Geraldo Rivera–Yeah!  THAT Geraldo Rivera!  Shocker!–was the voice of reason during The Story with Martha MacCallum on Fox News in an argue-fest with 27-year-old head of Students for Trump and person trying to bring back 1980s preppydom Charlie Kirk.

https://youtu.be/4fJ7LoN0L0s

Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham says conservativism faces existential threats because of mail-in voting and social media, but doesn’t mention how Trumpism destroyed conservative principles much earlier.

https://youtu.be/UZ9i0fOj9Lg

“There’s two threats to conservatism:  mass mail-in voting unverified and social media unregulated, unable to be sued when they take down the content of conservatives,” Graham whined on Sean Hannity’s newish hour. 

Kraken attorney and former member of Trump’s Elite Strike Force Team claimed on Twitter that she has four further election fraud cases pending before the Supreme Court, but Reuters reporter Brad Heath notes that no cases involving Powell are on the Court’s docket.

“YES! & our 4 cases with massive evidence of fraud pending at #SupremeCourt where our plaintiffs who are electors have standing & raise constitutional claims. #Fraud vitiates any results obtained by it[,]” Powell tweeted.

Powell posted the tweet at 6:54 p.m. ET Monday night, approximately 90 minutes after California registered its Electoral College votes, putting President-elect Joe Biden over the required 270 vote threshold.

Britain’s National Health Service has eased the restrictions on bisexual and gay men, allowing them to donate blood, NPR reports.

Unlike in the United States, gay and bi men in Britain were allowed to donate blood if they had not had sexual contact with another man in the last three months.  Men who have had sex with other men are barred from donating blood, regardless of the timeframe.

The new rules allow anyone who has had the same sexual partner for three or more months, regardless of gender, to donate blood providing that there’s been no exposure to a sexually transmitted disease.

He’s now 1-60 in his court filings.  The one-page decision tosses a case and denies the Trump campaign immediate relief.  It was issued more than five hours after the state certified its election results.

Reuters: “Senior Republican U.S. senators on Monday rejected the idea of overturning the 2020 presidential election in Congress, as a few of Trump’s most loyal backers contemplated a last-ditch effort to reverse his defeat. Senator John Thune, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said lawmakers had the right to challenge electoral votes but that the effort would get little support. ‘It’s their prerogative, it’s allowed for in the Constitution, but it’s not going anywhere,’ he told reporters.”

“Senator John Cornyn, another veteran Republican, also said he thought any such effort ‘would be a bad mistake’ soundly defeated in the 100-member chamber, currently controlled by his party. ‘There comes a time when you have to realize that, despite your best efforts, you’ve been unsuccessful, that’s sort of the nature of these elections. You’ve got to have a winner. You’ve got to have a loser,’ Cornyn told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. He said he expected there would be a peaceful transition of power from Trump, who has so far refused to concede the Nov. 3 election and launched dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to overturn his loss to Joe Biden.”

…Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen, an outstanding person, will become Acting Attorney General. Highly respected Richard Donoghue will be taking over the duties of Deputy Attorney General. Thank you to all! pic.twitter.com/V5sqOJT9PM

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2020

“Republicans said Trump electors who weren’t certified met in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to cast votes in case pending litigation overturned the results. But any attempt to get Congress to consider a rival slate of electors is ‘not going to work as a matter of law,’ said Edward Foley, a professor and director of an election-law program at Ohio State University who has studied disputed elections” – Bloomberg.

Unmentioned in the Bloomberg article are the fake Electoral College certification documents some MAGA freaks in Arizona tried to submit to the National Archives. In Michigan, the Trump Electors tried to get into the building and were turned away by police.

At 5:28 p.m. ET, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris surpassed the 270-vote threshold in the Electoral College when California assigned their electors, providing them with sufficient votes for victory and assuring that Biden will be the 46th President of the United States.

While lame duck president Donald Trump continues to dispute the reality of his reelection loss, the Constitutional requirement of having the majority of the 538 Electoral College vote has been met, clearing the way for Biden and Harris to be inaugurated January 20th.

In a final indignation to Trump, Biden is on pace for the expected 306 Electoral College votes to be cast for him, more than the 304 Trump received in 2016, when two “faithless electors” from Texas changed their Trump votes to go one each to John Kasich and Ron Paul.

So I’m stuck leaving children’s songs and cartoons on a few hours a day to keep the you-know-who from throwing stuff at me. Every half-hour or so it gets randomly interrupted by some bullshit ad – usually Raymour and Flanigan furniture – but maybe one in ten is a music video, like this uhhhh, song below which just came on my television, apropos of nothing about 20 minutes ago:

This is far from the only one I’ve seen and I’m just astonished that someone would pay YouTube to play their music videos. I mean, if you’re a struggling artist then money is hard to come by, and handing it to a mega-corporation so they can play it between “Five Little Ducks” and “The Wheels on The Bus” is pretty fucking stupid. Now maybe I’m wrong and YouTube is actually promoting Ms. Min, but I see no indication as such. It’s her money and she’s free to spend it as she pleases, I just hope she realizes that YouTube is not giving her any real bang for her buck.

Congressman Paul Mitchell of Michigan announced in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper that he is leaving the Republican Party and becoming an Independent.

