Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:

Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)

Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities

Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders

Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction”

The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

How many times have you heard this is the most important election of our lifetimes in the last few weeks? When Strauss & Howe published The Fourth Turning in 1997, the national debt was $5.4 trillion, and the country was running an annual deficit of $22 billion. We now add $22 billion of debt every 4 days, amounting to $2 trillion per year. They postulated the major catalysts for the next Fourth Turning would be debt, civic decay, and global disorder.

As we enter the 17th year of this Crisis, no one can question their prescience in predicting the facilitators which have propelled this ongoing Crisis thus far. The volcanic debt eruption created by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street cabal owners in 2008 initiated all the chaos, debt creation, crushing inflation, authoritarian measures, social decay, celebration of delusion, delegitimization of the regime media and their corrupt government co-conspirators, and the rise of Trump. This country, and most of the western world, is experiencing extreme economic, social, political and military distress, as this upcoming election is guaranteed to ignite a civil and global conflagration.

No matter the result of this election, the losing side will not accept the outcome. It has been unequivocally evident for several weeks Trump would win this election in a landslide, on par with Reagan’s destruction of Mondale in 1984, if the Democrat cheat machine of fraudulent mail-in ballots, illegal hordes voting, and ever trusty Dominion vote switching algorithms cannot overcome his overwhelming margin.

Those pulling the levers are willing to do anything to retain power, not excluding assassination of Trump, initiating WW3 or some other manufactured crisis to cancel the election, illegal lawfare schemes to convict Trump of fake crimes or prevent his inauguration in January, or releasing their BLM, Antifa, and Illegal terrorist hordes into the streets to wreak havoc and initiate civil war. The treasonous bastards who stole the 2020 election and have committed crimes against the American people fear the retribution and prison sentences which could be inflicted upon them if Trump wins. They will not go silently into the night.

The Deep State skullduggery implemented through election fraud shenanigans, using their captured Soros judges and district attorneys to commit illegal lawfare, will rile the normies (aka deplorables, aka garbage) if they feel another election has been stolen by these treasonous totalitarians. Normal Americans have reached their breaking point. They have seen their bank accounts defunded by the Biden/Harris inflationary tsunami, unleashed by their covid debacle and ironically named Inflation Reduction Act, and their enablers at the Federal Reserve who printed trillions of new fiat, while keeping interest rates at 0% for years.

Anyone living in the real world knows inflation is at least twice as high as the reported government manipulated figures. They gaslight us about GDP growth, number of jobs added (850,000 overestimation last year), unemployment rate (% in labor market hugely underestimated), and every government statistic, in order to portray a false narrative of an economy doing well and raising all boats. The only boats being raised are the yachts of the .1%.

In reality, economic distress is creating psychological trauma on young and old alike. Seniors on fixed incomes and the poor dependent upon welfare, sink further into poverty, as the cost of food, energy, rent, medicine, and most necessities reach all-time highs. No one earning the average income in this country can afford a home. Credit card debt and auto loan debt have reached unpayable levels, and an avalanche of defaults and re-possessions has commenced. Meanwhile, with stock markets and housing markets at all-time highs, the wealthy have gotten wealthier, so the plight of the bottom 90% is of no concern to their day-to-day luxurious existence.

This bifurcation of economic circumstances is evidenced by the populist rage propelling Trump’s campaign. Normal Americans are tired of being screwed over by the system and fed up with politicians, left wing billionaires (Soros, Gates, Bezos, et al), and regime media talking heads demanding they acquiesce to their totalitarian mandates, while being propagandized to believe their provably false narratives about the “great” economy. Biden is president in name only, as proved by his dementia ridden rants and those pulling the strings casting him aside like a piece of trash when he no longer met their needs.

I don’t think Strauss & Howe envisioned the types of social distress which would be ushered in by the ruling oligarchy in a desperate attempt to divide, destroy, and degrade the social fabric of our society, obliterating the common values which helped build this nation. The organized, funded, and promoted invasion of our country by third world bottom feeders with the intent to take the lower paying jobs of native Americans, overwhelm the country’s social welfare system, funnel illegal voters into swing states, and create civil chaos in formerly homogeneous communities, is designed to contribute to the economic collapse of the country, allowing the Great Reseters to implement their new world order machinations.

The race riots, funded by Soros and encouraged by his bought off district attorneys in every shithole Democrat run sanctuary city in America, conducted by his BLM and ANTIFA hired terrorists, were designed to bring down Trump and demoralize the white middle class families who are the backbone of the country. We were supposed to bow down to these race baiters and pretend a drug addict black criminal thug was a saint, while honoring fictitious made-up ridiculous black holidays like Juneteenth and Kwanzaa. The entire narrative has been to make white people take the knee and accept this woke drivel. The goal has been to destroy the community standards we grew up with and replace them with an anything goes mentality of degeneracy and delusion.

The other socially explosive issues designed to divide and conquer have involved pretending mentally ill men are women and vice versa, while mentally ill women encourage the mutilation of their children as a sacrifice to the woke gods. Allowing mentally ill perverted men into women’s restrooms is pure insanity, but corrupt politicians, bought-off government bureaucrats, and woke judges have mandated this dangerously absurd behavior.

Men dominating women’s sports is perfectly fine to these seekers of societal implosion. Allowing and encouraging young girls to cut off their breasts because their batshit crazy mothers suffer from a woke form of Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a despicable surrender to degeneracy. We are failing our children, resulting in massive levels of depression, drug use, self-mutilation, and suicide among the young.

The most socially distressful act in the history of mankind was our authoritarian government politicians and bureaucrats forcing over 270 million guinea pigs (over 5 billion worldwide), under threat of losing their livelihood and being ostracized from society, to be injected by an experimental gene therapy marketed as a vaccine, that did not prevent people from catching, spreading or dying from the most overhyped flu in history.

The ruling overlords, who planned this fake pandemic (Event 201), successfully created the largest mass formation psychosis among the fearful masses than has ever been achieved through a propaganda of fear campaign. They proved they could force the sheep to willingly lock themselves down and beg to be injected with a toxic concoction designed to kill them suddenly or over time, while reducing fertility and disabling millions, accomplishing a major goal of the Gates depopulation agenda. The pure bloods will never forget or ever forgive those who treated them like trash. The coming civil war will see the dividing lines very much aligned between the jabbed versus the unjabbed.

Political distress has been building in this country since the day Trump descended that Trump Tower escalator in June of 2015, announcing he was running for president. He was able to corral the populist rage of the economically and socially distressed deplorables and achieve the upset of the century against the Deep State chosen one, initiating the Deep State coup against him, which continues to this day. The political system is wrought with fraud, corruption, malfeasance, and a disregard for the proper legal functioning of elections.

The 2020 election was stolen, mainly through fake mail-in ballots supposedly instituted as a one-time covid measure. Now it is a permanent fixture, and systematic fraud is purposely built into the system, as no ID or proof of citizenship is required to vote, illegals are being enabled to vote illegally by the Democrat party, and the judicial system is filled with left-wing activist judges whose sole purpose is to promote criminality and deviancy.

The desperation of the Deep State oligarchs and their hired henchmen within the CIA, FBI, DOJ, and State Department is palpable and exceedingly dangerous, as they are willing to burn down the system to prevent their criminal conspiracy from being revealed. They have tried to imprison and kill Trump already and will continue to do so before his January inauguration. It is probably too late to stop the election from taking place, but nothing they do is too diabolical to exclude at this point. When Trump’s margin of victory exceeds their ability to cheat, they will proceed with plan B and unleash their paid hordes of violent felons in every major city in America, to try and stop Trump from assuming power.

