Two years ago, the great people of Wisconsin asked me to endorse a man named Brian Hagedorn for State Supreme Court Justice, when he was getting destroyed in the Polls against a tough Democrat Candidate who had no chance of losing. After my endorsement, Hagedorn easily won!…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2020

…Republicans in Wisconsin should take these 3 strong decisions to their State Legislators and overturn this ridiculous State Election. We won in a LANDSLIDE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2020

Televangelist and possessed decaying bag of bones Pat Robertson said that the election is over and that lame duck president Donald Trump “lives in an alternate reality”

https://youtu.be/5EOI5sp6tRM

Robertson rattled off a number of lies Trump has repeatedly told, claiming they’re not lies because Trump believes them.  (Fact check:  they’re still lies.)  Robertson claimed Trump did a “marvelous job with the economy.”  (Fact check:  that’s a lie.)

After seeing coronavirus hospitalizations spike 75% in the previous weeks, the premier of the Canadian province of Ontario will implement a province-wide lockdown December 26th, the Washington Post reports.

Canada’s most populous province, Ontario will maintain the lockdown for 14 days for the entire region, but the southern, more densely-populated area will stay locked down until January 23rd.

Ontario had attempted to use smaller, less intrusive, more targeted efforts to control the coronavirus, but those efforts failed to contain the spread and impact of the pandemic. 

E. Jean Carroll, a former fashion editor who is suing outgoing president Donald Trump for defamation after he called her a liar for alleging that Trump raped her in the dressing room of an upscale New York City department store, used a trending hashtag on Twitter to throw some shade at Trump.

See you in court.#MessageFor45

— E. Jean Carroll (@ejeancarroll) December 21, 2020

More than 70 cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point have been accused of cheating in a math exam in what is being called the worst cheating scandal at the service academy since the 1970s, USA Today reports.

Fifty-eight cadets have admitted to cheating on the exam, which was administered remotely due to restrictions put in place because of the coronavirus.  Most will go through a rehabilitation program and be put on probation that will last through the remainder of the time at West Point.  Others have resigned, and some others will face disciplinary hearings that could result in their expulsion.

“There’s no excuse for cheating when the fundamental code for cadets is that they should not lie, cheat or steal,” said West Point law professor Tim Bakken, who described this as a potential national security scandal. “Therefore when the military tries to downplay effects of cheating at the academy, we’re really downplaying the effects on the military as a whole. We rely on the military to tell us honestly when we should fight wars, and when we can win them.”

With Four days until Christmas, we’re having multiple crises here in the US: thousands of Americans are dying per day of Coronavirus. Tens of millions are out of work. Millions face eviction at the end of the year. And our evil, deranged lame duck president is having a meltdown over losing reelection and will probably continue to do some serious damage before he’s removed finally in 30 days. Liberals and Conservatives are even angrier at each other than they were before the election.

Compared to across the pond, however, we’re living in a relative utopia – or at least, we can see relief at the end of a very long tunnel. There will no longer be a Trump in public office in one month, but Britain is still dealing with the leadership of Boris Johnson. He’s been unable to craft a Brexit trade deal and the UK finally leaves the EU in ten days. All traffic has been halted from France as a new Coronavirus strain – one that spreads 70% more easily from person to person – was identified there a few days ago. Panic buying is out of control in anticipation of shortages. France shut all truck traffic in and out of Calais Sunday night, thousands of outbound trucks snarled highways in Kent, though the jam on the other side was cleared more easily.

Britain is right fucked right now, so if you have friends or family there, check in on them and keep them in your prayers. They have a tough road ahead of them.

President-Elect Joe Biden received his coronavirus vaccine on live television Monday afternoon, with each rolling up his sleeve at Christiania (Delaware) Care Hospital.  First Lady-designate Dr. Jill Biden got her vaccine earlier in the day.

Biden made small talk with the nurse who administered the shot as he received the dose, calling her one of the “real heroes” of the pandemic.

Biden commended the scientists, the clinicians and the front line workers who made the development and distribution of the vaccine a reality.  Biden said that the “administration deserves credit for getting this whole thing off the ground with Operation Warp Speed.”

Biden noted that he was getting the shot on camera to encourage people to get the vaccine when it’s available, but in the meantime to practice public health recommendations, particularly during the holidays, because the virus is still dangerous and can still hurt people.

