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This is an excellent question that people really need to know more about.When we solve a problem, after a while, we tend to forget what solved the problem and go back to what we used to do that caused the thing to go over the cliff in the first place.That was the 2008 mortgage and financial crisis, as it forgot the lessons of the Great Depression.History up to the Great DepressionIn the 1920’s, when the economy was booming and it seemed like the party would never stop, banks lent out a ton of money on credit, with the presumption that all that money would be paid back and that there was sufficient collateral to cover it.Except, there wasn’t.One of the biggest assets that people might own that a bank could recover is real property. As Will Rogers once noted: “Buy land. They ain’t makin’ any more of the stuff.” Real property was something that pretty much always appreciated in value.Prior to the early 1900’s, most people didn’t own their own homes. Most people rented. Many lived in tenements and apartments in cities, or lived as tenants on farms in rural areas. Land speculators often bought what was left of the government land grants as the frontier closed.But, in the 1920’s, that began to change as banks felt more confident in lending credit for new construction. There were significant speculation bubbles. People bought property and built homes on future credit that wasn’t based on anything but hope.And as the stock market ticked ever higher and higher, banks bet on it. With the deposit money of their customers.And then the Stock Market Crash of 1929 hit.Banks that were significantly overleveraged and undercapitalized were hit hard. Many just failed, and those who had their deposits at banks that became insolvent just lost everything. There was no deposit insurance. If your bank went under, you were screwed out of your entire savings.And if you lost your job, that meant you also lost any means of continuing to pay back that home loan.Additionally, there were suddenly vast quantities of new construction for sale… that nobody could afford any longer. That drove down property values everywhere.Suddenly, your property that was worth $10,000 last year might now only be worth $5,000. But you might still owe $8,000 - what we call “underwater.” If you default or declare bankruptcy, the bank loses. And you’re out on the street.And then, what could the bank do with the house? How could they sell it? Nobody was buying. So, the bank suddenly has a ton of illiquid assets.More foreclosures in a neighborhood continues to lower the property values further, and the destructive cycle just ends up repeating itself.The Hoover administration tried economic protectionism. At the administration’s pushing, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, which imposed schedules of high tariffs on over twenty thousand types of imported goods, to protect American business, by golly.It backfired spectacularly and greatly exacerbated the worsening Depression.Weather conditions didn’t help. A severe drought ravaged the Midwest and Great Plains starting in 1930. Farmers had been using what in retrospect were poor farming practices, tearing down line fences and forest windbreaks and not planting cover crops for winters. The thin layer of good topsoil in the Great Plains turned to dust and became an ecological nightmare.Farms started going under as crops failed. The Smoot-Hawley tariffs only made things worse.Additionally, the money supply dried up. The banks that survived, like J.P. Morgan Chase, just turned off the credit spigot to stay afloat. They stopped lending. Why? Again: illiquid assets. The banks were holding on to all these properties and other assets that they couldn’t sell. And people didn’t trust the banks because so many had lost everything depositing their savings there. Because the banks couldn’t sell anything they had, and nobody would give them any cash, they didn’t have any money to give out.Part of the problem was the gold standard. Under the Federal Reserve Act, at least 40% of the money in circulation had to be backed by gold reserves held by the federal government. So, there was no modern tool of being able to print more money to help increase liquidity.On top of that, gold became more expensive. Mortgages often had clauses that allowed banks to demand repayment in gold because of the gold standard. By 1932, that resulted in a disparity in payment between the dollar and the value of gold that meant that if a debtor was forced to repay in gold, it could cost him as much as $1.69 for every dollar he owed. This led to more bankruptcies and foreclosures still.Because of the tariffs, the lack of money supply, the collapse of agriculture, and lack of consumer spending, rampant deflation initially set in. This made exported American goods increasingly more expensive for overseas importers, even where other nations had not instituted retaliatory tariffs of their own. Manufacturing began to collapse. The steel industry followed.And the Depression spiraled out of control.When Roosevelt took over from Hoover in 1932, the nation was becoming increasingly desperate.The New DealRoosevelt ran on a radical new idea that he called “The New Deal.” The premise was that the government would intervene in the economy and prop it up through deficit spending and government borrowing. The New Deal would create government programs to put people back to work and get people back to farming and building things, and that eventually, once people got back on their feet, the government could take those supports out.Various New Deal reforms were leveled at the financial sector to try to get the credit flowing again.One reform was put on the banks directly: the Glass-Steagall Act. One of the problems with the banking crisis was that banks could gamble with depositor’s money. The Glass-Steagall Act separated investment banks from commercial banks. Investment banks are gamblers. These deal with stock and bonds and venture capital and hedge funds and Wall Street. Commercial banks are the Savings and Loan where you put your nest egg. The Glass Steagall Act put a firewall between the two. The idea was that Wall Street could melt to the ground and Main Street wouldn’t go with it.Keep this in mind. It will be important later.Another was to protect depositors. Commercial banks would be required to pay into a new Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation: the FDIC, which would make sure that depositors would get paid back if the bank collapsed. That encouraged people to trust banks again. People would deposit their money, and banks could use that money to start giving out loans again.A third was to help reduce the risk of default on certain types of loans through surety agreements. Sureties had been around forever: they’re a promise to pay a debt if the original debtor defaults.The Federal government aimed these programs at home loans in particular, to try to reduce the homelessness problem. And so, in 1938 with the National Housing Act, the government formed the Federal National Mortgage Association, or FNMA. FNMA, or “Fannie Mae,” would buy the mortgages from the banks, who would continue to “service” the mortgages. From the perspective of the consumer, it looked just like their ordinary transaction: get a loan from the bank, pay the bank. The bank kept some money for “service fees,” and the Feds took over the loan, and importantly: the risk of default. This created a secondary market for mortgages for the first time in history.But Fannie would only buy that mortgage if it met certain criteria, such as debt to income ratios, term of the loan, and more. If banks wanted to make other loans, that was fine, but Fannie wouldn’t buy them.And the program basically worked. Banks started lending again. Credit slowly started to thaw out. Banks started getting more liquidity in their balance sheets. People started being able to buy homes again.After World War II, the housing market took off again, fueled in part by the GI Bill and a push for suburbanization and the creation of easily duplicated, cheap ranch houses on a standardized template.But in the background still driving things along was always Fannie Mae and the prime 30 year fixed-rate mortgage, which had become as much a part of the standardized American experience as baseball. Housing prices rose steadily home ownership became a stable part of the American economy. Virtually every person in the country could see a viable path to owning their own home.By the 1960’s, FNMA owned more than 90% of the residential mortgages in the United States and individual home ownership had risen to the highest levels ever recorded. This led to the greatest expansion of the middle class in history.So, of course, like all wildly successful government programs, we had to fix it.PrivatizationIn 1954, FNMA was semi-privatized into a