“In a memo not made public until now, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows emailed to Vice President Mike Pence’s top aide, on New Year’s Eve, a detailed plan for undoing President Joe Biden’s election victory, ABC News’ Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl reports. The memo, written by former President Donald Trump’s campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, is reported for the first time in Karl’s upcoming book, ‘Betrayal’ – demonstrating how Pence was under even more pressure than previously known to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”

“Ellis, in the memo, outlined a multi-step strategy: On Jan. 6, the day Congress was to certify the 2020 election results, Pence was to send back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump falsely claimed he had won. The memo said that Pence would give the states a deadline of ‘7pm eastern standard time on January 15th’ to send back a new set of votes, according to Karl. Then, Ellis wrote, if any state legislature missed that deadline, ‘no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that state.’ Such a scenario would leave neither Biden nor Trump with a majority of votes, Ellis wrote, which would mean ‘Congress shall vote by state delegation’ – which, Ellis said, would in turn lead to Trump being declared the winner due to Republicans controlling the majority of state delegations with 26. The day after Meadows sent Ellis’ memo to Pence’s aide, on Jan. 1, Trump aide John McEntee sent another memo to Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, titled, ‘Jefferson used his position as VP to win.’ Although McEntee’s memo was historically incorrect his message was clear: Jefferson took advantage of his position, and Pence must do the same” – ABC News

Washington Post: “The national environment could hardly look more favorable to Republicans one year before the midterm elections, with declining approval for President Biden, growing pessimism in the country and spiking prices for essentials like gasoline and milk. But Republican struggles to settle on candidates have left some wondering whether the party will blow its big chance to retake the U.S. Senate. The party’s front-runner in Pennsylvania, Sean Parnell, is awaiting a judge’s ruling on accusations, which he denies, that he choked his estranged wife and hit one of his children. The top-polling Missouri GOP candidate, former governor Eric Greitens, is trying to downplay his resignation from office after allegedly tying up his mistress in the basement of his marital home.”

“And in Georgia, the party’s likely nominee, Herschel Walker, is bracing for a Democratic advertising assault about his ex-wife’s claims that he threatened her with a gun. Competitive primaries elsewhere have pushed the debate in the Republican Party far outside the comfort zone of general election strategists, as the candidates fall over each other to indulge former president Donald Trump’s election conspiracy theories. To top it all off, the party’s top Senate recruit, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, shocked party insiders last week by saying he didn’t want the job. The challenges have forced Republicans to play defense, often against fellow members of their own party, in multiple states that Biden won in 2020, like Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania. The prospect of fierce and damaging primaries in some states risks weakening candidates for a general election, when Republicans seek to win over voters who previously rejected Trump.”

Applebee's x Cheetos®!

🤯🥵🤯🥵🤯 🔥💥🔥💥🔥 pic.twitter.com/nFhHCN3RfL

— Applebee's Grill + Bar (@Applebees) November 14, 2021

“The son and one-time heir apparent of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi announced Sunday his candidacy for the country’s presidential election next month, Libya’s election agency said. Seif al-Islam submitted his candidacy papers in the southern town of Sabah, the agency said in a statement. Gaddafi’s son was captured by fighters late in 2011, the year when a popular uprising toppled Gaddafi after more than 40 years in power. Moammar Gaddafi was later killed amid the ensuing fighting that would turn into a civil war” – AP.

“So here’s the bottom line:  there is an Axis of Evil in this country.  Prosecutors, politicians and the press whip up violence, hoaxes and scandals, then lock up anybody that gets in their path,” Fox News host (and guy auditioning for a Head & Shoulders commercial) Jesse Watters said without an iota of self-awareness.

“Washington Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, is stranded in El Salvador after testing positive for COVID-19 there, and has sought help from fellow Republican lawmakers to send him monoclonal antibody treatments,” the Seattle-Times reports. “Ericksen told KIRO radio he was ‘fighting a bad bout’ with the virus while in the Central American country. It’s unclear if the senator was vaccinated against the virus, and he did not respond Friday to a text message or phone call seeking comment.”

An ardent MAGA loyalist and anti-vaxxer, Ericksen has sponsored legislation that would bar the state from imposing vaccine mandates on state employees. Ericksen explained to fellow lawmakers via e-mail that he tested positive for Covid shortly after arriving in El Salvador. Ericksen was not able to return to the United States due to his diagnosis and was begging fellow lawmakers to send him monoclonal antibodies, which are not available in El Salvador.

