irregularities before the state holds its two U.S. Senate run-off elections on Jan. 5 so they don’t repeat themselves.

But Favorito, who lives in the Atlanta area, said the Fulton County shift was so dramatic it seemed as if someone had “dumped” a huge batch of mail-in ballots for Biden into the system overnight.  “One candidate could not go up by 20,000 and the other do nothing — in Fulton County or any county in Georgia,” he asserted. “That’s just not going to happen.”

Added Favorito: “I think they’re going to find the root cause of the irregularity was something electronic, and I think it’s going to change the results substantially.”

“They knew good and well they should never have bought this system in the first place,” he said. “We explained that Dominion was rejected in Texas for failing to meet basic security standards before they bought it.”

Favorito suspects similar surges in Biden ballots may have taken place during the counting of mail-in ballots on other nights, including Election Night. On Nov. 3, Fulton County elections officials informed observers that they were shutting down the tabulation center before midnight, only to continue counting throughout the night while no one was watching.

“Fulton County elections officials falsely announced that the counting of ballots would stop at 10:30 p.m.,” Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer complained in a recent Tweet. “Officials unlawfully resumed the counting of ballots after our observers left the center.”

Favorito fears that what he observed on Nov. 5 was not an isolated incident. “There could have been multiple 20,000-batch irregularities,” he said, “but they never got reported because they cleared out the observers.”

He does not rule out “ballot harvesting” as the culprit behind the sudden surges of mail-in votes for Biden.

He said the hundreds of drop boxes Raffensperger agreed to distribute at shopping centers and other cities throughout the state may have encouraged third parties to collect ballots in the name of other voters and stuff them into the boxes, which is illegal.

“That’s just begging for fraud,” Favorito said.

Kimberley A. Strassel writes at Wall Street Journal Harvesting the 2020 Election  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Pelosi’s top priority was remaking the electoral system. The virus gave her a boost.

Democrats grandly named their bill the For The People Act, but conservatives had better titles. This page called it the “Majority Preservation Act,” while the editors at National Review described it as an “Unconstitutional, Authoritarian Power Grab.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decried the bill as a “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party,” and dubbed it the “Democrat Politician Protection Act.”

Mrs. Pelosi’s bill didn’t become law, despite her attempts this year to jam some of its provisions into coronavirus bills. But it turns out she didn’t really need it. Using the virus as an excuse, Democratic and liberal groups brought scores of lawsuits to force states to adopt its provisions. Many Democratic politicians and courts happily agreed. States mailed out ballots to everyone. Judges disregarded statutory deadlines for receipt of votes. They scrapped absentee-ballot witness requirements. States set up curbside voting and drop-off boxes. They signed off on ballot harvesting.

Meaning, “the fix” (as it were) was in well before anyone started counting votes. Pollsters aside, political operatives understood this election would be close—potentially closer in key states than it was in 2016. The Democratic strategy from the start, as evidenced by that legal onslaught, was to get rules in place that would allow them to flood the zone with additional mail-in ballots.

And of course there was harvesting—as these pages warned. This isn’t a new practice; candidates and campaigns have been honing it for years. Three years ago, the Palm Beach Post ran an expose on the practice in Florida. A North Carolina congressional race in 2018 was roiled by a ballot-harvesting operation, and a new election was ordered. This year simply offered the perfect environment to roll it out at new levels, and throughout the fall conservative groups were documenting examples.

Yet the beauty of ballot harvesting is that it is nearly impossible to prove fraud.

How many harvesters offered to deliver votes, only to throw away inconvenient ones? How many voters were pushed or cajoled, or even paid—or had a ballot filled and returned for them without their knowledge? And this is before questions of what other mischief went on amid millions of mailed ballots (which went to wrong addresses or deceased people) and reduced voter verification rules. As the Heritage Foundation’s election expert Hans von Spakovsky has explained, mail-in voting is the “single worst form of election possible” because “it moves the entire election beyond the oversight of election officials.”

Case in Point:  Erie, Pennsylvania

Bulgarians Winning Covid Fight Using HCQ+, Canadians and Americans Losers

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Bulgaria is protecting health care workers and outpatients the smart way, as reported here Hydroxychloroquine for prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19 in health care workers: Bulgaria.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) exerts antiviral effects through several mechanisms. Our initial experience suggests that HCQ could be used for prophylaxis of COVID-19 infection in health care workers (HCW) and could help to control the virus in the early disease stages. We suggest a prophylactic strategy with HCQ for autumn-winter-spring 2020-2021.

Providing adequate health care is vitally important during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep morbidity and mortality low. Health care workers (HCW) are key guarantees for this process, and they must feel safe and adequately protected, which includes reliable prophylactic measures (1).

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) could exert antiviral effects, essential for prophylaxis and early treatment of COVID-19, through several mechanisms: 1) endosomal pH increase, which inhibits SARS-CoV-2 entry through the host cells’ membranes; 2) inhibition of ACE2 cell receptor glycosylation, which impedes SARS-CoV-2-receptor binding; 3) blocking the transport of SARS-CoV-2 from early endosomes to endolysosomes, which prevents the release of viral genome; 4) immunomodulation; 5) limiting the post-viral cytokine-storm syndrome (2, 3).

We share the experience of the Bulgarian Cardiac Institute (BCI) regarding the use of HCQ for prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19 in HCW.

BCI comprises seven hospitals and eight medical centers, with around 1200 HCW, covering more than two-thirds of Bulgarian territory.

Since March 2020, many of our employees were in close contact with COVID-19 cases. We offered prophylaxis with HCQ 200 mg qd for 14 days to 204 of them. 76.4% of the group (156 HCW) used HCQ and none of them presented with COVID-19 symptoms. Unfortunately, out of the rest 48 HCW that refused HCQ prophylaxis, three developed symptoms and tested positive for COVID-19.

During the last seven months, 38 HCW at BCI tested positive for COVID-19, half of them symptomatic.

We suggested the following treatment regimen as an early home-based therapy for them: azithromycin 500 mg qd; HCQ 200 mg tid and Zn up to 50 mg qd for 14 days. 33 (86.8%) of them undertook this treatment, with symptoms abolishing between 2nd and 4th day, none of them requiring hospitalization and with a negative PCR on 14th day for all.

In conclusion, our experience at BCI suggests that HCQ could possibly provide protection against infection with SARS-CoV-2 (prophylaxis), and could, if used early, help control the COVID-19 infection (treatment).