public-private hybrid where the government owned the preferred stock (with better voting rights within the corporation,) and the public held the common stock (which gave dividends, but inferior voting rights).And in 1968, Fannie Mae was privatized entirely, with a small slice of it (known as Ginnie Mae) carved off to maintain Federal Housing Authority loans, Veterans Administration loans, and Farmer’s Home Administration mortgage insurance. Because Fannie Mae had a near monopoly on the secondary mortgage market, the government created the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation to compete with it: Freddie Mac.By 1981, Fannie and Freddie were doing well as private companies, and Fannie came up with a great idea that had been done in limited settings: pass-through mortgage derivatives. They would bundle up various mortgages and sell them as a type of bond to investors. Investors loved the idea. The housing market had been extremely stable for nearly fifty years and offered a modest, but highly reliable return. And so the commercial home loan mortgage backed security was born.Keep this in mind. It will be important later.The Savings and Loan CrisisBy the early 1980’s, the economy had been stable for 30 years (more or less,) and thanks to the Glass-Steagall Act, commercial banks were doing okay even with the “stagflation” of the 1970’s. Home prices continued to rise about on par with wage growth.But one type of commercial banks, the Savings and Loan banks, wanted to do better than okay. S&L’s were the kind of bank in It’s a Wonderful Life. S&L’s were specifically singled out in federal legislation, like credit unions, for a single purpose: to promote and facilitate home ownership, small businesses, car loans, that sort of stuff.A business-friendly Congress agreed. They passed two laws in 1980 (signed by Jimmy Carter) and 1982 (Signed by Ronald Reagan) that allowed banks to offer a variety of new savings and lending options, including the Adjustable Rate Mortgage, and dramatically reduced the oversight of these banks.Adjustable rate mortgages work by locking in a fixed rate for a short term, and then after that initial term, the mortgage rate would re-adjust every additional term after that. If the prime interest rates set by the Federal Reserve stayed high, lenders would get hammered.But S&L’s had a fix in mind for consumers: just keep refinancing your home every time the first term is up. Home prices would just always continue to rise, right? They could collect closing costs every couple of years, and consumers remained essentially chained to them in debt with a steady stream of revenue that would always be secured if something happened. It was perfect.Keep these types of mortgages in mind. It will be important later.By the mid-1980’s, the lack of oversight allowed S&L’s to start making riskier and riskier decisions, offering certificates of deposit with wild interest rates, as much as eight to ten percent. They were exempted from FDIC oversight, while still keeping deposits federally insured (what could go wrong there, right?)And then the Federal Reserve, in an effort to reduce inflation, raised short-term interest rates, which sent ripple effects through these S&L’s, who had been made very vulnerable to that particular issue through these bad decisions, lack of appropriate capitalization, and overpromising depositors.By 1992, almost a third of savings and loan banks nationwide had collapsed.This crisis led to the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), which put back some of the same oversights that had been taken off because people wanted to make more money, particularly better capitalization rules (which were tied to risk,) increased deposit insurance premiums and brought back some FDIC oversight, and reduced these banks’ portfolio caps in non-residential mortgages.Keep this in mind. It will be important later.The Repeal of Glass-SteagallRemember how back in the 30’s, in the midst of the Great Depression, we instituted that firewall between investment banks and commercial banks?Again, it worked so well, we had to fix it.Starting in the 1960’s, the federal regulators began to start to allow commercial banks to get back into the securities game again. The list was limited, and was supposed to stay in relatively safe stuff.This accelerated under Reagan’s policy of deregulation, and continued under Clinton in the 1990’s. By 1999, Bill Clinton declared that Glass-Steagall no longer served any meaningful purpose, and most people had declared it dead well before that. The law was officially repealed in 1999 with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.Immediately, investment and commercial banks start merging again. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Citibank, all of these investment banks start buying out the commercial banks or merging.And there’s a culture difference between those.Remember: investment banks are gamblers. These are the Wall Street guys. They’re risk takers. They’re hedge fund managers. These are your Gordon Gekko type guys. Commercial banks are Main Street guys. They’re generally conservative, George Bailey types.And the investment banker culture won out over the course of the 2000’s. George Bailey starts snorting coke and putting on Ray Bans with a blazer and jeans.Sub-Prime, NINJA, and ARM LoansIn the early 1990’s, affordable housing started to become a greater and greater issue. George H.W. Bush signed legislation in late 1992 amending Fannie and Freddie’s charters to push them to make loans to people with lesser means than the traditional prime criteria. The Clinton Administration continued pushing Fannie and Freddie to accept more low and moderate income earners.That meant taking on riskier loans.The Clinton administration put rules in place in 2000 to curb predatory lending practices, and rules that disallowed those risky loans from counting towards their low-income targets.The Bush administration took those predatory lending rules off in 2004, and allowed those risky, “sub-prime” mortgages to count towards the low-income targets set by Housing and Urban Development.Remember those ARM mortgages?Heh, heh. This is getting long, and you probably glossed over that, didn’t you? I told you it was going to be important.Banks started making riskier and riskier loans, often those ARM loans. They could meet their HUD targets and make tons of money. And again: the gravy train was endless, right? The housing market had not lost value for over fifty years, even in the recessions of the 70’s and 80’s.So, they put more people in houses. Bigger houses. More expensive houses. The economy was doing good. New construction was hot. Contractors couldn’t build the McMansions fast enough.Banks started a race to the bottom with these sub-prime loans, getting all the way to NINJA loans: No Income, No Job, No Assets required. You’re a homeless person selling Etsy products out of your car? You’re already prequalified on a quarter-million subdivision home with a quarter-acre. Congratulations.As long as you could afford the payments, you were in.De-regulationIn the early 2000’s, the Bush administration wanted to keep the economy going. There was a low-level recession from March 2001 to November 2001 following the dot-com crash. The administration lifted a number of securities and financial sector oversight rules. One of those rules was about capitalization.Remember that? I told you that was going to be important.Capitalization requirements are how much reserve cash a bank needs to keep on hand to prevent collapse if something happens, against their liability sheets. Remember: that’s how banks got in trouble before the Great Depression and again right before the Savings and Loan Crisis. They took on too many liabilities and didn’t have enough capital to actually pay it all out.The Bush administration relaxed the rules on required capitalization and what assets could count as capital. Some of those assets turned out not to be very useful.Collateralized Debt Obligations and the Mortgage Backed SecurityRemember, back in 1981, when Fannie starts issuing those mortgage backed securities, re-selling them as bonds with a low, but reliable interest rate?That gets more complicated after 2004–2005 with the increased use of a financial tool called the collateralized debt obligation. Basically, a CDO is just a promise to pay investors in a sequence based on the cash flow from something the CDO invests in. The rate of return was tied to how risky the CDO was.In the 70’s and 80’s, CDOs were pretty safe, mundane things. They were basically like index funds; they invested in a lot of stuff and did okay. But by the mid-2000’s, CDOs were becoming riskier and riskier, while providing more and more reward. CDOs bought up mortgages like crazy, because they had increasingly higher interest rates as the subprime mortgages started taking off.But people were nervous