NBC News:  “A prolonged gunbattle between rival gangs inside Ecuador’s largest prison killed at least 68 inmates and wounded 25 on Saturday, while authorities said clashes were still uncontrolled hours later at the Litoral Penitentiary, which recently saw the country’s worst prison bloodbath.  The killing erupted before dawn at the prison in the coastal city of Guayaquil in what officials said was the latest outbreak of fighting among prison gangs linked to international drug cartels. Videos circulating on social media showed bodies, some burned, lying on the ground inside the prison.

“In the initial fighting, which lasted eight hours, inmates ‘tried to dynamite a wall to get into Pavilion 2 to carry out a massacre. They also burned mattresses to try to to drown (their rivals) in smoke,’ said the governor of Guayas province, Pablo Arosemena. ‘We are fighting against drug trafficking,’ Arosemena said. ‘It is very hard.’

“Presidential spokesman Carlos Jijón said late in the afternoon that ‘we have information that new clashes are reported in the Litoral Penitentiary … the inmates of Hall 12 attacked those of Hall 7, attempting to take control.’ He said about 700 police officers were trying to control the situation, with a contingent inside the prison. He did not clarify whether authorities had regain control of the compound or say whether there had been any more casualties.”

New York Times:  “In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.

“It was March 18, 2019. At the U.S. military’s busy Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, uniformed personnel watching the live drone footage looked on in stunned disbelief, according to one officer who was there. ‘Who dropped that?’ a confused analyst typed on a secure chat system being used by those monitoring the drone, two people who reviewed the chat log recalled. Another responded, ‘We just dropped on 50 women and children.’ An initial battle damage assessment quickly found that the number of dead was actually about 70.

“The Baghuz strike was one of the largest civilian casualty incidents of the war against the Islamic State, but it has never been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. military. The details, reported here for the first time, show that the death toll was almost immediately apparent to military officials. A legal officer flagged the strike as a possible war crime that required an investigation. But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike. The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified. The Defense Department’s independent inspector general began an inquiry, but the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike.”

NBC News:  “An apparently malicious hacker sent spam emails from an FBI email server Friday night to at least 100,000 people, an email spam watchdog group has found.

“The person’s motives are unknown, and it was not immediately clear the extent to which the hacker gained access to the FBI’s email system. The email message was a bizarre, technically incoherent warning that made reference to cybersecurity writer Vinny Troia as well as a cybercriminal group called The Dark Overlord. Troia’s company, Night Lion Security, published research on The Dark Overlord in January.  The hacker signed off as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Threat Detection and Analysis Group, which hasn’t existed for at least two years.

“The FBI routinely warns American companies of cyber threats targeting particular industries, or when they learn of malicious hackers trying an effective new technique. This is believed to be the first known case of a seemingly malicious actor gaining access to one of those systems to send spam to a large number of people.  The incident comes on the heels of a number of high-profile breaches of U.S. government networks in recent months, including a Russia-based attack that compromised at least nine federal agencies, and a Chinese-based hacking campaign so severe that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had to issue a rare mandate for all government agencies to immediately update their software.”

Washington Post:  “Tucked within an icy mountain lies a meticulously preserved World War I bunker. Climate change means we can now see it. The intact cavern-cum-barracks contains munitions, books, cigarette holders and animal bones, and it was once teeming with Austro-Hungarian troops. They staked out on Mount Scorluzzo, almost 3,000 meters (about 9,800 feet) above sea level, on the Italian-Swiss border, now part of Italy’s Stelvio National Park territory.

“‘These places were literally frozen in time,’ Giovanni Cadioli, a historian and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Padua in Italy, told The Washington Post.  Now, he added, climate change is playing a ‘pivotal role’ in their discovery, as warming temperatures have led to the melting of glaciers and permafrost, revealing a ‘time capsule.’  Amid the backdrop of the COP26 global climate change summit in Scotland, Cadioli underscored that the impressive findings were bittersweet: ‘We’d really rather not have retreating glaciers.’

“The artificial caves were made in 1915 by blowing up parts of the mountain and transforming them into makeshift barracks and shelters to house hundreds of European troops.  The barracks — along with the machine gun emplacements, sheltered walkways and tunnels — were held by Austro-Hungarian soldiers who were fighting Italian troops. They vacated their position on Nov. 3, 1918, in line with retreat orders, just days ahead of the armistice agreement on Nov. 11, which ended World War I.  From 1915 to 1918, European soldiers were stationed in the extremely harsh mountain terrain, facing punitive climatic conditions year-round. Nature, frostbite, falls and avalanches ultimately claimed more lives than enemy fire, Cadioli said.”

Associated Press:  “Fraudsters siphoned more than $830,000 that the city of Seattle intended to send to a family homelessness nonprofit, The Seattle Times reported. The newspaper said it obtained emails by public records request showing that nine payments sent between November 2020 and April 2021 went to what the city incorrectly thought was an account owned by the nonprofit, Mary’s Place.

