“President Donald Trump has spent his final weeks in office much as he has the preceding years: setting fire to the relationships that buttressed his rise to power. Over the past few days, the president has floated primaries against top-ranking Republicans, pushed out administration officials who were bedrock allies, threatened major bills crafted in conjunction with his team, and turned on officials who won’t help him cling to power. Inside the White House, the response to it all has been growing alarm, coupled with resignation that this is the 45th U.S. president’s modus operandi. Trump’s profound self-interest is no secret. But never has that trait been so visible against a backdrop this consequential, with his legal team and administration’s attack on democratic processes so blatantly anti-democratic.”

“‘The president spent much of the Christmas weekend [at Mar-a-Lago] talking about other Republicans who weren’t doing what he wanted and acting like failures and defeatists,’ said one person present at his private Florida club who was on the receiving end of his grievances. Even behind closed doors, the source said, ‘he was not finding much to be happy about this Christmas.’ But Trump’s actions raise questions about his future as well. And they have illuminated – once more – the fundamental paradox behind his political rise: How can someone burn so many bridges and not eventually find himself alone?” – Daily Beast.

NBC News: “A man wearing a Santa Claus beard and hat and President Donald Trump mask shot his brother-in-law twice in California on Saturday, authorities said. The victim was hospitalized with serious but non-life-threatening injuries following the morning attack in Rohnert Park, California, the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety said in a statement.”

“Gerald Jacinth, 75, of Las Vegas, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. He was wearing the apparent disguise when he parked across the street from his brother-in-law’s home and approached to hand him a package, department officials said. ‘He had parked his black Dodge car across the street from the victim’s house wearing an over the head mask resembling Donald Trump, white long curly beard and a Santa hat as he made his way up the driveway,’ the Rohnert Park authorities said. The 77-year-old victim, whose name was not released by police, met Jacinth outside but did not recognize him, police said. He would not take the package, which the suspect said was a ‘special delivery,’ and Jacinth raised a duffle bag he was carrying and opened fire, the department said. It was unclear if the victim, who was struck twice, was shot through the bag.”

“The coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and Astra Zeneca is expected to win approval this week as the head of the drugs giant said it ‘should be’ effective against the highly transmissible new strain of the virus. Senior government officials expect the drugs watchdog to give the green light before Thursday, speeding up the provision of the jab to the 15m people who could end up in hospital if they caught the virus. Astra Zeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, today reveals that new data will show the vaccine is as effective as the Pfizer and Moderna jabs that have already been approved, protecting 95% of patients, and is ‘100% effective’ in preventing severe illness requiring hospital treatment” – Times of London.

Politico: “The foreign cyberattacks that so many intelligence officials feared didn’t upend the 2020 elections – but this year’s contests nonetheless showed how much the nation still needs to do to fix its security weaknesses. Paper trails protected the integrity of the votes in closely watched states, thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid, but many counties still lack that protection. States mostly rejected the riskiest voting technology – internet balloting – but a few embraced it. And a pandemic-ravaged nation managed to vote safely and reliably, but election offices are still woefully short of money and staff.”

“Perhaps most of all, this year also exposed the United States’ vulnerability to election threats from within, as President Donald Trump and other leading Republicans promoted discredited conspiracy theories to try to nullify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. ‘The big picture lesson from 2020 is that ensuring an accurate result isn’t enough,’ said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science professor and leading election security expert. ‘Elections also have to be able to prove to a skeptical public that the result really was accurate.’ Restoring that trust starts – but doesn’t end – with improving the election technology, policy specialists say. Joe Kiniry, the chief scientist at the election technology firm Free & Fair, said the U.S. ‘simply cannot continue’ using election systems that ‘an enormous fraction of the electorate’ considers ‘broken.’ Without urgent reforms, he said, ‘2024 will be a disaster.'”

Former Republican Wisconsin governor and person voted “Most Likely to Hit Himself in the Face with a Shovel” by his high school class Scott Walker was caught in a lie while tweet-bragging that he went to a pizza place for dinner.

Walker tweeted that he was enjoying a pie at his favorite pizzeria, posting a photo supposedly of the dinner he was enjoying.

Great pizza tonight at San Giorgio Pizzeria Napoletana. We have to support our local restaurants and small businesses! pic.twitter.com/uvMityyraH

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) December 27, 2020

Unfortunately for Walker, Twitter sleuths found that *exact same pizza* with the *same arrangement of sausages* and the *exact same drinks* in an earlier post of his from last fall. 