about investing solely in these high-risk CDOs. And so, investment banks that bought up those mortgage-backed securities started to bundle together some high-risk mortgages with some regular, low-risk mortgages and promising that they were safer.And then some investment banks started to lie about how many of those high-risk mortgages were in them. Why? Again: the housing market was super-stable and always going up. Those loans only looked high-risk on paper, right? I mean, those debtors could always just keep refinancing every couple of years.So banks bought up those assets and added them to their capitalization sheets.You see it, right? You see the problem here? Not yet?Keep this in mind. It will be important in just a minute.The CollapseI remember being in college in the early 2000’s, and asking the loan officer at our local bank how some of the people I knew were making maybe $10–12 an hour could afford these massive homes and boats and jet skis and campers. My parents were teachers; they weren’t doing bad, but we couldn’t afford all that and I knew they were doing better than some of those people. The loan officer shook his head and said, “They can’t. They can afford the payments.”Some of those people didn’t have furniture in their homes. If they had a party, they rented furniture for a couple days. I’m serious. That was a thing. Many of them were in deep, crippling credit card debt, paying off the balances of one with another, and justifying it with the idea that it would be okay when the next raise kicked in.It was a classic speculation bubble.Then in late 2006–2007, that bubble burst.The housing market became oversupplied. People stopped buying the new construction and the existing homes as much. And home values started to drop.And suddenly, because home values plateaued and then dropped, so too did the little bit of equity that many of these purchasers, in debt up to their eyeballs, had in their homes. Without more equity, they couldn’t refinance. And because they could’t refinance, those ARM loans or other loans kicked in, and the interest rates on them skyrocketed.And suddenly, they couldn’t make the payments anymore.And then they went into default on their mortgages.Followed by foreclosure.And often bankruptcy.It turned into a vicious cycle. Once one or two neighbors end up losing their homes in foreclosure, it affects the property values of everyone else around those properties like a contagion. Healthier borrowers started to become impacted as property values declined and now they couldn’t refinance.In 2007, lenders foreclosed on 79% more homes than in 2006: 1.3 million foreclosures. In 2008, this skyrocketed another 81% still: 2.3 million. By August of 2008, nearly one in ten mortgages nationally were in default and foreclosure proceedings. By one year later, this had risen to over 14% nationally.The RecessionRemember, the financial sector had heavily invested in all of those housing market securities. They thought they were safe. They thought that the housing market would never go anywhere but up. They built their whole foundation on it.And they had relied on those securities to meet their capitalization requirements.Securities that suddenly turned out to be nearly worthless.Huge banks ran out of liquid cash almost immediately. This is what happened to Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and more. They were suddenly holding on to billions upon billions of dollars of assets that were either worthless, or completely frozen. They couldn’t sell the bits of stuff that was even worth anything.And because their assets weren’t liquid, they didn’t have money to lend anymore.And that lack of credit is what grinds the economy to a halt.That impacted every sector of business in the United States. Which impacted every sector of business in the world. And that meant that businesses started having to lay people off because they couldn’t get the money to keep paying them.And then because those people lost their jobs, they started to default on their mortgages. Which rippled through the CDO market again.This was why it was so critical for the Federal Reserve to buy those toxic assets and provide the banks with liquid cash in their place. They had to get the credit flowing again to re-start the gears of the economy. Without it, we almost certainly would have seen a full repeat of the Great Depression.And that brings us to today.That’s the abbreviated, oversimplified explanation. It’s more complicated than this, and there’s other factors that contributed, but that’s kind of the main story in basic terms. That’s roughly how 10 million homes went into foreclosure.And we still haven’t fully recovered. Over twice as many people rent as opposed to own. Less than one-third of people who have lost a home in foreclosure in the last decade will be able to repurchase another again. Roughly 2/3ds of those people who lost their homes have so damaged their credit that they will never qualify again. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions more, were so emotionally traumatized by the experience that they simply refuse to go through it again.And that number of renters to owners is substantially higher for my generation, the Millenials, who have never seen any substantial portion of the post-2008 recovery. We still haven’t made up the wages that would allow us to save enough to purchase, even setting aside the massive increase in student debt we carry.75% of my generation wants to own a home. Less than 35% do.And, in case reading this wasn’t chilling enough for you, the present administration has been lifting some of the exact rules and regulations that were put into place after the 2008 collapse that were lifted in 2004 that were put in place after the 1980’s collapse after those were lifted. Because it worked so well the first two times.Mostly Standard Addendum and Disclaimer: read this before you comment.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, et cetera and BNBR violation and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.Look, this is pretty oversimplified. Ph.D. theses have been written about this. I’m trying to make it at least remotely accessible to those with the patience to read it. Don’t be pedantic about it, please?Getting cute with me about my commenting rules and how my answer doesn’t follow my rules and blah, blah, whine, blah is getting old. Stay on topic or you’ll get to watch the debate from the outside.Same with whining about these rules and something something free speech and censorship.If you want to argue and you’re not sure how to not be a dick about it, just post a picture of a cute baby animal instead, all right? Your displeasure and disagreement will be duly noted. Pinkie swear.If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.Debate responsibly.

This is a long answer that will summarize all the testimonies and rebut most of the misleading information.Most of the people have covered the fact that this wasn’t an official hearing, it was more like a GOP clubhouse meeting with a GOP Pennsylvania legislator. No one was under oath.It seems that they held a similar meeting in Arizona with similar results. It’s performatively trying to look official to give more credence to their conspiracy theories and misinformation since they clearly don’t have the evidence to press forward in court.This was a superspreader event. They attempt to spread misinformation masquerading as official testimony…and no one wore a mask in a small hotel ballroom.Let’s look at Giuliani’s testimony, first.To summarize in advance, it’s full of either lies or ignorance mixed with misinformation.During the course of this election, we’ve come pretty close to losing our right to free speech. There’s been censorship that I’ve never seen before, of an incredible nature by big tech, big networks, big companies.This is utter nonsense. “Big tech” can’t censor you, by definition your right to free speech is protected from the government. Facebook has been removing fake posts, while Twitter has been labeling them as misinformation (but still showing them). This is Victimhood talk, and pathetic victimhood talk on top of it. What I’m reading here is that the Trumpists don’t want government out of business, they want to regulate media companies to only tell their truth.You know there was a fierce debate over whether we should have mail-in ballots in the first place.It’s so bizarre the different factual universes we find ourselves in. We’ve always had mail-in ballots. Every state had a way to mail in ballots for decades. Several states have exclusively mail in ballots. PRESIDENT TRUMP ALWAYS VOTES BY MAIL! This narrative has been invented by the GOP who have spend decades stacking the deck through dozens of legalized voter suppression measures.