For the sixth consecutive day, the US has logged more than 100,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases, and this happens five days after outgoing president Donald Trump claimed we would no longer hear about the coronavirus.

According to the COVID Tracking Project, the US registered more than 118,000 cases Monday, along with nearly 400 fatalities.  Another aggregator, from Johns Hopkins, put the nation over 10 million total cases since the pandemic began.

Illinois and Texas led the nation with more than 10,000 new cases on Monday.  The seven-day moving average of cases for the nation surpassed 117,000.

Additionally, the number of people hospitalized with coronavirus jumped another 4% to 59,275, predicting an increasing number of cases and fatalities in coming days as the curve continues upward.  The US has not had that number hospitalized with coronavirus since July 25th.

Michael Kuperberg, the executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the group responsible for producing the National Climate Assessment, was removed from his position November 6th, according to Politico.

An email sent to Kuperberg by Politico got a bounce-back automatic reply stating that Kuperberg had returned to his position at the Department of Energy three days after the election.  It was released immediately after the election that Betsy Weatherhead would henceforth lead the report, which coordinates contribution from 13 government agencies.  Weatherhead worked for the US Geological Survey when she first joined the government from Jupiter International, a private climate science organization where she’s still listed on the Leadership page of the website.

South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Sean Hannity’s program that continued and increasing use of mail-in ballots means that Republicans would never be elected to office again.

https://youtu.be/rzepHvrjF-0

Graham just won reelection in a campaign in which about 50% of the ballots in his own race were mail-in ballots.  Surprisingly, Graham did not make a plea for money in this short appearance.

New York Times: “Attorney General William P. Barr, wading into President Trump’s unfounded accusations of widespread election irregularities, told federal prosecutors on Monday that they were allowed to investigate ‘specific allegations’ of voter fraud before the results of the presidential race are certified. Mr. Barr’s authorization prompted the Justice Department official who oversees investigations of voter fraud, Richard Pilger, to step down from the post within hours, according to an email Mr. Pilger sent to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times.”

“Mr. Pilger, a career prosecutor in the department’s Public Integrity Section who oversaw voting-fraud-related investigations, told colleagues he would move to a nonsupervisory role working on corruption prosecutions. ‘Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications,’ he wrote, ‘I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch.’ A DOJ spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Pilger’s message.”

The director of the Office of Presidential Personnel has instructed the heads of Executive branch agencies to fire any political appointee who is seeking another job outside of the administration, Forbes reports.

It’s routine for political appointees to seek outside employment at the end of one term, either because of the stress of their positions or because they want to move on to capitalize on their new-found experience in the government.

The order, by John McEntee, impact 4,000 political appointees around the government, mandating that they stay in their government jobs to show their loyalty to Donald Trump as he attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“Peru’s President Martin Vizcarra was forced out of office when congress unexpectedly voted to impeach him, plunging the nation into political crisis as it recovers from one of the world’s deepest slumps Legislators voted 105-19 in favor of removing Vizcarra over corruption allegations, a larger-than-expected tally that surprised observers in the politically volatile country. The head of congress, Manuel Merino, will be sworn in as interim president at 5 p.m. on Tuesday” Bloomberg reports about a more functional Democracy than that of the United States.

The Food and Drug Administration has given emergency approval for the use of an experimental antibody treatment from Eli Lilly to treat people with COVID-19, Business Insider reports.

The treatment is similar to a Regeneron antibody cocktail received by Donald Trump when he was hospitalized at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda Maryland in early October.

The treatment is not a cure.  It’s a therapy that lowers viral loads in patients with mild to moderate cases of COVID-19, reducing the risk of the infection worsening.  It has shown no significant side effects in patients.

Bloomberg: “The final-stage trial of a Chinese frontrunner vaccine candidate has been halted in Brazil due to a serious adverse event, the first time that any of the Asian nation’s rapidly developed Covid-19 shots have met with such a setback. Testing of Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s vaccine, called Coronavac, has been halted in Brazil after an event that occurred on Oct. 29, said the Brazil Health Agency on Tuesday, without any further detail on the illness. The study is interrupted in accordance with regulations while the agency analyzes if the study should continue, it said.”