Biden and Harris’ handlers will use every lawfare means at their disposal to prevent the smooth transition of power. The fake January 6 insurrection will seem quaint compared to what these traitors will attempt to pull off. We know they consider us deplorable, garbage, racist Nazis, so that belief allows them to consider us as non-humans and use lethal means to suppress our voices. The Biden-Harris administration updated DOD Directive 5240.01 on Sept. 27 to include provisions authorizing lethal force in certain circumstances when assisting civilian law enforcement. The timing of this change sure seems suspicious, as this volatile election enters the home stretch.

This is where military distress will rear its ugly head. We know the woke military cooperated and conspired with the other Deep State bad actors in the coup against Trump. Milley acted in a treasonous manner behind Trump’s back by communicating with adversaries and planning to override any direct order from the Commander–in-Chief. The military leadership under Biden has proven to be incompetent, committed to diversity & equity, and willing to do the bidding of the forces aligned against Trump.

The possibility of the military participating in violent coup against Trump before he takes office, or shortly thereafter, is not out of the question. When men who know they have committed illegal, treasonous acts feel threatened with exposure and prosecution, they are capable of anything to avoid their fate. Militarily, this is an extremely dangerous period for our nation.

With neocons dominating in Congress, and their regime media partners regurgitating their propaganda talking points about Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, these psychopaths are pushing as hard as possible for WW3. Whether it launches in the Ukraine, Gaza, the Taiwan Straits, or on the border of the two Koreas, their goal is global conflict and obscene profits for the military industrial complex who dole out the bribes. They know Trump is not a war monger and will attempt to broker peace deals in the Ukraine and in the Middle East. Therefore, they are recklessly flailing about trying to initiate a global firestorm before Trump assumes the presidency.

Beware of our “Gulf of Tonkin” false flag incident, which will be used as the basis to go to war with whichever “evil dictator” suits our purposes at that moment. No matter the outcome of this election, there will be blood – whether it be American blood on American soil or American blood on foreign soil, or both simultaneously. Fourth Turnings always accelerate towards a violent denouement, with an unanticipated number of deaths. Over 5% of the male population was killed in the American Civil War Fourth Turning, while 65 million people were killed during the WWII Fourth Turning. With the current level of killing technology, the potential number of casualties in a global conflict would be astronomical and inconceivable to average Americans.

I do not have any misconceptions that the election of Trump can undo the fiscal disaster heading our way. At best, he could delay the timeline for financial catastrophe and possibly keep WW3 from launching during his term.  I even wonder whether the selection of Kackling Kamala and Tampon Tim, the single worst presidential ticket in American history, has been purposely engineered by the Deep State in order to insure the economic and financial implosion happen during Trump’s reign.

Discrediting Trump, as they did by blaming Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression, when it was FDR’s policies that exacerbated the problem, might provide the Democrat Deep State Party with the narrative that Trump’s policies caused the collapse. There is absolute certainty the losers in this election will declare it stolen and refuse to acknowledge the winner. With over 75% of the population expecting post-election violence, there will be violence. Where it leads and what unintended consequences befall the nation are unknown but guaranteed to further split a divided nation.

The core elements of this Fourth Turning Crisis (debt, civic decay, global disorder) were the driving factors at the outset and continue to be the driving factors as we approach the climax of this winter of our discontent in the early 2030s. Between now and then will be the most perilous years of our lifetimes. Panic, chaos, financial disaster, authoritarian measures, civil war, global war, and a myriad of other epic challenges await. They will attempt to abscond with your wealth through their Great Taking plans.

They will attempt to implement their Great Reset though CBDCs, mass surveillance, and totalitarian enforcement of their new world order mandates. They will continue their depopulation efforts through war, vaccines, and starvation of the poor. They will attempt to put a final nail in the coffin of the U.S. Constitution, ushering in their one world government, controlled by billionaire oligarchs, and enforced by their military/police thugs. They are attempting to demoralize the masses, propagandizing them into believing only the government can save them, and forcing them to march into an electronic gulag with no escape routes.

All my ruminations about this Fourth Turning always come down to the potential outcomes laid out by Strauss and Howe twenty-seven years ago, before the turn of the century, and eleven years before the triggering of this Crisis. No matter which channels of distress the volcanic molten lava breaks free from, the next several years will be disconcerting, difficult, destructive, and deathly. There is no escape from the grim reality of what is coming. You cannot be prepped enough to withstand the bitter winter winds which will begin to blow with the outcome of this election.

Nothing will be the same after November 5. Will there ever be another election? Will our country still exist in its current form ten years from now? Strauss and Howe did not predict a specific outcome but provided four realistic possible outcomes. Three out of four are dire, including the end of humanity as a distinct possibility. After reading the recent best-selling book Nuclear War – A Scenario, you realize the world could end in a matter of hours if the weak-minded psychopaths leaders initiate an unstoppable progression of responses.

I know the linear thinking noobs who believe the world always progresses in a straight line will dismiss these warnings as just conspiracy theory doom porn. They have no interest in the cyclical nature of history and will continue to trust the government narrative, enforced by the regime media propaganda mouthpieces, and repeated by the NPCs who make up a major percentage of the population. That’s fine. They can keep their heads in the sand and believe the delusional drivel doled out by those in power, but Fourth Turnings are going to deluge them under a tsunami of reality, pain, death and destruction. That’s just the way it is.

People need to get their heads straight and understand the challenges that lie ahead. I don’t see any easy solutions, and I’m not selling a newsletter with the secret to surviving this Fourth Turning. I’ve been issuing warnings for over a decade, and I’ve seen nothing that has happened or is happening, to make me change my mind.

1. This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection and bad luck.

2. The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.

3. The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.

4. Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.

I’ve been issuing warnings for over a decade, and I’ve seen nothing that has happened or is happening, to make me change my mind. Befriending like-minded people and summoning all the courage and fortitude you can muster is the best advice I can give.

The best analogy for the next several years is: get prepared to slog many miles through a raging blizzard in sub-zero temperatures with less than 50% chance of survival.

Good luck and Godspeed.

Authored by Patrick Lawrence via Consortium News,

At this moment it is hard to locate the limit of what either of the two main political parties in the U.S. will do to avoid losing…

Uh-oh. The New York Times is picking up its familiar theme now that the Nov. 5 elections are but a few days out front: Those mal-intended foreigners are again “sowing discord and chaos in hopes of discrediting American democracy,” it reported in a piece published Tuesday. 

The Beelzebubs haunting this political season, when everything would otherwise be orderly and altogether copacetic among Americans, are Russia, China and Iran.

Why can’t this year’s version of the old, reliable “Axis of Evil” leave us alone with our “democratic process,” the one the rest of the world envies and resents? Troublemakers, with all their “sowing.” You could probably call them “garbage” and get away with it. 

Uh-oh. We’re already reading of tampered voter-registration forms and forged applications to vote by mail in two districts in Pennsylvania, the populous state where the results in 2020 could not have been blurrier and whose 19 Electoral College votes were decisive in getting Joe Biden into the White House last time around.

But not to worry. In a delightful reprise of one of the truly memorable phrases to come down to us from the 1960s, an election commissioner in one of the districts where officials uncovered the malfeasance tells us, “The system worked.” 