[1][1][1][1] They knew that voter turnout would be increased significantly by mail in ballots and have been eroding public trust in the process that the President himself utilizes in order to stage this last ditch attack on Democracy.Many scholars, many experts, always felt that mail-in ballots were very dangerous because they’re very easy to forge, it leads to more defrauding. We will warned by Justice Souter, among others. We will warned by President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, in a report that they did on how to make elections more secure.I couldn’t find what Souter said other than a decision that he would have upheld restrictions in Texas on helping the elderly cast their ballots out of fears of ballot harvesting.[2][2][2][2] Also, The Carter Foundation found the exact opposite thing that Giuliani has claimed.[3][3][3][3]“I urge political leaders across the country to take immediate steps to expand vote-by-mail and other measures that can help protect the core of American democracy – the right of our citizens to vote,” said former President Carter.Giuliani continues:Witnesses we present are going to first show you that, in the case of Philadelphia, and in the case of Allegheny County, and one or two other counties, the mail-in ballots that were received, were not inspected at all by any Republican, they were hidden from Republicans. In the case of Philadelphia and Allegheny County, I can’t be absolutely certain, but I do believe the witnesses will show that a Republican never got to see a single ballot.This is directly contradicted by their lawyers:The transcript from one of Trump’s legal challenges is fascinating. The judge trying to get to the bottom of whether they WERE allowed to have observers:Judge : “Are your observers in the counting room?”Trump lawyer: "There's a non-zero number of people in the room.” pic.twitter.com/CU4VbqIfj4— Man vs Baby (@mattcoyney) November 6, 2020Not just in this case, but in every one.Giuliani continues to complain about absentee ballots not being a problem normally because it’s acceptable to have a little bit of fraud, in his book (I mean, to be fair, there’s likely always a small amount of fraud, these elections are a big deal).That’s a huge number of votes, 65% of the vote had been cast. Under normal circumstances, like if this were a fair media, your state would have been called for Trump. Virginia was called with 10% of the vote, it turned out to be separated by 1%.I think we may have actually won Virginia, but that’s another battle. Michigan, we were ahead by 300,000 votes, Wisconsin, more. Georgia, we were down to 90% and ahead. What are the odds that they all switched overnight? They just switched by the next day.So the interesting thing here is that he’s playing into the other narrative that the media doesn’t determine the winner.The problem is that he’s he’s right, he’s just digging a deeper hole into reality.Virginia has gone blue for the past decade, and not by a little. The past 3 presidential elections leaned heavily red in the initial counting, because those small precincts all over the state are able to finish and report quickly. The much larger precincts and counties in Northern Virginia (Loudoun, Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, Prince William) as well as Richmond and Chesapeake are heavily blue and take much longer to finish processing. That last 1% of precincts has more than half the vote in the state. This is not unusual.With more mail-in ballots than usual, many states accepting the ballots for as long as a week after the election so long as they’re postmarked before the end of election day. It didn’t help that the GOP sabotaged the post office, either, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters.[4][4][4][4] Pennsylvania, in particular, and these legislatures, in particular, made it illegal to validate and count the ballots before the election was over causing this delay in counting.Nothing switched overnight. The ballots were already cast, they were just being counted.The media caused this complaint, and their “calling” of the election doesn’t mean anything, legally. The results are certified by the states and then they send electors to vote officially. Frankly, I think the media should cut the crap with this play-by-play election commentary since it plays right into the hands of those trying to erode trust in the Fourth Estate.We have calculated, and the evidence will show, that there were 682,770 mail-in ballots that were entered into your votes, in just Allegheny County and in Philadelphia, that were not observed by any single Republican.This would be news…if they did have evidence…which they don’t. They’ve repeatedly said they did, but haven’t presented ANY evidence of it. They even removed this part of it (the number of ballots keeps changing daily, as well) from their lawsuits two weeks ago.[5][5][5][5] They’re most likely taking the inch (they found that they were kept too far away) and taking a mile (THEY WEREN’T ALLOWED TO OBSERVE ANYTHING!).[6][6][6][6]Once again, they’ve presented zero, zip, zilch, evidence that 600,000+ ballots were verified without observation.I’ll give you one other enormously puzzling statistic. You sent out in the State of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1,823, 148 absentee or mail-in ballots. You received back 1.4 million, approximately. However, in the count for President, you counted 2.5 million. I don’t know what accounts for that 700,000 difference between the number of ballots you sent out and the number of ballots that ended up in the count. That number, 2,589,242 was on your government website until yesterday. And yesterday, it was removed without explanation.There’s 3 things wrong with this statement:The first number cited was for the primaryThe larger number cited was for the 2020 presidential electionThe numbers weren’t removed from the website (You can see them here: Pennsylvania Elections - Summary Results)I’ll repeat, Both of these different sets of numbers are still on the website and you can see them.Fact check: Pennsylvania mail-in ballot claim mixes primary, general election dataHe throws out a bunch of other numbers:22,686 mail-in ballots that were returned on the day they were mailed. (Pennsylvania allows you to request and submit in person early, no issues there)How about 32,591 were returned the day after they were mailed? (same as above)20,000 were returned before they were mailed (this comes from an “anonymous source” at epoch times (a right wing propaganda source) that posted screenshots of a datasource that’s not available and is formatted improperly from the site…My guess is that there was a placeholder or a clerical data entry error)8,021 ballots from dead people (but then he changes it to 30,000 in the next sentence) A number of news sources have looked into these finding no evidence outside of a few small incidents involving registered Republicans.[7]4,984 mail-in ballots that were never requested. (This is perfectly legal in Pennsylvania for parties to request ballots for people)[8]I can go on. Everything Giuliani brings up in his little tirade is either blatantly false, intentionally misleading, or easily explicable but easy to manipulate for people who refuse to listen.Before I continue, let me remind you: this hearing was held after nearly every single lawsuit was thrown out because there was no evidence of anything wrong. That even their assertion that the observers weren’t able to see things that they initially gave an injunction to allow the observers to be closer, was rejected on appeal because they weren’t restricted arbitrarily, they were restricted by a highly contagious virus that kills or cripples many that are infected.The “hearing” continues with different witnesses, mostly volunteers who were observers.Justin Kweder tries to establish they didn’t have meaningful access to observe things, but, again, the access was there, it was just not over people’s shoulders, and nothing was done in secret. His claims apply to all observers, so shenanigans could have occurred for Trump. Nevermind that the counters are also working in teams to prevent mistakes, as well…I find it disturbing that they’d allege that these volunteers would be able to, and willing to, stuff hundreds of thousands of ballots with hundreds of observers in the room.Kim Peterson makes similar allegations, but is inconsistent claiming that she was either 10, 15, 20, or 200 feet away from people, without mentioning that there were people all around the corral which were 10, 15, or 20 feet away from the people on the other side .She also reveals that there was closed circuit TV on so that the observers could see everything from a distance. She was disappointed in the quality — she just wanted to do her civic duty. The precious snowflake.Let’s summarize, briefly the first two. Some observers were far away from some of the counters…but there were cameras and monitors all over so that you can see everything.Leah Hoops says this:Not only was private