CNN reports the judge has set Steve Bannon’s contempt trial date for July 18th, 2022.

French cops have arrested Khalid Aedh Al-Otaibi, a Saudi national at Charles de Gaulle International Airport on a Turkish warrant over the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Associated Press reports. Al-Otaibi, who was headed home to Riyadh when he was stopped, was among 12 Saudis sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2018 in response to the killing.

A group called “Secure The Vote” has filed petition drive paperwork with the Utah Lt Governor’s office for a 2022 statewide ballot initiative to almost entirely eliminate the state’s universal mail-in voting system except in extremely limited circumstances, reduce the 10-day early voting period to a zero day early voting period, completely ban all mechanical or electronic voting tabulation (itself a secondary verification on top of hand counts), and force election day only, in person, strictly on paper ballots marked with pencil, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.

Missing from the article is whether or not these sore, cunty losers would put their money where their mouths are and refuse to accept any votes in favor of the referendum if they came in via an early in-person or mailed-in ballot tabulated electronically. We all already know the answer though.

Two people are dead and three are injured after a shooting over a masking dispute at a public services office in Southeast Moscow, TASS reports. Cops say a man pulled out a pistol and opened fire after being asked by a security guard to put a mask on in the lobby, fulfilling the power fantasies of based American “patriots” who hate government control. So MAGA.

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows will cease cooperating with the House select committee investigating January 6th, his attorney Sideshow George Terwilliger told Fox News on Tuesday. “We have made efforts over many weeks to reach an accommodation with the committee” Terwilliger said, leaving out whether or not he would describe the effort as “good faith”.

Not hard to imagine that this reversal comes as Meadows finds himself in the doghouse with his abusive Orange Master, after the massive unforced errors of disclosure about the specifics of the timing of Trump’s October 2020 Coronavirus infection in Meadows’ lame book. Then there’s also the fact that publishing the book in the first place may have constituted a waiver of the fake executive privilege Meadows is trying to claim. Either way, backing out like this is definitely a display of whimpering obedience to his master after Marky’s been a bad boy.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian was triggered by the Biden Administration’s diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, The Hindu reports. “Without being invited, American politicians keep hyping the so-called diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which is purely wishful thinking and grandstanding. If the U.S. side is bent on going its own way, China will take firm countermeasures” said Zhao, who did not provide any specific detail of this supposed retaliation for America declining a non-invitation to the games.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s first female leader, will leave office after 16 years as Germany’s president on Wednesday, passing the torch to Olaf Schultz, the AP reports. Merkel saw four American presidents, four French presidents, five British prime ministers and eight Italian premiers come and go during her time, which saw Germany’s international profile raised as the leader in attempting to build a stable, unified Europe while the UK left and Poland and Hungary work to fuck it up.

With a type of cyclone called a “kona low” heading for the island state, Democratic Hawaii Governor David Ige signed a state of emergency Monday afternoon as heavy rains and widespread flooding is expected, the New York Times reports.

Coming from a southerly direction, a kona low typically stalls over land masses, dropping tons of rain on land formations that typically don’t get a lot of rainfall, raising the risk of mudslides.  Rainfalls of 15 inches are expected around the state, with some areas getting as much as 25 inches.

Oahu, the home of Honolulu and the most populous island in the state, is expected to get the heaviest rain from Monday night into Tuesday morning.  More than 5,000 households were without power Monday evening (local time), and two highways have already been shut down because of the storm.

In this parallel universe, Fox News advocates for the Nanny State, where government employees are responsible for the actions and character of children, not the parents.  Or, at least, that’s what happens when the mass shooter is a white kid.

“Who’s better positioned to evaluate the psychological state of this child?  The parents with no professional training or resources, or the school that has all that training and resources and by the way, spends vastly more time watching that kid’s behavior, conduct and interactions with each, with other students, with other teachers in the course of the school day than the parents do,” says Fox News guest, lawyer and podcaster Andrew Branca says defending the parents of Oxford, Michigan shooter Ethan Crumbley.

Retweet and share this everywhere. This shows that it is possible!

— George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) December 7, 2021

Democrats should be theoretically terrified by the news in the latest George Papadopoulos-endorsed ConservativeBrief.com clickbait article. Theoretically, of course, like it could have potential applicability to maybe be some sort of template for a legal decision to overturn an election that a Democrat won due to suspected fraud and install the Republican in the office.

