Sidney Powell, an erstwhile member of the Elite Strike Force Team known for filing Kraken lawsuits, said Tuesday that the Georgia runoff elections may have already been rigged to have the Republicans win the seats so that it appears to the untrained eye that the system is fair.

“Well yeah, I mean the situation we’re in now, I would suggest that everybody in Georgia turnout on Election Day, and do it again: Vote for the Republican candidates in mass numbers and see what happens,” Powell said as reported by Newsweek, adding, “And it might be that they’ve even rigged the system so that the two Republicans win so they can say, ‘Oh see? There’s no problem.'”

Appearing on a soon to be renamed Rush Limbaugh Show, Powell told the guest host that urging people to vote is great, but she believes that the final winner have already been selected by the Deep State.

The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service say Americans could start seeing as early as Tuesday night the $600 stimulus checks signed into law two days ago by lame duck president Donald Trump, Politico reports.

As the Republican-led Senate holds up consideration of a $2,000 stimulus check, the Treasury Department is moving forward to quickly distribute the amount already passed by Congress last week.  Trump’s latest temper tantrum, however, delayed the implementation of the distribution because he refused to sign the legislation for three days.

Individuals who made up to $75,000 in 2019 will get $600; couples will be eligible for $1,200 if they made up to $150,000 combined. People with children can receive up to $600 per child, for up to two children for a maximum $1,200.

As Ali Velshi of MSNBC noted in tonight’s broadcast, filling in for Rachel Maddow, lame duck president Donald Trump included an odd graphic in a campaign-style ad the White House posted Monday night.

https://youtu.be/-T5Q2SKtEAI

At the 44 second mark, the video touts “Trump Stands For Peace,”  The video accompanying the claim shows the ceremony of the signing of the so-called Abraham Accords, in which two small Arab nations (who never had hostilities with Israel) signed formal recognition of the State of Israel.  But in the lower right corner shows a Nobel Prize medal given to those who won it for achievement in sciences.

The Tennessean: “Sixteen months before Anthony Quinn Warner’s RV exploded in downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, officers visited his home in Antioch after his girlfriend reported that he was making bombs in the vehicle, according to documents obtained by The Tennessean.”

“On Friday, 63-year-old Warner blew up a city block, police say, about 6:30 a.m. on Second Avenue outside an AT&T switch facility. The bomb caused massive destruction to 41 downtown buildings and crippled telecommunication systems throughout the Southeast over the weekend. In the aftermath, The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said Warner was ‘not on our radar’ prior to the bombing. But a Metro Nashville Police Department report from August 2019 shows that local and federal authorities were aware of alleged threats he had made.”

“Louisiana Congressman-elect Luke Letlow has died at Ochsner LSU Health in Shreveport with COVID-19, a family friend confirmed Tuesday night. Letlow, 41, was transferred from St. Francis Medical Center to the Ochsner LSU Health ICU on Dec. 23 and has been treated there since then. Letlow is survived by his wife, Julia Barnhill Letlow, and two young children” – News-Star.

Without a doubt, 2020 will go down as one of the worst years in American history, and one of the reasons for that is the actions (or inactions) of the person who occupied the Oval Office and his supporting cast of incompetent sycophants.

It’s the end of the year, and there will be various “Bottom 5” and “Top 10” lists, but with NatZero being an ostensibly political-oriented website, I wanted to put one together only dealing with Trump’s worst moments.  To cite a Marine Corps mantra:  “There are many like it, but this one is mine.”

5.  Denying the pandemic.  This goes beyond the staggering amount of ineptitude demonstrated by Team Trump, with its failure to procure accurate tests and PPE.  It goes further than the inability of the administration to implement a single domestic policy to stem the spread of the coronavirus.  It starts with Trump’s fundamental unwillingness to even acknowledge that there was growing problem in the first place.  It continues on his denial of medical evidence and the scientific process that the coronavirus was a danger to not just lives, but to our economy.  Remember when Trump (and his minions) repeatedly told us that COVID was no worse than the flu?  That was about 300,000 lives ago.  Remember when he said we’d have close to zero cases–not deaths, cases–by the first weekend in March? 