grant money used from the center for tech and life owned by Google and Mark Zuckerberg, but pop-up voter sites were also approved. These pop-up voter sites were placed in heavily Democrat cities, including Chester and Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, in which case the grant money from the CTCL was used to pay for electioneering. It was literally a one-stop shop. Walk in, apply, get your ballot, submit, and you were out the door. But where this didn’t take place was in heavily Republican and independent areas.The reality is that areas with lots of people tend to be blue, proportionately. Areas with fewer people proportionally tend to be red. If you were going to put a pop up location anywhere, why would you put it in the middle of a cow pasture?Her complaints might be true, but they’re founded in nonsense, like arguing that Gravity isn’t fair.We have signed affidavits under penalty of perjury, which should be consideration enough to know that this is a very serious issueJust because you tell the truth doesn’t make it relevant. Her claims about not being able to observe were heard but dismissed after initially granting an injunction. The distance was not arbitrary, and accomodations were made for access.She also claims that they weren’t able to see the ballot signature validation room until an injunction was put in place. I found no record of any such injunction, unless she’s referring to the injunction that was put in place requiring them to be allowed within 6 feet, that was then rescinded on appeal.[9][9][9][9]Gregory Stenstrom did his best to be charming, but starts off saying it was his first time. He claims to have memorized the process manual, but he clearly skipped the training session.First, he claims they gave actual ballots instead of provisional ballots to people who claimed that they had requested mail in ballots. He doesn’t understand the process because if they had shown up as requesting mail in ballots, they would have been in the database. They didn’t, so they got actual ballots. Never mind this contradicts what other poll watchers saw regarding the treatment of black voters.[10][10][10][10]Then he claims that he wasn’t allowed into the counting center at first, which is valid because you have to be certified to be allowed in. Remember the chaos in at the Michigan counting facility when people not authorized to be there tried to storm in?He then claims there was a “forensically destructive process” with how the ballots were coming in…making claims that people “weren’t observed” and USB drives were being shuffled around. Ballots being moved around, votes being updated (50,000 for biden…because they organize the ballots and then run them…). He claimed that he spoke with a sheriff and the sheriff did nothing.He constantly makes emotional appeals and seems interested in the process…but rather than actually be a part of the process he’d rather “just ask questions.” — A key tactic in spreading conspiracy theories. His entire testimony seemed to revolve around ignorance of the process and drawing long conclusions from incomplete understandings of what was going on.The star witness seems to be Colonel Phil Waldron. He claimed no expertise or evidence or observation of the counting process, so he had no way to make any real claims about observers, but that didn’t stop him from continuing the claims the other witnesses made. He did claim expertise in information warfare that he took part in towards the end of his 30 year career.Consider a Colonel to be similar to a Project Manager at a very large company. They usually have several teams working underneath them and they’re either happy where they are, they’re not driven enough to advance, or not political enough…or they’re just not good enough. When you get to that point you’re in charge of people that know what they’re talking about and you just have to have a vague sense of it, it’s not required that you actually be or have the qualifications of a white hat hacker…and it shows in his testimony that he’s been at a distance from this stuff.He was clearly brought in by Trump's team and nearly everything he says is irrelevant and speculative. He claims, without evidence, for example, that 600,000 ballots were counted without observation. He insinuates, that the late Hugo Chavez had his undead hands on this election.I know there have been statements to the contrary but I personally debriefed the son of a Cuban intelligence officer who had first hand knowledge of Hugo Chavez’s family members who told him not to worry about the populous threat against Maduro’s election in Venezuela.Actual people that were able to analyze these things and verify the machines were trustworthy didn’t find anything…but Mr. Waldron personally could talk to people who guaranteed it. And let’s be clear, he’s tracing this “DNA” history back to before 2010…6 years before Trump won in Pennsylvania and many other states that use the same machines.All of this is similarly pointless conjecture since we have the paper ballots that we can audit.He says some things that make someone at all familiar with security wonder about his qualifications:And just so you probably all are aware, on 30 September, an election storage facility was robbed in your state. 30 USB devices were stolen and a laptop. Those USB devices more than likely had encryption devices and you just heard another previous witness talk about the nonstandard use of the USB storage devices.Yes, a facility was robbed. No, the USB devices didn’t have nonsensical “Encryption devices” on them, they had ballot layout templates for the machines to be programmed.[11][11][11][11] The machines are all sealed and those layouts are easily acquired elsewhere. The ballot layouts are also public information that are mailed out to everyone in advance of even the ballots being mailed out for remote voting.As a matter of fact, one of our white hat hackers previously discovered a malware that’s present on the servers that captures every log in and every password of every operator down to the precinct level that logs into one of these systems. That’s just like giving the password to your bank account out, putting it on the dark web. It’s not going to be there very long.There’s no context here. “Previously” could mean any time before hand. It looks like he hasn’t touched these things since 2010…They’ve most likely updated these servers since then, and if they found this “a malware” (No one talks like this in infosec circles) they probably fixed it…but we don’t know. But because of the way that he talks about these things it’s clear that he doesn’t have much insight and is simply trying to “just ask questions”.There’s a manufacturer specified rate of speed that a number of ballots can be imaged and processed. These spike anomalies in this chart really show where for us to look forensically to actually determine what happened with these votes. Our team has looked at these systems and there are a dozen ways to interdict the voting process, whether it’s mail in ballot manipulations, they can scan and allocate blank votes, whether it was a 70,000 votes left in the back room. There’s just lots of ways to interdict these systems.It’s like he doesn’t understand that:They don’t have to upload them as they run the ballotsThey can have more than one machine goingThey can release the reports whenever they feel like itMost of those votes are mail in ballots which haven’t been used to this extent in previous elections due to obvious circumstances, so this process is going to be differentThese aren’t votes coming in…these are votes that are being counted. There’s nothing unusual about this other than the fact that Pennsylvania didn’t allow early ballot counting to take place.This is just a purported “expert” “just asking questions” and sowing distrust.Gary Phelman says he has a “poll watcher’s certificate” that he says is good in every location in Philadelphia. He said he was denied entry. He claims it’s because his was yellow. He tries to claim they weren’t wearing masks, he definitely wasn’t wearing his bandana properly, however. A video of his encounter was here:A poll watcher in Philly was just wrongfully prevented from entering the polling place#StopTheSteal pic.twitter.com/iJTFtRk0Id— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) November 3, 2020Even though he is complaining about this now, it was cleared up pretty quickly:(Feeley is a spokesperson for the city commissioners) More on this can be seen here: Right-wing propagandists try to concoct a Philadelphia election scandalThis was an isolated incident that was cleared up on election day…yet here he is testifying about it.Dave Stisogis testified about a few things. He’s a lawyer and worked on campaigns for several candidates as well as running for office several times.First he complained about the processes and rule changes and how difficult it was for