Anthony Fauci on the lack of professional standards at Fox News concerning the accusations by contributor Lara Logan comparing him to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele: “I think the response is with so many people across the country and the world are responding to the absolutely preposterous and disgusting comparison that she made,” an obviously disturbed Fauci says. It’s an insult to all of the people who suffered and died under the Nazi regime in the concentration camps. It’s unconscionable, what she said, forget about the fact that she was being totally slanderous to me. As usual, she had no idea what she was talking about, saying it’s as benign as flu. When did influenza ever kill 770,000 Americans. So not only is she being slanderous and disrespectful to so many people who were killed in the concentration camps by Dr. Mengele but she absolutely has no idea what she’s talking about. She’s completely incorrect in everything she says. What I find striking [is] how she gets no discipline whatsoever from the Fox network, how they can let her say that with no comment & no disciplinary action. I’m astounded by that.”

Merry Christmas! 🎄
ps. Santa, please bring ammo. 🎁 pic.twitter.com/NVawULhCNr

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) December 4, 2021

NBC News reports that Russia has deployed around 90,000 troops along the Russia/Ukraine border. The troops are reportedly limiting their movements to night-time as part of an effort to avoid surveillance by spy-planes and satellites. The rising military tensions occur as President Joe Biden is preparing for a video call with Putin next week.

The tensions are rising as Ukrainian President Zelensky is accusing Ukraine’s wealthiest man, Rinat Akhmetov of conspiring with the Russian government to try to create a Russian-backed puppet government in the Ukraine.

Edward Shames, a World War II veteran and the last surviving man who served with Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division–the unit known as “The Band of Brothers” because of the eponymous 2001 HBO mini-series of the same name, passed away Friday at the age of 99, CNN reports.

After enlisting the Army in 1942 at the age of 20, Shames joined Easy Company as a private when the unit was formed at Toccoa, Georgia.  He rose to become Operations Sergeant before earning a battlefield commission one week after parachuting into France on D-Day.  He fought with Easy through the remainder of the war, including when the unit was cut off from allied troops in the Battle of the Bulge, and he was part of the unit that liberated German concentration camps.

After the war, Shames stayed in the military, rising to the rank of colonel in the Army Reserve.  He married Ida Aframe in 1946; his wife of 73 years passed in 2019.  He has two children, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.  In the “Band of Brothers” miniseries, he was portrayed by actor Joseph May in the episode “The Breaking Point,” the seventh episode of the series which depicts the liberation of the French town of Foy.

1. Every single year more than 600,000 people in the US die from cancer.

The country has never once shut down.

Not a single school has closed.

And every year, over 600,000 people, of all ages and all races will continue to die from cancer.

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) December 4, 2021

The recent school shooting in Oxford, Michigan that left three students dead and eight others injured has created a variety of complications for the Republican Party. A recent report from NRAWatch details how the organization is “broken and bankrupt” as a result of declining contributions, rampant economic mismanagement within the organization, and legal actions brought by New York State Attorney General Tish James.

In past years, the NRA has relied on a steady stream of mass shootings at schools and other locations, along with associated conspiracy theories about “false-flag operations” and “crisis actors” to scare gun owners into thinking that the Federal Government would soon be sending SWAT teams to their homes to seize their weapons and throw them into internment camps.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan that was coordinated by the former Trump administration and spearheaded by former secretary of state Mike Pompeo is turning into a humanitarian disaster. A massive draught in the country has led to crop failures, and damage to infrastructure from years of insurgent wars have left the country facing a crushing food shortage.

The Taliban government has proven completely incompetent at being able to manage the nation’s economics or banking systems. Foreign banks are reluctant to invest in the country, because of the irate and flaky nature of Taliban leaders. “The Taliban’s human rights record, in particular with respect to women and ethnic minorities, makes the reluctance of the international community to legitimise the regime and allow funding to the Afghan state understandable. No one wants to fund the Taliban regime,” reports Al Jazeera.

Interesting that the responses here assume I’m picking sides. Maybe let the justice system work and let the facts come out before rushing to have your hot takes?

I guess that’s too reasonable. https://t.co/Sd91gE4m2e

— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) December 4, 2021

Former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, who lost literally dozens of cases in her failed effort to overturn the 2020 election, and whose only experience practicing criminal law ended with her being fired from a Colorado district attorney’s office for “unsatisfactory performance”, then somehow failed upward into becoming senior legal adviser for the reelection campaign for the President of the United States in 2020, a team that then lost literally dozens of cases seeking to overturn the result of the election when he lost, really sort of kind of seems to be implying she believes the Michigan parents who bought their 15 year old son the handgun he used to kill four other teenagers and injure seven more, are not being treated fairly by the media.