Like if it happened in an election for a town council seat in Eatonville, Florida that a Dem won 269 to 268 because the one decisive vote came from a drifter living in a motel room owned by the mayor who offered the drifter a break on the back rent in exchange for casting a vote for him and his allies on the town council then it could also happen over 43,735 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, right? That could sort of possibly happen and Trump could be reinstated, right?

The problem with this Coffee Boy fellow’s clickbait is how it manages to go full circle with its astonishing inconsequentiality. Blatantly premised and marketed toward uncritical MAGA dipshits suckered into opening the links, we can’t help but end up clicking ourselves. How else are we to marvel at just how wide the delta is between the obvious lie by omission in the tweet and the unimportance of the news within? The disappointment itself is exciting. And yet the click does not care how we feel. It is registered all the same, from gullible right wing assholes and smartass millennial pseudo-journalists alike. George Papadopoulos still gets his 35 cents or whatever they’re paying him per click. Nice not even remotely close to actual work if you can get it.

“You’ve got a horrible jobs number,” lead paint chip enthusiast Ewic Trump says about the jobs report released last week.  “Two hundred ten thousand jobs.  The worst jobs numbers we have seen in a long time.”

In January 2021, his father’s last month in office, the nation saw 233,000 jobs created, according to BLS.  In the previous month, December 2020, the nation lost 306,000 jobs.  And of course, who can forget April 2020, 19 months ago, when during the Trump Administration, the nation lost 20,679,000 jobs.

The first confirmed case of the omicron variant of coronavirus has been identified in Texas:  the patient is a Houston-area woman in her 40s who has not traveled outside the country, the Associated Press reports.

“It’s normal for viruses to mutate, and given how quickly omicron spread in southern Africa, we’re not surprised that it showed up here,” Dr. John Hellerstedt, a DSHS commissioner, said. “Getting vaccinated and continuing to use prevention strategies, including wearing a mask when you are around people you don’t live with, social distancing, handwashing and getting tested when you have symptoms, will help slow the spread of the virus and help end the pandemic.”

Neither Republican Governor Greg Abbott or his staff returned calls to the AP for comment.

“Cleta Mitchell, for example, a prominent Republican lawyer, was just informed by AT&T that Democrats want her phone records, several months of her phone records.  Why?  On what grounds?  Because Cleta Mitchell once spoke to Donald Trump about the vote in Georgia.  And complaining about election results is now a crime.  We’ve reached out to AT&T about this and effectively what they’ve told us is that they are going to comply with the subpoenas from Congressional Democrats.  They’re probably afraid not to comply.”

There will be a special treat, responsively to our news, for you all! Stay tuned!

— Devin Nunes’ cow 🐮 (@DevinCow) December 7, 2021

I’m sure it’ll be udderly ridiculous.

The park comprising a memorial to Holocaust victim Anne Frank in Boise, Idaho was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti on Hanukkah over last weekend, the second time this year the park has been targeted, NBC News reports.

The memorial, founded in 2002 in downtown Boise as an educational park, had anti-Semitic slogans and pictures spray-painted on the walls of a tunnel that runs under part of the park.  The city quickly painted over the graffiti.  Last year, someone placed stickers with Nazi swastikas and saying “we are everywhere” at various places around the park.

“The anti-Semitic messages contained in the graffiti found along the Greenbelt put a literal and figurative stain on our community,” Mayor Lauren McLean said on Twitter. “This will not be tolerated.”

It’s December. #txlege https://t.co/TfHNZPGxHH

— Diego Bernal (@DiegoBernalTX) December 7, 2021

Texas House Dem Diego Bernal and Republican colleague Jared Patterson on ERCOT’s obviously very serious efforts to correct the issues which caused the catastrophic outages of February 2021.

“The U.S. and European allies are weighing sanctions targeting Russia’s biggest banks and the country’s ability to convert rubles for dollars and other foreign currencies should President Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine,” Bloomberg News reports. Several Russian oligarchs have purchased homes in the United States over the last ten years and donated millions of dollars to GOP candidates.

The chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly cooperating with the House Select Committee looking into the January 6th attack on the Capitol, giving the panel insight into Pence’s actions and statements, CNN reports.

Marc Short, who remains a key advisor to Pence, was with Pence throughout the events at the Capitol, including being escorted to a little-used loading dock while being evacuated during the attack by Trump supporters.  Short may be able to tell the committee with Pence spoke with during the emergency and what the vice president’s reaction to those conversations was.