him to get people accredited (which applies to both sides).Then he talked about how he was observing the mail in ballot process about how they were separating the secrecy envelopes from the ballots with the cutting machines.His entire testimony can pretty much be summed up with this sentence:We had really no concept of what was going onThe Dunning-Kruger was strong with this one. He uses his credentials to imply that he is familiar with how it should work without establishing that he actually understands how it should work before saying flat out here that he doesn’t and has no intention of learning.At one point he called the fact that they had to “flatten out ballots” “obscene.” Which is a very…bizarre term for it. He says:People would come in with big armloads of ballots from the other room. Apparently with no providence, no explanation of where they came fromThis has been debunked to death. It’s a multistep process with observers at every step. Just because you can’t see everything doesn’t mean there isn’t meaningful access to it. If you did “have a concept of what was going on” you probably wouldn’t have expected it to be narrarrated to you.But there was absolutely no providence to what was going onHe likes the word providence.I had about 25 other affidavits from other folks that had joined me during the time that had been part of this that describe essentially the same thing over there in Allegheny County, most of whom were attorneys and had been versed on the comings and goings of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which I might suggest, ultimately, the last decision in recanvassing when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ultimately said that it doesn’t matter how far you’re away from the ballots because you don’t have the right to challenge anything, anyway. I read the opinion, and I said to myself, “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court just called off elections in the state of Pennsylvania.”Again, a sworn affidavit might mean that you’re telling the truth, but it doesn’t make it relevant. Just because you’re a lawyer doesn’t mean that you have any insight into how elections work behind the scenes…and I’ve linked to the decision [9], and it doesn’t say what he claims.Next we have Elizabeth Preate Harvey who is full of softball concerns about the process, all of which are rehashes of what’s already been said and completely ephemeral.First, the Montgomery County Republican Committee was not provided meaningful view of the mail-in ballots at any time, despite our requests. Second, we were not provided with regular, detailed information about the mail-in ballots over the course of the election, despite our requests. Third, we still lack complete and detailed information about these ballots despite our written requests.I mean, this is, frankly all bullshit. Mail-in ballots are the same as in person ballots, except with secrecy envelopes. Sample ballots are mailed out prior to the mail in ballots.Second, as testified, you have observers all over the place. The “regular, detailed information” is likely not something that you’re entitled to, however much you wish you were.Third, Public information is available on the Pennsylvania secretary of state website.Since the election, we have received many calls and emails from Republicans with questions about whether their mail-in ballot was counted, expressing concerns that they didn’t request a mail-in ballot, but received one, anyway, that they were made to vote provisional when they shouldn’t have, that they have great concerns about the efficacy of this election.They can check that by calling their office. Clerks all over the country are friendly and very helpful.As touched on above, the Republican party likely requested one on their behalf which is completely legal in PennsylvaniaProvisional ballots are counted if they’re deemed legitimate to vote.In order for this country to have trust in the electoral process, elections must be viewed as open and transparent.I agree, and with social media, and media coverage, this has been the most transparent election in the history of the country.Julie Vahey was the Executive Director of the Montgomery County Republican Committee. She claims no one was allowed to see the mail in verification area…yet the lawsuits never make this assertion.[12][12][12][12]They claim they weren’t close enough to see what was going on. (Neither were the Democratic observers if that was the case). They eventually moved the tables to give better visibility, which she doesn’t mention…just complaints about the process.Over the last ten months, in my role, I’ve spoken to thousands of voters firsthand who have lost faith in the election processes and procedures in Montgomery County and across Pennsylvania as a whole.Over the last ten months…That’s waaaaay before Trump started complaining about mail in ballots. That’s back in February even before the lockdowns hit. That’s a really bizarre time frame.Next we have Barbara Sulitka who is basically an elderly voter and her daughter Cheryl Nudo and son-in-law Charles who is helping her testify. Barbara thinks her vote didn’t count since she got a print out that didn’t have Trump on it. Cheryl thinks scantron forms are a form of voter suppression because old people don’t get technology. (seriously).I’ve never gotten a receipt of who I voted for, and the only thing I could find is that if you did a provisional ballot they give you the id of that ballot so you can track it.[13][13][13][13]Then we have Olivia Jane Winters who told a long tale about how the Chief of elections might have voted twice.Finally we had Gloria Lee Snover who testified that Mail-in ballots were new and confusing…She claimed that they didn’t have access to observe them (which would have been illegal, so why they didn’t file suit about that is strange) and that, without evidence, claimed Democrats had more access and information than she did.Then Trump came on and rambled for 10 minutes adding no evidence to the table since he wasn’t there and had no visibility or expertise on the matter.They let the audience chant “Trump” in a cult-like manner for 5 minutes.The Chairman then pats himself on the back:I think what you’ve just heard guarantees that a hundred years from now, that this is the most important public hearing ever held by this Senate committee.and they lob it back to Trump’s lawyers, who botch the numbers to make it seem like they’re going to flip the election because of all of this pretend fraud.This fake hearing was more like cult-ritual. There were no Democrats present, no testimony from the election officials (many of whom were Republicans), no testimony from anyone but the select few that could try to confirm their biases.The people present were not under oath and some of their testimonies were different from their sworn affidavits. Many of them weren’t trained.The numbers provided were wrong. Their experts weren’t experts.The goal of this is to build up a wall of “Just Asking Questions” and pile on more and more innuendo to try to make it seem like there’s smoke, and therefore fire. Upon closer examination, it’s all just steam. These implications are like a hydra, designed so that if you cut one head off, 2 more pop in their place. Such that books have to be written that no one will read to debunk it all.This is like a travelling revival show. The purpose was to sell snake oil.The only thing that will come of it is more donations to help Trump pay back his debts.Some more viral misinformation debunking:Tracking Viral Misinformation About the 2020 ElectionFootnotes[1] Stacking the deck: How the GOP works to suppress minority voting[1] Stacking the deck: How the GOP works to suppress minority voting[1] Stacking the deck: How the GOP works to suppress minority voting[1] Stacking the deck: How the GOP works to suppress minority voting[2] Absentee ballot dispute reaches Court - SCOTUSblog[2] Absentee ballot dispute reaches Court - SCOTUSblog[2] Absentee ballot dispute reaches Court - SCOTUSblog[2] Absentee ballot dispute reaches Court - SCOTUSblog[3] Carter Center Statement on Voting by Mail for 2020 U.S. Elections[3] Carter Center Statement on Voting by Mail for 2020 U.S. Elections[3] Carter Center Statement on Voting by Mail for 2020 U.S. Elections[3] Carter Center Statement on Voting by Mail for 2020 U.S. Elections[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/05/usps-late-ballots-election/[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/05/usps-late-ballots-election/[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/05/usps-late-ballots-election/[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/05/usps-late-ballots-election/[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lawsuit-pennsylvania/2020/11/15/4aab8048-279b-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lawsuit-pennsylvania/2020/11/15/4aab8048-279b-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lawsuit-pennsylvania/2020/11/15/4aab8048-279b-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lawsuit-pennsylvania/2020/11/15/4aab8048-279b-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html[6] Trump lawsuit seeks to block certification of votes in Allegheny, Philadelphia counties[6] Trump lawsuit seeks to block certification of votes in Allegheny, Philadelphia counties[6] Trump lawsuit seeks to block certification of votes in Allegheny, Philadelphia counties[6] Trump lawsuit seeks to block certification of votes in Allegheny, Philadelphia counties[7] Man arrested for voter fraud in Luzerne County[8] Your Pa. election questions answered: I received a mail-in ballot application but never requested one. What should I do?