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Jan. 6 Investigators Zeroing In On Apparent Plot To Hijack Election With Fake Electors The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot is intensifying its probe into the filing of counterfeit election certificates signed by slates of fake Republican electors for the 2020 presidential election in five states. The Republican electors falsely declared themselves “duly elected and qualified,” and sent signed certificates to Congress and the National Archives claiming to affirm former President Donald Trump as the winner in five states he had actually lost: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin. All the states had legitimate Democratic electors for Joe Biden, reflecting residents’ votes. The brazen scheme involved Trump campaign officials in an operation coordinated by his former personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, both The Washington Post and CNN reported. “We want to look at the fraudulent activity that was contained in the preparation of these fake Electoral College certificates,” said House committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Politico reported. “And then we want to look to see to what extent this was part of a comprehensive plan to overthrow the 2020 election.” “There’s no doubt that those people were engaged in a constitutional fraud on the public and on the democracy,” Raskin told The New York Times, referring to the fake electors. The select committee is expecting new documents from the National Archives related to the fake electors scheme, according to chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who called the apparent involvement of members of Trump’s circle in the plot a “concern.” Committee member Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) called the submission of the fake electoral certificates a “dangerous precedent,” according to Politico. The fake elector slates were apparently intended to be a go-to line-up of Republicans in the event then-Vice President Mike Pence rejected the legitimate electors in states Trump lost, which Trump was pressing him to do on Jan. 6, 2020. Trump ally and right-wing attorney John Eastman, author of the so-called coup memos, had suggested that Pence, armed with “multiple” elector slates, could introduce the pro-Trump fakes to challenge the legitimate Biden electors in the seven states Trump lost. Fake documents were also filed in Pennsylvania and New Mexico, but those GOP counterfeits were referred to as “electors in waiting” in case court challenges to Biden’s win were successful. The certificates from the other five states falsely claimed that the pro-Trump electors were the rightful electors. Officials in some of the states are either investigating the operation, or have referred information to federal prosecutors. Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel last week called the operation an “open-and-shut case of forgery of a public record.” She asked federal prosecutors to investigate the 16 Michigan Republicans who submitted false certificates. Jan. 6 Investigators Zeroing In On Apparent Plot To Hijack Election With Fake Electors | HuffPost Latest News

The kids are not alright: Data suggests 10% of children with COVID-19 become "long-haulers". "We are definitely seeing long COVID in children," said Dr. Amanda Morrow, Co-Director of the Kennedy Krieger Institute's Pediatric Post-COVID-19 Clinic in Maryland. "It does exist. And it is impacting day-to-day lives significantly."" Because the data is preliminary, estimates thus far vary wildly on the prevalence of what is now known as "long Covid" in children and adolescents. Available studies have reported wildly varying numbers on the proportion of children who suffer long Covid, ranging from 0.8% to 66% of total pediatric COVID-19 cases. "We don't really know a whole lot," said Dr. Sindhu Mohandas, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. "We are just starting to learn over the past few months what long Covid in kids is." Recognizing its existence, Mohandas said, has been a big advance. While there is no official definition of pediatric long Covid at this time, the parameters typically include the persistence (or return) of symptoms 12 weeks following the initial infection. Some criteria look for new or persistent symptoms 30 days out from the acute infection. Another key is ruling out of alternative medical explanations — making the process of diagnosis lengthy and requiring a multi-disciplinary team. However, there is now growing consensus that somewhere around 10 percent of COVID-19 cases in kids turn into long Covid — at least according to the data collected for primarily pre-omicron and pre-vaccine cases. At this time, most of the studies come from other countries. In September 2021, the Israeli Health Ministry announced the results of a survey showing that 11.2% of kids reported symptoms of long Covid. "No one is certain exactly how many people who've had COVID-19 end up being long haulers," wrote Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Professor of Pediatrics Dr. Peter Rowe on the American Academy of Pediatrics' "Healthy Children" website. He continued: "One study showed that as many as 52% of teens and young adults between ages 16 and 30 may experience lingering symptoms 6 months after having COVID. The U.K. Office for National Statistics estimated that 12.9% of children 2 to 11 years of age, and 14.5% of children 12 to 16 years old, still experienced symptoms 5 weeks after infection." "It will end up being about 10% — is my guess," said Morrow. "We do not know at this point what risk factors predispose children to developing long COIVD. It could be a possible outcome for anyone. We just don't know."

