Suspected felon Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who once blocked National Zero on Twitter for mocking his marital infidelity, has closed only 3 cases of suspected voter fraud statewide brought by his office’s “election integrity” unit between October 2020 and September 2021, the Houston Chronicle reports. During that time, the six attorneys assigned to the unit worked more than 20,000 hours, and the Texas legislature bumped its annual budget from $1.9 million to $2.2 million a year.

To prosecute three cases. And yet Paxton himself says he doesn’t have the resources to prosecute more of them. “I don’t think anybody knows the degree to which it happens because even our office who probably prosecutes more election fraud than anyone else in the country… We don’t have enough resources to cover all election fraud. So it’s really hard to know how large an issue this is because very few states put any resources in to actually detect or prosecute voter fraud” said Paxton, whose wife is a shitty amateur country music artist, on a recent podcast.

Self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” Roger Stone exited his session in front of the House Select Committee on the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol after 25 minutes because he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.  As he left the Capitol, Stone flashed his Nixon-esque “victory” gesture, but as this photo shows, he had a definite look of fear and doubt in his eyes.

A graphic by epidemiologist Michael Oleson shows a startling gap between red and blue counties in COVID-19 death rates since the Coronavirus vaccines became widely available last spring:

…a situation that is bound to get much, much worse once the full brunt of the Omicron variant hits the United States, per the New York Times’s David Leonhardt, who writes “One telling detail is that Covid deaths in both swing counties and heavily Biden counties have not risen over the past two months, even as nationwide case numbers have surged. In heavily vaccinated communities, rising caseloads don’t automatically lead to rising death tolls… Omicron appears to be so contagious that even a modest decline in severity – such as the decline estimated in an early analysis from South Africa – could still lead to a large spike in deaths, as Dr. Robert Wachter of UC San Francisco, explained to me. Some basic arithmetic makes the point: Imagine that the risk of death is 30 percent lower from an Omicron case than a Delta case – but that Omicron leads to a tenfold increase in cases. This combination would lead to a substantial increase in deaths. ‘It’s bad number times a decent number, and you end up with a bad number,’ Wachter said.”

1. One of the biggest holes in the lie about J6 being a planned insurrection is that all the people there were unarmed.

Anyone with half a brain knows that gun owners only leave their firearms at home when they don’t feel the need to carry a gun or are obeying the law.

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) December 17, 2021

Full thread: “If a group of elected officials, who support the second amendment, actually organized an insurrection with the people who own guns, then they would have brought guns to the so called ‘planned insurrection.’ There was no planning and we ALL denounced the riot. The real issue is that the Capitol was left unprotected by those in charge of protecting it. Denying President Trump’s pre-J6 requests of bringing in the National Guard put everyone in danger. And the bad actors incited the riot. The American people aren’t buying the lies.”

So there are several things wrong with this. The first is that Greene feels the need to say she was not involved in planning the riot. The second is that she seems to want it both ways: Trump wanted the National Guard there but “those in charge” rebuffed him, like Donald wanted to prevent the riot from happening. He didn’t. Third, for months Greene has been saying all sorts of shit about the treatment of the few dozen Capitol rioters being held at a DC jail – that they’re being abused by guards, subjected to Critical Race Theory re-education, treated worse than the war on terror prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, so on and so forth – but now they’re “bad actors” too.

“The Trump Administration was responsible for a series of critical failures tha undermined the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the Coronavirus pandemic. The Trump Administration’s Persistent Political Interference in the Pandemic Response Contributed to One of the Worst Failures of Leadership in American History… The Trump Administration’s Failure to Execute an Early Response Strategy and Address Critical Supply Shortages Exacerbated the Public Health Emergency and Put Countless American Lives at Risk” are among the toplines of the interim staff report of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, issued Friday.

