Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “President-elect Joe Biden will campaign in Atlanta on Tuesday for Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to rally Democrats ahead of Jan. 5 runoffs to determine control of the U.S. Senate. The event coincides with the first week of early voting in the twin contests – and comes a day after presidential electors in Georgia and other states formally cast their votes to make Biden the next president. Details of the Atlanta rally have yet to be announced. Ossoff and Warnock are trying to recreate the formula that helped Biden narrowly capture Georgia, making him the first Dem White House hopeful to carry the state since 1992.”

“They’re betting that Biden’s return – he stumped in Georgia a week before the election – will re-energize the base. Biden’s trip will follow a string of high-profile Republicans who have stumped for U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. A half-dozen potential 2024 GOP candidates have already campaigned in Georgia, and Vice President Mike Pence is holding a rally Thursday in Augusta – his third visit of the month.”

“Politics never stands still, but Trump largely does. As he leaves the White House, Trump should be haunted by a stark reality – if he had any capacity for self-calibration, he wouldn’t be leaving the White House at all. He’s got one set of political tools. When things are going well, his instinct is to double down on those. When things are going poorly, his instinct is to double down on those. In political terms, the pandemic demanded modulation of Trump’s blame-casting brand of politics – but also would have lavishly rewarded him if he had done so.”

“Trump didn’t change because he didn’t perceive the need and couldn’t conceive of how to do so. That’s a combination of flawed judgment and impoverished imagination that hardly supports optimism about his ability to retain power in the new circumstances that await him once gone from the White House” – Politico.

Declaring that “Federal judges do not appoint the president in this county,” federal judges in the Eastern District of Wisconsin have dismissed the last “Kraken” lawsuit filed in the state.

“Federal judges do not appoint the president in this country. One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so,” the order reads.  “After a week of sometimes odd and often harried litigation, the court is no closer to answering the “why.” But this federal court has no authority or jurisdiction to grant the relief the remaining plaintiff seeks. The court will dismiss the case.”

More than 1,500 attorneys, including retired judges and state supreme court justices; former ABA and Bar association presidents; and legal scholars have called on local bar associations to disavow the efforts of lame-duck president Donald Trump’s legal team to undermine the 2020 election and disenfranchise tens of millions of voters.

The bipartisan group Lawyers Defending American Democracy issued the letter, calling into the question the legal basis for Trump’s lawyers’ arguments and noting that the lawyers have issued false and misleading public statements while not being able to support those arguments in courts.

“A license to practice law is not a license to lie to the public on behalf of a client, whether doing so endangers one individual or the entire body politic,” the letter says. “Indeed, American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct 4.1(a) and 8.4(c) put lawyers at risk of sanctions for engaging in dishonesty, deceit and misrepresentation — in or out of court. Under Rule 3.1, lawyers filing frivolous claims are also subject to sanctions.”

Carrying what he claimed to be a bomb, a man walked into the Spokane Teamsters building, which also houses the offices for the Spokane County Democrats and handed an employee an envelope that contained a political manifesto, KHQ NBC-6 News reports.

The suspect also set a small fire in the building before police and fire department units arrived.  Upon investigating the package, the police department determined it was not an explosive device.  The suspect, who stayed at the scene, was taken into custody.

Republican Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers said in a statement, “I am so thankful that no one was hurt in today’s incident. No one should be targeted with violence because of their political beliefs. As I have said many times before, we must all unite in standing against hate and violence of any kind. It has no place in our community or in the United States of America.”

“The Attorney General did not consult us before signing on to this brief, so we don’t know what his motivation is. Just as we would not want other states challenging Utah’s election results, we do not think we should intervene in other states’ elections. Candidates who wish to challenge election results have access to the courts without our involvement. This is an unwise use of taxpayers’ money” – Joint statement from Utah Governor Gary Herbert and Governor-elect Spencer Cox on Attorney General Sean Reyes’s decision to join with Texas AG Señor Scumbag and the rest of the gang on the Supreme Court lawsuit.