[9] https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000176-0ae5-d692-a977-1effb4f90000[9] https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000176-0ae5-d692-a977-1effb4f90000[9] https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000176-0ae5-d692-a977-1effb4f90000[9] https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000176-0ae5-d692-a977-1effb4f90000[10] Being a poll observer in West Philly made me really angry. Here’s why. | Opinion[10] Being a poll observer in West Philly made me really angry. Here’s why. | Opinion[10] Being a poll observer in West Philly made me really angry. Here’s why. | Opinion[10] Being a poll observer in West Philly made me really angry. Here’s why. | Opinion[11] Memory sticks used to program Philly’s voting machines were stolen from elections warehouse[11] Memory sticks used to program Philly’s voting machines were stolen from elections warehouse[11] Memory sticks used to program Philly’s voting machines were stolen from elections warehouse[11] Memory sticks used to program Philly’s voting machines were stolen from elections warehouse[12] Poll watchers emerge as a flashpoint in battle over ballots[12] Poll watchers emerge as a flashpoint in battle over ballots[12] Poll watchers emerge as a flashpoint in battle over ballots[12] Poll watchers emerge as a flashpoint in battle over ballots[13] Election 2020 in Pennsylvania: All of your voting questions, answered | Spotlight PA[13] Election 2020 in Pennsylvania: All of your voting questions, answered | Spotlight PA[13] Election 2020 in Pennsylvania: All of your voting questions, answered | Spotlight PA[13] Election 2020 in Pennsylvania: All of your voting questions, answered | Spotlight PA

Straight up? It’s truly awful, and would never pass peer review.If you have some time, here’s a fairly detailed critique: https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archive/pubs-pdfs/2020/200921-in-response-yan.pdfIf you have even more time, let’s take the mickey out of this dreadful article. The following parody does however require that you read the dire original, if it's to make sense :)Fig 1. The boastful gibbon, H. trumpiiNB. The following is satire. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, without satirical intent, is entirely coincidental.The Yin ReportThis complements the Yan report,[1][1][1][1] which is almost as creepy as the film version of Cats.AbstractThe boastful gibbon (Hylobates trumpii,* Fig. 1) has caused unprecedented decimation of the global economy, including the needless deaths of at least 200,000 people in the USA alone, but despite its tremendous impact, the origin of the species remains mysterious and controversial. The natural origin theory, although widely accepted, lacks substantial support. The alternative theory of origin in a research laboratory is however strictly censored, and I haven’t been able to get any one of those crummy peer-reviewed scientific journals to accept my brilliant theories. So far.Nonetheless, this virulent organism shows biological characteristics that are inconsistent with natural origins. In this report I and my friends from Breitbart (those not yet in prison) describe the genomic, structural, medical and literature EVIDENCE that strongly contradicts the ‘Natural Origin Theory’, henceforth abbreviated to NOT.The evidence proves that H. trumpii was a laboratory product made by recombining the DNA of a Scottish-born housewife with that of the Bornean orangutan, Pongo pygmaeus, using the latter as a template and/or backbone, and/or bony spurs. Building upon the evidence, we further postulate—and heck, that means it’s true—a synthetic route of H. trumpii, demonstrating that laboratory creation of destructive gibbons is convenient and can be accomplished in approximately a few years, give or take a few decades. Our work emphasises the need for an independent investigation into absolutely everyone that doesn’t just accept what we say, especially those damn trailer park white trash peer-reviewed journals who won’t publish the TRUTH. I TELL YOU. REALLY.It also argues for a critical look into certain recently published data, which, albeit problematic were used to claim that there are thousands of bat viruses out there that intermittently emerge to cause illnesses like SARS and MERS, quite naturally. I mean, really, who would believe the evidence of tens of thousands of meticulous, carefully researched papers backed by science and logic, when they contradict my world view? And I know what I’m talking about, really. From a public health perspective, these actions are necessary as knowledge of the origin of H. trumpii and of how it entered the gene pool is of pivotal importance in the fundamental control of lying, self-aggrandizing politicians, and preventing similar future travesties of leadership.IntroductionH. trumpii has caused widespread destruction, failed relations between formerly amicable countries, and increased the standing of autocrats throughout the world by its pernicious habit of shaking their hands repeatedly and even repeatedly kissing their unmentionables, if the price is right, or even if they have a good track record of killing journalists.[2][2][2][2] Despite tremendous efforts taken by many sane people, this organism has only recently been controlled, and remains obstinate and challenging, even in defeat.As a gibbon, H trumpii differs from other apes and indeed, other members of the family Hylobates. It uses its small hands to attack journalists—especially if it perceives they are crippled or female; is known by its harsh vocalisations and mockery of minority groups; and has a general tendency towards disinhibited frontal-lobe type behaviour. Its origin is a subject of much debate. Conventional theories cite unreliable publications like alleged birth certificates,[3][3][3][3] but these conclusions are being challenged by scientists all over the world, some of them even with degrees that weren’t purchased online. In addition, we all know that gain of function research has long advanced to the stage where genomes can be precisely engineered and manipulated to enable the creation of novel organisms possessing unique properties. In this report, we present such evidence and the associated analyses. Part 1 describes the genomic and structural features of H trumpii, Part 2 describes a highly probable pathway for the laboratory creation of this organism. This report is produced by some really great people too, so you must believe it. We’re not expatriates with a chip on our collective shoulder, Oh no. Definitely not.Here, just like my esteemed colleague and pal Li-Meng Yan, I could cite a whole lot of references to back up my claims, but I won’t. Like her, most of the references would be to (a) broken links or (b) irrelevant publications or (c) people who know nothing about either gibbons or birth certificates, but why bother. Nobody actually checks references, do they?[4][4][4][4][5][5][5][5][6][6][6][6][7][7][7][7][8][8][8][8]MethodologyWe retrieved canonical sequences for H. trumpii from a well-established repository of human DNA (Clifford & Daniels, 2006) and DNA sequences for P. pygmaeus from Taxonomy browser (Pongo pygmaeus) but these didn’t fit our pre-conceived ideas, so we found a sad orangutan with small hands hiding in a Moscow zoo, and used its DNA instead. Our sequencing was dodgy, but you must trust us, because we’re real scientists. Honest.1. Has H. trumpii been subject to in vitro manipulation?We present three lines of evidence to support our contention that laboratory manipulation is part of the history of H. trumpii:i. The genomic sequence of H. trumpii is suspiciously similar to that of an orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) we found in a Russian laboratory;ii. The small-hands motif (SHM) of H. trumpii, which determines its lack of sensitivity, resembles that of at least one orangutan.iii. H. trumpii is generally rather orange, and so are some Scottish born housewives, and if this doesn’t convince you, there’s no reasoning with some people.1.1 Genomic sequence analysis reveals that P. pygmaeus, or a closely related ape, should be used as the backbone (or bony spurs) used for the creation of H. trumpiiWell of course it could. Anything is possible, isn’t it? In addition, here are a lot of gratuitous images that appear to support our case without actually meaning anything.