In a CNN op-ed on Thanksgiving Day, President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill, in a CNN op-ed, thanked people who keep the nation functioning during the pandemic:
“We are grateful for the frontline workers who have never stopped showing up over these long and confusing months, making sure our food is harvested and shipped, keeping our grocery stores stocked, picking up our trash, and keeping our cities and towns safe.
“We are grateful for the health care workers who put in long shifts and isolate themselves from their loved ones, the nurses who comfort and help people say one last goodbye, and the doctors who fight for every breath.
“We are grateful for the educators who learned to teach in virtual classrooms almost overnight, who did extra work to reach families without technology, or who took late-night phone calls from parents on the verge of tears.
“We are grateful for the parents who have carried their families through the chaos, working or searching for a job, navigating childcare and remote learning.
“We are grateful for the researchers and scientists who have spent this year learning everything they can to understand how to fight this pandemic and working tirelessly to find a vaccine and therapeutics.”
On Thanksgiving Day, in the midst of ranting tweets, Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) held a press conference, the first time he has taken questions since his defeat. He claimed proof for election fraud is people voting for Biden. Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asked DDT if he would concede to Biden, and DDT shouted, “Don’t talk to me that way! I’m the president of the United States.” For the first time, he declared he would leave the White House if the Electoral College selects Biden.
DDT paid Wisconsin $3 million for recounts in two counties. One of them, Milwaukee, announced Biden picked up another 132 votes in the recount. About 65 percent finished, Dane County will be done by the state’s certification of ten electoral votes for Biden on Tuesday. DDT still wants to throw out over 238,000 ballots in the two counties.
Unable to win lawsuits to stop voting and certification, DDT tries to decertify existing certifications. He failed in Pennsylvania this morning when a three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit Court rejected the case, writing, “Calling an election unfair does not make it so.” Like the other almost 40 rejections to DDT’s arguments, the ruling determined lawyers had no “specific allegations and … proof.” A DDT-appointed judge wrote the opinion. Jenna Ellis, DDT’s lawyer, wrote, “On to SCOTUS!” Biden won the state’s 20 electoral votes by an 80,000 majority.
A Commonwealth court uncertified Pennsylvania’s certified votes until an evidentiary hearing in the case. The same court has rejected GOP arguments two other times. GOP Rep. Mike Kelly challenged 2.5 million mail-in ballots, accusing the state legislature of constitutionally expanding the process. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman pointed out that lack of certification would eliminate “down-ballot elections”:
“If [votes are] not certified, we don’t have a House or have our state Senate, and those are controlled by Republicans. So they’re literally trying to make the argument that there was fraud with Joe Biden’s race but my race, there was no fraud in that race. So there’s absolutely no basis in reality, but that’s never stopped them from lying.”
Fetterman said Pennsylvania found only two cases of voter fraud, both from Republicans who tried “to vote for Trump with their relatives, whether they were dead or living.” The Pennsylvania GOP legislature approved mail-in voting over a year ago, but no one objected because they thought it could favor the Republicans.
With QAnon queen Sidney Powell as lawyer, Michigan electors and local GOP officials are using her conspiracy theories against Biden in a federal court case. On Monday, Michigan certified the win for Biden. and Powell’s arguments have already been ruled “not credible” by a Wayne County judge. The lawsuit also demands voting machine and software be impounded for inspection. Powell, dropped by DDT’s campaign, also filed a wacko lawsuit in Georgia with both filings marked by inaccurate spelling. Losing in Pennsylvania, she’s heading to Arizona with allegations already rejected in a court case there.
Rudy Giuliani receives $20,000 a day for his inept lawyering, but Powell asks for the checks to be made out to her personally. She set up her website on November 11, the day after she appeared on Fox’s Lou Dobbs Show.