Politico: “Lawyers for Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Arizona’s 11 Republican electors revealed Tuesday that Vice President Mike Pence declined to sign onto their plan to upend Congress’ certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. It’s the first indication that Pence is resisting some of the most extreme calls to reverse the presidential election results, thus relying on his role as the presiding officer on Jan. 6, when Congress meets to finalize Biden’s win. Gohmert and the Arizona electors sued Pence this week to throw out the procedures that Congress has relied upon since 1889 to count electoral votes.”

“Instead, he said, Pence has the unilateral authority to determine which electors should be voted upon by Congress – raising the prospect that Pence would simply override the choices made by voters in states like Arizona and Pennsylvania that Biden won, to introduce President Donald Trump’s electors instead. But in a motion to expedite proceedings, Gohmert and the electors revealed that their lawyers had reached out to Pence’s counsel in the Office of the Vice President to attempt to reach agreement before going to court. ‘In the teleconference, Plaintiffs’ counsel made a meaningful attempt to resolve the underlying legal issues by agreement, including advising the Vice President’s counsel that Plaintiffs intended to seek immediate injunctive relief in the event the parties did not agree,’ according to Gohmert’s filing. ‘Those discussions were not successful in reaching an agreement and this lawsuit was filed.'”

When are we going to be allowed to do signature verification in Fulton County, Georgia? The process is going VERY slowly. @BrianKempGA Pennsylvania just found 205,000 votes more than they had voters. Therefore, we WIN Pennsylvania!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2020

The City of Louisville has started formal proceedings to fire the two officers still on the police force who were part of the raid that ended with the homicide of Breonna Taylor, USA Today reports.

Detectives Joshua Jaynes and Myles Cosgrove both received pretermination letters stating they would be involuntarily dismissed from the Louisville Metro Police Department.  The letters advise the pair of an upcoming administrative hearing to formally decide the matter.

After an investigation by the department’s Professional Standards Unit, Jaynes was found to have violated department procedures for preparation for a search warrant execution and truthfulness, according to his lawyer.  The rationale for Cosgrove’s dismissal was not released publicly by Cosgrove or the department.

Nearly every hospital in Los Angeles County had to divert ambulance traffic away over the weekend because of overcrowded emergency rooms and a lack of therapeutic oxygen, KCAL CBS-2 News reports.

California Governor Gavin Newsom assembled a support team to assist the region, which has experienced a sharp rise in coronavirus cases in the last month.  Currently, about two-thirds of intensive care beds in LA County hold coronavirus patients.

“As cases continue to remain at the alarmingly high levels, hundreds more people are likely to die,” said county health director Barbara Ferrer.

“The audit team, consisting of law enforcement officers with the Secretary of State’s office and GBI, reviewed 15,118 ABM ballot oath envelopes from randomly selected boxes that stored the 150,431 ABM ballots received in Cobb County for the November 3, 2020 General Election. The sample size of oath envelopes reviewed was chosen in order to reach a 99% confidence level in the results.”

“Utilizing the decision guidelines set forth below, the audit team confirmed the accuracy of the initial determination of the Cobb County Elections Department in all but two 2 cases. In the two cases where the audit team determined that the voter should have received a cure notification, the audit team was able to confirm by interviews with the voters that the actual voters in question cast the ballots. Based on the results of the audit, the Cobb County Elections Department had a 99.99% accuracy rate in performing correct signature verification procedures. The audit team was also able to confirm that the two ballots that should have initially been identified by Cobb County Elections Department staff as requiring a cure notification were actually cast by the voters to whom they were issued. No fraudulent absentee ballots were identified during the audit” Read more.

“Article II of the Constitution provides that “[e]ach State shall appoint” electors for President and Vice President ‘in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.’ U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 2 (emphasis added). That power is ‘plenary,’ and the statutory provisions enacted by the Legislature of a State, in the furtherance of that constitutionally delegated duty, may not be ignored by state election officials or changed by state courts” reads the opening statement of Trump v Biden and it all goes downhill from there.