Private equity douchebag Brian Shevland is suing the CEO of Digital World Acquisition Corporation, the shell company with which the Trump Media and Technology Group is merging with to be listed on the stock market, Axios reports. Shevland alleges he was removed from the firm and cut out of the private share price of $0.003 cents each for a stock that is currently trading at $51.33 per share, and that conversations between Trump and other DWAC principals were ongoing before the merger was publicly announced, something which the Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority are currently investigating.

Customs and Border Patrol reportedly encountered more than 173,000 illegal immigrants crossing the southern border in November! Most for a November in DHS history. pic.twitter.com/Y7lvdsSe9E

— GOP (@GOP) December 17, 2021

The headline’s sarcastic. There’s no surprise here that the unhinged rapper’s fake presidential campaign was designed solely to split votes against Trump, but the Daily Beast has dug up some additional detail about who backed it and the potential federal campaign finance law violations that happened along the way, as Kanye 2020 failed to report paying a number of top GOP consultants – likely because they were providing their “services” completely free of charge.

“So many of these firms work for major Republican organizations, and they are not doing this for him out of the kindness of their hearts,” said Jordan Libowitz, communications director at DC watchdog CREW.”It’s pretty clear Kanye was a GOP plant, whether he knew it or not.”

Among them were Jill Vogel, a Republican Virginia state senator, and partner at Holtzman Vogel, a law firm with deep connections to Republican organizations. “The importance of disclosure in this matter can’t be overstated,” Common Cause VP Paul S Ryan told the Daily Beast “It’s no secret that Kanye West’s candidacy would have a spoiler effect, siphoning votes from Democrat Joe Biden. Voters had a right to know that a high-powered Republican lawyer was providing legal services to Kanye – and federal law requires disclosure of such legal work.” Holtzman Vogel also represented the Trump Campaign in a failed post-election lawsuit in Pennsylvania. Read more at the Daily Beast.

At least 27 are dead in a likely arson attack after a psychiatric clinic went up in flames in the city of Osaka, Japan on Friday, Reuters reports. “Most of the people who lost their lives could be medical workers or patients at the clinic. This is unbearable,” said Dr Yumiko Inoue, a physician at a nearby hospital. Local media reported a man – possibly a patient at the clinic – was seen with a “leaking bag” in the lobby area, which he then set down next to a heater and kicked over, starting the fire.

A federal judge largely upheld an opinion of a magistrate judge who had dismissed the lawsuit, but found one argument that will allow a case filed by the brother and sister-in-law of disgraced general Michael Flynn against CNN for linking them to QAnon to go forward, Politico reports.

Jack and Leslie Flynn filed a $75 million lawsuit against the network seeking damages, claiming CNN defamed them repeatedly by using a video of them and Mike Flynn swearing allegiance to QAnon as part of the commercial for a special about the conspiracy theory, saying “CNN goes inside a gathering of QAnon followers.”

The magistrate judge had thrown out the lawsuit earlier, but the federal judge rejected the dismissal on appeal from the Flynns.

The judge ruled that the network did not conclusively demonstrate that Jack and Leslie Flynn were part of the QAnon conspiracy, despite having video of them swearing an oath and having tweets where they support Q conspiracies.  The judge concluded that a “false light” claim could go forward because the hearing was not a venue at which the legitimacy of the evidence could be determined.

https://twitter.com/BettyMWhite/status/1471667260116779009

New York City will welcome back hundred of thousands of fully-vaccinated revelers to Time Square for the iconic ball drop on New Year’s Eve as a city tradition will return after taking a year off because of the pandemic, NBC News reports.

“We’re going to watch very carefully,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday. “It’s still more than two weeks away. And if at any point we need to alter the plan, we will. … Because it is an event where people are fully vaccinated and all outdoors, right now that’s something we’re going forward with.”

New York is seeing a spike in coronavirus cases due to the spreading Delta variant, causing some Broadway shows to suspend performances.

John Murray Rowe Jr., 63, of South Dakota has been indicted by federal prosecutors for attempting to communicate national defense information to aid a foreign government, for his efforts to communicate classified information to FBI operatives posing as Russian agents, the Associated Press reports.