Outgoing Vice President Mike Pence received his vaccination last week.  Lame duck president Donald Trump hasn’t yet received a vaccine, either privately or on camera.

Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced on MSNBC that British Airways and Delta Airlines to include passengers flying to New York State in testing for the new variant of the coronavirus that is sweeping through the United Kingdom.

According to the BBC, more than 40 countries have banned travelers from the UK, where an emerging, highly infectious strain of the coronavirus has been identified.  More than 140 countries are now requiring mandatory coronavirus testing for people who have been in the UK in previous weeks before they can enter the nation.

Cuomo cited the inaction of the Trump administration in his call to mandate testing for international travelers coming into the United States.  He noted that three airlines are the primary international carriers bringing passengers into New York airports:  British Airways, Delta Airlines and Virgin Atlantic.  Cuomo noted he has not heard back from Virgin about his testing request.

NBC News: “The family of an American college student is appealing to the U.S. government for help as she faces a four-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to breaking the Cayman Islands’ mandatory 14-day Covid-19 isolation protocols for visitors. ‘She just wants to come home,’ 18-year-old Skylar Mack’s grandmother, Jeanne Mack, told the ‘Today’ show on Monday. ‘She knows she made a mistake, she owns to up to that, but she’s pretty hysterical right now.'”

“Skylar is a pre-med student from Georgia. She traveled to visit her boyfriend, Vanjae Ramgeet, 24, who was in the Cayman Islands for a jet-skiing competition. Mack did not isolate for the mandatory 14 days. Instead, Mack said she isolated for two days and tested negative twice for coronavirus before abandoning her tracking device and leaving isolation to attend her boyfriend’s jet-skiing competition. Mack was sentenced to prison last week. Jonathon Hughes, the attorney representing Mack and her boyfriend, said four months in prison – an upgraded sentence from community service – would have ‘a particularly harsh effect on her.’ Her family said they appealed directly to President Donald Trump, whose office wrote back that her case would be forwarded to the ‘appropriate’ federal agency, likely the U.S. State Department.”

Since the November elections, more than 67,000 new voters registered in Georgia before the December 7th deadline to be eligible to vote in the upcoming runoff elections, NBC News reports.

The plurality of the new registrants, 44%, registered as Democrats while 41% filed as Republicans.  Fifteen percent identified as independents, with the remainder filing under minor parties.

New voters, who are likely highly motivated to vote in the January 5th runoffs, could swing the two races, which polls show within a single percentage point.  The stakes of the races are the control of the US Senate:  if Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock both win, the Senate will be a 50-50 tie, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote after her January 20th inauguration. 

With less than a month left in his term, lame duck president Donald Trump has once again addressed a matter of significant importance during the coronavirus pandemic and economic downturn:  the architecture of federal buildings.

According to Bloomberg News, Trump signed an executive order requiring that all federal buildings around the nation be “beautiful.”

That’s right:  Trump demands all federal buildings be “beautiful.”  That’s what it said in the Executive Order.  “Beautiful.” 

“A group of about 300 demonstrators attempted to force their way into two separate entrances of the Oregon state Capitol on Monday, outraged that the state Legislature was holding a special session closed to the public. The crowd is a loose collection of members of the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer and others far-right groups, many of them are armed with pistols and rifles. At one point during the demonstration, which began around 9 a.m., a woman tried to climb in a window on the west side of the government building. Oregon State Troopers, however, repelled her – before two more troopers showed up to insist that she get off the ledge.”

“Those troopers were quickly chased off by screaming protestors, many of them toting long black rifles. Minutes later, the crowd moved to the building’s north entrance and attempted to push their way in. A dozen more troopers arrived at the door, declared it an unlawful assembly, and pushed the crowd back, using some kind of deterrent in a series of ‘pop’ sounds, at which point the protestors swarmed back out again, their eyes watering and coughing” – Daily Beast.

New York Times: “Last week, [Smartmatic founder Antonio Mugica’s] lawyer sent scathing letters to the Fox News Channel, Newsmax and OAN demanding that they immediately, forcefully clear his company’s name – and that they retain documents for a planned defamation lawsuit. He has, legal experts say, an unusually strong case. And his new lawyer is J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media in 2017, at least $177 million, for a beef producer whose ‘lean finely textured beef’ was described by ABC News as ‘pink slime.'”