That’s what she’s hinting at here, right?

On December 2nd a story appeared in the New York Times detailing how two Georgia election workers filed suit against the right-wing propaganda outlet The Gateway Pundit for defamation. This follows announcements that Dominion Voting systems is initiating legal action against a variety of individuals who helped promote Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election being “stolen”. Anthony Fauci should strongly consider following the lead of those election workers, as there is no doubt that he has amble grounds to seek relief under existing defamation precedents. Targets worthy of consideration for a string of lawsuits brought by Dr. Fauci would include FOX News, Newsmax, One America News, The Gateway Pundit, and Breitbart. He may also wish to bring suit against private individuals, such as Judy Mikovitz, and any parties that were involved in the production of the “Plandemic” conspiracy theory video.

28 U.S. Code § 4101 defines the term “defamation”: “The term “defamation” means any action or other proceeding for defamation, libel, slander, or similar claim alleging that forms of speech are false, have caused damage to reputation or emotional distress, have presented any person in a false light, or have resulted in criticism, dishonor, or condemnation of any person.” There is no question that the rampant false claims brought by media outlets have been laughably false (claims of magnetization and “tracking nanobots”), presented Dr. Fauci in a false light (such as recent comparisons to “Dr. Mengele”) and have resulted in widespread criticism and condemnation of Dr. Fauci.

Seeking to prevent another January 6th, 2021-style shitshow from happening on January 6th, 2025, Democrats in Congress are looking to make some updates to remove the ambiguity from the Electoral Count Act of 1887, itself a clarification of Article II Section 1 of the Constitution, the New York Times reports. Whether such a change would garner enough support from Senate Republicans to cross the 60 vote threshold for passage is uncertain, though the Times reports there is wide bipartisan support from a coalition of state and local lawmakers pushing for an update.

The Trump Regime attempted to exploit ambiguities in the language of the Electoral Count Act and Article II Section 1 with ultranationalist Claremont Institute lawyer John Eastman’s now-infamous coup memo detailing how then-Vice President Mike Pence could have derailed the count by selecting Trump’s alternate slate of electors from states Biden won in the 2020 election.

Eastman relied on his own warped interpretation of the Article II Section 1 “the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted” where he believed gives the Vice President unilateral authority to decide which Electoral Votes should be counted, allowing him to skip those from Arizona and six other unspecified states (we’re guessing the other six are Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and either Minnesota or Nebraska), before using either state legislatures or the House itself to throw the election for Trump. This of course is complete horseshit.

The word “counted” there is a bad choice of phrasing and unfortunately our language provides both active and passive usage of the verb. Eastman believes “counted” means an active enumeration, as in “I counted all the change I found under the couch, it was $1.53″ where in the real world “shall be counted” is meant as a passive increase in scored quantity resultant from another action. “When the quarterback completes the pass to the receiver in the end zone, the referee blows the whistle and raises his arms, signaling the catch was good, the touchdown shall be counted toward the offense team’s score” is how it should be read. The count here means the quantity is increased by the affirmation its validity by the referees and the review booth. That’s it. He’s not judging a karaoke contest or a gymnastics competition, he’s filing out a scorebook, play-by-play as it happened. That this insanely convoluted and still probably incomprehensible explanation is necessary should serve as a solid argument for Congress to clarify the process.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were arrested in Detroit after a few hours-long manhunt across Michigan late Friday, after they had fled charges of involuntary manslaughter related to their son Ethan’s shooting rampage in Oxford, Michigan on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. Detroit Police Department Chief James White told reporters the Crumbleys were “distressed” but otherwise did not put up a fight when they were apprehended by Detroit police officers at a commercial building in the Motor City, acting on a tip from a business owner whom had spotted their vehicle and called 911. The Crumbleys were then located in the building “in hiding” and are expected to be booked into the Oakland County jail on Saturday.

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has reportedly been telling people for weeks how much Donald was going to love his new book, hoping he would help promote it and boost sales for the multi-hundred page love letter to the Holy Orange One, reports the Daily Beast.

