Viral News: The State of Utah is in coronavirus meltdown with nearly 4,000 new cases reported yesterday. Gov. Gary Herbert warned that the state’s hospitals are in danger of being overrun. In Illinois, the City of Chicago has issued a 30-day stay-at-home order for residents. Ivy League colleges announced that they are cancelling winter sports and postponing the spring season.

  This all comes just as the Centers for Disease Control predicts coronavirus deaths in the US could hit 282,000 by December 5^th.

  As of this morning, the number is 242,435 dead, 627 more than yesterday. The country is breaking records for new cases every day. Yesterday it was 160,000 people newly diagnosed with the virus. California and Texas have both crossed the million mark for cases, putting them in the company of some small countries.

  And Corey Lewandowski, a campaign adviser to President Trump, became yet another member of the Trump and White House circle to test positive. 

  The President has not publicly acknowledged the resurgent crisis. It’s his 8^th day holed up in the White House. 

The Long Count: Election authorities in Arizona announced that they audited their state’s vote and found no fraud, punching a big hole in the President’s claim that the election was stolen. The major news outlets have called Arizona for Joe Biden, giving him 290 votes in the Electoral College to 217 for Trump.

  Federal cybersecurity and election officials have declared that last week’s presidential election “was the most secure in American history” and said “there is no evidence” that voting was compromised in any way. “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” the statement said.

  It’s Trump making up votes. He tweeted yesterday, “Now 73,000,000 Votes!” as if he’s the winner. His actual vote at that moment was 72.6 million and he neglected to say that Joe Biden has 5.3 million more votes that he does.

  Some news agencies report according to insiders that Trump is waffling between fighting on and giving up, but he’s still thinking of creative ways to hang on. NY Times reporter Maggie Haberman reports that in a White House meeting the President floated the idea that some of the Republican state legislatures could ignore their state’s vote and appoint Republican electors who would then give Trump a second term.

 New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi said on CNN this morning that Trump might be dragging this out just for the attention. “We have to remember this is a guy from reality TV,” she said. “He understands high drama. And this is the series finale.” 

To Be Briefed: The red wall is beginning to crack. Some high ranking Republicans are beginning to defect from the president’s refusal to cooperate with Joe Biden’s transition into the presidency. Senators John Thune of South Dakota, the majority whip; Charles Grassley of Iowa, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina all said the Trump administration should start giving Biden the highest level security briefing — the same as what the President gets.

  Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins, who has difficulty standing up for much of anything, said in support of giving Biden the briefings “It’s probably the most important part of the transition.”

New Media: President Trump has turned against Fox News, the pro-Trump cable megaphone that helped make him President. He’s furious that they accurately called Arizona for Joe Biden on election night.

  He tweeted, “@FoxNews daytime ratings have completely collapsed. Weekend daytime even WORSE. Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot the Golden Goose.” That would be Donald Trump.

  The President is pushing his diehards to the credulous One America News Network and Newsmax, which, like the President, refuses to recognize the outcome of the election.

  Axios reports according to its sources that, “President Trump has told friends he wants to start a digital media company to clobber Fox News and undermine the conservative-friendly network.”

The Obit Page: Tom Metzger, a publicity-seeking white supremacist and anti-Semite who was founder and leader of the White Aryan Resistance, died last week in Hemet, California, at age 82. Before the internet, Metzger pioneered the use of radio and television to spread his message.

  In 1992 he lost a $12.2 million judgment awarded by a jury in Portland, Oregon that found Metzger liable for three skinhead followers killing an Ethiopian student. The judgement left him broke and pretty much forced him to shut up.

  In England, Peter Sutcliffe, the British serial murderer dubbed by the press as the Yorkshire Ripper, has died at age 74.  He was convicted in 1981 in the murders of 13 women over five years in northern England and sent to prison for life. 

Star Wars: The Air Force is gearing up to equip fighter jets with killer lasers capable of knocking down hostile missiles and eventually other aircraft.

  The system is called SHiELD, or Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator. It would be mounted inside a pod on fighters developed before stealth technology; the F-15s, F-16s and maybe the tank-busting A-10 Warthogs. 

   A lot of fighter planes still have machine guns, which would have been useless to Luke Skywalker.

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