Based on this experience, we at BCI adopted a new prophylactic strategy for HCW starting from the 2nd half of October 2020. This includes alternative months of HCQ intake (200 mg qd) and months without therapy. We are planning to continue this prophylaxis regimen throughout the autumn, winter, and spring months.

See also Truth and Lies about HCQ Covid Regimen

From previous post:

Article is HCQ is effective for COVID-19 when used early: analysis of 118 studies.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

HCQ is an effective treatment for COVID-19. The probability that an ineffective treatment generated results as positive as the 118 studies to date is estimated to be 1 in 23 million (p = 0.000000043).

•Early treatment is most successful, with 100% of studies reporting a positive effect and an estimated reduction of 63% in the effect measured (death, hospitalization, etc.) using a random effects meta-analysis, RR 0.37 [0.30-0.47].
•100% of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) for early, PrEP, or PEP treatment report positive effects, the probability of this happening for an ineffective treatment is 0.002.
•There is evidence of bias towards publishing negative results. Significantly more retrospective studies report negative results compared to prospective studies, p = 0.04.
•Significantly more studies in North America report negative results compared to the rest of the world, p = 0.002.

Figure 2: Treatment stages.

Figure 2 shows stages of possible treatment for COVID-19. Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) refers to regularly taking medication before being infected, in order to prevent or minimize infection. In Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), medication is taken after exposure but before symptoms appear. Early Treatment refers to treatment immediately or soon after symptoms appear, while Late Treatment refers to more delayed treatment.

Table 1. Results by treatment stage. 2 studies report results for a subset with early treatment, these are not included in the overall results.

Publication bias. Publishing is often biased towards positive results, which we would need to adjust for when analyzing the percentage of positive results. Studies that require less effort are considered to be more susceptible to publication bias. Prospective trials that involve significant effort are likely to be published regardless of the result, while retrospective studies are more likely to exhibit bias. For example, researchers may perform preliminary analysis with minimal effort and the results may influence their decision to continue. Retrospective studies also provide more opportunities for the specifics of data extraction and adjustments to influence results.

For HCQ, 87.5% of prospective studies report positive effects, compared to 69.8% of retrospective studies, two-tailed z test 2.07, p = 0.04, indicating a bias toward publishing negative results.

The lack of bias towards positive results is not very surprising. Both negative and positive results are very important given the current use of HCQ for COVID-19 around the world, evidence of which can be found in the studies analyzed here, government protocols, and news reports, for example [AFP, AfricaFeeds, Africanews, Afrik.com, Al Arabia, Al-bab, Anadolu Agency, Anadolu Agency (B), Archyde, Barron’s, Barron’s (B), BBC, Belayneh, A., CBS News, Challenge, Dr. Goldin, Efecto Cocuyo, Expats.cz, Face 2 Face Africa, France 24, France 24 (B), Franceinfo, Global Times, Government of China, Government of India, GulfInsider, Le Nouvel Afrik, LifeSiteNews, Medical World Nigeria, Medical Xpress, Medical Xpress (B), Middle East Eye, Ministerstva Zdravotnictví, Morocco World News, Mosaique Guinee, Nigeria News World, NPR News, Oneindia, Pan African Medical Journal, Parola, Pilot News, Pleno.News, Q Costa Rica, Rathi, Russian Government, Teller Report, The Africa Report, The Australian, The BL, The East African, The Guardian, The Indian Express, The Moscow Times, The North Africa Post, The Tico Times, Ukraine Ministry of Health Care, Ukrinform, Vanguard, Voice of America].

We also note a bias towards publishing negative results by certain journals and press organizations, with scientists reporting difficulty publishing positive results [Boulware, Meneguesso]. Although 88 studies show positive results, The New York Times, for example, has only written articles for studies that claim HCQ is not effective [The New York Times, The New York Times (B), The New York Times (C)]. As of September 10, 2020, The New York Times still claims that there is clear evidence that HCQ is not effective for COVID-19 [The New York Times (D)]. As of October 9, 2020, the United States National Institutes of Health still recommends against HCQ for both hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients [United States National Institutes of Health].

Treatment details. We focus here on the question of whether HCQ is effective or not for COVID-19. Significant differences exist based on treatment stage, with early treatment showing the greatest effectiveness. 100% of early treatment studies report a positive effect, with an estimated reduction of 63% in the effect measured (death, hospitalization, etc.) in the random effects meta-analysis, RR 0.37 [0.30-0.47]. Many factors are likely to influence the degree of effectiveness, including the dosing regimen, concomitant medications such as zinc or azithromycin, precise treatment delay, the initial viral load of patients, and current patient conditions.

News website Panorama.it has launched a petition to get the drug hydroxychloroquine officially reinstated so that Italian doctors can once again use it with patients. If not, some of them will go ahead and use it anyway. The retracted Lancet study and trials using lethal doses(!) of HCQ were enough to get it officially banned in Italy as in other countries. Except the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) has not yet reapproved it, despite studies showing its effectiveness. Here are excerpts of the Change.org petition translated from Italian:

At the moment there are no treatments of proven effectiveness to be administered at home. Because the only therapy that AIFA (Italy’s Medicines Agency) had authorized at home, the one based on hydroxychloroquine, has been blocked. It happened on May 26, after the publication of a study in The Lancet, which was withdrawn 13 days later.

Meanwhile, German GPs, who had administered 1,060,000 doses of hydroxychloroquine in March, continued to prescribe it. In the United States, three states lifted the ban on the drug in early August. In China, on August 19, the National Health Commission’s guidelines continued to recommend the active ingredient for Covid 19 patients. And on September 21, The Lancet itself retraced its steps, with a study claiming that hydroxychloroquine reduces mortality.

In order to save lives, we ask AIFA to restore the use of hydroxychloroquine for home patients in the very early stages of the disease, possibly even with an emergency procedure. Otherwise, we invite the Agency to provide shared protocols of treatment practicable in the territory.

Bankers Should Mind Their Own Business, not the Climate

Posted on by Ron Clutz

John H. Cochrane writes at the Hoover Institution Central Banks and Climate: A Case of Mission Creep.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The following is adapted from John H. Cochrane’s remarks at the European Central Bank’s Conference on Monetary Policy: Bridging Science and Practice. His full presentation about the challenges facing central banks is here.

Central banks are rushing headlong into climate policy. This is a mistake. It will destroy central banks’ independence, their ability to fulfill their main missions to control inflation and stem financial crises, and people’s faith in their impartiality and technical competence. And it won’t help the climate.

