Monday, January 4, 2021

"What does it profiteth a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?" asks Tom Friedman, as some Republican's stand by President Trump's fraudulent electoral claims.

 

Mayor Bowser is asking the residents of DC not to engage with the pro-Trump protesters. This is excellent advice. Ignore them. Let them march around in circles and yell at each other.

 

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reimposed a lockdown in England as a more transmissible variant of Covid-19 fuels a surge in infections and hospitalizations in the country

 

The feds tracked Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged madam to a New Hampshire hideaway using her cellphone data

 

"Court documents show that a Wisconsin pharmacist told police he tried to ruin hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine because he believed the shots would mutate people's DNA."

 

Mnuchin's public engagement schedule fails to provide the countries that he will visit this week, and his travel dates. Press are also not invited on whatever trip he's taking, which is paid for by taxpayers. I've heard it's to the middle east

 

As former prosecutors, @RepKathleenRice and I believe @realDonaldTrump committed multiple crimes during the phone call in which he threatened GA SoS Raffensperger to “find 11,780” votes or to “recalculate.” Today we made a criminal referral to the @FBI

 

Carl Bernstein says Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is “far worse than Watergate”

 

You may not see #MoscowMitch on your ballot in #GASEN but he’s definitely there! A vote for @sendavidperdue and #KKKLoeffler is a vote for Mitch McConnell.

 

TRUMP FINALLY MAKES HIS PERFECT PHONE CALL: His recorded extortion of Brad Raffensperger to falsify GA’s vote totals isn’t a Watergate Smoking Gun; it’s a Trump Smoking Flamethrower. We need Presidents Bush, Obama, Clinton to condemn him. We need President Biden to prosecute him

 

MORE: The U.S. Justice Department says it will appeal the Assange decision

 

BREAKING: U.K. judge blocks Julian Assange extradition to U.S. over suicide risk

 

BREAKING: New recordings reveal that Belarusian dictator Lukashenko put $1.2m in an off the books account to organize assassinations of enemies of his regime in Germany.

 

Georgia elections board member cites “probable cause” in Trump phone call, urges civil and criminal investigations

 

BREAKING: South Korean-flagged tanker bound for UAE goes into Iranian territorial waters; security firm fears it's seized.

 

The sedition caucus is worse than a treasonous conspiracy. At least real traitors believe in something. Me on the GOP effort to overthrow a democratic election

 

In an extraordinary rebuke of President Trump, all 10 living former secretaries of defense cautioned against any move to involve the U.S. military in pursuing claims of election fraud.

 

Pence just left the Hill after a two-hour meeting in his office that included an appearance by the Senate parliamentarian, per our Hill team. Trump’s been vocal privately that he expects the VP to play a role in the GOP disruption when Congress meets to certify Biden’s win.

 

In Los Angeles county, one person is being diagnosed with #covid19 every 6 seconds. Someone is dying every 10 minutes. I grew up in LA & so many I know have lost loved ones. Hospitals are overwhelmed all over the country & it’s up to us to flatten the curve and help one another.

 

It's important to understand the context of the "Listen, all I want to do is this, I just want to find 11,780 votes" line. It comes 40 min into the call, after Raffensperger has destroyed each fraud claim, and right after Trump makes the reference to jail time.

 

Alexander Lukashenko authorised political murders in Germany in recent years, according to a sensational recording of his former spy-chief

 

Kamala Harris lambasts Trump call with Georgia officials as "bold abuse of power."

 

#RTHK’s English-language channel Radio 3 has cancelled its annual election for #HongKong’s Person of the Year amid attacks from #Beijing loyalists. Read more:

 

The monster that Paul Ryan helped create is trying now to eat our democracy - and even Paul Ryan can see it.

 

Liz Cheney to GOP conference: "Such objections set an exceptionally dangerous precedent, threatening to steal states' explicit constitutional responsibility for choosing the President and bestowing it ... on Congress. This is directly at odds with the Constitution's clear text."

 

If anyone is looking for your felony-committing AG on Wednesday, he will be in DC working on getting a pardon

 

U.S. government checks constituted 40% of farmers' income in 2020, per USDA

 

McCarthy backs efforts to challenge Electoral College results

 

Remember: Trump's FIRST play in GA was to have Doug Collins name himself the guy to count GA votes. So the asks really haven't changed all that much. They just want to put someone who'll cheat in charge of the actual ballots.

 

Donald Trump and his henchmen have made a concerted attack on American democracy, and done so much corrupting damage that it would be dereliction to give them a pass. My piece in

 

U.S. airlines are ready to put the jets back in the air. Europe’s regulator (and Sully Sullenberger) wants more fixes. And the FAA is still trying to gag whistleblowers

 Hard Pass

#Editorial AppleDailyHK|"But for the #Hongkongers, 2021 may not necessarily be much better than 2020, and they might even be facing harder difficulties and injustice..." Face pandemic and brutal injustice with strong beliefs

 

Moscow’s proxy ‘republics’ announce that Donbas is and always was ‘Russian’

 

THREAD: NEW: A person directly familiar with the situation tells me that investigators in New York have questioned at least one witness about Rudy Giuliani’s work with Ukrainian oligarch Pavel Fuks as part of their criminal investigation into Trump’s personal attorney.

 

In Xi Jinping’s China, nearly everything is becoming a national security issue

 

The dozen Republican senators who said they'll vote to reject Biden's win when Congress meets this week were all invited on CNN to explain their position this morning but @jaketapper says all declined or failed to respond.

 

I don't know how else to put this: The QAnon social media pipeline has totally engulfed far-right social media and churns out one new fictitious way for Trump to remain president every day. It's all Donald Trump ingests, and he thinks he can remain president because of it.

 

It wasn't just Trump pressuring Raffensperger. Here's what Mark Meadows had to say on the call

 

2) this is why this health care rationing and prioritizing for survival likelihood is so chilling. We know we can’t get enough care anymore soon.

 

China may strip lawyer of ‘Hong Kong 12’ of practising licence

 

Performance Art by Lin Wood

 

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is missing after criticizing the Chinese government. Wow. This would be like the U.S. government kidnapping Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg to teach them a lesson.

 

The lawyers on the call supporting Trump are now criminal lawyers. Or lawyer criminals. They helped him commit a crime. Attorney-client privilege doesn’t protect lawyers who commit crimes with clients.

 

BREAKING: #Georgia State Election Board member (only Dem on 5-member board) has asked @GaSecofState Raffensperger to open an investigation into possible civil or CRIMINAL violations in Trump’s phone call, including “solicitation to commit election #fraud,” a FELONY.

 

The Pentagon said that it ordered the aircraft carrier Nimitz to remain in the Middle East because of Iranian threats against President Trump and other U.S. officials, just three days after sending the ship home as a signal to de-escalate rising tensions

 

Japan may enter a state of emergency this week as the country grapples with soaring coronavirus cases, a number of which have been linked to a new, potentially more infectious variant.

 

Here’s the full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and Raffensperger

 

Republicans begin new Congress feuding over bid to overturn election

 

The full call is here and while I have your attention pay your child support