Its not about the COVID, its about his pig-headedness.

Not the years in our lives that counts, but the life in our years.

The most explosive material so far is the executive order that Trump had prepared well in advance to seize the voting machines and ballots. Then, he planned to declare an extensive and prolonged review that would keep him in office for several months while he and his cronies figured out a way to abort the election results entirely.

Just Tories being Tories. Move along now, nothing to see here.

Is the tide continuing to turn against Trump? The Georgia DA is convening a special grand jury to hear the evidence that Trump illegally tried to corrupt the election there: Things Get Even Worse For Trump As Georgia DA Requests Special Grand Jury Into Criminal Election Interference (politicususa.com)

Voter suppression in action: Mail-in ballot rejections many times higher under new Texas law The number of rejected mail-in ballot applications is skyrocketing in Texas counties under new Republican-authored voting restrictions recently signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott. The Texas crackdown on mail-in voting appears to be hitting hardest in the state's most densely populated counties, which also tend to have more voters of color and predominantly vote Democratic. In Travis County, which includes Austin, about half of all mail-in ballot applications have been rejected ahead of the state's March primaries, up from a rate of about 11% in the 2020 election cycle, according to the county clerk's office. About half of applications were rejected in Hidalgo County as well, according to elections administrator Yvonne Ramon. Dallas County has rejected 43% of the applications it received, according to elections administrator Frank Phillips. In Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, more than half of the applications received on Monday were rejected under the "ridiculous" new law, said county elections administrator Jacque Callanen. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said the county is rejecting applications at a rate 700% higher than previous cycles because of the new "voter suppression laws that create a maze of technicalities." Harris County includes the city of Houston, and with 4.7 million residents has a higher population than 24 U.S. states. "Voters are being mistreated in this circumstance," Travis County election clerk Dana DeBeauvoir told reporters on Tuesday. "My friends, this is what voter suppression looks like." Many of the applications have been rejected because of the new identification requirements under Texas' new voting law, SB 1. Texas law already restricted mail-in voting by people under age 65 but the new law requires voters to include their driver's license or state ID number in their application, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. Counties must match those numbers against the information in each individual's voter file to approve their application. Counties have struggled to match ID information because they lack certain data, particularly because voters are not required to provide both their state ID and Social Security numbers when they register to vote. The Texas secretary of state's office last year said more than 2 million of the state's 17 million registered voters did not have one of the two ID numbers on file and more than 250,000 did not have either number on file. The numbers have declined since then, but more than 700,000 voters still do not have both numbers on file and more than 100,000 don't have either, according to the secretary of state's office. Nearly 500,000 Texas voters do not have a driver's license on file, which is the first number voters have to provide on their applications. Voter suppression in action: Mail-in ballot rejections many times higher under new Texas law | Salon.com

The Klan Was the Original ‘Election Police’ Today’s Republican politicians are counting on ignorance of or apathy about that history as they try to create their own election-crime cop forces. Days after blocking the advancement of vital voting rights legislation and corrupting the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Republican politicians are advancing their undemocratic agenda by advocating for the creation of “election police.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking for $5.7 million to create an Office of Election Crimes and Security. In Georgia, former senator and gubernatorial candidate David Purdue promises a new Election Law Enforcement Division. Other Republicans pushing Trump’s Big Lie are sure to follow. They aren’t breaking new ground, but joining a long tradition of dressing up efforts to suppress and intimidate Black voters as somehow protecting the integrity of our American democracy. A tipping point of the 1960s voting rights movement was the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. Dr. Martin Luther King, John Lewis, and voting rights activists marching from Selma, Alabama, to the state’s capital were infamously attacked on what’s come to be known as “Bloody Sunday” by Southern police led by Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, the president of the Alabama Public Service Commission. Americans nationwide saw for themselves as Connor’s goons attacked citizens protesting non-violently with bully clubs, dogs, and militarized vehicles. Lewis nearly died in the confrontation. That August, the Voting Rights Act became law, and Black Americans could finally vote without the threat of government-sponsored or -sanctioned terrorism—that is, the voting police. This week, Senate Republicans voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that would have restored voting rights protections created by the 1965 legislation but removed by John Roberts’ Supreme Court in 2013, on the bizarre premise that racial disparities were no longer a problem. With those protections gone, conservative politicians in the South are again trying to militarize and police voting. This was all too predictable to anyone who knows American history, and part of the Republican Party’s anti-Democratic agenda is to ensure that much of that history is ignored or forgotten. It’s good that many Americans know about the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but more of them should know about Edmund Pettus, a white terrorist and politician from Alabama. Pettus, born in Alabama in 1821, was a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. Following the Civil War, he was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson along with thousands of other Confederates, and upon obtaining his freedom he became a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan Was the Original ‘Election Police’ (thedailybeast.com)

