PP NewsBrief: 2021-01-29

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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Who is Alexei Navalny? Behind the myth of the West’s favorite Russian opposition figure

"Compressed into a two-minute soundbite, the story of Alexei Navalny and the recent protests that have erupted across Russia seems simple enough. The Russian opposition figure who recently survived an attempt on his life — an alleged poisoning delivered via Novichok-laced pants — was arrested and convicted of breaching his bail conditions in a process that can be fairly described as unjust. In response, his supporters took to the streets across the country in protest.

Ask a Russian, like Katya Kazbek, and they will tell you something different: things are way more complicated than they seem. Katya is a writer, translator and the editor-in-chief of arts and culture magazine Supamodu.com who today lives in New York by way of Moscow and Krasnodar Krai in the North Caucuses. In an effort to give some nuance to Navalny and what has been happening overseas, they recently put together a widely shared Twitter thread that served as a highlight reel of Navalny’s political career — and the picture it painted was not pretty. Having read this, I contacted them to ask more about a man whose treatment has been unjust, but who — it turns out — is no hero."

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6 Warning Signs from Biden’s First Week in Office

1. Vaccination Passports
2. Cabinet Appointments
3. Iraq
4. Afghanistan
5. Syria
6. Domestic Terrorism

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Buying and securing Bitcoin for dummies

As long as people understand that they're basically gambling I don't see a problem with getting involved in this. But the idea that you're going to hedge against some societal collapse by hording a societal construct that derives the entirety (or nearly so) of its value from its ability to be converted into fiat? That seems to be incredibly naive and dangerously foolish to me. But hey: Convince me I'm wrong. I'm open to it.

"Want to buy bitcoin but don’t know how to acquire some of this fancy internet money you’ve been hearing about? Concerned that the dollar is going to hell in a handbasket and you want to diversity into a more sound form of money?  You’ve come to the right place!

This is designed to be as simple as possible – a non-technical set of instructions for how to buy bitcoin, and just as importantly, explain how to secure your bitcoin properly. There’s a lot of technical mumbo jumbo to back the importance of securing your bitcoin, but just remember: If you don’t have possession over your bitcoin, it’s not really your bitcoin. Custodial solutions for bitcoin are a very bad idea, and it subjects you to potential costs and middlemen, among other unnecessary issues. Anyway, let’s get started."

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Just in time for Joe? US Covid-19 cases drop a record 35 percent over last three weeks

"Covid-19 cases in the US have declined 35 percent over three weeks, a record drop that conveniently coincides with the ascension of President Joe Biden – and a handful of other explanations media reports have ignored.

The New York Times posted the encouraging statistics on Thursday, crediting “the very early stages of herd immunity” and a possible increase in mask-wearing and social distancing. The paper did not provide evidence for any of the claims, calling them “possible explanations.”

“The United States has never experienced a sharp and sustained decline in new coronavirus cases – until, perhaps, now,” the paper declared in a timid deviation from its usual doomsaying."

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"You're A Bunch Of Cowards" VA Parent Unloads On School Board For Not Reopening In Viral Video

"“You should all be fired form your day jobs,” he says to the school board.

“You’re a bunch of cowards hiding behind our children as an excuse for keeping schools closed.”

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Trump’s going nowhere: Former president meets with Rep. McCarthy, vows to help Republican Party win upcoming House races

More absolute failures of leadership by Trump. He sure is racking up those blatant examples of betrayal of the average people lately.

"Even with an upcoming Senate impeachment trial and numerous Republican lawmakers more boldly criticizing him, Donald Trump is reportedly offering his help in getting Republicans control of the House.

Trump met with House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Thursday to discuss the Republican Party’s chances at taking control of the House in next year’s midterm elections.

A readout about the meeting from Trump’s ‘Save America’ Political Action Committee described the meeting as “good and cordial” and also promised Trump will have a major role in the Republican Party’s immediate future.

“President Trump has agreed to work with Leader McCarthy on helping the Republican Party to become a majority in the House,” the Super PAC announced. “They worked very well together in the last election and picked up at least 15 seats when most predicted it would be the opposite. They will do so again, and the work has already started.”"

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N.Y. AG: Cuomo Administration Undercounted COVID Nursing Home Deaths By ‘as Much as 50 Percent’

"Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration drastically undercounted COVID-19 nursing home deaths, a damning report from New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges.

According to the New York State Attorney General’s Office, the N.Y. State Department of Health’s published nursing home data “may have been undercounted by as much as 50 percent.”