I think I understand.  

I tell you, whenever I read of people in other countries sowing anything, whether it is doubt or chaos or disinformation, and at this point even pumpkin seeds, it always turns out the same. This word “sowing” has been a favorite in the mainstream press since 2016, when we read daily — and of this we were to have no doubt — the Rrrrrussians were “interfering in our elections.”  

Since then, everytime I read of someone sowing something it sows more doubt in my mind — more than I already harbored — that one can take our electoral system, as we have it in the 21st century, the slightest bit seriously.  

This is to say nothing of putting one’s name on it behind a little green curtain in a voting booth.

On the one hand you have the Times, which has diminished itself over the past eight years to little more than the Democrats’ house organ, already preparing to suggest that the malign enemies of American democracy corrupted the elections. Believe me, you will hear this if Kamala Harris loses but not if she wins.  

On the other hand, you have early but clear cases of attempted vote-rigging and local election officials waving these cases off as nothing at all to fret about. It is interesting to consider why said officials profess so cavalier a view.  

I have thought for months that the 2024 elections, discord already in plentiful supply, could easily tip over into a degree of civil chaos beyond anything so far recorded in the American story. Just such a day of reckoning now seems to beckon. 

Neither of the main parties appears prepared to lose. At this moment it is hard to locate the limit of what either party will do to avoid losing. 

Remnants of Democracy

All by our lonesome selves, it seems to me, we Americans have made a mess of the remnants of our democracy these past eight years.

This is not to suggest American politics has ever been other than, let’s say, in the way of a barnyard. In this, neither of the major parties, whose function since the mid–19th century has been to circumscribe acceptable politics and policy, is free of responsibility. 

But in the matter of responsibility I assign more to the Democrats than to the G.O.P. It was Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump eight Novembers ago that confirmed America’s swift drift into post-democracy.

The Democrats have never recovered from the disruption in 2016 of their dream that history was about to end and their idea of the liberal ethos would eternally prevail, all alternatives withering away the way Marx and Engels thought the communist state would.

Anti-Trump protest in Washington, D.C., Nov. 12, 2016. (Ted Eytan/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

I have long detected that American liberalism has at its core a vein of illiberalism that is essential to its character.

America is simply not, to put this point another way, a tolerant nation. It does not encourage its people to think: It requires them to conform. Alexis de Tocqueville saw this coming two centuries ago in the two volumes of Democracy in America. 

We are now, post–Clinton, treated to the spectacle of full-dress liberal authoritarianism, and if you do not like the term there are others. De Tocqueville, prescient man, called it “soft despotism.” I’ve always favored “apple-pie authoritarianism.”

Institutional Corruptions

There is a feature of this awful manifestation among NPR–addicted, kale-eating liberals that distinguishes our time as especially discouraging as to the future.

This is their wanton corruption of some of the institutions without which even a semblance of democratic government is impossible. I am thinking particularly of three that figure in the pre-election picture.

One is the judiciary — federal, state, county, local. Beginning with the Mueller investigation, the in-plain-sight corruption of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the ridiculous court cases brought against Donald Trump, Attorney–General Merrick Garland’s subversion of the Justice Department to protect President Joe Biden as his son’s influence-mongering schemes came to light — all this in behalf of the Democrats:

Well, as I learned during my days as a correspondent abroad, when the judicial system goes down, the path to failed-state status opens.  

Two is the intelligence apparatus and the military. Intel, from the days of James Clapper and John Brennan, has lined up unequivocally behind the Democrats ever since the brash real-estate man from New York foolishly assumed he could “drain the swamp” — his declaration that he would take on the Deep State.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Feb. 18, 2017. (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

As to the military, the generals thought nothing of declaring eight years ago, at the Democrats’ convention in Philadelphia and in open letters published in the Times, that they would refuse the commander-in-chief’s orders were Trump to win and attempt a new détente with Russia and an end to “the forever wars.” 

Yes, you’ve got John Kelly, who served in Trump’s cabinet and then as his chief of staff, suddenly calling Trump a fascist — the Democrats’ favorite epithet these past weeks. Doesn’t anyone want to know why Kelly worked closely with a man he considered a fascist? Doesn’t it occur to anyone — it must, surely — that Kelly, a retired Marine general, says these things to serve the party he trusts to keep the wars going and the tax dollars flowing?  

A paradox here, more apparent than real: John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, James Mattis, Mark Esper, and various others like them did not wear uniforms when they served in the Trump administration, but they never took them off. 

If this election is about anything — apart from the price of groceries, of course — it is about the national-security state’s place in American politics. In our post–2016 era, intel and the military are perfectly welcome to operate openly, unabashedly, in the American political process — this because the Democratic Party gives them a wide berth to do so. 

Deep-State Democracy

Now, do you think the Deep State gives a toot about democratic process? Ask the Italians and the Greeks, the Iranians and the Guatemalans, the Japanese, the South Koreans and the Indonesians, the Chileans and the Venezuelans, and… and damn, ask most of humanity at this point. As others have pointed out since the Russiagate days, what the spooks have long done abroad now visits itself upon the American polity. 

The obvious follow-on: Should we be concerned as to whether the Democrats and these institutional allies would let this election go to Trump just by the vote count? 

I am.

As to the third of the institutions that have corrupted themselves in the Democratic Party cause, may I let mainstream media speak for themselves? Apart from independent publications such as the one you are reading, the intent of American media is no longer to inform the public but to protect the institutions they purport to report upon from the public gaze.   

Trump’s “a threat to American democracy,” Harris its savior: It’s a bust at this point. The New York Times has made itself a re-enactment of The New York Times. The Washington Post under the ownership of Jeff Bezos and this ghastly new chief executive of his, Will Lewis, cannot manage, and doesn’t seem to attempt, even a re-enactment. 

I do not seem to be the only one ill-at-ease at the prospect of mayhem to come after midnight Nov. 5. The Post published a survey Wednesday, conducted in the first half of October, indicating that among voters in the states where the election could go either way, 57 percent are nervous that Trump supporters won’t accept defeat and may resort to violence, while a third of those surveyed think Harris supporters will take it to the street, as they used to say, if the candidate of joy and vibes loses.

Harris campaigning in Glendale, Ariz., on Aug. 9. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

The numbers skewed even more dramatically when The Post asked Democrats about Trump’s people and Trump’s people about Democrats. In a survey The Associated Press published Thursday, you have 70 percent of those polled saying they are “anxious and frustrated.”

Join the party. I cannot, myself, take either candidate seriously. I take seriously the thought that a lot of people will not take the result seriously and a mess will ensue. 

And in this I worry more about Democrats resorting to corrupt conduct than I do the Republicans. Why this, you may ask.

To begin with, I do not at all like the smell of that Times piece quoted at the top of this column. It reeks too strongly of the scene in 2016, when, on either side of the election, the Democrats and all manner of repellent “progressives” conjured of thin air a frenzy of Russophobia from which American has yet to recover. 

Steven Lee Myers, previously of the Times’s Moscow bureau, is now some kind of “disinformation” reporter and led the work on the piece in question. And all is as it was for four years after Clinton’s defeat: no shred of independent reporting or sourcing in anything under his byline. Intel people and other unnamed officials feed this guy like a foie gras farmer feeds his geese. 

This is all you get from our Stevie. And I don’t see anyone trying on this disgraceful stuff in behalf of the Trump campaign. I have suggested my conclusions.

