Democrats:

-More lockdowns
-Less Christmas

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) December 19, 2020

New York Times: “President Trump on Friday discussed making Sidney Powell, who as a lawyer for his campaign team unleashed a series of conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan plot to rig voting machines in the United States, a special counsel investigating voter fraud, according to two people briefed on the discussion. It was unclear if Mr. Trump will move ahead with such a plan.”

“Most of his advisers opposed the idea, two of the people briefed on the discussion said, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who in recent days sought to have the Department of Homeland Security join the campaign’s efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the election. Mr. Giuliani joined the discussion by phone, while Ms. Powell was at the White House for a meeting that became raucous at times, according to one of the people briefed on what took place. Other administration officials drifted in and out of the meeting, two of the people briefed said, and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, pushed back on the ideas being proposed. Ms. Powell accused other Trump advisers of being quitters, according to the people briefed. But the idea that Mr. Trump would try to install Ms. Powell in a position to investigate the outcome sent shock waves through the president’s circle. She has repeatedly claimed there was widespread fraud, but several lawsuits she filed related to election fraud have been tossed out of court. Mr. Trump has been in contact with Ms. Powell in recent days, despite the fact that the campaign last month sought to distance itself from her as she aired wild and baseless claims about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which were used in some states, somehow being connected to a Venezuelan plot to control the election.”

….discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!). There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. @DNI_Ratcliffe @SecPompeo

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2020

Bloomberg: “Prime Minister Boris Johnson imposed a full lockdown on London and large parts of southeast England and told the public across the country to avoid travel, in a desperate attempt to stop a new strain of coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the U.K. After emergency talks with his most senior officials, Johnson canceled plans to ease pandemic restrictions for five days during the holiday. Household mixing will be banned in London and the south-east and socializing restricted to just Christmas Day across the rest of England. The premier announced a new Tier 4 will apply in the hot-spot areas around the capital from Sunday, with all non-essential shops closing, millions of people ordered to stay at home and all foreign travel banned except for essential purposes. Johnson urged people across England to ‘stay local’ and not travel far. He promised the new rules will be reviewed on Dec. 30.”

https://youtu.be/RVk8gjj5-9U

This Christmas, if you plan on watching the 1964 Rankin-Bass Animation studio classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with family, it’ll be helpful to interrupt constantly to point out how much it retroactively works as an allegory for the Trump movement. At its core, Rudolph is a tale of alienation and ostracism for being different – but that once you prove yourself to be situationally useful to the regime, your differences are actually in fact a good thing – well for the time being at least. Who knows if tomorrow will work out.

AP: “Jen O’Malley Dillon, President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign manager and incoming deputy chief of staff, referred to congressional Republicans as “fuckers” in a conversation with the magazine. And Washington was again in a tizzy. The hand-wringing is a preview of one of the political shifts ahead once Biden takes office. Democrats preparing to take power are furious at any sign of a double standard from Republicans who looked past — or encouraged — President Donald Trump’s profane and divisive behavior in office.”

“And Republicans, eager to portray Democrats as elitists, are suddenly aghast over a lack of decorum. Although Marco Rubio didn’t condemn Trump’s comment about African ‘shithole countries,’ the Florida Republican senator seemed scandalized by O’Malley Dillon’s comment. He tweeted that it shows what Democrats ‘really think.”’White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted the comment ‘says volumes’ about Biden. She later walked back the comment in a virtual conversation with fellow Democratic operatives. While it’s easy to dismiss the O’Malley Dillon episode as another example of Washington’s endless capacity for self-obsession, it reveals some difficult truths. For one, the deference that Republicans showed the White House during the Trump era will be a thing of the past. The same party that cheered Trump for “telling it like it is” is poised to attack those in the incoming administration who deviate from the folkways expected in official Washington. ‘They’re going to look for any reason not to work with the Biden administration,’ former North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp said of Republicans. The new standard seems to be applied with particular vigor to women.”