Trump absolutely hates it, telling people the book is “fucking stupid”, and his rage at Meadows over his memoir’s revelation that the Donald tested positive for Coronavirus nearly a week before it had been publicly disclosed in October 2020 was described by the Beast as “volcanic”. This of course kind of contradicts the book’s earlier publicity sheet, in which “Trump” said “The Chief’s Chief” is a “a fantastic book” on “politics, truth, our great administration, and exciting achievements that took place in government” – and that it “would make an incredible Christmas present.”

UPDATE Saturday, 12:40 a.m. ET:  US Marshals are offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information that leads to the apprehension of the Crumbleys, who have not been located and who have not communicated with their attorneys.  The attorneys claim the couple left the area for their own safety.

The Crumbleys own a 2021 black Kia Seltos with the license plate DQG5203 and a 2019 white Kia Soul with the license plate DZH8994, according to the sheriff’s office and Secretary of State records.

• The White House physicians who kept secret Donald Trump’s positive coronavirus test on September 26th need to answer questions about how they learned Trump violated quarantine and infected scores of people for days, and who they told about Trump’s health.  The minions in the Trump White House not only endangered hundreds of people over days, but nearly cost the life of the (granted, very much disliked) President of the United States.
• I like the fact that a number of Trump’s cronies are pleading the Fifth.  It shows that, even in retrospect, they themselves can see their actions were criminal.  
• The children of anti-vaxxers must start refusing to eat their vegetables at dinner, claiming “body sovereignty” and the illegality of parents forcing children to put something in their bodies the kids don’t want.  That is, if they actually get served vegetables during dinner, and not just something ordered by yelling into a clown’s mouth.
• If Kevin McCarthy wants to calm the disarray in the House GOP caucus, he should just post dicta on Twitter, because that’s the only thing his freshman class of representatives thinks matters.

“Breaking news we have here tonight exclusively,” Rachel Maddow reports, “that the incriminating letter that was drafted from the US Justice Department to Georgia state officials essentially inducing them to flip the election results in that state, rather than just being the product of Jeffrey Clark, a single Justice Department official–who’s announced he’s going to plead the Fifth in that investigation, who has already been held in contempt in that investigation–rather than just being his work, as has been described in public reporting, the investigation has discovered White House metadata on that document which shows that it appears to be the product of the Trump White House.  If that work product is, in fact, a crime raises new questions as to where this investigation is going.”

If this is the case–that the Trump White House composed the January 5th letter to Georgia state officials and simply has Clark put his name on it–the question then becomes, “How long was the Trump White House planning to illegally overturn the election?” and what other crimes did they crime–besides lying to virtually everybody about the source of that letter.

“It didn’t sound like him.  It didn’t sound like a cold to me.  I’m not a doctor.  I’m not gonna play one on TV,” says Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots Cosplayer Sean Hannity as he plays doctor on TV.

Updating on top of the update: Per CNN citing a law enforcement source, James and Jennifer Crumbley have turned off their phones and withdrawn $4,000 from an ATM. Whether they used their vehicle’s CD player to listen to “Life in the Fast Lane” from “The Eagles Greatest Hits, Volume 2” during their escape is unknown but probable, circumstances considered.

Madeline. 8lbs 2oz. Mrs Kelly is doing just fine but is keeping a "low profile" for the time being. Ever notice how every hospital in the world has the same style BABY BLANKET? pic.twitter.com/cuLlfYDqIP

— Greg Kelly (@gregkellyusa) December 4, 2021

Extrapolating by number of excess deaths, Russia’s COVID-19 pandemic death toll may have already surpassed that of the United States, the Moscow Times reports, based on their analysis of numbers from the Rosstat official statistics agency. As of October 31st, over 810,000 more Russians have died in the months since the pandemic began than were recorded in their corresponding months in 2019 – for example, October 2021 saw 247,000 deaths from all causes, about 90,000 more than the 157,000 who died in October 2019 prior to the pandemic. October 2021 was the fourth consecutive month of over 200,000 fatalities, and the fifth since January 2008.

The CDC by contrast estimates that 890,000 excess fatalities occurred in the United States through the end of November 2021. This means that, with a month lag in reporting, and with a population roughly a third the size of the United States, if November was anything like October in Russia (and it was probably even worse) the Russian Federation has very likely already seen more deaths from COVID-19 than the United States. No wonder the fanboys love it so much.

“Former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, after agreeing to testify to Jan. 6 committee on Saturday, conveniently now announces he has a medical condition that means he can’t appear tomorrow after all“ reports the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, also adding a statement from the committee, “Through his attorney, Mr Clark has informed the select committee of a medical condition that precludes his participation in tomorrow’s meeting. He has provided ample evidence of his claim.”