Washington Post: “The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has retained forensic accounting specialists to aid its criminal investigation of President Trump and his business operations, as prosecutors ramp up their scrutiny of his company’s real estate transactions, according to people familiar with the matter. District Attorney Cyrus Vance opened the investigation in 2018 to examine alleged hush-money payments made to two women who, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, claimed to have had affairs with him years earlier. The probe has since expanded, and now includes the Trump Organization’s activities more broadly, said people familiar with the matter.”

“Vance has contracted with FTI Consulting to look for anomalies among a variety of property deals, and to advise the district attorney on whether the president’s company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains highly sensitive. The probe is believed to encompass transactions spanning several years.”

Colorado.gov official statement: “Today, Gov. Polis and state health officials announced Colorado’s first case of the of COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7, the same variant discovered in the UK. The Colorado State Laboratory confirmed and notified the CDC of the case. The individual is a male in his 20s who is currently in isolation in Elbert County and has no travel history.”

“Public health officials are doing a thorough investigation. The individual is recovering in isolation and will remain there until cleared by public health officials. The individual has no close contacts identified so far, but public health officials are working to identify other potential cases and contacts through thorough contact tracing interviews. The Colorado state lab was the first in the country to quickly identify the variant through sophisticated analysis of testing samples. The lab initially performed the diagnostic PCR test on the sample and found that the sample was positive for COVID-19 with strong signals for the N gene and ORF1ab (both are detected when a person has COVID-19), but the signal for the S gene was not detected. When the S gene doesn’t register in the testing, it is called an ‘S Drop Out Profile,’ and it is considered an essential signature for the variant. The sample was flagged for further investigation. Scientists then sequenced the viral genome from the patient sample and found eight mutations specific to the spike protein gene associated with this variant. Genome sequencing is a molecular profiling of the entire viral RNA sequence.”

Well he didn’t actually say that, but you can tell he wanted to.

“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll, Sponsored by SLANTED from Sharyl Attkisson, for Tuesday shows that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) disapprove. The latest figures include 35% who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing and 45% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -10” says Rasmussen Reports in an article that was brought to you as part of a marketing campaign for some bullshit book complaining about the media.

The extended holiday lame duck president Donald Trump is taking at his Mar-a-Lago club did not start off well, as Trump was reportedly angered by the renovations his third wife, Melania, made to the private residence, CNN reports.

Trump, who is not legally allowed to use Mar-a-Lago as a permanent residence, immediately began berating staff and management about the updates as soon as he walked into the 3,000 square foot private apartment at the club, sources say.

Apparently, Trump was not happy with the design choices made by the Third First Lady and her interior decorator, Tham Kannalikham, and he took it out on the employees of the establishment. 

Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2000 payments ASAP. $600 IS NOT ENOUGH! Also, get rid of Section 230 – Don’t let Big Tech steal our Country, and don’t let the Democrats steal the Presidential Election. Get tough! https://t.co/GMotstu7OI

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2020

“A divided federal appeals court has upheld the power of legislators in the House minority to demand records from the executive branch. Acting in a dispute over records related to President Donald Trump’s luxury Trump International Hotel, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday, 2-1, that lawmakers can resort to the courts to enforce an obscure statute known as the seven-member rule” Politico reports.

“The law, which dates to 1928, allows any seven members of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee to demand that any executive agency turn over any requested information related to the panel’s broad mandate. The Trump administration argued that the lawmakers lacked standing to turn to the courts to force disclosure of the records, but the majority on the D.C. Circuit panel disagreed. ‘The separation of powers, it must be remembered, is not a one-way street that runs to the aggrandizement of the Executive Branch,’ wrote Judge Patricia Millett. ‘When the Political Branches duly enact a statute that confers a right, the impairment of which courts have long recognized to be an Article III injury, proper adherence to the limited constitutional role of the federal courts favors judicial respect for and recognition of that injury.'”