Cartoon Character: Like The Muppets’ Count von Count, President Trump can’t stop counting. He has asked for a second recount in Georgia because the vote is within the margin to allow for it.

  In announcing the recount, the Trump campaign demanded signature matching of absentee ballot envelopes, despite repeated explanations from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that doing that would be illegal and impossible.

  “Let’s stop giving the People false results,” the Trump campaign said without offering any evidence. “There must be a time when we stop counting illegal ballots.”

  Continuing a campaign of lies to undermine American democracy, Trump also tweeted, “In certain swing states, there were more votes than people who voted, and in big numbers.” 

  In a full hand recount finished last week, Trump gained some votes in Georgia but Biden finished ahead by 12,670. Even if Trump miraculously turns it around in Georgia, he would not gain enough in the electoral college to return for a second term.

  Trump and some of his supporters are actually urging legislators in states the President lost to appoint electors who will ignore the election results and vote for Trump.

  Becoming a rare voice in the Republican party, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania called on Trump to give up and accept that he lost. “President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania,” Toomey said.

  Before you admire Toomey’s independence and bravery, note that he’s not running for re-election to another term. 

Frankenstein’s Monster: A federal judge in Pennsylvania over the weekend blasted President Trump’s lawyers for asking him to “disenfranchise almost seven million voters” in the November 3^rdelection because a couple of ballots were flawed and not counted.

  Trump’s lawsuits to overturn the results of the election he lost are getting shot down as quickly as they are brought to court.

  Judge Matthew Brann dismissed the Pennsylvania case “with prejudice.” In polite legal language that means “don’t bring this crap back in front of me.”

  Brann wrote that, “One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption,” but, “Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.”

  Brann said that a portion of the legal claim, “like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together.” 

  Trump’s lawyers have become the gang that couldn’t litigate straight. In Georgia, a judge hearing claims of fraud told Trump’s lawyer’s, “I understand that’s your argument, but what’s your evidence?” 

  One Trump lawyer filed a lawsuit in Washington, DC, that should have been filed in Michigan.

  And in Arizona  a Trump lawyer admitted to the judge, “We are not alleging fraud. We are not saying anyone is trying to steal the election.”

Off the Island: Evidently Trump and his campaign team have their limits. They’ve thrown out the lawyer Sidney Powell because her theories about the election being stolen by a dead South American dictator in a conspiracy theory involving Venezuela, the CIA, and a Canadian voting technology company are too much even for a President who has Rudy Giuliani as his lead lawyer.

  Powell went a step too far claiming Georgia Republican Gov. Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are taking payoffs as part of the scheme. 

In Transition: President-elect Joe Biden is trying to get on with establishing a new administration even while getting the stiff arm from Donald Trump. Biden is reported to have chosen for his secretary of state Antony Blinken, who was deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser under President Obama. He had also been then-Vice President Biden’s national security adviser.

  Trump claims it’s premature. “Why is Joe Biden so quickly forming a Cabinet when my investigators have found hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes, enough to ‘flip’ at least four States,” he asked on Twitter. Trump said, “Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself. THE WORLD IS WATCHING!!!”

Viral News: Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, one of two Republicans in a runoff election set for January, is isolating out of caution after having conflicting tests for the coronavirus. A rapid test was negative, but the slower one was positive.

  The US added nearly 159,000 new cases in the past 24 hours and 889 deaths.

The Obit Page: Jan Morris, a noted British journalist, travel writer and historian who was one of the first famous transexuals in the world, has died at age 94 in Wales.

  Named James Morris at birth, she had been an officer in a British cavalry regiment and climbed three-quarters of the way up Mount Everest to write about the first conquering of the world’s highest mountain.

  Wrestling with her gender identity, at age 46 she underwent transition surgery. She later wrote in the opening lines of her 1974 memoir, “Conundrum,” under the name Jan Morris, “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl.”

Crime Blotter: Police arrested a 15-year-old boy for Friday’s shooting at a Wisconsin shopping mall. They said the shooting that resulted in eight people being wounded was the result of an argument.

Speechless: Overcome by the events of 2020, the word nerds at Oxford Dictionaries were unable to pick a single word of the year and instead issued several “Words of an Unprecedented Year”.

  The words they say include 2020’s “ethos, mood, or preoccupations” include bushfires, Covid-19, WFH, lockdown, circuit-breaker, support bubbles, keyworkers, furlough, Black Lives Matter, and moonshot.

  They neglected to include “denial.”

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