But Jan. 6, Jan. 6, Jan 6! First of all, what happened on Jan. 6 does not rise to “coup” or “insurrection.” It was a protest, with much to suggest the presence of agents provocateurs. And second, there seems to me there was plenty to protest by that point. 

Straight off the top, there was the liberal authoritarians’ perfectly legible collusion to suppress the contents of Hunter Biden’s vastly incriminating laptop computer three weeks before the vote, to the point of blanket censorship of the New York Post, the oldest newspaper in America. If this was not open-and-shut election interference someone will have to tell me what constitutes it.

On less certain ground, I have read of many election officials in many states, Pennsylvania high among them, certifying the 2020 results. But a truly convincing, here-are-the-numbers case for these results in states such as Pennsylvania is hard to come by. You never read of Trump’s claims that the Pennsylvania results were rigged. You read only and always of Trump’s “false claims” or “discredited claims” or “disproven claims” to the point you start thinking of Lady Macbeth and how she doth protest too much, methinks.   

Trump addressing The Believers religious group, in July in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

I recall, very imperfectly, seeing research purportedly done by a computer scientist at one of the universities in Philadelphia. Just after the election he or she put out a series of screenshots on social media, time-stamped to the second, that appeared to show the results in a significant number of districts changing all at once and by enough to give Biden a swift come-from-behind victory by a margin of slightly more than 1 percent.  

Genuine or a put-up job, this research? Credible or not credible? I would not dream of judging it, but this is not my point. My point is that there should be no cause to doubt such results as these and, eight years on, as I read it there still is. 

Doubt recreates itself, as you may have noticed, like some organism that regenerates. So we come to the Times’ report Tuesday of attempted voter fraud in Lancaster and York counties, two populous areas of, once again, Pennsylvania.

Campbell Roberston’s piece has just about everything, starting with a headline that has Trump “sowing doubt.” He, Trump, is even “using reports about suspicious voter registrations to cast the election as already flawed.” 

What a cad. What a scoundrel. What a… fascist tyrant. 

It seems that some thousands of forged or otherwise fraudulent voter registration forms and requests to vote by mail arrived recently in the offices of the Lancaster and York election authorities.

So far as one can make out, some official or officials in each county brought these “large batches” of falsified government documents to light. Whereupon other officials in each case smothered this discovery as if suffocating the matter with a pillow. 

Alice Yoder, an election commissioner in Lancaster, put it best, or anyway most preposterously.

“The system worked,” saith Ms. Yoder.

“We caught this.”

I honestly had to read this quotation several times to believe anyone would say this. 

I would like to know a few things about this case that we are not told. 

The batches of forgeries “were submitted by out-of-state canvassing groups,” Robertson reports, groups that remain unidentified.

One, what are canvassing groups and what do they do in whose behalf?

Two, what were such groups doing in Lancaster and York counties if they are not from Pennsylvania

Three, if they are not from Pennsylvania, what were they doing with Pennsylvania election forms that were purportedly genuine?

Just two more questions.

Four, why are the election officials in these two counties not naming the guilty canvassing organizations? This seems to me very troubling. 

And five, what are the party affiliations or otherwise the voting preferences of officials who will not identify the offending organizations and say things such as “The system worked.”

There are no grounds to draw any conclusions whatsoever on this point, given we know absolutely nothing about these people, but I went to the trouble of looking up Ms. Yoder’s c.v. 

There is a bit of the sociologist in all of us, well– or underdeveloped as the case may be. Journalists often make use of their endowments in this line.

Drawing on mine, I would speculate that Ms. Yoder’s c.v., after a careful peruse, is highly suggestive of a Kamala Harris voter, perhaps even of a liberal authoritarian. 

Could be dead right, could be dead wrong. I cannot go beyond more or less idle speculation.

And not more or less idle doubt as Nov. 5 draws close.

*  *  *

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News or ZeroHedge.

Regional media reports and government statements have confirmed that Israeli naval forces have captured an alleged senior Hezbollah official in a daring raid launched from the Mediterranean sea on Friday.

The man described as a high-ranking Hezbollah operative has been identified as Imad Amhaz. Commandos on speed boats reportedly landed on a Lebanese beach and snatched him from a cabin in the early morning hours. 

“A sizable force, suspected to be Israeli, stealthily touched down on the shores of Batroun in northern Lebanon, roughly 87 miles from the Israeli border, with the intent of snatching a high-ranking terrorist operative from his hideaway in a cabin,” Israel’s YNet news details, adding that the raid involved 25 Israeli elite troops.

Lebanese national broadcaster National News agency separately described that an “unidentified military force” carried out a “sea landing” at a beach at Batroun, south of Tripoli.

The commando group “went with all its weapons and equipment to a chalet near the beach, kidnapping a Lebanese man… and sailing away into the open sea on a speedboat,” NNA added.

Lebanese media is only saying that the man that was nabbed was a “student” of a maritime institute in Lebanon. According to more from eyewitnesses of the strange episode:

He was taken from student housing near the Batroun institute, but was a resident of the Shia-majority town of Qmatiyeh further south, said the acquaintance who spoke on the condition of anonymity for security concerns.

He was completing courses to become a sea captain, the source told AFP, adding that the man was in his thirties and was well known by the teaching staff at the center.

But the IDF has called the man a “significant source of knowledge” for Hezbollah’s naval force. It’s expected that Amhaz will be detained and interrogated in a military prison.

“He was taken to Israel to be questioned by the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 — which specializes in HUMINT, or human intelligence — on Hezbollah’s naval operations,” Times of Israel subsequently reported.

UN peacekeeping forces in South Lebanon have entered the controversy, amid conflicting reports they may have prevented the Lebanese armed forces from responding to the raid (which UNIFIL firmly denies) on Lebanon’s sovereign territory and its citizens:

Lebanese journalist Hasan Illaik, who first reported on the raid, cited anonymous Lebanese military officials as saying the operation was apparently carried out in coordination with the German Navy operating within UNIFIL forces, to prevent the Lebanese Navy from interfering.

Meanwhile, some Lebanese sources say that the kidnapped man is innocent, and not affiliated with Hezbollah, and that the IDF kidnapped a regular Lebanese citizen. Video also captured the raid:

🚨BREAKING 🚨 An Israeli commando kidnapped a Lebanese licensed boat officer, believing he was a high-ranking Hezbollah official, in a “daring operation” yesterday in Batroun north Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/BraFMuTdmy

— Hala Jaber (@HalaJaber) November 2, 2024

Israel’s military has further said that “The operative has been transferred to Israeli territory and is currently being investigated.”

The Associated Press has acknowledged that the occupation of the kidnapped man is murky and uncertain, amid continuing speculation: “Three Lebanese judicial officials told AP the incident occurred at dawn Friday, adding that the captain might have links with Hezbollah.” The report added: “The officials said an investigation is looking into the man is linked to Hezbollah or working for an Israeli spy agency and an Israeli force came to rescue him.”

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

I had an old friend who used to be a bouncer at one of the bars where I worked in Philadelphia many years ago. We got along decently outside of work because we both had the same mutual interests in our twenties: beer, sports, gambling, and women.

The big differences between us were that he had a much shorter temper than I did, a much tougher time controlling his emotions and a much larger appetite for alcohol. As would happen given those differences, as the years went by, we eventually lost touch, only to bump into each other randomly at the airport one day after we hadn’t seen each other for about ten years.