“’We’ve discovered the bank account that was associated with Mary’s Place automatic payments from the City of Seattle has been changed without our knowledge and our city payments have been deposited to an unknown bank account,’ the nonprofit’s executive director, Marty Hartman, wrote in a June email titled ‘URGENT: FINANCE CONCERN.’ The city confirmed that the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service are investigating, and it said it is reimbursing the nonprofit and introducing safeguards to prevent a recurrence.

“Some city councilmembers said they didn’t learn about the theft until Friday. The city uses public funds to pay Mary’s Place and dozens of other providers for outreach, shelter and food for the city’s homeless population, which was the third-highest in the nation at last count. The diverted money represents less than 1% of the city’s $167 million homelessness budget.”

“A pre-print study which claimed that there is a 1 in 1,000 risk of contracting a heart inflammation condition known as myocarditis has since been retracted due to a calculation,” Reuters reports. “The study which was conducted by researchers at The University of Ottawa Heart Institute, was featured in numerous [MAGA and antivax] blogs and social media posts as proof that the COVID-19 vaccine is unsafe for use.”

“The study was first published on September 16 on the platform MedRxiv, a website that publishes studies that have yet to be peer-reviewed. The pre-print paper has since been retracted. The study had calculated an incidence rate of myocarditis in the Ottawa region post-vaccination by dividing the number of occurrences of the heart inflammation condition over a two-month period (June and July 2021) in Ottawa (32) by the total number of vaccinations in the area (reported as 32,379 in the pre-print).”

“Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said Friday that patrols are being stepped up around the local office of U.S. Rep. Andrew Garbarino after a retired Long Island Rail Road worker allegedly phoned in a threat to kill the congressman because of the elected official’s vote in favor of an infrastructure bill. Defendant Kenneth Gasper, 64, of Lake Ronkonkoma, surrendered to police Wednesday evening before he pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor aggravated harassment charge at his arraignment Thursday. John Ray, a lawyer for Gasper, said in a statement later Friday that his client was a ‘grandfather with a spotless record’ who hadn’t threatened the congressman.”

“‘Ken is an ordinary American who was offended when politician Garbarino became an overnight Democratic and voted, in Ken’s view, to wreck our country. He conveyed his chagrin to an unseasoned telephone aide in Mr. Garbarino’s office. Ken never made any threat,’ the Miller Place lawyer added. A court complaint charging Gasper with the misdemeanor alleges he called Garbarino’s congressional office in Massapequa Park at about 3:30 p.m. Monday. It says he spoke to a congressional staffer and ‘was extremely upset over an infrastructure bill’ and ‘unhappy’ with Garbarino’s vote on it. Garbarino was one of 13 House Republicans to vote Nov. 5 for the Democratic-led $1.2-trillion infrastructure package. Former President Donald Trump criticized those Republicans and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called them traitors” Newsday reports.

What the fuck type of criminal defense lawyer tells a local newspaper his client’s accuser voted to “wreck our country”? So what if the asshole was “offended”? It’s one thing for, say, a Capitol rioter’s lawyer to try to minimize the crime in a sentencing memorandum, that’s pretty much what all defense attorneys are paid to do, but to more or less try to justify violently threatening a member of Congress and their staff is another, and completely fucking insane thing entirely.

“Russian president Vladimir Putin on Saturday expressed disapproval of a threat by Belarus’ leader to cut off Russian gas supplies to the European Union,” reports Politico. “‘He can, I guess, it’s no good, though, and I’ll talk to him about it … in case he just said it out of anger,’ Putin told Russian TV channel Rossiya 1 in response to Alexander Lukashenko’s threat to turn off the gas taps. ‘This would be a violation of our transit contract and I hope it will not come to that,’ Putin said, referring to agreements governing the flow of Russian gas along pipelines running through Belarus. Cutting off the gas ‘would not contribute to the development of our relations with Belarus as a transit country,’ he warned.”

“The Russian president also claimed not to have heard Lukashenko’s gas threat which was relayed on Thursday by Belarussian state media. Lukashenko made the threat as the EU considered more sanctions on his regime in response to the migrant crisis on the Belarus-Poland border. On Friday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia will respect its gas contracts with Europe. ‘Russia has been, is and will remain a country that fulfills all obligations to provide European consumers with gas,’ Peskov said.”

Russia appears to be looking to maintain their hydrocarbon delivery contracts in an attempt to cash out on their fossil fuel reserves. This follows a recent study published in the journal Nature Energy which predicted that Russia could end up with as much as $2 Trillion in petroleum and natural gas reserves that end up “stranded” as the rest of the world moves on to alternative energy, leaving those reserves effectively worthless.