And, as of January 18th, we have passed the midpoint of winter and weather will be moderating from here on.

Babylon 5 was the high-water mark for Sci-Fi series. The creator was given a 5-year contract to ensure the characters and plots could evolve naturally, and did. Good stuff- I still have the DVDs.

Bombshell draft order reveals a plan for Trump to seize voting machines after the 2020 election A draft executive order obtained by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack reveals President Donald Trump had a plan, which he did not enact, to order the Secretary of Defense to seize voting machines in an attempt to stay in power after the January 20, 2021 inauguration of President Joe Biden. There was also a plan for Trump to deliver a conspiracy-theory filled speech announcing he was ordering the voting machines to be seized. It was titled “Remarks on National Healing.” “I hereby order,” reads the draft executive order, dated December 16, 2020 and published Friday by Politico. “Effective immediately, the Secretary of Defense shall seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records required for retention,” citing a federal law. Politico adds that “the draft order would have given the defense secretary 60 days to write an assessment of the 2020 election. That suggests it could have been a gambit to keep Trump in power until at least mid-February of 2021.” Bombshell draft order reveals a plan for Trump to seize voting machines after the 2020 election - Alternet.org

With Captain Burnham dripping empathy in almost every scene, muddled storylines, and an endless focus on who is sleeping with whom, the series ought to be euthanized. The only reasons the series is surviving is nostalgia and nothing better to replace it.

Trump WANTED a bloody riot at the Capitol. That would have given him the pretext to declare martial law, seize the ballots and voting machines and postpone further elections until it suited him. In times of confusion and threat, people usually flock to support the existing government unless it it is completely inept. This is when strongman dictators step up and p romise security at the (allegedly temporarily) price of loss of freedoms. It worked for BushII after 911, and Thatcher over the Falkland Islands.

Truth is that Edmonton and BC and nearly Calgary teams were train wrecks, so the Riders really backed into the playoffs.

If you use a pre-season game as better criteria than a real-game outing, sure.

McGuire has not shown himself to be more than a decent third-down-one-yard-plunge guy. Should not be difficult to find better, and Streveler was.

FWIW: The Freep today called the Bombers to win a third straight Grey Cup. Sounds good to me,

The GOP, for the most part have decided that they do not have to pretend to care about democracy, corruption or appearing racist. They believe they have gamed the system to the point where they can be elected without being concerned about gaining the most votes or being prosecuted. Trump is a shining example of this.

LOVED Wallace and Grommit from the first film on.

Donald Trump calls for racial violence: White supremacists are listening, but the media laughs Most notably, during his Arizona speech Trump encouraged racist violence against Black and brown people. This is not an exaggeration. These were his actual words: The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating — just, denigrating — white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you're white you don't get the vaccine, or if you're white you don't get therapeutics. It's unbelievable to think this. And nobody wants this. Black people don't want it, white people don't want it, nobody wants it. ... In New York state, if you're white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical health — think of it, if you're white you go right to the back of the line. ... This race-based medicine is not only anti-American, it's government tyranny in the truest sense of the word. White supremacists and other racial authoritarians and fascists listen closely to Trump's words, and take them seriously. This is literally a life and death matter. Donald Trump calls for racial violence: White supremacists are listening, but the media laughs | Salon.com