I was returning from a trip I had taken for my job, and he was on his way outbound to some tropical destination I can’t remember. After the perfunctory catch-up, I asked him why he was taking what seemed like a random vacation during the middle of the week.

He told me that days prior, he had been at the local casino in Philadelphia playing poker and had won $30,000 from the bad beat jackpot, so he was celebrating.

I asked him how it happened and what he did when he found out he’d won.

He told me: “Chris, that place has taken so much money from me that when I finally won, I flipped the f*cking poker table over in the middle of the room, while all eight people were sitting at it, and screamed at the top of my lungs.”

Then, he told me, they paid him out and asked him to leave and never come back.

Anybody else might easily write this story off as someone with a flair for the dramatic, but having seen my friend flip a table once or twice under far less exciting circumstances (or for no reason at all after multiple shots of Jameson), I knew he wasn’t making it up.

Heading into the weekend, I kept thinking about metaphors to make some type of big statement about how important I think Tuesday’s election is for our nation. No matter how many ways I tried to word it, all I could think about as an analogy to a potential Trump victory was my friend, sitting inside a casino he’s probably lost a zillion dollars in, finally scoring a big win against the house—the machine that always has the odds in its favor—flipping that table, with the chips, drinks and cards on it, and then getting kicked out carrying a massive Publisher’s Clearing House-style novelty check.

I don’t like that this is how I think of the government, the Democratic party and the media, conjoined as one unbeatable, dystopian chimera with the odds always in its favor—but I can’t help it. What else could you possibly call a ruling party of elites, using one hand to rig their primary process while using the other to write diatribes about the importance of democracy? What else could you call the party that blankets its deeply flawed policy prescriptions under the cloak of the moral high ground? What do you call the party that used to preach freedom of choice, speech and liberty that now takes its cues from giant pharmaceutical corporations and the military industrial complex? How about the party that outright lied in 2020 to the public about the president’s involvement in a Chinese influence-peddling scam days before the last election?

And then, what can be said about almost all of the major media networks that have enabled, and run cover for, these actions, all while making concerned looking faces like they actually give a shit about the truth and can’t believe how stupid we are?

Just last week, I watched the media arm of the Democratic Party, consisting of all the major news networks with the exception of Fox News, accuse Jewish people at President Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally of being Nazis. This week, I’m watching them tell the public that Trump said Liz Cheney should be executed when he said nothing of the sort.

Over the last four years, there have been countless instances like these — the “very fine people” hoax, the never-ending live coverage of the Russia collusion hoax, and CNN putting a yellow filter over Joe Rogan’s face and telling the world he was taking horse medicine when they knew he was not. I wrote it days ago: the media has sacrificed what’s left of its credibility at the altar of an un-elected woman who thinks the PCE deflator is something you sit on at a party that makes a farting noise and that “Strategic Petroleum, Reserve” is a brand of top shelf vodka.

National Review said it pretty well last month:

The media has gotten so much wrong over the last four years that not only is it bleeding viewers to alternative media, but major networks like CNN have been forced to lay off staff and completely rethink their programming. It’s a phenomenon that we saw continue last week, with Jeff Bezos making a point not to endorse a political candidate at the Washington Post because, in his words “Americans don’t trust the news media”.

Among the dead weight purged from CNN some years ago was anchor Brian Stelter. This week, probably without even knowing it, he made a very cogent point when he quoted an anonymous TV executive who said:

“If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form.”

Stelter doesn’t know it, but he’s onto something much bigger than he thinks. He’s presenting that statement out of protest because he believes that mainstream media really is the authority for objective truth and the moral high ground.

Of course, what the last decade has proven to us is that he’s wrong — deadass wrong. He may not know why he’s wrong, but the point he makes still stands: as I wrote days ago, at some point, the bias and outright lying are going to hit such a fever pitch that even independent and center-left viewers and voters are going to take notice.

People are simply not going to stand for one-sided fact-checking at debates, “60 Minutes” deceptively editing interviews, and political anchors injecting their politics into the “news.” In fact, longtime Washington Post contributor Hugh Hewitt walked off the set of one of his live streams and quit the Washington Post just hours ago because of exactly this: Democrats are not even hiding their bias anymore and completely lack finesse in their attempts to sway public opinion, as I have noted in a previous article.

For a glance at how left-wing mainstream media is imploding, watch the entirety of this four minute clip.

Now that we have the miracle of the internet and alternative media, when that moment comes, mainstream media will have officially crossed to the other side of the adoption bell curve and will begin its slow descent into irrelevance. Before that descent can begin, tolerance for the media must hit a zenith where viewer interest peaks, then ever so slightly starts to fade toward alternative media. This election could very well mark that apex officially moving behind us. Here’s how I see it:

A GOP victory on Tuesday not only flips the media’s figurative table over, it flips over the table of government in favor of empowering people. It flips over the table that is addicted to spending and racking up trillions of dollars in debt every year. It flips over the table that spends those trillions of dollars on other countries while increasing taxation on American citizens. It flips over the table that cleans up San Francisco for when China’s president arrives but can’t do so for American citizens. It flips over the table of every lie you’ve been told about Joe Biden’s mental health when you could clearly sit at home and watch with your own two eyes how poor of a state he was in. It flips over the table of identity politics and looking at everybody by their race, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality under the guise of fighting discrimination. And most importantly, a victory for the GOP on Tuesday flips over the table of trying to stifle the most important God-given right of them all: our right to free speech.

I’m not going to make some sensationalist claim like if the Democrats win, it’s going to be the end of the world. It won’t. That’s why we have three branches of government and, frankly, there are far too many lazy and incompetent people in government to effectively make too many negative changes quick enough for our nation to deteriorate much quicker over the next four years than it already is. But I bet even the Democrats who are going to vote for Kamala Harris know in the back of their mind that the nation isn’t on the right path right now, and that’s the way we will continue under a Harris administration. Only faster.

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If the GOP wins this election, I believe it will be far more consequential to the nation. It feels as though a dam is about to break in the United States and the magnetic poles of the two parties are about to shift. Joe Rogan alluded to this while interviewing Trump when he said:

“The rebels are Republicans now. You want to be punk rock? You want to buck the system? You are conservative now. The liberals are now pro-silencing criticism. They are pro-censorship. They talk about regulating free speech. It’s bananas to watch.”

There’s no question the left is pulling us further and further left and, at some point, the nation will snap back in the other direction, regardless of whether it is this election cycle or not. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel like we are right on the doorstep of making a statement that’s bigger than politics by reelecting Donald Trump.

Sure, it’ll be a statement that we want lower taxes, our freedom of speech, less regulation and small government. But most importantly, it would be a rebuke of all of the names that Democrats have called Republicans, all of the blatant lies they’ve told us and then scolded us like children for not believing, and the party and media machine’s assumption it could serve up whatever candidate it wanted, without a primary, and because they have the moral high ground and the media machine backing them, the country will just shut the fuck up and swallow it.

When my friend lost money consistently at the casino for years and years, he just “shut the fuck up and swallowed it” and kept coming back for more. The games were rigged, but hell—he was in there taking his shot. And when he finally had the chance to take the house, big, not only did he take some of that money back, but he made a statement in doing so. And while I don’t usually condone destructive behavior, deep down, I know how good it felt for him, and I’m glad he did it. Now, I wonder if the nation can do the same.