In making this argument, I do not claim that climate change is fake or unimportant. None of the following comments reflect any argument with scientific fact. (I favor a uniform carbon tax in return for essentially no regulation, but this essay is not about carbon policy.)

The question is whether the European Central Bank (ECB), other central banks, or international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development should appoint themselves to take on climate policy—or other important social, environmental, or political causes—without a clear mandate to do so from politically accountable leaders.

The Western world faces a crisis of trust in our institutions, a crisis fed by a not-inaccurate perception that the elites who run such institutions don’t know what they are doing, are politicized, and are going beyond the authority granted by accountable representatives.

Trust and independence must be earned by evident competence and institutional restraint. Yet central banks, not obviously competent to target inflation with interest rates; floundering to stop financial crisis by means other than wanton bailouts; and still not addressing obvious risks lying ahead; now want to be trusted to determine and implement their own climate change policy? (And next, likely, taking on inequality and social justice?)

We don’t want the agency that delivers drinking water to make a list of socially and environmentally favored businesses and start turning off the water to disfavored companies. Nor should central banks. They should provide liquidity, period.

But a popular movement wants all institutions of society to jump into the social and political goals of the moment, regardless of boring legalities. Those constraints, of course, are essential for a functioning democratic society, for functioning independent technocratic institutions, and incidentally for making durable progress on those same important social and political goals.

It’s Not About Risk

The European Central Bank and other institutions are not just embarking on climate policy in general. They are embarking on the enforcement of one particular set of climate policies—policies to force banks and private companies to defund fossil fuel industries, even while alternatives are not available at scale, and to provide subsidized funding to an ill-defined set of “green” projects.

Let me quote from ECB executive board member Isabel Schnabel’s recent speech. I don’t mean to pick on her, but she expresses the climate agenda very well, and her speech bears the ECB imprimatur. She recommends that

“[f]irst, as prudential supervisor, we have an obligation to protect the safety and soundness of the banking sector. This includes making sure that banks properly assess the risks from carbon-intensive exposures. . .”

Let me point out the unclothed emperor: climate change does not pose any financial risk at the one-, five-, or even ten-year horizon at which one can conceivably assess the risk to bank assets. Repeating the contrary in speeches does not make it so.

Risk means variance, unforeseen events. We know exactly where the climate is going in the next five to ten years. Hurricanes and floods, though influenced by climate change, are well modeled for the next five to ten years. Advanced economies and financial systems are remarkably impervious to weather. Relative market demand for fossil vs. alternative energy is as easy or hard to forecast as anything else in the economy. Exxon bonds are factually safer, financially, than Tesla bonds, and easier to value.

The main risk to fossil fuel companies is that regulators will destroy them, as the ECB proposes to do, a risk regulators themselves control. And political risk is a standard part of bond valuation.

That banks are risky because of exposure to carbon-emitting companies; that carbon-emitting company debt is financially risky because of unexpected changes in climate, in ways that conventional risk measures do not capture; that banks need to be regulated away from that exposure because of risk to the financial system—all this is nonsense. (And even if it were not nonsense, regulating bank liabilities away from short term debt and towards more equity would be a more effective solution to the financial problem.)

Next, we contemplate a pervasive regime essentially of shame, boycott, divest, and sanction

“[to] link the eligibility of securities . . . as collateral in our refinancing operations to the disclosure regime of the issuing firms.”

We know where “disclosure” leads. Now all companies that issue debt will be pressured to cut off disparaged investments and make whatever “green” investments the ECB is blessing.

Last, the ECB is urged to print money directly to fund green projects:

“We should also consider reassessing the benchmark allocation of our private asset purchase programs. In the presence of market failures . . . the market by itself is not achieving efficient outcomes.”

Now you may say, “Climate is a crisis. Central banks must pitch in and help the cause. They should just tell banks to stop lending to the evil fossil fuel companies, and print money and hand it out to worthy green projects.”

But central banks are not allowed to do this, and for very good reasons.

A central bank in a democracy is not an all-purpose do-good agency, with authority to subsidize what it decides to be worthy, defund what it dislikes, and force banks and companies to do the same. A central bank, whose leaders do not regularly face voters, lives by an iron contract: freedom and independence so long as it stays within its limited and mandated powers.

The ECB in particular lives by a particularly delineated and limited mandate. For very good reasons, the ECB was not set up to decide which industries or regions need subsidizing and which should be scaled back, to direct bank investment across Europe, to set the price of bonds, or to print money to subsidize direct lending. These are intensely political acts. In a democracy, only elected representatives can take or commission such intensely political activities. If I take out the words “green,” the EU member states, and EU voters, would properly react with shock and outrage at this proposal. If the ECB bought different countries’ bonds at different prices and in different quantities to reward those making greater progress on “green” policy implementation, there would likely be an outcry.

That’s why this movement goes through the convolutions of pretending that defunding fossil fuels and subsidizing green projects—however desirable—has something to do with systemic risk, which it patently does not.

That’s why one must pretend to diagnose “market failures” to justify buying bonds at too high prices. By what objective measure are green bonds “mispriced” and markets “failing”? Why only green bonds? The ECB does not scan all asset markets for “mispriced” securities to buy and sell after determining the “right” prices.

Who Gets the Green Light?

At face value, “carbon emitting” does not mean just fossil fuel companies but cement manufacturers, aluminum producers, construction, agriculture, transport, and everything else. Will the carbon risk and defunding project really extend that far, in any sort of honest quantitative way? Or is “carbon emitting” just code for hounding the politically unpopular fossil fuel companies?

In the disclosure and bond buying project, who will decide what is a green project? Already, cost-benefit analysis—euros spent per ton of carbon, per degrees of temperature reduced, per euros of GDP increased—is lacking. By what process will the ECB avoid past follies such as switchgrass biofuel, corn ethanol, and high-speed trains to nowhere? How will it allow politically unpopular projects such as nuclear power, carbon capture, natural gas via fracking, residential zoning reform, and geoengineering ventures—which all, undeniably, scientifically, lower carbon and global temperatures—as well as adaptation projects that undeniably, scientifically, lower the impact on GDP? Well, clearly it won’t.

The ECB is embarking on one specific kind of green policy, popular at the cocktail parties at Davos, but having little to do with cost-benefit analysis or science of climate policy.

In sum, where is the analysis for this program? I challenge the ECB to calculate how many degrees this bond buying plan would lower global temperatures, and how much it would raise GDP by the year 2100, in any transparent, verifiable, and credible way. Never mind the costs for now: where are the benefits?