The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts Last year’s Day of the Dead marked a grim milestone. On 1 November, the global death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic passed 5 million, official data suggested. It has now reached 5.5 million. But that figure is a significant underestimate. Records of excess mortality — a metric that involves comparing all deaths recorded with those expected to occur — show many more people than this have died in the pandemic. Working out how many more is a complex research challenge. It is not as simple as just counting up each country’s excess mortality figures. Some official data in this regard are flawed, scientists have found. And more than 100 countries do not collect reliable statistics on expected or actual deaths at all, or do not release them in a timely manner. Demographers, data scientists and public-health experts are striving to narrow the uncertainties for a global estimate of pandemic deaths. These efforts, from both academics and journalists, use methods ranging from satellite images of cemeteries to door-to-door surveys and machine-learning computer models that try to extrapolate global estimates from available data. Among these models, the World Health Organization (WHO) is still working on its first global estimate, but the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, Washington, offers daily updates of its own modelled results, as well as projections of how quickly the global toll might rise. And one of the highest-profile attempts to model a global estimate has come from the news media. The Economist magazine in London has used a machine-learning approach to produce an estimate of 12 million to 22 million excess deaths — or between 2 and 4 times the pandemic’s official toll so far. The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts (nature.com)

Anti-Vax Folk Singer Got COVID on Purpose. Now She’s Dead. The Czech songstress Hana Horka needed to get the virus to have a health pass to perform in venues so she deliberately caught it from her vaccinated husband and son. Hana Horka, a popular anti-vax folk singer in the Czech Republic could no longer perform with her popular band Asonance—the oldest folk band in the country—amid new restrictions requiring vaccination or proof of recovery from COVID-19 to enter concert halls and performance venues. So when her vaxxed up husband and son caught the virus, she decided it was her chance to get a health pass without rolling up her sleeve for a jab. The 57-year-old quickly became infected and seemed to be on the road to recovery, her son Jan Rek told Czech public radio station iRozhlas.cz. Then on Sunday morning as she got up to go for a walk she was stricken with back pain. Ten minutes later she was dead after choking to death. “She decided to continue to live normally with us and preferred to catch the disease than to get vaccinated,” Rek said after his mother’s death Sunday. Two days before she died the singer posted on social media that she made it through the worst of the virus. “I survived... It was intense,” she wrote. “So now there will be the theatre, sauna, a concert... and an urgent trip to the sea.” Her son said that the strong anti-vax movement in parts of Europe was to blame. There have been reports of COVID parties in Italy, Austria, and across Germany where new restrictions have punished the unvaccinated. About 63 percent of the population is fully vaccinated in the Czech Republic, and those who aren’t have protested the country’s new restrictions meant to take the burden off the public healthcare system. The singer’s son said the movement had blood on their hands. Czech Folk Singer Hana Horka Got COVID-19 on Purpose—Now She’s Dead (thedailybeast.com)

The Republican Party's new insidious invention: Election police Republicans have been committing election fraud right out in the open since 1964 and covering it up by yelling about “voter fraud.” Remember the hours-long lines to vote we’ve seen on TV ever since the 60s in minority neighborhoods? Those are no accident: they’re part of a larger election fraud program the GOP has used to suppress the vote for sixty years now. This election year Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is raising the stakes: he’s planning to put together a force of “election police” under his personal command to travel the state intimidating voters while pretending to look for “voter fraud.” As The Washington Post reports: DeSantis is asking the GOP-controlled legislature to allocate nearly $6 million to hire 52 people to ‘investigate, detect, apprehend, and arrest anyone for an alleged violation’ of election laws. They would be stationed at unspecified ‘field offices throughout the state’ and act on tips from ‘government officials or any other person.’ Meanwhile, the GOP in Texas is quietly recruiting 10,000 white volunteers “courageous” enough to go into Black and Hispanic polling places and confront people trying to vote. As Jessica Corbett reported for Common Dreams: Common Cause Texas on Thursday shared a leaked video of a Harris County GOP official discussing plans to ‘build an army’ of 10,000 election workers and poll watchers, including some who ‘will have the confidence and courage’ to go into Black and Brown communities to address alleged voter fraud that analyses show does not actually exist. The Republican Party's new insidious invention: Election police - Alternet.org

