1425 / 36
Good morning, and Happy Day-After-Electoral-College-Voting Day, or, as they call it in Canada, Tuesday.
First, some pandering. I was going to include a box of candy but Google was down just when I tried to order it for each of you yesterday morning. Dang it. You’ll just have to accept our love on faith.
Seriously: Everyone, thank you for subscribing to our little venture. We appreciate our readers more than you can possibly imagine. The midichlorians are dancing with joy, generating enough good feelings that somewhere on Tatooine, a light saber is beginning to levitate its way out of the sand (the Force is sending it to destroy Rian Johnson’s computer).
If you are a subscriber, please share The Racket News, so we can build a bigger subscriber base. We need to get a few thousand people reading us in order to properly make a racket.
If you’re not a subscriber yet, consider signing up. It’s free! (Disclaimer: for now at least.)
There have been 1,425 days since Donald Trump was sworn in as 45th President of the United States. In 36 days, he will lay down the powers and official duties of that position and become the 45th President of the United States, emeritus. Many will still refer to him, as is custom, as President Trump, in the manner people refer to Barack Obama as President Obama, or President Bush (Bush 41 and Bush 43). Many others will spit Trump’s name as if it were a curse; and many of that group never accepted him as president while in office.
What’s true is it’s all over but the whining. The EC voted, and Biden won, officially. Congress will certify this on January 6, 2021. At this point, loyalty to Trump’s “stolen election” narrative is little more than sky-screaming. Biden will be the 46th POTUS.
Those who can abandon ship are doing so. Attorney General William Barr is gone, and has proven that it’s possible to be both an ardent and loyal defender of Trump and an honest man.
Read David Thornton’s “apology to Bill Barr.”
Some kind of courage
Rep. Paul Mitchell is done being a Republican. He wrote “It is unacceptable for political candidates to treat our election system as though we are a third-world nation and incite distrust of something so basic as the sanctity of our vote.”
“Further, it is unacceptable for the president to attack the Supreme Court of the United States because its judges, both liberal and conservative, did not rule with his side or that ‘the Court failed him.’”
Here’s the whole thing in a tweet:
This is a whole lot of “too little too late” courage, like the soldier Timothy Upham, played by Jeremy Davies, in “Saving Private Ryan.” You know, the one who hid during the battle at the end, while his fellow soldier Mellish was bayonetted in hand-to-hand combat, only to emerge in time to take the surrendering Germans prisoner. He shoots the survivor—the one who killed Mellish—when the man utters his name.
Pro tip: If you’re going to quit, do it like Justin Amash did. Another pro tip: We all knew this was coming, so don’t act so shocked.
Outrage: Democrats screw the nation on COVID relief
Read this piece by Matt Taibbi (you might have to subscribe to his substack, it’s worth the price), on how Democrats are so cynical they’ve screwed over the entire country on COVID-19 relief, just to give a middle finger to Donald Trump, only to completely cave in to a tiny, useless relief bill that benefits defense contractors more than regular people impacted by the pandemic.
“There are no direct payments for regular working people, people living off tips,” the aide says. “But they made sure there’s a provision in there to help defense contractors who aren’t working right now. They get what they’re looking for.”
China and Russia are laughing
The Treasury Department got hacked by an elite Russian government cyber espionage unit. From The Washington Post:
The scale of the Russian espionage operation appears to be large, said several individuals familiar with the matter. “This is looking very, very bad,” said one person. SolarWinds products are used by organizations across the world. They include all five branches of the U.S. military, the Pentagon, State Department, Justice Department, NASA, the Executive Office of the President and the National Security Agency, the world’s top electronic spy agency, according to the firm’s website.
This is Stuxnet-level stuff, compromising security software vendors, which gives a straight path into the security infrastructure of whatever companies or agencies use that software. It’s bad, really bad.
Our election is so messed up that voting systems provider Smartmatic is about to sue the pants off OANN, Newsmax and Fox News for publishing what they called “disinformation.” I bet they win, and then Dominion will come in and clean up too.
China’s fingerprints are all over Apple, Eric Swalwell, Hunter Biden, and the friendly media who refuse to report on it.
They are laughing and toasting to our self-immolation in Beijing and Moscow.
It’s going to be a long week, because it’s only Tuesday.
One last thing. We’re looking at setting up a newsletter schedule. We’ve cut down the mailing to generally one a day, and we might trim further. We might publish on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and possibly Sunday with special content. Let us know in the comments what you think.
Enjoy the day and spend a few minutes meditating on the things that politics can’t touch. Like a nice hot cup of coffee.
Great job in presenting facts as a story.