And how would the ECB resist political pressure to subsidize all sorts of boondoggles? If the central bank does not have and disclose neutral technical competence at making this sort of calculation, the project will be perceived as simply made-up numbers to advance a political cause. All of the central bank’s activities will then be tainted by association.

This will end badly. Not because these policies are wrong, but because they are intensely political, and they make a mockery of the central bank’s limited mandates.

If this continues, the next ECB presidential appointment will be all about climate policy: who gets the subsidized green lending, who is defunded, what the next set of causes is to be, and not interest rates and financial stability. Board appointments will become champions for each country’s desired subsidies. Countries and industries that lose out will object. This is exactly the sort of institutional aggrandizement that prompted Brexit.

If the ECB crosses this second Rubicon—buying sovereign and corporate debt was the first—be ready for more. The IMF is already pushing redistribution. The US Federal Reserve, though it has so far stayed away from climate policy, is rushing into “inclusive” employment and racial justice. There are many problems in the world. Once you start trying to shape climate policy, and so obviously break all the rules to do it, how can you resist the clamor to defund, disclose, and subsidize the rest? How will you resist demands to take up regional development, prop up dying industries, subsidize politicians’ pet projects, and all the other sins that the ECB is explicitly enjoined from committing?

A central bank that so blatantly breaks its mandates must lose its independence, its authority, and people’s trust in its objectivity and technical competence to fight inflation and deflation, regulate banks, and stop financial crises.

A Narrow Role, and Essential

Working for a central bank is a bit boring. One may feel a longing to do something that feels more important, that helps the world in its big causes. One may feel longing for the approval of the Davos smart set. Why does Greta Thunberg get all the attention? But a central bank is not the Gates Foundation, which can spend its money any way it likes. This is taxpayers’ money, and regulations use force to transfer wealth between very unwilling people. A central bank is a government agency, and central bankers are public servants, just like the people who run the DMV.

Central banks must be competent, trusted, narrow, independent, and boring. A good strategy review will refocus central banks on their core narrow mission and let the other institutions of society address big political causes. Boring as that may be.

See also:  Financiers Failed Us: Focused on Fake Crisis

 

 

Election Skimming Program Detected

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Update Nov. 13, 2020 at the End

Dr.SHIVA LIVE: MIT PhD Analysis of Michigan Votes Reveals Unfortunate Truth of U.S. Voting Systems

MIT professor Dr. Shiva and colleagues discovered a pattern in Michigan voter data whereby tens of thousands of Trump votes were taken away and added to Biden totals.  As the video describes the program was designed to skim more votes away from large pools of Trump votes and avoid small pools, in order to be less noticeable.  The proportion of straight ticket Republican voters serves as the indicator of precincts where larger numbers of Trump only votes can be switched to Biden only votes (only refers to a vote not part of a party line ballot.  The linear relationship is quite striking and abnormal.  The more voters in a precinct voted Republican party line, the more Trump only votes in that precinct were taken away.

From Jo Nova website:

A “Transistor Function” algorithm has been used to alter voting patterns in Michigan. It has a “Weighted Race” feature.

Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an MIT engineer and Fulbright Scholar, with Phil Evans B.S.E.E. and Benny Smith (election commissioner and data analyst) have back-analyzed the pattern of voting in Michigan and figured out the electronic algorithm used to alter votes. Voting patterns are distorted in a way that can only be explained by a linear transformation (an algebraic equation) and he can approximate that equation and slope of the line. This means he can calculate how many votes were flipped and he does, and it’s massive.

This one form of fraud alone is enough to flip the election to Biden. That’s without all the postal vote backdating, the dead people voting, the out of state votes, the discarded ballots, the crooked media coverups, the pollsters fakery and the Pfizer hiding of the Covid Vaccine news. Trump won the election despite all the other trickery. If there had been real media coverage, honest vaccine headlines, exposure of Hunter Biden and honest polling the election probably could have been called by 8pm on Election day.

The action analysis starts at 13:30 minutes.

In disconcerting news, votes are stored as a decimal fraction. They are not even trying to record votes as whole numbers, as individual choices.

The dashed orange line should be a flat line, instead the downward slope “cuts in” and votes are increasingly distorted in precincts where more Republicans vote.  The ratio depends on the percentage of Republican voters in a precinct. The more Republicans there are, the more likely they are to abandon Trump and vote a Biden-then-Republican ticket.

The slope of that line is “too perfect” — it’s almost perfectly linear. The transistor effect kicks in and shows that the same algorithm was used in different counties across all precincts. The pattern is non-random. Even if you wanted to believe that Rep voters were tired of Trump it would not happen in a perfect line that depended on the number of Rep voters around you. (45 mins.)

Update Nov. 13, 2020


Paul Sperry writes at RealClearInvestigations, Pro-Biden Bug Also Suspected in Georgia’s Vote-Counting Software. Excepts in italics with my bolds.

A curious thing happened as Fulton County, Ga., election officials counted mail-in ballots at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena in the days after the election. In the early hours of Nov. 5, a surge of some 20,000 mail-in votes suddenly appeared for Joe Biden, while approximately 1,000 votes for President Trump mysteriously disappeared from his own totals in the critical swing state, where Biden holds a razor-thin lead.

A poll watcher noticed the suspicious shift in votes while monitoring the interim election results on the Georgia secretary of state website.

“I concluded from looking at these results that this was an irregularity, since there was no obvious reason for President Trump’s totals to have decreased while former Vice President Biden’s totals increased dramatically,” Voter GA co-founder Garland Favorito swore in an affidavit he filed this week with the secretary of state’s office.

Favorito suspects a variety of factors, including that votes were “artificially inflated” for Biden while using the same Dominion Voting system used by Antrim County, Mich., which erroneously transferred 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Last year, Georgia contracted with Dominion to automate vote tabulations in all 159 of its counties.

“The software appears to have thrown votes from Trump to Biden here too,” he said in a RealClearInvestigations interview. “Or Biden ballots were manufactured.”

The large disparity of gains between the two candidates “was something I had never witnessed before in my years of election monitoring,” said Favorito, a career IT professional who has been a leading advocate for election integrity in the state over the past two decades. He says he is not a Republican or Trump supporter.

On Nov. 10, Favorito sent his affidavit to Georgia Secretary of State recommending a full, by-hand ballot recount. The next day, his office announced it will conduct such an audit for the presidential race. Biden currently leads Trump by more than 14,000 votes in the state.

In addition to helping certify the presidential race, he said it’s imperative investigators identify the source of the irregularities before the state holds its two U.S. Senate run-off elections on Jan. 5 so they don’t repeat themselves.