He didn’t win the Election. He lost all 6 Swing States, by a lot. They then dumped hundreds of thousands of votes in each one, and got caught. Now Republican politicians have to fight so that their great victory is not stolen. Don’t be weak fools! https://t.co/d9Bgu8XPIj

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2020

CBS4 Minnesota: “The wife of Minnesota State Sen. Jerry Relph, of St. Cloud, says that her husband has died at 76. Last month, Relph tested positive for COVID-19, three days after going into self-quarantine after he discovered he was exposed at the State Capitol. Relph then went to an emergency room for his symptoms.”

“Following Relph’s death, Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka released the following statement: ‘Senator Jerry Relph was a true friend and colleague loved by so many. For four years, he rolled up his sleeves and tackled tough issues for our state. Senator Relph will always be remembered as a dedicated public servant. He was already thinking of ways to have an impact on his community after narrowly losing his re-election. We are deeply saddened by his passing and offer our prayers and support to the Relph family.’ Last month, Minnesota Democrats called for Gazelka to resign from his leadership post, saying Senate Republicans didn’t notify Democratic colleagues and non-partisan Capitol staffers about gatherings that led to positive COVID-19 cases.”

“Are we truly alone in the universe? You and I might not know the answer to that question, but a handful of people at the highest echelons of government have started to publicly talk about how seriously they take aliens. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been particularly vocal about this. ‘The federal government all these years has covered up [important information about UFOs], put brake pads on everything, stopped it,’ Reid said in The Phenomenon, a documentary that came out in October. ‘I think it’s very, very bad for our country.’ This month, Haim Eshed, who used to helm Israel’s Defense Ministry, came forth with even more jaw-dropping claims. He told Yediot Aharonot, an Israeli newspaper, that humans have made contact with aliens, and even formed a ‘galactic federation.'”

“Eshed, who ran Israel’s space program for almost 30 years, is perhaps the highest-ranking official in the military-industrial complex to make the case that humans are in contact with aliens. In the United States, no top official has said definitively that aliens are among us, but John Brennan, who ran the CIA during the Obama administration, is asking some pointed questions. ‘Life is defined in many different ways,’ John Brennan said in a conversation with economist (and podcaster) Tyler Cowen that was released Wednesday. ‘I think it’s a bit presumptuous and arrogant for us to believe that there’s no other form of life anywhere in the entire universe … Some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.’ In other words, some of the UFO stuff could be aliens” – New York Magazine.

Washington Post: “As President Trump remains defiant, refusing to publicly acknowledge that he lost the Nov. 3 election, all signs around the White House point to a four-year whirlwind coming to an end. Aides are quietly lining up next jobs, friends are wrangling last-minute favors and Cabinet secretaries are giving exit interviews. These behind-the-scenes preparations underscore the reality that while Trump may continue to tilt at the windmills, his tenure as president is ending.”

“There is no serious planning for a second term, and four officials say the West Wing is far more dormant than it once was, with aides spending their days on job interviews or working from home. The outer Oval Office, once a constant hubbub of traffic angling to see the president, no longer thrums with the same energy. Aides are frantically looking for jobs outside the West Wing, according to headhunters and consultants, but they’re fearful of getting fired if they are caught before Jan. 20. Some are just leaving. Staff secretary Derek Lyons and communications director Alyssa Farah are among the high-profile departures. A number of the campaign’s top officials – including campaign manager Bill Stepien – have all but disappeared from the orbit, aides say. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have purchased a $30 million property on a secluded island near Miami, according to the New York Post. Ivanka Trump has begun posting daily pictures looking back on the president’s term, or shots of her children at Washington destinations, such as the Lincoln Memorial.”

“U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said this week’s cyber attack – dubbed by one U.S. official as ‘the worst hacking case in the history of America’ – was ‘pretty clearly’ the work of Russians. Pompeo made the comments during an interview on the Mark Levin Show, effectively making him the first Trump administration official to publicly link the attack on U.S. and other computer systems around the globe to the Kremlin” – Fox News.

Politico: “Donald Trump has never had a week like the week he just had. On the heels of the Supreme Court’s knock-back and the Electoral College’s knockout, some of his most reliable supporters – Mitch McConnell, Vladimir Putin, Newsmax – all acknowledged and affirmed the fact of the matter. Trump is a loser. This is new territory for Trump, who over the course of a lifetime of professional and personal transgressions and failures has assembled a record of remarkable resilience, emerging all but unscathed from every one of his brushes with ruin.”