Note from QTR: This will be my last post about politics at least until after Election Day. If you haven’t yet, I urge you desperately to get to the polls on Tuesday and make your voice heard. Just like in 2020, this election may come down to single-digit numbers of votes in many places.

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author.

This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. I may or may not own names I write about and are watching. Sometimes I’m bullish without owning things, sometimes I’m bearish and do own things. Just assume my positions could be exactly the opposite of what you think they are just in case. All positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice and at any point I can be long, short or neutral on any position. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

Ukraine launched another wave of drones on Russia overnight, with Russia’s military saying early Friday that its air defense systems intercepted 83 Ukrainian drones across several regions, including over Crimea.

But at least some of the drones made it through, causing significant damage at an oil depot in the town of Svetlograd in southwest Russia. Regional Governor Vladimir Vladimirov described that an unmanned aircraft “fell” into the Svetlograd oil facility, but without causing casualties. Such large UAV attacks have been almost daily, and coming for weeks.

Social media videos circulated in the aftermath of the attack, showing a large blaze – which appeared to be quickly extinguished. The depot is owned by state oil giant Rosneft.

Bryansk and Kursk regions also saw waves of inbound drones overnight, with the military saying it downed 20 over Bryansk and 36 over Kursk. At least a dozen were also intercepted over Crimea.

On the other side of the conflict, Ukraine’s General Staff said Russia launched a record 2,023 drones across the border for the month of October. There have been some days in October when over a hundred drones were sent from Ukraine in a single 24 hour period – with the same from the Russian side on Ukraine as well.

Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been heavily impacted, with rolling blackouts across many parts of the country now a regular part of daily life. Russia has been much less impacted, and its infrastructure vaster.

Earlier this week Russia’s defense ministry announced more key gains in the Donetsk region. The military is now in control of Ukrainian town of Selydove, just southeast of the larger strategic city of Pokrovsk.

CNN has observed that “Selydove was an important staging area for Ukraine’s defenses and a key foothold to prevent Russia’s advance toward Pokrovsk.”

Ukrainian forces on the frontlines in the region have complained of multiple attacks from all directions of late. Russia has the artillery and manpower to keep up a constant assault, while Kiev forces lack both.

Russia “continues to assault with very large troop numbers. They used reserves from the north of the frontline’s Pokrovsk section to increase pressure on Selydove,” 15th brigade national guard spokesman Vitaliy Milovidov said on Tuesday.

Overnight, Ukrainian attack drones successfully struck a Russian fuel storage depot in Svetlograd, Stavropol Krai, setting multiple tanks alight.

Seen here, a Ukrainian drone slams into the Russian depot, detonating. pic.twitter.com/FRNxeKJLAH

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) November 1, 2024

“At the same time, the enemy is not destroying the city’s infrastructure,” he explained. “Most likely, they want to keep the town as a foothold for themselves in the future. Selydove is a large town where you can accommodate a large number of people and hide equipment.”

Russian forces are currently engaged in several offensives across the east and they are within a few kilometers of Pokrovsk; that’s spitting distance for their artillery and guided FAB munitions. Their strategy so far has been to encircle urban centers and slowly squeeze Ukrainian defense units out, which means the battle for Pokrovsk will soon be on the horizon at this rate.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

Some wild shifts are taking place in our time…

The low-tariff global trade order is falling apart.

Nationalist movements are gaining strength in every Western nation, not just the United States.

The major media is under serious financial strain to the point that the owner of the Washington Post has penned an editorial decrying the tendency to speak only to elites.

A presidential candidate is talking about scrapping the income tax.

The Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that 40 years of regulatory jurisprudence is essentially contrary to the Constitution.

The list goes on and on with the rise of homeschooling, the reliance on alternative media, the dramatic shift in partisan affiliations over healthy food, the unpredictable alliances over the U.S. role in the world, and so much more.

People are asking fundamental questions about issues that only a few years ago seemed fully settled. What was stable is unstable and what was believed by nearly everyone is now widely doubted.

It’s enough to make one’s head spin. What is happening and why is it happening?

The short answer is that we are living through a class paradigm shift.

One is going away and another is coming. We are in pre-paradigmatic times, which are surely the most exciting times to be alive.

The word paradigm entered into the mainstream of thought with an important book by Thomas Kuhn. His “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” appeared in 1962, and it completely upended the dominated assumptions about how science works.

More than that, it implicitly shook how people came to understand how progress takes place. He said it is not a linear process with every generation absorbing the best from the last but rather that progress is episodic, a shift from success to failure and back again, through titanic movements of large paradigms.

Kuhn arrived at this conclusion by looking at the long history of science and noticing the tendency toward complacency around an orthodoxy of some sort. This is the period he calls “normal science.” The practitioners have all been schooled in a certain way, deferring to teachers and dominant institutions that have captured government and the public mind. It’s a way of understanding the world and within that the main practitioners focus on problem-solving and applications.

This period of normal science can last a month or decades or centuries, rarely questioned. And then something happens. Kuhn writes that this orthodoxy comes to be challenged by certain features of reality that are not explained by normal science. Once these are more closely investigated, the anomalies start to pile up and then overwhelm the explanatory power of the settled paradigm. The longer this goes on, the more the paradigm comes under strain, as a new generation seizes on the failures and highlights the incapacity of the orthodoxy to account for the reality all around us.

That’s when the settled science breaks down. It can happen slowly or quickly, and sometimes paradigms overlap both in their popularity and their collapse. That collapse does not mean that every mind is changed. Kuhn observes that the practitioners of the old science continue on their merry way through retirement and final expiration, while the younger people work on cobbling together a new way of thinking that gradually emerges as the dominant paradigm.

Kuhn was writing about science and the profession thereof but his insight has broad application to sociological, cultural, and political ideas too. They do not evolve in a linear fashion, piling victory upon victory, as a Whiggish perspective of the 19th century would have it. Instead, change occurs episodically. One generation is as likely to forget the wisdom of the past as it is to overthrow the orthodoxies of the present. We are in a forever state of cobbling together truth rather than progressively unfolding it.

We’ve seen this happen in the postwar world, as planners built structures that were supposed to govern the world forever. But in a few short years, the world came to be divided rather than united by the Western perception of the new threat of Russian imperialism. That created the Cold War which lasted for 40 years until a new “end of history” was born, which put freedom, democracy, and U.S. hegemony on the commanding heights. That turn has been challenged by the rise of China and huge industrial shifts in the 21st century.

A worker is pictured with car batteries at a factory of Xinwangda Electric Vehicle Battery Co. Ltd., which makes lithium batteries for electric cars and other uses, in Nanjing in China’s eastern Jiangsu Province, on March 12, 2021. STR/AFP via Getty Images

If we were to name one dominant factor that has provoked the big change in our time, it would have to be the global response to the lab-created virus of SARS-CoV-2, which was met with Chinese Communist Party-style universal quarantines all over the world, and followed by shot mandates on most public institutions and many private businesses. These policies were extreme beyond which had been practiced in any period of history but also, and in many ways, merely an extension of the “normal science” of times.

The media, large corporations, and nearly all governments got behind the pandemic response and jeered the non-compliers. This was a huge error because it gave rise to a full generation of the incredulous who lost trust in elites at all levels: medical, academic, media, and government. It has all fallen apart in our time, leaving people scrambling in all directions for explanations of what could have gone so wrong and what should be done about it.

What fascinates me about our election year is not so much the issues on the table but the underlying template that everyone knows is there but no one dares mention; namely the utter discrediting of elite opinion over the last four years.