But Favorito, who lives in the Atlanta area, said the Fulton County shift was so dramatic it seemed as if someone had “dumped” a huge batch of mail-in ballots for Biden into the system overnight.  “One candidate could not go up by 20,000 and the other do nothing — in Fulton County or any county in Georgia,” he asserted. “That’s just not going to happen.”

Added Favorito: “I think they’re going to find the root cause of the irregularity was something electronic, and I think it’s going to change the results substantially.”

“They knew good and well they should never have bought this system in the first place,” he said. “We explained that Dominion was rejected in Texas for failing to meet basic security standards before they bought it.”

Favorito suspects similar surges in Biden ballots may have taken place during the counting of mail-in ballots on other nights, including Election Night. On Nov. 3, Fulton County elections officials informed observers that they were shutting down the tabulation center before midnight, only to continue counting throughout the night while no one was watching.

“Fulton County elections officials falsely announced that the counting of ballots would stop at 10:30 p.m.,” Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer complained in a recent Tweet. “Officials unlawfully resumed the counting of ballots after our observers left the center.”

Favorito fears that what he observed on Nov. 5 was not an isolated incident. “There could have been multiple 20,000-batch irregularities,” he said, “but they never got reported because they cleared out the observers.”

He does not rule out “ballot harvesting” as the culprit behind the sudden surges of mail-in votes for Biden.

He said the hundreds of drop boxes Raffensperger agreed to distribute at shopping centers and other cities throughout the state may have encouraged third parties to collect ballots in the name of other voters and stuff them into the boxes, which is illegal.

“That’s just begging for fraud,” Favorito said.

Kimberley A. Strassel writes at Wall Street Journal Harvesting the 2020 Election  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Pelosi’s top priority was remaking the electoral system. The virus gave her a boost.

Democrats grandly named their bill the For The People Act, but conservatives had better titles. This page called it the “Majority Preservation Act,” while the editors at National Review described it as an “Unconstitutional, Authoritarian Power Grab.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decried the bill as a “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party,” and dubbed it the “Democrat Politician Protection Act.”

Mrs. Pelosi’s bill didn’t become law, despite her attempts this year to jam some of its provisions into coronavirus bills. But it turns out she didn’t really need it. Using the virus as an excuse, Democratic and liberal groups brought scores of lawsuits to force states to adopt its provisions. Many Democratic politicians and courts happily agreed. States mailed out ballots to everyone. Judges disregarded statutory deadlines for receipt of votes. They scrapped absentee-ballot witness requirements. States set up curbside voting and drop-off boxes. They signed off on ballot harvesting.

Meaning, “the fix” (as it were) was in well before anyone started counting votes. Pollsters aside, political operatives understood this election would be close—potentially closer in key states than it was in 2016. The Democratic strategy from the start, as evidenced by that legal onslaught, was to get rules in place that would allow them to flood the zone with additional mail-in ballots.

And of course there was harvesting—as these pages warned. This isn’t a new practice; candidates and campaigns have been honing it for years. Three years ago, the Palm Beach Post ran an expose on the practice in Florida. A North Carolina congressional race in 2018 was roiled by a ballot-harvesting operation, and a new election was ordered. This year simply offered the perfect environment to roll it out at new levels, and throughout the fall conservative groups were documenting examples.

Yet the beauty of ballot harvesting is that it is nearly impossible to prove fraud.

How many harvesters offered to deliver votes, only to throw away inconvenient ones? How many voters were pushed or cajoled, or even paid—or had a ballot filled and returned for them without their knowledge? And this is before questions of what other mischief went on amid millions of mailed ballots (which went to wrong addresses or deceased people) and reduced voter verification rules. As the Heritage Foundation’s election expert Hans von Spakovsky has explained, mail-in voting is the “single worst form of election possible” because “it moves the entire election beyond the oversight of election officials.”

Case in Point:  Erie, Pennsylvania

Ocean Chill Increases Oct. 2020

Posted on by Ron Clutz


The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

  • The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
  • SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
  • A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source, the latest version being HadSST3.  More on what distinguishes HadSST3 from other SST products at the end.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST3 starting in 2015 through October 2020. After three straight Spring months of cooling led by the tropics and SH, NH spiked in the summer.  Now temps everywhere are dropping the last two months, with SH the lowest in this period, and Global anomalies below average since 2015.

A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016.  In 2019 all regions had been converging to reach nearly the same value in April.

Then  NH rose exceptionally by almost 0.5C over the four summer months, in August exceeding previous summer peaks in NH since 2015.  In the 4 succeeding months, that warm NH pulse reversed sharply.  Now again NH temps warmed to a 2020 summer peak, matching 2019.  This has now been reversed with SH and Tropics pulling the Global anomaly downward sharply.

Note that higher temps in 2015 and 2016 were first of all due to a sharp rise in Tropical SST, beginning in March 2015, peaking in January 2016, and steadily declining back below its beginning level. Secondly, the Northern Hemisphere added three bumps on the shoulders of Tropical warming, with peaks in August of each year.  A fourth NH bump was lower and peaked in September 2018.  As noted above, a fifth peak in August 2019 and a sixth August 2020 exceeded the four previous upward bumps in NH.

And as before, note that the global release of heat was not dramatic, due to the Southern Hemisphere offsetting the Northern one.  The major difference between now and 2015-2016 is the absence of Tropical warming driving the SSTs, along with SH anomalies reaching nearly the lowest in this period. Presently both SH and the Tropics are quite cool, with NH coming off its summer peak.

A longer view of SSTs

The graph below  is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations.  Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015.  This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since.  The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies.  Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July.

Double click on image to enlarge.

1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.  The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99.  For the next 2 years, the Tropics stayed down, and the world’s oceans held steady around 0.2C above 1961 to 1990 average.

Then comes a steady rise over two years to a lesser peak Jan. 2003, but again uniformly pulling all oceans up around 0.4C.  Something changes at this point, with more hemispheric divergence than before. Over the 4 years until Jan 2007, the Tropics go through ups and downs, NH a series of ups and SH mostly downs.  As a result the Global average fluctuates around that same 0.4C, which also turns out to be the average for the entire record since 1995.

2007 stands out with a sharp drop in temperatures so that Jan.08 matches the low in Jan. ’99, but starting from a lower high. The oceans all decline as well, until temps build peaking in 2010.

Now again a different pattern appears.  The Tropics cool sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off.  But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average.  In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16.  NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.