In emails, Rowe sent designs for military fighters to the operatives who he thought were Russian government officials.  “If I can’t get a job here then I’ll go work for the other team,” he wrote according to court documents.

Rowe had been fired in March 2018 from an unnamed defense contractor for security violations and because he had been identified as a potential insider threat to company security.  At one point, he attempted to smuggle a thumb drive into a secure area of his workplace, and he asked a coworker if someone could hold a US and a Russian security clearance simultaneously.

The New York Times has an very detailed account of how the diary of Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, was stolen and ultimately ended up in the hands of conservative media provocateur group Project Veritas, led by convicted criminal James O’Keefe.

Federal law enforcement and a House committee are investigating the theft of the book and how it was apparently used in an attempt to disgrace the Democratic presidential candidate.  The path taken by the book through the hands of a cash-hungry mother to a Florida donor to Donald Trump and ultimately to O’Keefe is an interesting tale.

The goal of O’Keefe in buying the diary was apparently to use it to blackmail Joe Biden into giving him an exclusive interview in October 2020, weeks before Election Day.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a recommendation that Americans should get the vaccines made by Pfizer or Moderna over the Johnson & Johnson version because the pair have proven more effective, the Associated Press reports.

The J&J shot also has been connected to a rare blood clotting issue that reportedly has caused nine deaths, a situation that does not impact the other two vaccines.  The CDC panel said that if patients seeking a vaccination or a booster, they should request the Pfizer or Moderna shots.

Patients who had the single-dose J&J shot are still protected, particularly if they got their booster shots.  Regardless of the manufacturer of the initial dosage, the CDC recommends everyone gets booster from Pfizer or Moderna.

A federal judge has nullified a $4.5 billion settlement with the family that founded Purdue Pharma, the company that pushed the use of opioids like OxyContin, spurring the addiction epidemic, Reuters reports.

The order negates the shield the agreement would have provided to the Sackler family from being sued by private parties, and it also disrupts the company’s bankruptcy.  U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon’s ruling notes that the bankruptcy court in which the agreement was approved did not have the authority to shield the Sackler family from civil lawsuits.

In September, a federal bankruptcy court judge approved a deal in which Perdue would declare bankruptcy, and the Sackler family would pay $4.5 billion in fines and settlements which would shield the family from future civil suits.  The Sackler’s had moved about $10 billion from the company to their personal accounts in the decade from 2008 to 2018.  About half a million Americans have died of opioid overdoses since 1999.

Connecticut dog Henry Dowling, 8, unemployed, is being hailed as a hero after he alerted his owners their 9 month old girl was in distress and having trouble breathing, Good Morning America reports. “He was head-butting the door open and going into her room and standing there. And every time I shooed him away, he would go back in as soon as my back was turned” said Kelly Dowling of the Boston terrier. Dolwing and her husband Jeff discovered their unidentified infant’s airway was obstructed, and immediately rushed her to the hospital. Doctors were able to clear the child’s airway and the family was back home several hours later. “We’re definitely spoiling the dog a little bit more. He was allowed to sleep in bed with me last night and he’s got a steak in his future” said Jeff Dowling, who should be screamed at and shamed for being a cheap bastard and only giving Henry a steak and not a lifetime supply of steaks as a reward for saving his daughter’s life.

A 58-foot long, 6-foot tall bridge that had been temporarily stored in an Akron, Ohio park disappeared over the course of a week as police investigate if the bridge was taken apart by scavengers trying to collect money for scrap, KIRO 7 Seattle reports.

The 10-foot wide foot bridge with a metal frame and wood planking was removed from its location crossing Little Cuyahoga River in Middlebury Run Park for a complete overhaul and restoration because it was being repurposed for a project at a local women’s shelter.  Earlier in the week, officials learned the bridge’s planks were missing.  On Thursday, the entire bridge was gone.

Police are asking residents for any information about the bridge, which was estimated to be worth $30,000 to $40,000.