“An Illinois contractor bidding to build President Donald Trump’s wall on the Mexican border was among three men arrested Tuesday in connection with the bombing of a mosque in Minnesota and the attempted bombing of a women’s health clinic in Illinois. Michael B. Hari, 47, was arrested and charged Tuesday in federal court in lllinois with arson and possession of machine guns. According to the complaint, Hari and two accomplices – 29-year-old Michael McWhorter and 22-year-old Joe Morris – were responsible for the bombing of a mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota, on Aug. 5, 2017, and the attempted bombing of the Women’s Health Practice in Champaign, Illinois, on Nov. 7. All three are now facing federal arson charges. Confidential informants told the FBI that Hari said he would pay McWhorter and Morris $18,000 for their participation in the mosque bombing, according to the FBI affidavit. All three men allegedly drove up to Minnesota in a rented truck for the attack.”

“Five parishioners were inside the mosque when it was bombed. No one was hurt. The attack, occurring at a time of rising anti-Muslim hate, garnered national headlines, especially after Trump’s apparent refusal to denounce it. (Trump’s then-adviser Sebastian Gorka defended the silence on the explosion, stating it might’ve been ‘faked by the left.’) Hari is a former sheriff’s deputy who lives in Charence, Illinois, where he ran Crisis Resolution Security Services Inc., which had put in a bid for Trump’s border wall. In a YouTube video promoting the proposal, a narrator says the wall would be ‘culturally significant, a powerful architectural statement of the determination of the American people to defend their nation and its Anglo-Saxon heritage, western culture, and English language’ and would defend ‘our way of life from other people who have different value systems.’ ‘Build that wall. Make America great again,’ the narrator states” – Huffington Post.

For essentially the first since now-lame duck Donald Trump became president, the Federal Election Committee will have its full slate of commissioners, Roll Call reports.  But there’s a major catch to the appointments.

The Senate approved three appointments to the Commission, joining the three already seated.  The FEC had just three commissioners until May 2020, when Trump appointed Republicans James Trainor.

Due to its bylaws, the FEC needs a quorum of four to carry out business.  The first time the FEC has had more than three commissions was May 2020.  The Commission has met, virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic, just once since then.

The FEC, by design is supposed to be a non-partisan regulatory commission, made up of three designees by Republicans and three by Democrats.

“10% of voters would have changed their vote if they knew about Hunter Biden.” Miranda Devine @nypost @TuckerCarlson But I won anyway!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2020

Louisiana State University, the defending champions in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Series, has self-imposed a ban on all season-ending bowl games, taking itself out of championship consideration, as it goes through investigations into potential NCAA rule violations.

CBS Sports reports that the university made the announcement Wednesday as the football team stands at a 3-5 record with two remaining games against Florida and the University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”).  However, an NCAA rule that requires teams to have a .500 season to be bowl-eligible were removed this season due to the uncertainty of the coronavirus.  LSU would not have been invited to a major bowl game this year.

The NCAA is investigation LSU for recruiting violations and other infractions.  The school is going through a newly-established NCAA Independent Accountability Resolution Process and has surrendered available sports scholarships as it rectifies past wrongs.

1. Time’s Person of the Year 2020 will be announced sometime early morning. Trump will not win.
2. The Supreme Court might make a decision in the Red v Swing states case. Trump will not win.

Everything else tomorrow will probably suck.

The United States achieved a dubious achievement Wednesday, exceeding 3,000 deaths from the coronavirus in a single day, more than ever occurred in the United States, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

The US recorded 3,054 fatalities, with nearly 210,000 new cases.  In addition, the number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus increased by 2% to 106,688, the highest total since the pandemic started.

Worldometers, a different aggregator, catalogued more than 3,100 fatalities and 220,000 new cases, nearly four times more than the next nation on the list, Brazil.

Texas, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Illinois recorded more than 200 fatalities on Wednesday according to Worldometers as of 8:00 p.m. ET.  California logged more than 30,000 new cases.

The Sun released a massive stream of charged particles recently that will cause the aurora borealis to be visible as far south as Pennsylvania and Oregon, as well as potentially knock out electronics in the Northern Hemisphere.

The burst of solar material happened December 7th, and it will impact the planet from December 9th to the 11th, CNN reports.