The highest summer NH peak came in 2019, only this time the Tropics and SH are offsetting rather adding to the warming. Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. Now September 2020 is dropping off last summer’s unusually high NH SSTs. f(Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.)

What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH.  The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before.  After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

But the peaks coming nearly every summer in HadSST require a different picture.  Let’s look at August, the hottest month in the North Atlantic from the Kaplan dataset.
The AMO Index is from from Kaplan SST v2, the unaltered and not detrended dataset. By definition, the data are monthly average SSTs interpolated to a 5×5 grid over the North Atlantic basically 0 to 70N. The graph shows August warming began after 1992 up to 1998, with a series of matching years since, including 2020.  Because the N. Atlantic has partnered with the Pacific ENSO recently, let’s take a closer look at some AMO years in the last 2 decades.


This graph shows monthly AMO temps for some important years. The Peak years were 1998, 2010 and 2016, with the latter emphasized as the most recent. The other years show lesser warming, with 2007 emphasized as the coolest in the last 20 years. Note the red 2018 line is at the bottom of all these tracks. The black line shows that 2020 began slightly warm, then set records for 3 months. then dropped below 2016 and 2017, peaked in August and is now below 2016.

Summary

The oceans are driving the warming this century.  SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.”  The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect.  The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? If the pattern of recent years continues, NH SST anomalies may rise slightly in coming months, but once again, ENSO which has weakened will probably determine the outcome.

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST3

HadSST3 is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.

HadSST3 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.

In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.

Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

The Odds Against Biden

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Steve Cortes writes at the National Pulse The Statistical Case Against Biden’s Win.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Statistics continue to cast real doubt on the probability of a President Trump loss in the election.

The statistical case is, admittedly, circumstantial rather than conclusive.

But the numbers also firmly point to the intense improbability of the accuracy of the present Biden lead. The statistical case provides more than enough reasonable suspicion to require hand recounts and immediate investigation into fraudulent activities, including the new damning revelations of on-the-record whistleblowers.

There are four key elements to the numerical thesis:

1. TURNOUT

Clearly, high turnout was expected in an intensely political year with vastly expanded access to mail-in voting. But the kinds of numbers reported simply defy reasonable expectations.

For Wisconsin overall, the turnout was above 90% of registered voters. Even in a state with same-day registration, such a number seems implausible.  After all, in Australia, a place where voting is mandatory, and failing to vote is punishable with stiff fines, the total turnout for the most recent election was still only 92%.

Even more importantly, looking within the Wisconsin vote, the decisive locale for Biden was, unsurprisingly, Milwaukee. Wisconsin’s largest city reported an 84% turnout to secure a 145,916 vote lead there for Biden.  Consider a comparison to another very similar Midwestern city, Cleveland, OH. Milwaukee has a population of 590,000, 67% of them minorities. Cleveland has 381,000 people with 60% of them minorities.

But Milwaukee’s 84% turnout dwarfs Cleveland’s more believable 51% turnout rate. Like many of the suspect statistical trends evident from last Tuesday, the abnormal factors favoring Biden seem only present in the key swing states that Biden allegedly won.

2. OUTPERFORMANCE VS. OBAMA

The breakouts higher for Biden relative to Obama’s performances in key areas simply do not seem credible.  Could a candidate as doddering and lazy as Biden really have massively outpaced the vote totals of a politician who boasted rock star appeal?

For example, consider that in key Pennsylvania counties of Chester, Cumberland, and Montgomery, Biden bested the Obama election performances by factors of 1.24-1.43 times. For Montgomery County, Obama won this swing county by 59,000 votes in his 2012 re-election. But in 2020, Biden won Montgomery County by a whopping 131,000 votes, more than twice the prior Obama margin.

Biden’s 2020 total vote in Montgomery is reported at 313,000, crushing Obama’s 233,000 take in 2012 – and population growth does not explain the gains, as the county only grew by 22,000 residents during those eight years.  Such eye-popping outperformance vs.Obama, in just the right places, naturally raises a lot of suspicion.

3. BIDEN-ONLY BALLOTS

Trump campaign legal counsel Sidney Powell reports that, nationwide, over 450,000 Biden-only ballots were cast, meaning the voter allegedly selected Biden but then neglected down-ballot candidates, including closely-contested Senate and House races.  Again, this phenomenon appears far more prominently in battleground states, raising the alarm for manipulation. Why would so many people vote Biden–only in battleground Georgia, but not in deeply-red Wyoming, for instance?

In the Peach State, President Trump’s vote total almost exactly tracked the vote totals for the Republican senate candidates, separated by merely 818 votes out of 2.43 million votes Trump earned there. But, Joe Biden saw an astounding surplus of 95,801 votes over the Democratic Senate candidates.

By comparison, in Wyoming Biden only registered a surplus “Biden-only” take of just 725 votes over the Democratic Senate candidate there, or about 1/4th his take in in Georgia, on a percentage basis. The Biden-only ballots do not conclusively prove fraud, but they sure reek of something very amiss.

4. ABSENCE OF MAIL-IN VOTE VETTING

Democratic governors clamored for massive amounts of mail-in voting, knowing full well that most states would become overwhelmed and wholly unable to establish the validity and legality of almost all the votes that poured in via mail.

In the case of Pennsylvania, Governor Wolf made such changes unilaterally, in stark violation of Pennsylvania law and in contradiction of the clear US Constitutional assignment of voting regulatory authority to state legislatures, not governors. Governor Wolf’s election boards clearly just accepted the ballots… en masse, without appropriate vetting. 

By their own admission, the scant 0.03% of rejected ballots represents a refusal rate that is just 1/30th the level of 2016 in Pennsylvania.  First-time mail-in voters typically see a rejection rate of about 3% historically, or 100 times the rejection rate of Pennsylvania in 2020.

When neighboring New York state moved to widespread mail-in voting this summer, their election officials rejected 21% of mailed ballots in June, representing a rate 700 times higher than Pennsylvania’s. This total lack of filtering or controls raises enormous suspicion regarding a seriously-tainted ballot pool in the Keystone State.

RIGGED?

The statistical case, in isolation, does not prove fraud. But the confluence of highly unlikely results does, emphatically, paint of picture of utter improbability.

Any one of these four factors alone would cast intense doubt upon election results.

Put all four together, and the result is a seemingly impossible statistical perfect storm.

To use a sports analogy, it would be a team pitching a perfect game in the World Series.

Not one game, nor two…but in all four games to “sweep” via pitching perfection.

Is it possible?  Theoretically, sure. Is it probable?