“‘He’s never been in a situation in which he has lost in a way he can’t escape from,’ Mary Trump, his niece and the author of the fiercely critical and hugely bestselling book about him and their family, told me the other day. Consequently, he is manifestly out of sorts, say former close associates, longtime Trump watchers and mental health experts. It’s not just his odd behavior – the testy, tiny-desk session with the press, the stilted Medal of Freedom ceremony, the cut-short trip to the Army-Navy football game. In the month and a half since Election Day he has been seen and heard from relatively sparingly and sporadically. No-showing unexpectedly at a Christmas party and speaking mainly through his increasingly manic Twitter feed. The combination of this unprecedented rebuke meeting an uncommonly vulnerable ego has people wondering if there is a chance that Trump’s unusual actions are evidence of something potentially more dire. Could he be on his way to a mental breakdown? ‘His fragile ego has never been tested to this extent,’ Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney, told me. ‘As each day ends, Trump knows he’s one day closer to legal and financial troubles. Accordingly, we will all see his behavior deteriorate until it progresses into a full mental breakdown.'”

Daily Beast: “A so-called incel who fantasized about blowing up a shopping mall and killing ‘hot cheerleaders’ pleaded guilty Friday to one count of possessing an unregistered destructive device. Cole Carini of Richlands, Virginia, reportedly idolized mass shooter Elliott Rodger, an ‘involuntary celibate,; or ‘incel,’ who in 2014 murdered six people in California and injured 14 others before taking his own life. Many legal scholars say incel-related violence, which has been linked to at least 53 deaths in recent years, is a form of domestic terrorism. The ‘incel movement’ is comprised of young men who feel angry at women for rejecting them.”

“The charges against Carini stem from a bizarre incident in June, when the 23-year-old showed up at the hospital missing his left hand and several fingers on his right. He also had shrapnel wounds to the neck and throat, but claimed to have suffered his horrifying injuries in a gardening accident. Knowing that Carini had a previous conviction on his record for explosives, local cops called in the FBI to search the home Carini shared with his mother. There, agents found a trail of blood leading to a second-floor bedroom. Inside, they found human skin and a chunk of flesh stuck to the ceiling, a box filled with rusty nails, a peanut butter jar containing at least two pounds of the volatile explosive triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a ‘substance used in the creation of improvised explosive devices,’ and ammonium nitrate, a form of which was used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 bombing of an Oklahoma City federal building, killing 168 and injuring nearly 700. Although it was not made public at the time, an FBI agent later testified in court that investigators found handwritten bomb-making formulas and recipes – with Carini’s name on them – in his bedroom, as well as a modified pressure cooker containing two vials in Carini’s bedroom closet.”

On December 18th, 2019, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, with 3 defections and zero Republicans joining them, voted to approve two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, one for abuse of power and another for obstruction of Congress in refusing to participate in the inquiry.

There was no seriously disputing what Trump did. In June 2019, feeling threatened by Joe Biden’s lead in head-to-head matchups of 2020 polls he bought into a John Solomon conspiracy theory, using congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine as leverage to get its then-newly elected president Volodmir Zelensky to announce a reopened investigation of Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings in the country, and attempted to cover it up – which in turn blew open thanks to a whistleblower on the White House’s National Security Council. By December 18th, 2020 all of the relevant facts were in hand. So were the alternative facts.

Just 33 days before he leaves office, lame duck president Donald Trump has named some members of his “patriotic education” commission that he wants to direct education curriculum, Politico reports.

Trump so-called “1776 Commission” is supposed to advise the president on education initiatives countering what Trump describes as teaching student “to hate their own country” in schools by including lessons on unfavorable history of the United States.  It’s his effort to oppose the “1619 Project” led by the New York Times Magazine, which focused attention on the 400th anniversary of the first African slaves being brought to America.

Larry Arnn, the president of the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan and a long-time Trump supporter, will be the chairman of the commission.  The vice president of Hillsdale College and the dean of the school’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government will be the commission’s executive director.

Despite lame duck president Donald Trump’s statement that the United States would pay the least of any nation, European Union nations are paying less than the US for the coronavirus vaccines, the New York Times reports.