In a new book, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie insists that Republicans “need to renounce the conspiracy theories and truth deniers, the ones who know better and the ones who are just plain nuts,” reports the Guardian. The former governor does not say if he thinks Trump knows better about his claims of electoral fraud, or is one of those who is ‘nuts’; but he adds: ‘We need to give our supporters facts that will help put all these fantasies to rest, so everyone can focus with clear minds on the issues that really matter. We need to quit wasting our time, our energy and our credibility on claims that won’t ever convince anyone or bring fresh converts onboard’.”

“Condemning the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Georgia congresswoman who has expressed support for conspiracy theories, Christie says Trump indulges such figures because he likes ‘anyone who says nice things about him’. Discussing the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that high-profile Democrats are involved in satanic child abuse, Christie writes that such beliefs ‘would be ridiculous if they were not so sad’. ‘Many in our society,’ Christie writes in Republican Rescue, ‘use these wild, untrue conspiracy theories to advance their political agendas.'”

“COP26 negotiators on Saturday began coalescing around a hard-fought deal to deliver the emissions reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, as the summit’s UK presidency warned the world faced a ‘moment of truth’,” reports the International Business Times. “India struck a discordant note, insisting on the right of developing economies to continue to use fossil fuels, as the two-week meeting in Glasgow edged towards its conclusion by debating a new draft text offered by COP26 president Alok Sharma.”

“But it was a rare note of objection as other influential players signalled their willingness to compromise, after the summit went into an unscheduled extra day Saturday. Chinese negotiator Zhao Yingmin said: ‘This text is by no means perfect, but we have no intention to open the text again.’ EU commission vice president Frans Timmermans said there was ‘a risk in this marathon of stumbling a couple of metres before the finishing line’, warning too against any reopening of the text.”

“US climate envoy John Kerry also backed the compromise, arguing ‘it is time to come together for future generations’. Much-threatened island states including Fiji, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu all signalled their support, despite pushing for much more financial support as they risk being swallowed by rising seas. Delegates in Glasgow are trying to hammer out how to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement goals to limit temperature rises to 1.5-2 degrees Celsius.”

On November 3rd, while in a moment of extreme exasperation following Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia, I wrote an article outlining several key steps that I felt were necessary for the Democratic Party if they were to have any chance of maintaining control of Congress in the 2022 election cycle. I’m glad to report that just ten days later, we are already seeing substantial progress on two of those three steps. If Democrats in Congress can maintain their momentum in the marathon that is today until election day of 2022, then they will have a much better chance of maintaining control of Congress for the last two years of President Biden’s term in office.

NBC News: “An Antarctic penguin’s misadventure has seen it waddle ashore almost 2,000 miles from home. The Adélie penguin, which is native to Antarctica, washed up on the coast of New Zealand on Wednesday. The rare visitor was spotted by resident Harry Singh, just south of Christchurch in Birdlings Flat on the southern island. A video captured by Singh shows the penguin wandering around on the beach. ‘I did not notice any physical injury, but it was tired and hungry,’ Singh told NBC News via Facebook messenger Friday. The last sighting of an Adélie penguin was in 1993 and this is only the third time one of the birds has made it to New Zealand’s shores, according to an online encyclopaedia of New Zealand birds, which says that one was found dead in 1962 and a live Adélie penguin was reportedly found in 1993. Although the bird’s sex was not immediately determined, locals fondly named it ‘Pingu,’ after the main character in a children’s TV series.”

“Singh said he and his wife stayed with the exhausted creature for nearly four hours, until staff from Christchurch Penguins Rehabilitation came to its rescue. Thomas Stracke of Christchurch Penguin Rehabilitation, arrived at the scene with a veterinarian, according to the news website Stuff. He told the site that the penguin was malnourished and severely dehydrated. The team had given Pingu some ‘fish smoothies’ before it was released back to the sea Friday morning.”

You stupid libs! Trump didn’t actually say the Capitol rioters wanting to hang Mike Pence is “common sense”, you lying socialist idiots! It was taken out of context you stupid buttholes! Look, read this fact check from the Federalist’s Kylee Zempel. It was a perfect statement:

See libs? Oh and did you notice how Axios made it look like responding directly to Karl saying “hang Mike Pence” chant with “it’s common sense”? It’s an interjection! Trump interrupted him! So what if he didn’t actually address it in his interjection! It doesn’t matter! Trump won and has a right to defend his supporters even if they want to hang Mike Pence! He’s a pussy, not a patriot!