Hell no – and so, we must commence with a vigorous audit as the future of our republic hangs in the balance.

Oct. Ocean Air Temps Steady, Despite NH Storm Spike

Posted on by Ron Clutz

banner-blog
With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  UAH has updated their tlt (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for October 2020.  Previously I have done posts on their reading of ocean air temps as a prelude to updated records from HADSST3. This month also has a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

HadSST3 results were delayed with February and March updates only appearing together end of April.  For comparison we can look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6 which are now posted for October. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI). In 2015 there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the latest and current dataset, Version 6.0.

The graph above shows monthly anomalies for ocean temps since January 2015. After all regions peaked with the El Nino in early 2016, the ocean air temps dropped back down with all regions showing the same low anomaly August 2018.  Then a warming phase ensued peaking with NH and Tropics spikes in February, and a lesser rise May 2020. As was the case in 2015-16, the warming was driven by the Tropics and NH, with SH lagging behind.

Since the peak in February 2020, all ocean regions have trended downward in a sawtooth pattern, returning to a flat anomaly in the three Summer months, close to the 0.4C average for the period.  A small rise occurred in September, mostly due to SH. Now in October NH spiked, coincidental with all the storm activity in north Pacific and Atlantic.  The global anomaly declined slightly due to dropping temps in SH and Tropics.

Land Air Temperatures Showing Volatility

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for October 2020 is below.

 

Here we see the noisy evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures, first by NH land with SH often offsetting.   The overall pattern is similar to the ocean air temps, but obviously driven by NH with its greater amount of land surface. The Tropics synchronized with NH for the 2016 event, but otherwise follow a contrary rhythm.

SH seems to vary wildly, especially in recent months.  Note the extremely high anomaly last November, cold in March 2020, and then again a spike in April. In June 2020, all land regions converged, erasing the earlier spikes in NH and SH, and showing anomalies comparable to the 0.5C average land anomaly this period.  After a relatively quiet Summer, land air temps rose Globally in September with spikes in both NH and SH. Now in October, the SH spike has been reversed, driving down the Global anomaly.

The longer term picture from UAH is a return to the mean for the period starting with 1995.  2019 average rose and caused 2020 to start warmly, but currently lacks any El Nino or NH warm blob to sustain it.

These charts demonstrate that underneath the averages, warming and cooling is diverse and constantly changing, contrary to the notion of a global climate that can be fixed at some favorable temperature.

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, NH in July more than 1C lower than the 2016 peak.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST3, but are now showing the same pattern.  It seems obvious that despite the three El Ninos, their warming has not persisted, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

Pfizer Covid Vaccine Looking Good

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Zachary Stiebera writes at Epoch Times Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Effective, Early Data Indicates.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds

COVID-19 vaccine candidate proved strongly effective in a large phase 3 study, according to results released on Nov. 9.

The results were termed as the first interim efficacy analysis and included 94 patients who had confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

The results were analyzed by an independent data monitoring board. They indicate an efficacy rate above 90 percent at seven days after the second dose, New York-based Pfizer and German biotechnology company BioNTech said. That means protection is achieved 28 days after the first vaccine. The vaccination schedule is two doses.

No serious safety concerns were reported in the interim results.

“Today is a great day for science and humanity. The first set of results from our Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial provides the initial evidence of our vaccine’s ability to prevent COVID-19,” Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer chairman and CEO, said in a statement.

“The first interim analysis of our global Phase 3 study provides evidence that a vaccine may effectively prevent COVID-19. This is a victory for innovation, science and a global collaborative effort,” added professor Ugur Sahin, BioNTech co-founder and CEO.

The phase 3 trial started on July 27 and has enrolled over 43,000 patients to date.

Nearly 39,000 have received the second dose as of Nov. 8.

There are currently no approved vaccines for the CCP virus. Dozens are in development around the world.

Vice President Mike Pence called the development “HUGE News,” adding: “Thanks to the public-private partnership forged by President @realDonaldTrump, @pfizer announced its Coronavirus Vaccine trial is EFFECTIVE, preventing infection in 90% of its volunteers.”

The U.S. government reached a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech in July, agreeing to pay $1.95 billion for the first 100 million doses of BNT162, the vaccine candidate the two companies created.

Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which has been helping fund various vaccine candidates, said the results were highly positive.

“We believe these interim results also increase the probability of success of other COVID-19 candidate vaccines which use a similar approach [pre-fusion spike as their immunogen], including all of the vaccines in the CEPI portfolio,” he said in a statement.

“If the final longer term analysis of the study data confirms this result, and if no safety issues are identified in the trial participants, this vaccine candidate will be able to seek regulatory approval.”

COVID Fearmongering With ‘Cases’ of Perfectly Healthy People

Posted on by Ron Clutz

John Carpay writes at Epoch Times COVID Fearmongering With ‘Cases’ of Perfectly Healthy People. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Across Canada, provincial governments are imposing new lockdown restrictions that violate the Charter freedoms of Canadians to move, travel, assemble, associate and worship.

Like other provinces, Manitoba relies on COVID-19 “cases,” which include perfectly healthy people who show no symptoms of any illness, to justify the violation of Charter freedoms.

Winnipeg is merely one victim, with the government having closed movie theatres, concert halls, sports facilities, restaurant dining rooms, casinos, museums, libraries, and galleries as of Nov. 2. Citizens lack the freedom to gather in groups larger than five.

Contrary to World Health Organization recommendations, they must wear masks while exercising at gyms. Children, who face essentially no risk of harm from the virus, are to be kept in a state of fear through two-metre physical distancing at schools. Contrary to what is obviously good for public health, all group sports are prohibited, and non-emergency surgeries and diagnostic procedures have been suspended.

When it comes to shaping laws and policies, context should matter. In Manitoba over 11,000 people die each year; for the year ending June 30, 2020, it was 11,266 to be precise, according to statista.com. In the context of 11,266 deaths, 75 people have died of COVID-19, which is less than 1 percent of deaths. These 75 deaths are very sad, and so are the other 11,191 deaths from cancer, cancelled surgeries, alcoholism, drug overdoses, suicides, and other causes.

In Manitoba and elsewhere, COVID-19’s impact on life expectancy is negligible, because this virus primarily targets elderly people who are already close to death because they are sick with heart disease, emphysema, diabetes, and other serious illnesses.

How many Manitobans have died, and how many will die, because of lockdown measures?