“I’m a conservative.  I’m a fiscal conservative.  I believe in small government,” Mitchell, who will retire as the representative of Michigan’s 10th Congressional District at the end of this term, said.  “I’m going to stand on my principles.  And yes, I will take abuse from both the far-left and the far-right.  In my opinion, the extremes from both parties are dragging their parties, and this country, off a cliff.”

Mitchell has been skeptical of lame duck president Donald Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 elections.  On November 29th, he tweeted, “Oh my God. . @realDonaldTrump Please for the sake of our Nation please drop these arguments without evidence or factual basis. #stopthestupid”.

The United States has exceeded 300,000 deaths due to coronavirus on the same day that the country started distributing the first available coronavirus vaccine, according to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus case tracker.

As of the site’s 3:26 p.m. ET update, the US had recorded 300,267 fatalities, the most in the world.  The US also topped the world with more than 16 million cases.

Arizona Republic: “In another sign of the lingering unrest over President Donald Trump’s election loss, an Arizona group sent the National Archives in Washington, D.C., notarized documents last week intended to deliver, wrongly, the state’s 11 electoral votes for him. Copies of the documents obtained by The Arizona Republic show a group that claimed to represent the “sovereign citizens of the Great State of Arizona” submitted signed papers casting votes for what they want: a second term for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.”

“Mesa resident Lori Osiecki, 62, helped created a facsimile of the ‘certificate of ascertainment’ that is submitted to formally cast each state’s electoral votes as part of an effort to prevent what she views as the fraudulent theft of the election. ‘We seated before the legislators here. We already turned it in. We beat them to the game,’ she said. Osiecki said she and others associated with a group called ‘AZ Protect the Vote’ have attended the postelection rallies protesting the results, including the daylong meeting in Phoenix that included Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. She left that gathering upset that Gov. Doug Ducey wasn’t supporting the president’s efforts and she wanted to take further action. She and the others chose electors as a result.”

For the first time, a host on cable propaganda outlet Newsmax has called President-elect Joe Biden “President-elect,” abandoning its hardheaded, anti-reality advocacy that lame duck president Donald Trump actually won the election.

https://youtu.be/p2ZxImUq_kk

12/14/20 12:57 pm EST:Trump’s losses in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania have been made official. Minnesota and Wisconsin’s meetings will begin at 1pm EST, Michigan’s at 2pm EST. Check out the Washington Post’s Electoral College vote tracker here.

UPDATE 12/14/20 1:21 pm EST: Wisconsin electors cast their 10 votes for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Reportedly Trump’s slate of electors also met and cast their votes for him in a separate building in the capitol area, which is just sad, lol.

UPDATE 12/14/20 3:19 pm EST: “It’s official. Michigan’s 16 presidential electors cast their ballots Monday afternoon in the state Capitol for Democratic President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris following a bitterly contentious election process. As the electors convened and organized, at least half a dozen Republicans attempted to enter the Capitol building as the Democratic electors were casting their votes inside. They said they were electors there to cast their vote for president. Michigan State Police officers denied them entrance” – Detroit News.

“Pursuant to FED. R. CIV. P. 65, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (“Plaintiff”) respectfully moves this Court to enter an administrative stay and temporary restraining order (“TRO”) to enjoin the State of New Mexico, the Electors and the Secretary of State (collectively, the “Defendants”) and all of their agents, officers, presidential electors, and others acting in concert from taking action to have such electors take any official action – including without limitation participating in the disposition of certificates of votes for President and Vice President that would ordinarily be performed in accordance with 3 U.S.C. 11, that are made and signed, or will be made and signed, in accordance with 3 U.S.C. 9. until further order of this Court and then issue a preliminary injunction or stay against their doing so – until further order of this Court, and to preliminarily enjoin and to stay such actions pending the final resolution of this action on the merit.”

“Alternatively, the Court should reach the merits, vacate the Defendant Electors’ certifications from the unconstitutional 2020 election results, and remand to the state of New Mexico legislature pursuant to 3 U.S.C. § 2 to appoint electors” is seriously the text of a complaint filed by the Trump campaign Monday in a federal court against the state of New Mexico.

The US Supreme Court rejected unanimously (with one abstention) a motion brought by the State of Texas for the Supreme Court to be the original court of record on a lawsuit it filed between states.  This case, however, wasn’t about election votes; it was about water, a valuable commodity in the arid Southwest.

The case revolves around the resolution of a dispute Texas has with its neighbor, New Mexico, over water storage after a 2014 tropical storm dumped rain on the Pecos River Valley.  Texas reached an agreement with New Mexico to store the water to prevent flooding, and the compact provided that New Mexico would return the water to Texas upon request.

A year later, as Texas faced massive droughts, it requested New Mexico release the water backing into the river’s ecosystem.  Texas then complained that New Mexico withheld some of the water it had diverted the year before; New Mexico provided scientific data that the water had evaporated. 

A new variant of the coronavirus is sweeping through southern England, increasing the number of infections, but authorities don’t believe that this strain will lead to more serious cases nor do they believe it will be resistant to new vaccines, the Washington Post reports.

“I must stress at this point that there is currently nothing to suggest that this variant is more likely to cause serious disease, and the latest clinical advice is that it’s highly unlikely that this mutation would fail to respond to a vaccine,” UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said. “But it shows we’ve got to be vigilant and follow the rules and everyone needs to take personal responsibility not to spread this virus.”

Hancock said more than 1,000 cases involving the new strain have been identified and that the strain is spreading rapidly.