The claims of the experts simply became too implausible to compel public assent. And this time it was personal. People’s schools and churches were closed, loved ones forced on ventilators to die alone, and whole communities were shattered when public spaces were blocked.

In other words, the “normal science” became a threat to people’s lives, especially once the vaccine mandates came along that most people did not want or need and which ended up being far less effective and far more dangerous than advertised. That was the turning point, the mark at which the anomalies overwhelmed the orthodoxies and the expert classes fell into disrepute.

Nothing about any of this would shock Thomas Kuhn, who gave us a map of understanding back in 1962. Finding that new way of thinking is the essence of our times, which is why everything seems to be in question. The other day, Elon Musk suggested cutting $2 trillion next year from the federal budget. It barely made the headlines, even though it is a highly credible promise.

That’s the new world in which we live. It is being built on the embers of the old.

To be sure, this shift will not happen all at once. It will happen in fits and starts and be accompanied by a great deal of alarm and even pain along the way. But one way or another, it is going to happen, and for one simple reason. As Jeff Bezos explained in the Washington Post, reality is an undisputed champion.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Podcaster Joe Rogan said in an Oct. 30 episode of his show that he gave Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign an “open invitation” to sit down for an interview at any time.

“I said anytime. I said if she’s done at 10, we’ll come back here at 10. I’ll do it at 9 in the morning, I’ll do it at 10 p.m. I’ll do it at midnight if she’s up, if she wants to, you know, drink a Red Bull,” he said, recalling what he told the campaign.

Rogan’s show features around 14 million subscribers on Spotify, making it the top show on the platform, but it also generates significant traffic and engagement on YouTube.

His interview with former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, released late last week, has garnered more than 41 million views on YouTube so far.

While speaking to comedians Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster during episode 2220 of The Joe Rogan Experience…

…Rogan said that Harris “actually reached out when she found out that [Trump] was coming on.”

“So their camp reached out to me,” he said.

“So I said, ‘Great, I would love to talk to her.’ But it was very difficult to tie it down. They wanted [me] to travel, and see, the thing is, if I go somewhere, then there’s going to be other people in the room. And they want to control a lot of things, I’m sure.”

As The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reported, Harris was in Houston last week and held a rally there featuring an endorsement and speech from pop singer Beyoncé.

In a social media post earlier this week, Rogan said that the Harris campaign had conditions for the Democratic presidential nominee to do the interview.

The Epoch Times previously reached out to the campaign, which has not responded to Rogan’s remarks, for comment.

“For the record, the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast,” Rogan wrote in a social media post on Tuesday.

“They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her, and they only wanted to do an hour. I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin. My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being. I really hope we can make it happen.”

During the episode with Kisin and Foster, Rogan also addressed speculation that he might be a covert Trump supporter.

“Just because of my appearance, there’s always been this assumption that I’m some right-wing MAGA guy,” he said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

“I’m a politically homeless person for sure. You know, I always considered myself a left-wing person. I never thought I would ever vote right-wing, but then the tides of culture shifted in a very bizarre way. And it just made me, over time, much more aware of what this stuff is really all about.”

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), will also air on Rogan’s show after being interviewed at Rogan’s Austin studio on Wednesday.

Both Trump and Harris have engaged in a flurry of campaigning as the race draws to a close. Both candidates have taken part in several podcasts ahead of the 2024 General Election as they attempt to reach new audiences.

More than 60 million people have cast early ballots so far ahead of the Nov. 5 contest, according to data released by the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

The Epoch Times contacted the Harris campaign for comment about Rogan’s claims but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.

Authored by Jim Lee via RealClearPennsylvania,

Currently, both the national climate and the polling seems to point to a Trump victory in November. For instance, according to polling averages , only 28% of Americans say the country is going in the right direction, compared to 61% who say it’s on the wrong track. Why is this important? Because wrong track voters are more apt to vote for the party out of power – i.e., the Trump campaign – than the party “in power.”

Second, President Joe Biden’s average approval rating is still at a dismal 41% nationally, with a higher 56% of Americans saying they disapprove of his job performance. Why is this important?  Because if Americans are unhappy with the president’s job performance, they theoretically should be less likely to vote for another four years of his administration with a vote for the Harris campaign. And remember, when Kamala Harris was asked on a national network television program just recently if she would have done anything different than Biden, she couldn’t answer. In other words, she seems to have unwittingly conceded that she represents another four years of a Biden presidency. 

Another reason the political climate seems to favor Republicans at the current time has to do with how Americans are self-identifying in polls. According to national polling, in October 2016, the country self-identified as Democrat by a 3-point margin over Republicans. In October 2020, the country self-identified as Democrat by a higher 6-point margin. But in September of this year, just last month, new polling showed Republicans with a 1-point lead over Democrats on party self-identification. This could prove important because it seems to suggest that more Americans are aligned with the GOP brand than the Democrats – another good sign for the Trump campaign.

Moreover, the current polling has shifted in Trump’s favor both nationally and in critical battleground states. For instance, the RCP average of national polls now shows Trump with a 48.4 to 48.3% lead – just one tenth of a percent difference, but still leaning Trump. This is a big deal because the national popular vote has favored Harris for months, but now has shifted in Trump’s favor.  This could be a sign of which way the political winds are blowing. Plus, polling averages currently show that Trump leads in all seven battleground states, including Pennsylvania (.6 percent lead), Michigan (.2 points), Wisconsin (.2 points), Arizona (1.5 points), North Carolina (.8 points), Georgia (2.2 points) and Nevada (.7 points). These are RCP averages as of October 26.

In Pennsylvania, Trump’s lead is significant when you consider that on that day in 2020, Biden led in the RCP averages in Pennsylvania by 4.8%; Biden of course went on to eek out a narrow margin over Trump by only 1.2%.  Back in 2016 at this time, Hillary Clinton led in the RCP averages by 4.3 points, only to lose to Trump by a razor-thin, 48.58 to 47.85 margin on Election Day (or 44,292 votes).

So, are we on the cusp of a landslide (Electoral College) victory for Trump? No one knows for sure, but it could happen. In Pennsylvania, our latest poll shows a 46% to 45.8% statistical tie between Trump and Harris (Harris leading by .2 percentage points). This poll was conducted October 18-22 with a sample size of 500 likely voters. But there is plenty of good news for Trump in this poll. 

For instance, Trump looks poised to overperform his 2020 numbers with Republicans.  In the current survey, Trump is winning Republicans by an 89.4% to 3.7% margin over Harris. Why is this important?  In 2020, Trump lost 8% of the GOP vote to Biden – a huge setback in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans. More importantly, Trump is doing better with Independents in the current survey, currently leading them 43.9% to 36.4%. In 2020, Biden carried Independents by a 52:44 margin according to CNN exit polls. If Trump wins Independents in Pennsylvania, which constitute about 16% of the electorate and are technically the fastest growing cohort of the voter registration rolls, he will likely win the Keystone State.

And the political issues currently favor a Trump victory in terms of what is influencing people’s vote choices. For instance, in our Pennsylvania survey, 45% say inflation and the economy is the top issue that will influence peoples’ votes for a candidate, while immigration is second (at 32%). No other issue polls higher. Inflation/economy voters are breaking for Trump by a 57.4% to 35.4% margin. Immigration voters favor Trump by a whopping 72.7% to 17.4% margin. So, if voters go to the polls thinking about inflation, the economy and illegal immigration, Trump is likely to win. Lower ranking issues like protecting democracy, reproductive rights, and healthcare access all favor the Harris narrative.