“Sao Paulo’s Instituto Butantan, which partnered with Sinovac to produce the vaccine locally, said in a statement it was surprised by the decision and is looking into details of what happened in the study. Butantan said it will hold a press conference on Tuesday morning. Sinovac’s company representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Serious adverse events that occur in drug trials include death, immediate risk of death, long term or serious incapacitation, and hospitalization. Such pauses are not uncommon in large-scale drug trials and two western developers – AstraZeneca Plc and Johnson & Johnson — have paused their vaccine trials in recent months due to serious adverse events, only to re-start them after investigation. But China has already started administering its vaccines, including Coronavac, to hundreds of thousands of people under an expansive emergency use approval, making the prospect of a safety issue being detected at this stage more concerning.”

As I have long said, @Pfizer and the others would only announce a Vaccine after the Election, because they didn’t have the courage to do it before. Likewise, the @US_FDA should have announced it earlier, not for political purposes, but for saving lives!

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

What does this mean? Jack shit.

What does it really mean? It’s some kind of coordinated propaganda offensive coming from the top of the MAGA Reich, where two days after Biden was declared the winner by all the most reliable sources – Fox News’s decision desk, AP, CNN, CBS News, etc – they’re trying to “get back in the game” with all this bullshit. Consider: Attila and Perdue Chickenshit turning on the Georgia Secretary of State, Moscow Mitch acting like a prissy bitch, Barr making noise about prosecuting voter fraud, Kayleigh McEnany and Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel making assholes out of themselves at a press conference, and this empty gesture by RealClearPolitics, whose editorial staff look subtle in comparison to Goebbels.

We’ve seen this before. It’s the last in a long line of rollouts from the Trump Regime and its allies when they’re feeling cornered and need to rally the cult. Obamagate, Uraniumgate, Burisma, Durham, the IG Reports, the Nunes Memo, and fuck it’s been four years of this garbage why not have a farewell tour. The real goal is keeping the white trash voters of Georgia tuned in so the GOP Senate majority can be saved.

UPDATE 8:39 pm EST 11/9/20: I screwed up. RCP never actually called Pennsylvania for Biden per Daily Wire reporter Ryan Saavedra. The rest of this post however does still apply.

According to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll, 70% of Republicans feel that the presidential election wasn’t free and fair, believing that mail-in voting led to widespread voter fraud and ballot tampering, though there is no evidence of such claims.

Prior to the election, just 35% of Republicans questioned the legitimacy of US elections.  However afterwards, that number doubled, with most Republicans echoing conspiracy theories propagated by the losing incumbent presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The poll, taken after networks called the election for President-elect Joe Biden, found 78% of Republicans believed that mail-in voting led to widespread voter fraud and 72% believed that ballots were tampered with.  Of those who stated the elections were not free and fair, 84% said the malfeasance benefitted Biden. 

“Attorney General Barr authorized prosecutors to ‘pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections,’ contradicting longstanding practice that keeps the Justice Department from impacting the results of an election” – New York Times DOJ beat reporter Katie Benner.

Religion News Service: “Bishop Harry Jackson Jr., a prominent conservative pastor and evangelical adviser to President Donald Trump, has died, according to his church. Jackson died Monday (Nov. 9), according to a statement posted on the website of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland, where he was senior pastor. ‘It is with a heavy heart that we notify you that our beloved Bishop Harry R. Jackson, Jr. has transitioned to be with the Lord on November 9, 2020,’ the statement read. ‘Please pray for the Jackson family’s comfort and respect their right to privacy at this time.’ In late September, Jackson and a number of other faith leaders attended a White House ceremony where Associate Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was announced as President Trump’s nominee to fill the seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”

Today’s Trump campaign press conference featuring Kayleigh “Binder Barbie” McEnany, being broadcast on Fox News was cut off in the middle as McEnany started to list unsubstantiated accusations of election fraud.

https://youtu.be/HpQlF6mIEis

McEnany claimed that because Democrats opposed opposing voter ID, verifying signatures, citizenship, residency, eligibility, and trying to keep observers out of the count room, then Democrats were therefore welcoming election fraud.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I just think we have to be very clear: she’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and illegal voting, unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue to show you this,” Fox host Neil Cavuto said as the network cut off the audio. 