Ron DeSantis Opens Antibody Centers That Are Useless Against Omicron. The Florida governor is flogging monoclonals that experts say are no match for Omicron. If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were a responsible leader dedicated to the well-being of his constituents, he would have made clear that the Regeneron monoclonal antibody being administered at his five new treatment sites is all but useless in the current COVID-19 surge. But DeSantis is DeSantis, and therefore his own top priority. He is happy to offer false hope in the middle of a pandemic—as his state breaks infection records week after week—if he believes it is to his political advantage. Last month, DeSantis held a press conference outside Ocala Medical Center with a sign reading “Early Treatment Saves Lives” and touted monoclonal antibodies as the answer to the COVID crisis. His surgeon general, Joe Ladapo, described vaccines, masks, and testing as a “trifecta” of “lunacy.” Omicron had already begun to spread in Florida and elsewhere, so quickly that it was soon responsible for the overwhelming majority of new cases. The federal government stopped distributing two of the three mjaor monoclonal antibody treatments—Regeneron and Bamlanivimab—on the grounds they were ineffective against the new variants. The third treatment, Sotrovimab, remains in such short supply it is reserved for only the most vulnerable people. DeSantis accused the Biden administration of falling victim to “hysteria.” Lapado made public a letter he wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra saying, “The federal government is is actively preventing the effective distribution of antibody treatments in the U.S.” Never mind that it was because the treatments themselves are ineffective. On Jan. 3, DeSantis tweeted a video of himself standing with the “Early Treatment Saves Lives” sign outside at Broward Health. “Instead of keeping a stranglehold on monoclonal antibodies, the federal government must release its stockpiles to states who want them and allow states to purchase these medications directly,” he said. On Jan. 4, he posted a video of himself with the well-traveled sign in Jacksonville. “Governor DeSantis is in Jacksonville ready to open a monoclonal antibody treatment site IF the federal government would provide the supply Florida needs,” he declared. On Jan. 5, he insisted, “With Omicron, there’s not enough evidence to say that Regeneron and the bamlanivimab work. There’s not enough evidence to say if it’s going to be as effective or more against Delta, we just don’t know.” In fact, there was already considerable evidence to the contrary. Prominent medical experts were reaching a consensus that Regeneron and Bamlanivimab do not work against Omicron. “It’s equivalent to giving them a placebo,” Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of Infectious Disease at University of Alabama Medicine, told the Daily Beast. “We just assume there’s not going to be any benefit to using them.” But on Jan. 7, the Biden administration caved. DeSantis reported that Florida had secured 15,000 doses of Regeneron. He announced that they would be distributed at five new sites. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Opens Monoclonal Antibody Centers That Are Useless Against Omicron (thedailybeast.com) Trump’s Favorite ‘Demon Sperm’ Doc Now Suggests Praying the COVID Vax Away Stella Immanuel, the eccentric “demon sperm” doctor who was embraced and defended by ex-president Donald Trump for her evidence-free claims about curing COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine, is back with another outlandish claim. This time, at a right-wing gathering over the weekend, Immanuel theorized that one can pray away the effects of the COVID-19 vaccination. “Every time we have prayed for people that have taken the vaccine because it is Luciferian,” she said at megachurch pastor Clay Clark’s ReAwaken America Tour stop in Arizona. “And the mention of the name of Jesus, every knee bows.” Immanuel further floated the idea of prayer reversing the effects of a vaccine merely with the utterance of Jesus’ name. “Each time we pray for people that have taken the vax, something, there is a reaction. A needle poke, the hands start shaking, and we cast this stuff out of people,” the Houston-based pediatrician added, while implying that the vaccine is the “devil” which one “must come at” with “the name of Jesus.” Trump’s Favorite ‘Demon Sperm’ Doc Now Suggests Praying the COVID Vax Away (thedailybeast.com)