DDT had a busy week, at least for him, with two major appearances last Tuesday—each about a minute. One of them was the pardoning of the National Thanksgiving Turkeys, this year named Corn and Cob. Hailing from Iowa, the turkeys are returning to their home state after a time in a luxury hotel. He was kinder to these than Carrot two years ago when he ridiculed Carrots for losing the count and refusing to “concede.” Matt Flegenheimer and Maggie Haberman have a great piece on how DDT had expected his time in the Oval Office to be “a rolling turkey pardon.”
DDT’s bad relationship with birds doesn’t seem to have improved since before his inauguration. Over five years ago, Time’s cover story, “The Donald Has Landed,” featured a photo of him and “Uncle Sam” who evidently didn’t approve of bigots and demagogues. Footage for the photo shoot.
Before Michael Flynn’s ruling, DDT pardoned him. DDT fired Flynn for lying to VP Mike Pence, and Flynn pled guilty to lying twice to the FBI about promising Russia in secret conversations before the inauguration that DDT would remove Russian sanctions. Flynn also secretly worked with Turkey. QAnon members are upset because the pardon means “guilt” when they want “exoneration.”
Still struggling to win by disenfranchising millions of voters, DDT called an informal meeting of Pennsylvania legislators at Gettysburg (PA) despite the state’s formal certification of 20 electoral votes. DDT originally meant to appear in person, but his legal team leader, Rudy Giuliani has again been exposed to COVID-19. Giuliani appeared with the group, most of them not wearing masks.
DDT’s conservative Supreme Court increased the rate of infections and deaths from COVID-19 by agreeing with New York religious organizations claiming they were illegally targeted by virus restrictions. In the 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts joined the three progressive justices, writing:
“It is a significant matter to override determinations made by public health officials concerning what is necessary for public safety in the midst of a deadly pandemic.”
Roberts also noted restrictions were already eased, eliminating the need for court intervention. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was alive, Roberts’ vote created a majority to treat religious groups the same as others. Justice Sonia Sotomayor added the state treated churches equally or more favorably when compared with other groups; thus it did not discriminate. Cuomo increased restrictions because some religious groups turned areas into “hot spots” of spiking coronavirus cases. Changes were temporary, based on numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
In a tweet, Joyce Vance, a federal prosecutor for 25 years, addressed the majority of justices who elevated Christian and Jewish beliefs over public health officials and state laws for other groups:
“Your religious views now give you the right to withhold the services of your business from people whose ‘lifestyle’ you disagree with, withhold healthcare from women & attend superspreader events that let you infect your neighbors with a deadly virus.”
After DDT demanded churches open last summer, the virus surged across areas in which religious groups refused to take precautions. The disease hits not only the people within the church but also others throughout the community as church members become superspreaders. For example, 12 deaths and 213 cases are connected to events at the Charlotte (NC) United House of Prayer for All People earlier this year, and 11 buses brought people for another superspreader event two weeks ago to further spread disease.
War in the Middle East could add to DDT’s death toll. For the third time in 18 months, he sent several heavy bombers to the Middle East threatening Iran after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s secret meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed ben Salam. Pompeo was supposedly on a diplomatic mission. The last threat was when DDT used an airstrike to assassinate top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani. DDT’s “maximum pressure” against Iran led to more nuclear material at higher levels of enrichment. Within the next 54 days before he leaves the Oval Office, DDT plans far more sanctions and “covert actions” against Iran to sabotage Biden’s efforts to rejoin the anti-nuclear deal.
DDT may have killed 33 unaccompanied Guatemalan children by deporting them after a judge ordered them to stop a deportation. Agency officials claimed they didn’t know about the order until the plane landed in Guatemala, but they didn’t bring them back. DDT’s administration claims it’s protecting the public during the pandemic, but the permission for unlimited church gatherings shows no protection from the virus. Coronavirus cases and deaths per capita in Guatemala are far fewer than in the U.S.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has lost another member, Lamar Alexander (TN) to a COVID-19 infection, but McConnell keeps punishing people. He plans a pay freeze for all civilian federal workers in the spending package required to keep the government open after December 11.
Nel's New Day 