“Now, Mr. Connolly’s target is a kind of red slime, the stream of preposterous lies coming from the White House and Republican officials around the country. Mr. Mugica isn’t the only potential plaintiff. Dominion Voting Systems has hired another high-powered libel lawyer, Tom Clare, who has threatened legal action against Ms. Powell and the Trump campaign. These are legal threats any company, even a giant like Fox Corporation, would take seriously. And they could be fatal to the dream of a new ‘Trump TV,’ a giant new media company in the president’s image, and perhaps contributing to his bottom line. Newsmax and OAN would each like to become that, and are both burning money to steal ratings from Fox, executives from both companies have acknowledged. They will need to raise significantly more money, or to sell quickly to investors, to build a Fox-style multibillion-dollar empire. But outstanding litigation with the potential of an enormous verdict will be enough to scare away most buyers. And so Newsmax and OAN appear likely to face the same fate as so many of President Trump’s sycophants, who have watched him lie with impunity and imitated him – only to find that he’s the only one who can really get away with it. Mr. Trump benefits from presidential immunity, but also he has an experienced fabulist’s sense of where the legal red lines are, something his allies often lack.”

Early Monday morning, the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee was removed from the crypt of the Capitol building in Washington, DC at the direction of the Virginia state government, according to Politico.

4:02 am. 12/21/20. Crypt of the US Capitol. pic.twitter.com/2ttGecsj5B

— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) December 21, 2020

States determine what people are honored in certain places in the Capitol, and a commission named by the Virginia State Legislature recommended removing the Lee statue and replacing it with civil rights leader Barbara Johns, who led a high school student group that led to a case incorporated into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that fought racism.

The Lee statue will be relocated to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture in Richmond.

“Attorney General Barr says he sees no reason to appoints a special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation” reports CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz, later adding “Regarding the election AG Barr – If I thought special counsel was appropriate I would have appointed one”

In a stunning investigation, Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, who survived poisoning with a deadly nerve agent by operatives of the Russian government, got one of those operatives to describe in a phone call how they tracked and ultimately poisoned him, including the detail that they put the nerve agent in his underpants, CNN reports.

CNN and online investigative operation Bellingcat were able to identify members of the team assigned to assassinate Navalny.  For most, Navalny phoned them directly to try to get them to talk.  In one case, a CNN reporter went to the apartment of Oleg Tayakin, who slammed the door when the reporter asked about Navalny.

But for the last target, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, Navalny and the team masked his identity by spoofing the phone number of the Russian intelligence service, the FSB, and having Navalny pose as a high-ranking official with Russia’s National Security Council.

Barack Obama:
—69,000,000 votes
—873 counties

Donald Trump:
—75,000,000 votes
—2,497 counties

Joe Biden:
—81,000,000 votes
—477 counties

…And we’re not allowed to question his “victory”

🤔

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 21, 2020

“To preserve his hold on power, Trump has spent the weeks since Election Day promoting falsehoods about voting problems in Georgia and five other states, successfully persuading tens of millions of his supporters to believe a lie – that the election was stolen from him, and from them. He has done so by harnessing the power of his position, using his pulpit at the White House and his Twitter feed to let loose a fusillade of conspiracy theories. His assault on the integrity of the election has gotten a hefty assist from pro-Trump media outfits and an assortment of state lawmakers and lawyers who gave oxygen to the debunked allegations – and a majority of congressional Republicans, who called on the Supreme Court to overturn the results in four states.”

“Trump is continuing to press his case, even now that the electoral college has formally elected Biden. In a meeting with allies on Friday, the president discussed deploying the military to rerun the election and appointing attorney Sidney Powell, whose conspiracy theories about election fraud have been widely discredited, as a special counsel to investigate the outcome. Along the way, Trump has willfully damaged two bedrocks of American democracy that he has been going after for years: confidence in the media as a source of trusted information and faith in systems of government. It might be one of his lasting legacies” – Washington Post.

Eight years ago today, the world was supposed to end in some sort of fiery astrological maelstrom of death and destruction – but that didn’t work out for whatever reason, even though it seemed like a sure bet. Did some team of tough, scrappy hero archaeologists deactivate the ancient doomsday machine underneath the Mayan pyramids just before the portal to the shadow realm was opened? Why didn’t anyone get that action set-piece on tape? Who played the comic relief on the team?

Also, what if the Mayans were just off by eight years? That’d be so 2020! LOL!