Trump has claimed that he unilaterally declared the United States would get “favored nation” status, which in his mind means that the US would automatically get the lowest price for any product, particularly drugs.

However, a Belgian government official tweeted out the price schedule the EU is paying for vaccines, which is significantly lower than the US government’s costs.  The EU is paying the equivalent of $14.70 per dose for the Pfizer vaccine, while the US is paying $19.50.

Axios: “The Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, one day after it was endorsed by a panel of independent experts. The authorization of a second coronavirus vaccine, coming exactly one week after the FDA cleared Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for emergency use, marks another milestone in the country’s path to curbing the pandemic and increases access for millions of Americans. Moderna’s vaccine, which the FDA confirmed is safe and has a 94.1% efficacy rate, does not need to be stored at ultracold temperatures and comes in smaller batches, making it easier to distribute to rural areas than Pfizer’s vaccine.”

Remember this crazy, very obviously Russian asshole on The Hill? As far as I can remember he disappeared at some point very early in 2020. I think he died from Coronavirus.

TRUMP ✓ VERIFIED • a year ago
I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE LEFTISTS ARE THINKING BUT IT’S PRETTY CLEAR THAT THEY HAVE BEEN FOOLED AGAIN WITH THIS FAKE IMPEACHMENT SCAM AND SHAM.
Thu, 12/19/2019 1:03 PM on ‘Democrats rally behind Pelosi on delay of articles’

MAXX • a year ago
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP IS CORRECT AGAIN.
IF SOMEONE ACCUSES ME OF ANY WRONGDOING AND I KNOW I’M INNOCENT, THEN I WOULD REACT THE SAME WAY.
Wed, 10/2/2019 1:36 PM on ‘”You People Should be Ashamed of Yourselves! We Have the Most Dishonest People” – President Trump shames Corrupt Liberal Media (VIDEO)’

DAILY • a year ago
BRING IT ON! IN 2020 PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP WILL WIN THE U.S. PRESIDENCY IN A LANDSLIDE, REPUBLICANS WILL HOLD THE SENATE AND WIN BACK THE HOUSE. THE FIRST TASK IN 2021 FOR REPUBLICANS MUST BE TO REPEAL AND REPLACE DISASTROUS OBAMACARE!
Tue, 9/24/2019 3:39 PM on ‘2020 Democrats Call for Impeachment: ‘The President Is a Criminal’’

SPACE • a year ago
HOLY COW!
THE PERVERTED DEEP STATE!
Thu, 8/29/2019 2:53 PM on ‘DOJ IG Reveals Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lied Under Oath About Viewing Porn on Govt-Issued Computer – DECLINED PROSECUTION’

EVIDENTLY…. • a year ago
EVIDENTLY, THE VERY FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS VERY DESPERATE THESE DAYS AS USUAL. THE VERY FAKE NEWS MEDIA HAS RUN OUT OF MUNITIONS TO TRY TO DIMINISH PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP BECAUSE THEIR NUCLEAR WEAPON (DIRTY AND CORRUPT COP Robert Mueller AND HIS DISGRACEFUL REPORT) TURNED TO BE A WATER GUN.
Sun, 8/25/2019 7:48 PM on ‘New York Times Admits Editor’s Comments Were Racist and Antisemitic’

Anyone seen CAPS AND BOLD DOUCHE again? I kind of miss him and his mindless spam.

The House passed a two-day stopgap spending bill as negotiations on a coronavirus relief bill and another bill to fund the government broke down hours before the midnight Friday deadline needed to continue full operation of federal operations, CBS News reports.

Pending Senate approval, the continuing resolution will fund the federal government through Sunday.  House majority leader Steny Hoyer said that the earliest a vote will be taken on a spending bill and a coronavirus relief bill would be Sunday.

Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey proposed winding down Federal Reserve lending programs, putting a halt to negotiations on spending and coronavirus aid.  Democrats allege that the effort to shut down the Fed program would cripple opportunities to stabilize the economy as President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

Today, after a yearlong process that produced hundreds of submissions and research involving space professionals and members of the general public, we can finally share with you the name by which we will be known: Guardians. pic.twitter.com/Tmlff4LKW6

— United States Space Force (@SpaceForceDoD) December 18, 2020