The Associated Press reported last May that the Cuomo administration mandated that more than 4,300 recovering COVID patients be sent back into nursing homes, despite the likelihood that some of those patients were still contagious and could spread the virus throughout the facilities.

With over 43,000 fatalities, New York leads all of the other states in the number of deaths by the coronavirus, while it is number four on the list of total COVID-19 cases in the United States.

The N.Y. Attorney General’s Office has been investigating nursing homes throughout the state since last March, in response to “allegations of patient neglect and other concerning conduct.” There are more than 1,000 private nursing homes in the state."

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How to Deprogram Us

"A new buzzword on social media, cable news, and among leftist activists is “deprogramming.”

Along with terms like “reprogramming,” “de-Baathification,” and “deplatforming,” deprogramming refers to cleansing the incorrect mentalities of former Trump Administration officials—and even those who voted for Trump.

Note that deprogramming does not refer to elites who peddled the “Russian collusion” hoax for years, despite the abject absence of evidence.

Not long ago, two Washington Post columnists offered some solutions to the Trumpist threat. One, Max Boot, wished to ban Fox News and other conservative stations from cable subscriptions.

The other, Eugene Robinson, suggested that there was a need to focus on mostly “white” Republicans to “deprogram” their thoughts."

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Moving The Needle On Election Reform

"Bottom line, local and state laws were changed unconstitutionally in key swing states that contributed materially to the results of the 2020 election. Kline says that the only way to effectively ensure the integrity of future elections is through legal discovery and court decisions. He says that specific, long-term legal efforts must be pursued to effectively hold local officials and legislatures accountable. The Amistad project plans to do a comprehensive deep dive “across the nation” into the state legislatures. The project will take cases to trial that address the unconstitutional changes that states made during the November election. The goal will be to ensure that existing state laws cannot again be circumvented. All citizens must be assured that their votes are counted and counted properly.

A cause as important as election integrity demands uncommon commitment. The hard work from people like those associated with the Amistad Project, True the Vote, Legiscan, Scott Presler’s incredible action items, and the newly formed apolitical PAC associated with Sidney Powell seem to be the only way to move the needle on real election reform. Thomas Edison once said, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Maybe everyday Americans will become motivated by this crucible moment to do the work of holding their local officials accountable for the very laws that will give them the voice they deserve."

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‘Enemy within’: Pelosi calls for additional House security, claims members of Congress THREATENED by colleagues

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has demanded additional security for lawmakers, citing threats from “within” the House, while the temporary fence around the Capitol is on the way to becoming permanent.

"We will probably need a supplemental [budget] for more security for members when the enemy is within the House of Representatives, a threat that members are concerned about in addition to what is happening outside," Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday.

Asked to specify her “enemy within” comment, Pelosi cited “members of Congress bringing guns on the floor.”

"It means we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress," she said, not clarifying what those specific threats of violence have been."

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Suck It, Wall Street

"The only thing “dangerous” about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter. That bit about investigating this as a “pump and dump scheme” to push prices away from their “fundamental value” is particularly hilarious. What does the Washington Post think the entire stock market is, in the bailout age?

America’s banks just had maybe their best year ever, raking in $125 billion in underwriting fees at a time when the rest of the country is dealing with record unemployment, thanks entirely to massive Federal Reserve intervention that turned a crash into a boom. Who thinks the “fundamental value” of most stocks would be this high, absent the Fed’s Atlas-like support in the last year?

For context, Goldman, Sachs posted revenues of $44.56 billion in 2020, its best year since 2009, a.k.a. the last year Wall Street cashed in on a bailout. Back then, the shortcut back to giganto-bonuses was underwriting fees for financial companies raising money to purge themselves of TARP debt. This time it’s underwriting fees for bond issues and IPOs. The subtext of both bailouts was that anyone who owned or underwrote financial assets got richer, while everyone else got the proverbial high hat. It’s no accident that income inequality dramatically accelerated after the last bailouts, and that the only people to see net gains in wealth since 2008 have been the richest 20% of Americans, a pattern almost certain to continue.

The constant in the bailout years has been a battery of artificial stimulants sent through the financial sector, from the TARP to years of zero-interest-rate policies (ZIRP) to outright interventions like the multiple trillion-dollar rounds of Quantitative Easing. All that froth allowed finance companies to suck out hundreds of billions in fees, encouraged lunatic risk-taking in every direction and rampages of private equity takeovers, and kept a vast stable of functionally dead companies alive on cheap credit."