Yet despite all these factors pointing in Trump’s direction, our polling still shows a statistical tie, so Harris can’t be counted out. In the poll, there are some red flags for Trump. For instance, voters who say they already cast early ballots favor Harris by a 53.9% to 37.1% margin. This means Harris has the edge in early returns with absentee and mail in ballots. Plus, Trump doesn’t seem to be getting much traction with Hispanic/Latino voters, which make up about 8% of the state’s electorate and are a fast-growing cohort in suburban areas like Lancaster, Reading, Allentown and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton media markets. In the current survey, Harris leads Trump with Latino voters 76.7% to 20.0%. This suggests an underperformance for Trump when you consider that Trump got 27% of the Latino vote in 2020 according to exit polls. In addition, in a separate poll we recently conducted in the hotly contested 10th congressional district election (between GOP incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Perry and Democratic challenger Janelle Stelson), Harris actually leads Trump by a 46:41 margin – a reversal from a 4-point Trump victory in this same district in 2020. So, Trump seems be underperforming in some Mid-state counties, which are a must win area for him when you consider that our polling shows Trump will lose the vote-rich Philadelphia suburban collar counties, plus the state’s two major urban centers of Allegheny and Philadelphia counties. Let’s not forget that in 2020, Biden carried the Keystone State but only by winning 13 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties – a highly surgical approach to victory.

So, the current survey seems to suggest a very close race on Election Day in a very pivotal battleground state. Turnout could be the deciding factor in determining the outcome. This is because Pennsylvania is almost a 50:50 state in voter registration since the GOP has narrowed the voter registration edge to fewer than a 300,000 vote-difference, or a current 44% Democrat to 40% GOP margin; independents and other third-party voters make up the remaining 16%.  Exit polls in 2020 showed a +1 percent margin for GOP versus Democrats in party self-Identification. In the current poll, Trump is winning Republicans 89.4% to 3.7% over Harris, while Harris is winning Democrats 90.8% to 3.2% over Trump. So, both candidates seem to be doing equally well in their respective bases of support. This means it’s hard to tell if the “never Trump” campaign narrative is getting real traction or is simply a red herring.  This means whichever candidate gets more of their voters to the polls will likely be the victor. Other states will see similar trend lines since states like Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin are also states where Republicans and Democrats are relatively equal in voter registration. Turnout will play a critical role in this election, and the party that gets their vote out could have the edge on Election Day.

Authored by Andrew Chen via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Cyber threat actors from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been implicated in multiple breaches of networks associated with federal government agencies and departments, according to a report from the national cybersecurity agency.

“Over the past four years, at least 20 networks associated with Government of Canada agencies and departments have been compromised by PRC cyber threat actors,” said the National Cyber Threat Assessment 2025-2026, released Oct. 30 by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

The centre identifies China as the top threat actor targeting Canada, noting that its cyber operations are “second to none” in scale, technique, and ambition. Beijing’s objectives include espionage, intellectual property theft, malign influence, and transnational repression, the centre says. 

While the report highlights China’s hacking of 20 federal government networks in the past four years, information elsewhere in the report shows that Chinese hackers have had access to multiple government networks longer than that. The report says that Chinese agents have compromised Canadian government networks over the past five years, collecting communications and other valuable information.

“While all known federal government compromises have been resolved, it is very likely that the actors responsible for these intrusions dedicated significant time and resources to learn about the target networks,” the report reads.

At a press conference on Oct. 30, Caroline Xavier, chief of the Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE), would not  comment on the details of the breaches, but said mitigation measures had been “effective.”

“The key message for us—when there are incidents that occur—is really being focused on ensuring [we] minimize the impact to the government department that may have been compromised. And that is exactly where our focus has been,” she told reporters. “We do feel that the measures were taken to be able to mitigate any of the risks, and to address the incidents in an effective manner.”

The cyber centre is hosted within CSE, Canada’s electronic spy agency, which is responsible for collecting signals intelligence and defending against cyberattacks.

China Targets

In addition to federal agencies, provincial and territorial governments are also seen as valuable targets for Beijing, the report said, noting that these governments hold decision-making power over regional trade and commerce, including the extraction of critical minerals and other natural resources.

Xavier said this targeting indicates Beijing is a “sophisticated, consistent, and persistent actor,” and that Canada needs to address the threat with a more comprehensive approach.

“We have work to do as a nation, to continue to work, in particular with the provinces, territories, indigenous communities, because we recognize that we’re all vulnerable, or we all could be vulnerable, and we really want to continue to raise Canada’s cyber resilience,” she said.

The cyber centre also echoed previous reports from various human rights groups, warning that Beijing’s transnational repression has primarily targeted five specific communities, referred to by the regime as the “five poisons.” These include Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, supporters of Taiwanese independence, and pro-democracy activists.

“PRC actors very likely facilitate transnational repression by monitoring and harassing these groups online and tracking them using cyber surveillance,” the report said. “For example, the PRC has been publicly linked to cyber espionage operations against the Uyghur minority group, including members living in Canada, using spear phishing emails and spyware.”

Other Countries Named

Other state-backed threat actors highlighted in the cyber centre report include Russia, Iran, and India.

Russia’s cyber operations are characterized as “a multi-layered strategy” that combines conventional cyber espionage and computer network attacks with disinformation. Its primary goal is to enhance Russia’s global status while undermining democratic institutions in Canada and among its allies.

A specific case cited in the report involves a breach detected by Microsoft in January, where a Russian state-sponsored cyber threat actor known as Midnight Blizzard accessed the company’s cloud-based enterprise email service.

The group infiltrated correspondence between Microsoft and government officials in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Initially, the actors sought information about Russia itself, but later used personal data and credentials from the emails to gain access to Microsoft customer systems.

Meanwhile, the report said Iran has been expanding its cyberattacks to western countries amid its ongoing military conflict with Israel.

“Iran has taken advantage of its back-and-forth cyber confrontation with Israel to improve its cyber espionage and offensive cyber capabilities and hone its information campaigns, which it is now almost certainly deploying against targets in the West,” the report said.

During the press conference, Xavier also identified India as an “emerging threat” to Canada.

“India very likely uses its cyber program to advance its national security imperatives, including espionage, counterterrorism, and the country’s efforts to promote its global status and counter narratives against India and the Indian government,” the report said.

Citing her recent testimony before the foreign interference inquiry, Xavier noted India could potentially “flex those cyber threat actions against Canadians” amid ongoing diplomatic tensions.

Earlier this month, Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, prompting a reciprocal move by India, which also expelled six Canadian diplomats. This dispute arose after the RCMP announced its investigation into criminal activities allegedly involving “agents of the Government of India.” 

‘Ever-Present’ Threat

The Centre for Cyber Security says Canada has entered a new era in which cyber threats are “ever present.”

“Canadians will increasingly feel the impact of cyber incidents that have cascading and disruptive effects on their daily lives,” the report said.

The centre says the threat has expanded as Canadians increasingly rely on online platforms and digital technologies to go about their lives.

“These systems record and process vast amounts of data about us, often over poorly secured or untrustworthy digital networks,” it said.

Aside from the threats from hostile state actors, the centre notes that the cybercrime business model is “underpinned by flourishing online marketplaces” where leaked data is sold along with cyber tools for criminals.