[9][9][9][9] [10][10][10][10]Maybe there aren’t enough brightly coloured images, right, but I’m on a budget.Also, we all know that the human genome possesses about 5000 human-specific Alu elements, while the chimpanzee genome has about 2000, and orangutans have just 250, and with our admittedly crappy analysis of the DNA of H trumpii, we found more similarities to P. pygmaeus, so if that doesn’t convince you, then nothing will.1.2 The small-hands motif (SHM) really cannot be born from nature, or this would mean our theory, which is ours, and belongs to us,[11][11][11][11] would be wrong and it isn’t so it must have been created through genetic engineering, reallyBut wait, there’s more, the orangutan chromosome 12 has a neocentromere, and so does H trumpii, so there you go, it’s just obvious. And H trumpii has small hands, and so do very small orangutans. Need we say more? That Russian orangutan had very tiny hands, I promise you, but we lost the photographs. Okay, here’s a picture of baby orangs with smallish hands. Aren’t they cute?1.3 H. trumpii is rather orange, and so are some Scottish-born housewivesThis is pretty clear, and we could show you a whole lot of irrelevant pictures, but really, just believe us. It’s so much easier. I mean, you’ve all watched Brave, haven’t you, and here’s Merida at Disneyland.1.4 SummaryEvidence presented in this part reveals that certain aspects of the H. trumpii genome are “extremely difficult to reconcile to being a result of natural evolution”, and if you think this claim not only butchers science but also the English language, you only need to examine the very similar sentence in the paper by my esteemed colleague Dr Yan.As a gibbon, H trumpii differs significantly from other apes, and so on. It has a lot of properties that are just its properties, but perhaps if I repeat them ad nauseam, then this will convince you that everything else I say must be right. The existing scientific evidence relies a lot on common sense and logic and good science and the way other bat viruses have emerged and caused human illness, but why let this stand in the way of untrammelled speculation? Because, I mean really. And those buggers in the foul, white trash, trailer park, conspiracy theorist hegemonistic fascist peer review journals can’t be trusted, well can they?Therefore, the NOT theory is not right, and the laboratory origin theory (LOT theory) has lots to offer.Part 2. A postulated synthetic route for the creation of H. trumpiiOkay, so now we come to the bit where we describe a synthetic route of creating H. trumpii in a Russian laboratory setting. It is postulated based on substantial literature support as well as genetic evidence present in the H trumpii genome. Although steps presented herein—Ohh, fuck, are they still reading this, Li-Meng? We better come up with something. All our friends have criticised the involved lab with lax security, leaking viruses left, right and centre, but now we need to present this vision of brilliant researchers who can engineer hundreds of small nucleotide substitutions and also manufacture new receptor binding domains with enhanced affinity, using cutting-edge predictive techniques that haven’t actually been invented yet. But they’re still lax enough to let it out. What should we do? Ahh.Let’s talk up their past successes, completely irrelevant to the mad-scientist creation of a subtly engineered organism, and then throw in a lot of speculation. That should do it. Shit!! Are we live? Did you really put that into the preprint? You f***ing a-hole. Okay, let’s recall that and wave our hands a bit. We could even put in some convincing time-spans to make it look really professional. Whew. A close call.Final remarksMany questions remain unanswered about the origin of H. trumpii, but above we’ve CONVINCINGLY shown that the LOT theory has lots to offer and the NOT theory is simply not right, so there. We’d like to take this opportunity to blame all the military people we hate so much, and try to justify ourselves by saying all of the irrelevant things we’ve said before. We’d like to nit-pick a whole lot of other papers too, but that would be unprofessional, as we never wrote any criticism at the time. And we’d like to accuse and blame everyone who disagrees, because they’re JUST PLAIN WRONG, especially those mother-***ing c***-sucking white trailer trash peer reviewed journals. So there!We’d like to thank Breitbart and a heap of anonymous conspiracy theorists for support.*The rules for biological nomenclature indicate that adding two “i’s” to a name like H. trumpii must mean that the organism is a fungus. In a forthcoming paper, I’ll prove that this organism is not a gibbon at all, but actually a Russian-engineered fungal weapon of mass destruction that just looks like a gibbon. Watch this space!Footnotes[1] Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route[1] Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route[1] Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route[1] Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route[2] Trump boasted he protected MBS after Khashoggi hit: Report[2] Trump boasted he protected MBS after Khashoggi hit: Report[2] Trump boasted he protected MBS after Khashoggi hit: Report[2] Trump boasted he protected MBS after Khashoggi hit: Report[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/03/another-trump-birther-conspiracy-debunked-with-birth-certificate-this-time-his-father/[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/03/another-trump-birther-conspiracy-debunked-with-birth-certificate-this-time-his-father/[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/03/another-trump-birther-conspiracy-debunked-with-birth-certificate-this-time-his-father/[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/03/another-trump-birther-conspiracy-debunked-with-birth-certificate-this-time-his-father/[4] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archive/pubs-pdfs/2020/200921-in-response-yan.pdf[4] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archive/pubs-pdfs/2020/200921-in-response-yan.pdf[4] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archive/pubs-pdfs/2020/200921-in-response-yan.pdf[4] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archive/pubs-pdfs/2020/200921-in-response-yan.pdf[5] Review 1: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[5] Review 1: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[5] Review 1: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[5] Review 1: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[6] Review 2: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[6] Review 2: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[6] Review 2: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[6] Review 2: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[7] Review 3: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[7] Review 3: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[7] Review 3: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[7] Review 3: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[8] Review 4: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[8] Review 4: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[8] Review 4: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[8] Review 4: "Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route" · Rapid Reviews COVID-19[9] Estimating Divergence Time and Ancestral Effective Population Size of Bornean and Sumatran Orangutan Subspecies Using a Coalescent Hidden Markov Model[9] Estimating Divergence Time and Ancestral Effective Population Size of Bornean and Sumatran Orangutan Subspecies Using a Coalescent Hidden Markov Model[9] Estimating Divergence Time and Ancestral Effective Population Size of Bornean and Sumatran Orangutan Subspecies Using a Coalescent Hidden Markov Model[9] Estimating Divergence Time and Ancestral Effective Population Size of Bornean and Sumatran Orangutan Subspecies Using a Coalescent Hidden Markov Model[10] cytochrome oxidase subunit II (mitochondrion) [Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus[10] cytochrome oxidase subunit II (mitochondrion) [Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus[10] cytochrome oxidase subunit II (mitochondrion) [Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus[10] cytochrome oxidase subunit II (mitochondrion) [Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus[11] Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses[11] Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses[11] Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses[11] Anne Elk's Theory on Brontosauruses