Crooked Media - What A Day: Flynn, the mouth of madness

While President Trump is loading toner into the pardon printer (potentially in exchange for gobs of cash), his allies’ refusals to accept the results of the election have reached frightening, if very stupid, levels of lunacy.
 

• Trump’s freshly-pardoned former national security advisor Michael Flynn shared a deranged manifesto from a right-wing Ohio group calling for Trump to “temporarily suspend the Constitution” until a new election is held, impose martial law, and “silence the destructive media.” You know, like the textbook definition of a military coup. It’s a classic If You Give a Mouse a Cookie situation—if you pardon a criminal conspiracy theorist for lying to the FBI, he’s just gonna want to try sedition.
   
• Pro-Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood retweeted the same statement shortly before holding a “Stop the Steal” rally in Georgia, where they urged Republicans not to vote in the January Senate runoffs unless Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Purdue (R-GA) demand a special legislative session to investigate Trump’s defeat: “They have not earned your vote. Don't you give it to them. Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election for god's sake!” Helping libs win the Senate to own the libs, the highest form of trolling.
   
• This is the same blend of clownery and real danger we’ve seen at every stage of the Trump coup, now turned up to 11: The military should overthrow the government, Trump’s allies now openly say, but if that doesn’t pan out, just let the Democrats win more elections. It’s goofy, it makes no sense, and it’s setting the stage for nightmarish future elections and potential violence. Hours after Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling furiously implored Trump to stop spreading lies after a Dominion contractor was threatened with a noose, Trump made him a target, Powell and Wood cranked up the rhetoric, and Sens. David Perdue (R-GA) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) refused to apologize for backing Trump’s conspiracy theories. It’s not great.

If the U.S. military were down for a coup, Trump would probably be less absorbed with pardoning his shitty kids and plotting his triumphant comeback.
 

• The New York Times reported that Trump has discussed potential preemptive pardons for his three eldest children and Jared Kushner (good luck out there, Tiffany), as well as for America’s Wettest Mayor Rudy Giuliani. And those are just the criminals he’s protecting for free: While we don’t know much about the “bribery-for-pardon” scheme that the Justice Department has been investigating, court documents show that it involves someone with a short last name who was in Bureau of Prisons custody as recently as this summer. That person’s lawyer communicated with White House counsel in some capacity, and investigators suspect that two people working for him were secretly lobbying White House officials, and may have offered to funnel money as political donations. 
   
• Meanwhile, Trump’s hints at another presidential run in 2024 (which he may or may not kick off on Inauguration Day, like a baby) are getting louder. At the third of at least 25 planned mask-optional White House Christmas parties, Trump told guests, “It's been an amazing four years. We are trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I'll see you in four years.” As exhausting as it is to contemplate, we can all take comfort in the fact that it would be a tremendous kick in the nuts for Secretary of Running for President Mike Pompeo.
   

As at every stage of the clown coup, Trump and his allies have called for anti-demoratic actions that have no chance of happening, based on fraud claims and conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality. But Republicans’ silence has helped amplify that anti-democratic rhetoric, and we can’t ignore that this one buffoon trying to protect his ego and escape accountability is weakening our defenses against the next, slightly shrewder buffoon to come along.

We're only a few weeks away from the January 5 runoff in Georgia that will determine control of the Senate.  Early voting starts on December 14, and if you're looking for ways to support groups on the ground making sure every voter makes their voice heard, make sure to sign up to Adopt Georgia. We'll be sending new opportunities to donate and volunteer every week between now and January, so head over to votesaveamerica.com/georgia to learn more about what you can do today →

As Congress rolls into another round of stimulus talks (Democratic leaders have now come out in support of the bipartisan proposal in the Senate), newly released data from the last round of aid shows that it wasn’t quite distributed as intended. More than five-million companies received loans under the $525 billion Paycheck Protection Program, but a tiny fraction sucked up most of the funds: About 600 businesses received $10 million, the largest possible loan, and one percent of borrowers somehow wound up with more than a quarter of the total money disbursed. (Paging Bernie Sanders.) Rubbing salt in the wound of struggling small businesses, the Trump Organizations and the Kushner Companies received more than 25 PPP loans worth more than $3.65 million. Could be cool if that, uh, didn’t happen again. 

Sidney Powell cited 8kun administrator Ron Watkins in a Georgia lawsuit alleging that Dominion voting machines are all haunted by the ghost of Hugo Chavez, or whatever. The message board 8kun is the home of QAnon, and reporters have theorized that Watkins and/or his dad Jim Watkins write at least some of Q’s posts. Powell has retweeted all kinds of QAnon content and the whole Dominion Voting Systems conspiracy theory arose from the QAnon swamp, but Watkins’ affidavit marks one of the first official links between a prominent QAnon player and Trump’s post-election legal effort. Watkins didn’t have any actual evidence to provide (we’re as surprised as you), but he’s spent much of the last month online spreading baseless claims about Dominion—the ones which, with Trump’s amplification, have led to death threats. (Q, meanwhile, has posted just three times since the election.)

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A group of romance novelists (to whom’s ranks Stacey Abrams belongs) have launched the fundraising effort Romancing the Runoff to mobilize Democratic voters in Georgia. 

Massachusetts is poised to become the first state to ban the use of facial recognition by law enforcement and public agencies.

Eastern Michigan University and Henry Ford Colleges have announced a partnership expanding affordable education opportunities for Michigan essential workers. 

Pharrell Williams has launched Black Ambition, a nonprofit that aims to support Black and Latino entrepreneurs.