New York Times:”In laying the groundwork for his baseless claims of voter fraud, Mr. Trump had declared from the debate stage that ‘bad things happen in Philadelphia,’ and over the weekend his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani assailed a history of corruption in the city as he pursued unlikely efforts to challenge the election results. But ask Philadelphians about when things turned sour with the president, and many will point back more than two years, to his abrupt cancellation of a traditional White House visit for the city’s beloved Eagles football team after its first ever Super Bowl victory in 2018. In this city with a penchant for deeply held civic grudges, trash talk and impolitic celebrations of its rivals’ travails, where Crisco slathered on telephone poles to prevent climbing is a sign of impending revelry, the blocks around City Hall on Saturday began to resemble the famed Super Bowl parade of 2018.”

“Chest-pumping pride spilled out, with expressions of enthusiasm for Mr. Biden, the former vice president, often overshadowed by feelings of vengeance toward Mr. Trump. ‘Philly knows how to stand up for itself, and love us or hate us, this is what we do right here,’ said Rob Cancel, 37, as he joined the celebration outside the city’s convention center on Saturday sporting a red ‘Bad things happen in Philadelphia’ T-shirt. A widely circulated photograph showed one man holding a sign listing perceived civic adversaries — though it used a different, more profane, word — who had been ‘defeated by Philadelphia,’ including King George III, the former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and Mr. Trump. Another photo showed a sign held aloft over revelers noting that Mr. Trump had ‘disinvited the Eagles to the White House.’ It added, ‘So we returned the favor.'”

Georgia's election result will include legally cast ballots – and ONLY legally cast ballots. Period. pic.twitter.com/ldgxvOysPj

— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) November 9, 2020

New York Post: “David Bossie, a Trump adviser who was put in charge of the campaign’s election legal battle just days ago, has been diagnosed with COVID-19, according to a report Monday. President Trump’s re-election campaign on Friday tapped the veteran conservative operative to spearhead its post-election legal fight challenging the vote count in several states where Trump is narrowly trailing Joe Biden.”

“But on Monday, Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs reported that the 55-year-old adviser had been diagnosed with the coronavirus on Sunday — the latest in a string of infections roiling the president’s inner circle. Earlier Monday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development confirmed Secretary Dr. Ben Carson had tested positive just days after attending an election night event in the White House East Room. His diagnosis followed that of chief of staff Mark Meadows, another attendee, as well as several other White House aides and Trump campaign aide Nick Trainer. According to Jacobs, the president tapped Bossie to lead his legal fight when Meadows fell ill with the coronavirus.”

“McConnell, the most powerful Republican in Congress, stands firmly with President Trump as the president fights his legal battles. Rails against ‘far left mobs,’ minutes after meeting with AG Barr at the Capitol. Wants ‘no lectures’ from Democrats” – Washington Post correspondent Robert Costa.

For some unknown reason, a large portion of the North Lawn of the White House, which borders Pennsylvania Avenue, was dug up, removing the grass over a large portion of the area, CNN’s Betsy Klein reports via Twitter.

Sometime between 5:30 am and now the White House North Lawn was dug up pic.twitter.com/3zEtPb3wkV

— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) November 9, 2020

The North Lawn, sometimes called the Front Lawn of the White House because of its location on Pennsylvania Avenue, faces the North Portico of the White House, where dignitaries are typically welcomed into the mansion.  It’s typically the area media congregate to do remove broadcasts from outside the White House.

There has been no public notice of work planned for the area, but a Bobcat, a small front-end loader/tractor, was seen in the area.