Three people were killed and three others injured when a person walked into a Rockford, Illinois bowling alley and started shooting, NBC News reports. Police have a suspect in custody.

The shooting took place just before 7 p.m. local time at Don Carter Lanes. The shooter started firing outside the bowling alley, wounding a number of people, and continued shooting inside the building. At least two teenagers were among the victims, but their status is unknown. Under local coronavirus rules, the bowling alley should have been closed, but a restaurant attached to the bowling alley may have remained open to serve customers seated outside or for carry-out. “When officers arrived on scene, the shooter was still in the building,” Rockford Police Chief Dan O’Shea said at a media briefing. “No officers fired their weapons we know of at this point, but the individual that we believe is responsible, and the only individual we believe at this point to be involved, we may have in custody. But it’s still to be determined.”

Five women, aged 8 to 50, were found shot to death in a home in rural Atkins, Arkansas Saturday, ABCNews reports.

Local law enforcement authorities do not believe there is any danger to the public because they believe the shooter is among the dead, Pope County Sheriff Shane Jones said at a press conference Saturday afternoon.

The women, who were all related, were found when another relative came to visit.

Showing leadership when the country has been abandoned by the person holding the Oval Office, President-elect Joe Biden castigated lame duck president Donald Trump for abandoning his office and the American people, Politico reported.

Biden released a statement calling on Trump to due his duty and sign legislation that would provide aid to Americans who need unemployment benefits, rent relief, small business assistance and stimulus payments. “It is the day after Christmas, and millions of families don’t know if they’ll be able to make ends meet because of President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign an economic relief bill approved by Congress with an overwhelming and bipartisan majority,” Biden said. “This bill is critical. It needs to be signed into law now.”

….fake signatures, illegal immigrant voters, banned Republican vote watchers, MORE VOTES THAN ACTUAL VOTERS (check out Detroit & Philadelphia), and much more. The numbers are far greater than what is necessary to win the individual swing states, and cannot even be contested….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2020

….But when it is all over, and this period of time becomes just another ugly chapter in our Country’s history, WE WILL WIN!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2020

AP: “Millions of people in the U.K. faced tough new coronavirus restrictions Saturday, with Scotland and Northern Ireland demanding tighter measures to try to halt a new variant of the virus that is believed to spread more quickly. Northern Ireland went into a six-week lockdown and in Wales, restrictions that were relaxed for Christmas Day were also re-imposed. The number of people under England’s top level of restrictions – Tier 4 – increased by 6 million on Saturday to 24 million people overall, around 43% of England’s population. The region included London and many of its surrounding areas. No indoor mixing of households is allowed, and only essential travel permitted. Gyms, pools, hairdressers and stores selling nonessential goods have been ordered to close and pubs and restaurants can only do takeout. Business groups say the restrictions will be economically devastating to their members. Another 570 daily deaths from COVID-19 were reported, bringing Britain’s total death toll to 70,195, the second-worst death toll in Europe after Italy. Britain also reported more than 32,700 new cases of the disease on Christmas Day.”

“Fears about the U.K.’s new variant have sparked a week of border chaos. Around 1,000 British soldiers spent Christmas Day trying to clear a huge backlog of trucks stranded in southeast England after France briefly closed its border to the U.K. and demanded coronavirus tests from all drivers. But Britain’s Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said Saturday that more than 15,000 drivers had been tested and that the backlog at a testing site at Manston Airport was cleared by Sunday morning. Only 36 positive tests had been reported, he said on Twitter.”

Was an AT&T data center in Nashville destroyed by the bomb yesterday?

Were AT&T cell or wi-fi signals which access Internet used in connection with Dominion voting machines?

Asking for a friend.

P.S. It is unlawful for voting machines to be connected to Internet.

— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) December 26, 2020

This guy’s seriously out of his fucking mind. You’d think other people in MAGA World would be telling him to go get help and stop screwing things up.

New York Times: “The Rev. Raphael G. Warnock and Jon Ossoff, the Democratic challengers in the Senate runoffs in Georgia, have each raised more than $100 million since October – enormous sums that surpassed their Republican opponents by a significant margin and underscored Democrats’ confidence after recent gains the party has made in the state and their hopes that they might capture the Senate. The contests have drawn a surge of attention and investment from outside of Georgia, given the stakes, and the campaigning has only intensified in the final weeks before the runoff, which is scheduled for Jan. 5. Senator David Perdue, one of the Republican incumbents, raised $68 million in the period between Oct. 15 and Dec. 16, according to reports to the Federal Election Commission made public on Thursday. Senator Kelly Loeffler, the other Republican, raised close to $64 million during that period.”

The headstones of two German prisoners of war who died in a Texas POW camp during World War II have been removed from their graves because they featured Nazi swastikas, CBS News reports.

The graves are at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, interspersed among the graves of American servicemembers and other honored dead.  New headstones were put over the graves of Alfred P. Kafka and Georg Forst Wednesday morning.

“Clearly, it took a long time for this to happen, and it’s obviously the right thing to have been done,” said Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  Since it learned of the symbols last may, the foundation had lobbied the Department of Veterans Affairs, which maintains military cemeteries, to remove the markers.

Update 12:24 PM 12/26/20: Headline is slightly misleading, as authorities have not publicly identified a suspect, however CBS News Chief Justice and Homeland Security Correspondent Jeff Pegues reports “police have a person of interest or persons of interest in connection with the explosion that rocked Nashville on Christmas Day” so it’s likely only a matter of time before we’ll know what kind of MAGA white nationalist was behind the attack.

Update 3:02 PM 12/26/20:”A law enforcement source told CBS News at least one person of interest has been identified in connection to the recreational vehicle that exploded on Christmas morning, rocking downtown Nashville. Multiple sources confirm that Anthony Quinn Warner, a Nashville area resident, had a similar make and model recreational vehicle as the one in photos released to the public. Warner was described as a 63-year-old White man. Federal agents are at the address listed to Warner. A law enforcement source told CBS News at least one person of interest has been identified in connection to the Christmas morning explosion in Nashville. The person is connected to the recreational vehicle that exploded” reports CBS News.

University of Utah freshman football player Ty Jordan was killed Friday night in an accidental shooting, ESPN reports.  He was 19 years old.

Jordan, from Mesquite, Texas, was named the PAC-12 Offensive Freshman Player of the Year after rushing for 597 yards and scoring six touchdowns this year.

Police in Denton, Texas responded to a report of a shooting last night and found the victim, having been shot once.  He was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.  Police had ruled the shooting accidental, and no one else was harmed. 

Check out this video from my friends at Bedtime Stories, a top-notch YouTube channel for paranormal and true crime mysteries. This episode explores the infamous Rendlesham Forest Incident, where an American Air Force base in Britain found itself pretty much under invasion from an other-worldy force starting on the night of December 26th, 1980.

“Archaeologists in Pompeii, the city buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 AD, have made the extraordinary find of a frescoed hot food and drinks shop that served up the ancient equivalent of street food to Roman passersby. Known as a termopolium, Latin for hot drinks counter, the shop was discovered in the archaeological park’s Regio V site, which is not yet open the public, and unveiled on Saturday. Traces of nearly 2,000-year-old food were found in some of the deep terra cotta jars containing hot food which the shop keeper lowered into a counter with circular holes. The front of the counter was decorated with brightly coloured frescoes, some depicting animals that were part of the ingredients in the food sold, such as a chicken and two ducks hanging upside down. Archaeologists also found a decorated bronze drinking bowl known as a patera, ceramic jars used for cooking stews and soups, wine flasks and amphora” – Reuters.

A young military man working in Afghanistan told me that elections in Afghanistan are far more secure and much better run than the USA’s 2020 Election. Ours, with its millions and millions of corrupt Mail-In Ballots, was the election of a third world country. Fake President!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2020

“Changes to the way millions of Americans voted this year contributed to record turnout, but that’s no guarantee the measures making it easier to cast ballots will stick around for future elections. Republicans in key states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden already are pushing for new restrictions, especially to absentee voting. It’s an option many states expanded amid the coronavirus outbreak that proved hugely popular and helped ensure one of the smoothest election days in recent years. President Donald Trump has been unrelenting in his attacks on mail voting as he continues to challenge the legitimacy of an election he lost. Despite a lack of evidence and dozens of losses in the courts, his claims of widespread voter fraud have gained traction with some Republican elected officials. They are vowing to crack down on mail ballots and threatening to roll back other steps that have made it easier for people to vote” – AP.