It’s not something that Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin talks about. He and the politicians blithely assume, without evidence, that lockdowns do more good than harm. The number of lockdown deaths from cancelled surgeries, delayed cancer diagnosis, drug overdoses, and suicides is not yet fully known, but will likely exceed the number of COVID-19 deaths. In the United Kingdom, delays in cancer diagnosis have led to thousands of avoidable deaths and more than 59,000 years of life lost, according to a Lancet study.

The fact that death is a painful, inevitable part of life should not prevent us from taking a hard look at government policies, especially policies that might be taking more lives than the number of lives being saved.

Seven months ago, Canada’s provincial and federal governments joined other jurisdictions in accepting the predictions of Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, who said that COVID-19 would kill millions of people. Some politicians and chief medical officers claimed that COVID-19 poses a serious threat to children, youth, and young adults, thereby ramping up the fear.

This fearmongering caused Canadians to accept significant restrictions on their Charter freedoms to move, travel, assemble, associate and worship, all for the worthy goal of “saving lives.” Lockdown harms, such as increases in drug overdoses and suicides, have been ignored or accepted, as if dying of COVID-19 is somehow worse than dying of another cause.

Media continue to hype “cases” and warn of a “second wave.” Curiously, media rarely mention the fact that COVID-19 deaths peaked in April and May, then declined drastically in June, with further declines in July and August. Government data tells us that the number of deaths in September and October is nowhere near the numbers we saw in April and May. In every province, the government’s own data shows that there is no second wave of COVID-19 deaths.

Our Charter freedoms are violated on the basis of “cases” of COVID-19. Prior to lockdowns, the word “cases” referred to people who are actually sick. But today’s “cases” include completely healthy people who simply had a positive PCR (nucleic acid-based) test, the reliability of which is in dispute, with the number of false positives as high as 90 percent.

According to a National Post article, the “reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test, or RT-PCR — is so sensitive it can pick up debris from an old infection.” The PCR test detects genetic material as well as live virus, meaning it can be positive after the person has cleared the live organism. The article goes on to claim that “provinces are encouraging mass testing using a hyper-sensitive test that’s churning out daily case numbers, the implication being that a case always equals an active infection equals a person capable of spreading to others.” But Dr. Vanessa Allen, chief of medical microbiology at Public Health Ontario, states that “PCR picks up dead organism that is not infectious.”

As Harvard University’s Dr. Michael J. Mina explains it in the New England Journal of Medicine: “Most infected people are being identified after the infectious period has passed,” such that “thousands of people are being sent into 10-day quarantines after positive RNA tests despite having already passed the transmissible stage of infection.”

According to Dr. Jared Bullard, associate medical director of Cadham Provincial Laboratory in Winnipeg, any virus that is being picked up beyond 25 cycles is probably leftover genetic material from dead virus.

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has confirmed that any PCR test result above a cycle threshold of 35 is too high, and only picks up dead nucleotides.

Unsurprisingly, the number of “cases” rises with the number of tests that governments conduct. For example, September saw 28,763 “cases” in Canada, as a result of testing almost two million Canadians. But what really matters is not the “cases” of perfectly healthy people, but rather the fact that 300,000 Canadians die each year, an average of 25,000 per month. In September, 171 Canadians died of COVID-19, while 24,829 Canadians died of other causes.

The 10,000 COVID-19 deaths in Canada in 2020 are not much different from the 8,500 annual flu deaths in Canada in 2018.

We need to reach immunity.  Don’t Fence Us In!

Politicians claim that the lockdowns saved many lives, but they have yet to put forward actual evidence that might support their speculation and conjecture.

With government data on COVID-19 deaths at their fingertips, why do politicians and chief medical officers impose further restrictions on our Charter freedoms? Are they listening to media fearmongering about “cases” while ignoring their own data showing that there is no “second wave” of COVID-19 deaths? Do they realize that their promotion and instigation of unfounded fear serve to generate continued acceptance of Charter violations? Or is it that they have become addicted to control?

See also Clueless Covid Policies

Election Up for Grabs

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Johnathon Turley explains the election process at The Hill America should welcome review for close counts. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.

We are finishing only the second of four stages in an election for president. After the voting stage, states began the tabulation stage. We will soon enter the canvass stage, in which local districts confirm their counts and face challenges or recounts. Finally, there is the certification stage, in which final challenges can be raised. In other words, Trump is not deceased yet. Biden has reason to claim his lead as the odds are heavily against Trump. One or two states could flip on a “Hail Mary” challenge. But Trump needs four of those to win in a feat that would hyperventilate Aaron Rogers.

[My Comment: Most of the mass media and all of social media actively campaigned for the Biden-Harris ticket so their declarations of victory are the same as those from the candidates themselves.  With so many states heading for recounts and scrutiny of irregularities, the outcome is not yet determined.  After four years of fake news burying and hiding real news, we now have the challenge to sort between fake votes and real votes.

Nor is Trump “unclassy” for not conceding at this point. Democrats and all Americans were surprised the newspapers of record got it wrong in 1948 when Truman prevailed after all four stages of the election.  Nor did Al Gore give up in 2000.  It took 36 days and went all the way to the Supreme Court.  He lost when a crooked election supervisor in Palm Beach county of Florida was found guilty of favoring the Democrat by voiding Bush votes.  As well thousands of military ballots, which favored Bush by a roughly 2-1 margin, were arbitrarily excluded.]

I think he’s referring to “DQ”, meaning DisQualified.

Yet the public should welcome close scrutiny of these swing states. There are valid reasons to examine the figures based on the many unknowns in a new kind of election. The outcome will be determined by millions of mailed ballots in various states, some of which have never used such mailed ballots to this magnitude, and legitimate concerns were raised before the election.

States used rolls that are notoriously out of date and inaccurate. Some changed rules governing signature authentication or are accused of reducing the discrimination levels for machine authentication. In Nevada, the Trump campaign alleged that thousands of votes were cast from out of state and ballots were sent to dead voters. We cannot judge the merits of these claims until we see the evidence. It is difficult to see any problems without greater access to the ballots and the records of tabulation.

Just as some of us remain skeptical of such claims of fraud, it seems as implausible that this untested form of voting was used across the country without major glitches. Officials in cities like Detroit and Philadelphia with histories of election violations said the counts of mailed ballots were almost flawless, a claim difficult to rebut without review.

We need a review of counts in critical states to resolve a crisis of faith. A recent survey found that almost half of Americans lack confidence their ballots will be counted fairly. A Harvard study also found that only half of young black voters believe their ballots are even counted.

This lack of faith in the electoral process has been fueled by the shift to mailed ballots but builds on growing distrust of our political system.