The Coronal Mass Ejection may cause disruptions in radio service as well as potential problems with GPS systems, although little permanent damage is expected.  NOAA’s Geomagnetic Storm Index, which indicates the magnitude of the solar activity, is predicting a Kp Index of 7 (out of 9), indicating the storm will be visible as far south of Chicago and Detroit.

AFP: “Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo has won a second term after a tightly contested presidential election, the country’s electoral commission announced Wednesday, beating long-time opponent John Mahama. The results from Monday’s vote came hours after police said five people had been killed in election-related violence, casting a shadow over a country hailed for its stable democracy. Akufo-Addo of the centre-right New Patriotic Party (NPP) received 6,730,413 or 51.59 percent of votes while Mahama of the centre-left National Democratic Congress (NDC) received 6,214,889 or 47.36 percent, the electoral commission’s chairperson Jean Adukwei Mensa said.”

“BREAKING: Arizona Federal Court DISMISSES Kraken conspiracy lawsuit. “Allegations that find favor in the public sphere of gossip and innuendo cannot be a substitute for earnest pleadings” Trump and his allies are now 1-54 in post-election litigation.” —Mark Elias of Democracy Docket

“President Donald Trump warned Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr not to rally other Republican officials against a long-shot Texas lawsuit seeking to toss out the state’s election results, according to several people with direct knowledge of the conversation. The roughly 15-minute phone call late Tuesday came shortly before U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue issued a joint statement saying they ‘fully support’ the improbable lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reject election results in Georgia and three other battleground states that Trump lost. Earlier in the day, Carr’s office called the lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ‘constitutionally, legally and factually wrong.’ The complaint asks the justices to delay the Monday deadline for certification of presidential electors in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

“The two men spoke at the urging of Perdue, who along with Loeffler also received calls from Trump about Carr’s opposition to the lawsuit, according to three Republican officials, two of whom described Trump as ‘furious’ in his call with Loeffler over the attorney general’s stance. Minutes after Trump and Carr hung up, the two senators issued a joint statement proclaiming their support for the Paxton lawsuit. ‘This isn’t hard and it isn’t partisan. It’s American,’ the senators said. ‘No one should ever have to question the integrity of our elections system and the credibility of its outcomes.’ A person on the call between Trump and Carr described it as cordial. Trump told Carr that he’s ‘heard great things’ about him but that he’s picked up word that Carr was calling other attorneys general and urging them to stand against the Texas challenge. Carr told him that wasn’t true” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

CNN: “President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to block millions of votes from four battleground states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden. Trump’s request came in a filing with the court asking to intervene in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to invalidate millions of votes cast in four states that went for Biden: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The President is being represented by a new attorney, John Eastman, who is known for recently pushing a racist conspiracy theory that claimed Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was not eligible for the role because her parents were immigrants.”

https://youtu.be/5pCVxcz_6yo

Daily Beast: “An Arizona state representative tweeted an ominous biblical passage at the state’s governor, fellow Republican Doug Ducey, on Wednesday, in the latest salvo between factions of the Arizona GOP. Rep. Kelly Townsend, who was elected as a state senator last month, represents a wing of the Arizona Republican Party that has not accepted President Donald Trump’s election loss, and which takes issue with Arizona’s Republican governor for certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Earlier this week, the AZ GOP Twitter account asked followers if they were willing to ‘give their lives’ for the cause of keeping Trump in office. Ducey appeared to chastise his party on Tuesday, tweeting that ‘the Republican Party is the party of the Constitution and the rule of law. We prioritize public safety, law & order, and we respect the law enforcement officers who keep us safe. We don’t burn stuff down. We build things up.”

“Townsend quote-tweeted Ducey with a picture of the words ‘mene mene tekel upharsin’ written on a wall. As extremism reporter and Daily Beast contributor Nick Martin noted, the words are an allusion to a Bible story, in which they appear on the wall before a Babylonian king. The king is informed that the message means God has found him lacking, and has numbered his days. The king is killed that night.”

It would have been super helpful to know we had a working vaccine approved, Democrat Eric Swalwell compromised by China, and an active criminal investigation into Hunter Biden before the election

🤔

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 9, 2020