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Quinn: The Fourth Turning Detonation, Part 2

"There is not just one Grey Champion during a Fourth Turning, and their participation is generally as a lightening rod for change or the inspiration for younger generations to mobilize and fight the battles which ultimately decide the fate of nations and empires.  Samuel Adams and Ben Franklin were Grey Champions during the American Revolution Fourth Turning. Their fiery rhetoric and ability to guide the younger firebrands were their contributions to the cause.

Both Abe Lincoln and Jeff Davis were Grey Champions during the Civil War. One was assassinated before the conclusion of the war and the other was on the losing side, spending a couple years in a Federal prison after the war. FDR, Churchill, and Stalin were all Grey Champions during the World War II Fourth Turning. FDR died before the conclusion of the war and Congress implemented a two-term limit because he had become too powerful. Churchill was on the winning side, but the British empire disintegrated during his reign. Stalin, who had already murdered millions of his own people, presided over a despotic regime and immediately became the enemy of his former allies.

Anyone with a true grasp of history would acknowledge all these men had significant personality faults, huge egos, a determination to win by any means necessary (including breaking the law and flaunting the Constitution), and ability to mobilize forces to accomplish their goals. As we are in the thirteenth year of this Fourth Turning and Grey Champions always arise in the earlier stages, there is no doubt Trump was and still is one of the Grey Champions driving this ongoing Crisis towards its bloody climax."

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‘No idea how skilled labor works’? John Kerry savaged for telling unemployed fossil fuel workers to go MAKE SOLAR PANELS

"Kerry described Biden’s climate crackdown as “what needs to be done” to “deal with this crisis” of climate change.

“What President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices,” he said of the soon-to-be out-of-work oilmen and gas workers. “They can be the people to go to work to make the solar panels.”

“That is going to be a particular focus of the Build Back Better agenda.”"

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Attack of the Neckbeards: GameStop and the Hidden Culture Revolution

"Masked—no pun intended—by all of the political angst on the Right, there is a blooming and powerful cultural revolution underway. It is manifested in several areas, bringing to mind Andrew Breitbart’s famous warning that “politics is downstream of culture.” If I am correctly interpreting these signals; it means that while both the Right and Left are battling over a meaningless after-the-fact impeachment trial and whether installed President Joe Biden can sign enough executive orders fast enough, the ground slowly may be shifting beneath our feet. This is seen in a few stories…"

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Doomsday Clock poised at 100 seconds to midnight, scientists cite nuclear arms race & ‘online lying’ as threats

"The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” – a construct representing the threats to humanity from the nuclear to the natural – remains in the red at 100 seconds to midnight for 2021, its proprietors have warned.

The scientists released their annual forecast on Wednesday, highlighting a resurgent nuclear arms race, climate change, and online misinformation about the Covid-19 epidemic as three existential threats humanity must face down if the species is to survive.

While the clock’s hands haven’t moved since 2020, when it ticked into its current position, the scientists behind it have cautioned urgently against allowing the current state of affairs to settle in as a “new abnormal.”"

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Putin Warns of Conflict That Would Mean “End of Our Civilization”

"Elsewhere in his talk, Putin addressed Internet censorship, asserting that social media networks were now competing with elected governments over monopoly of power.

“We are now talking about economic giants, aren’t we? In certain areas, they are competing with states and their audience can include millions and millions of users,” said Putin.

“Here is the question, how well does this monopolism correlate with the public interest?” he asked."

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Professor who used Nazi salute in ‘free speech’ protest retires after being canceled by university

"Schuyler admitted to the student newspaper that he had said the phrase and deserved reprimand but that his point still stood. However, he retired just days later.

“I think I should be yelled at, but, again, I think there’s a very fine line between that and suddenly we’ve all lost our freedom of speech,” he told the paper."

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Twitter influencer Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, arrested for allegedly tricking Clinton backers to lose their votes in 2016

"A Donald Trump supporter in Florida has been arrested for allegedly tricking likely Hillary Clinton voters into thinking they were casting their ballots by text message so they wouldn't bother with going to the polls in 2016.

Douglass Mackey, 31, whose Twitter handle was Ricky Vaughn, was arrested Wednesday in West Palm Beach and made an initial court appearance on charges of conspiring to deprive people of their voting rights, the US Department of Justice said in a statement."

It's only OK if you're a corporate media outlet for you to engage in acts of voter suppression...