CNN: “Parks and recreation workers in South Carolina made an extraordinary discovery during a routine water quality test at a small lake. The crew caught a 9-pound goldfish that was about 15 inches long in the murky waters of Oak Grove Lake, said Ty Houck, director of Greenways, Natural and Historic Resources for the Greenville County Recreation District. That’s a whopper of a goldfish. National Geographic says the average weight for a pet goldfish is .2 to .6 pounds, though they can top 5 pounds in the wild. The average length is 4.7 to 16.1 inches. Houck said he has no clue how long the fish, which is not native to South Carolina, has been in the lake in the upper part of the state. He told CNN the team didn’t see anything resembling a goldfish when they last studied the lake a decade ago. ‘We think someone must have just dropped their fish in the lake because they didn’t want it anymore, instead of flushing it down the toilet,’ Houck said.”

“Texas’ #SCOTUS suit seeking to overturn the results of elections in four states that didn’t elect Trump relies in part on the testimony of Melissa Carone, who became an SNL character after a Mich. hearing and was found by a state court to be not credible.” —Brian Heath of Reuters

Sullivan Land Services and its subcontractor Ultimate Concrete smuggled armed Mexican “security teams” over the border to guard construction sites and equipment as part of its operation to build lame duck president Donald Trump’s self-acclaimed border wall, the New York Times reports.

Two whistleblowers filed accounts with the Justice Department in February detailing the lengths the two companies took to bring Mexican workers over the border, including building an illegal road and using trucks and other construction vehicles to block views of security cameras.

The whistleblowers, contract employees for the companies, also report the barrier was breached many times and the contractors used unapproved third-party companies to undertake the repairs. 

“Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) had some sort of dental malfunction during his Tuesday press conference. In a video first posted by The Recount, what appears to be a tooth falls out of Gohmert’s gums mid-speech. Gohmert, to his credit, carries on speaking as if nothing is happening. Gohmert, 67, was treated for COVID-19 earlier this year. Last month, The New York Times reported that survivors of the disease had reported dental issues – including teeth falling out – but there is no concrete scientific evidence that the two are directly linked” – Daily Beast.

New York Times: “People searching online or in stores for over-the-counter tummy soothers are finding that they can’t easily buy antacid medications like Tums, Pepcid and its generic version, famotidine, in parts of the country. A few weeks ago, Wegmans Food Markets took the step of limiting shoppers to two packets of famotidine products per trip. During a pandemic that has seen bursts of hoarding, this may be the most unexpected. Americans are stressed. They’re concerned about the rising number of coronavirus cases. They worry about their jobs. Remote learning is a nightmare, and grocery shopping is no walk in the park. Not to mention the elections. And now, here come the holidays. The result is that some people are dealing with ‘Pandemic Stomach,’ acid-churning episodes that are increasomg demand for over-the-counter and prescription antacids.”

“Georgia Republicans on Tuesday outlined a plan to restrict mail voting and roll back the election laws that contributed to the state’s record-high turnout in the presidential election – unwinding rules the party itself put in place. The framework for legislation – which would eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, add a voter ID requirement to mail ballots for voters with an eligible excuse and eliminate drop boxes – appears designed to respond to President Donald Trump’s repeated and false claims that mail voting is rife with fraud” NBC News reports.

“‘As soon as we may constitutionally convene, we will reform our election laws to secure our electoral process by eliminating at-will absentee voting. We will require photo identification for absentee voting for cause, and we will crack down on ballot harvesting by outlawing drop boxes,’ the Republican Senate majority caucus said in a press release issued Tuesday. There’s no evidence of substantive voter fraud in American elections, a fact affirmed by numerous academic studies and even Trump’s own voter fraud commission. Attorney General William Barr, who has made misleading claims in the past about voter fraud, has also said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. There’s also no evidence that drop boxes, mailbox-like receptacles that allow voters to return their ballots directly to election officials, are more vulnerable to fraud than other methods. Sealed ballots in those boxes are collected by election officials. What Republicans call ballot harvesting – the handling or delivery of a ballot by someone to whom that ballot does not belong – is already illegal in Georgia.”

Politico: “President-elect Joe Biden has selected Rep. Marcia Fudge to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. The offer to lead the roughly $50 billion housing agency comes after weeks in which Fudge launched a bid to become the first Black female Agriculture secretary. Fudge, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, and her allies in the Congressional Black Caucus had lobbied openly for the USDA job. Biden is now leaning toward choosing former Obama agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack.”

“The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the court is denied” says the Court’s order in Kelly, Mike et al. v Pennsylvania, et al.

“BREAKING: Georgia Court DISMISSES Republican election contest seeking to decertify the results of the presidential election. Trump and his allies are now 1-50 in post-election litigation.”  —Mark Elias of Democracy Docket

They got caught because we were leading by so much more than they ever thought possible. Late night ballot “dumps” went crazy! https://t.co/gPpVWUUs91

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2020

“The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States – Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000. For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power (i.e., 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000⁴)” – actual text of the complaint Texas AG Ken Paxton, currently under federal investigation for bribery, submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States.

“When Britons receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine shots, they also get a wallet-size vaccination card showing that they have received the first of two required doses. They are not ID cards; they do not contain any personal information, not even the person’s name. Even so, there are worries that they could be the beginning of a ‘passport’ system that would divide society into two tiers, granting cardholders access to some services and businesses, like boarding a plane or eating at a restaurant, while others are excluded” reports the New York Times.

So expect a lot of “None may buy or sell without the mark” from the Q crowd shortly.

Judge Emmit Sullivan Tuesday dismissed the federal case against disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, citing lame duck president Donald Trump’s pardon as the reason for rendering the case moot, Reuters Brian Heath reports.

Sullivan noted in his opinion that he is skeptical of Flynn’s claims that he simply forgot the topics of his conversations with Russian government officials.  Sullivan also stated that the government’s argument for withdrawing the charges “appear pretextual, particularly in view of the surrounding circumstances.”

Sullivan said that Trump’s interest in the case was evident by the 200 times Trump had tweeted about Flynn.  However, given the power of a presidential pardon, there is no other action the Court could take but to dismiss the case.

RESIST

— Dan Bongino Dbongino Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Can 240 Years of FREEDOM Be
Undone In One Week⁉️#Resist

— Cher (@cher) January 28, 2017

The US Army has suspended or fired 14 members of the command at Fort Hood in the aftermath of the investigation into the murder of US Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén as well as a spate of other crimes at the Texas base, the Washington Post reports.

Guillén, a 20-year-old soldier from Houston, was reported missing April 22nd.  Her remains were found in a shallow grave just east of the base on July 1st, with forensic scientists matching them to her two days later.  Army Spc. Aaron Robinson allegedly killed Guillén because he was involved with her and another woman; Robinson committed suicide when the remains were found.

An independent civilian commission investigated the situation at Fort Hood and found the command structure highly permissive of sexual harassment, abuse and other lax discipline.  The number of murders and disappearances of people at the base, as well as other serious crimes, particularly sex crimes, greatly exceeded other posts, the commission found.

NBC’s Geoff Bennett reports Biden is considering outgoing Alabama Dem Senator Doug Jones for Attorney General, which would be the second time in three years that Jones took that little Keebler elf bastard Jeff Sessions’ old job. Jones is tough on white nationalist terrorism, as a district attorney he convicted two KKK scumbags of a 1963 bombing which killed four girls at a Black church.

“Quick break from the AZ hearing to note that the Trump campaign just got another loss in Pennsylvania — PA Supreme Court rejected appeal re: 1,995 mail-in ballots in Bucks County with envelope defects” — Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeedNews