Sign of the Times: President Trump in Florida suddenly signed the $908 billion pandemic relief and government funding bill, which will avert a shutdown, extend expanded unemployment benefits and the eviction moratorium, while triggering $600 checks to individual taxpayers.

  Trump said in a statement, “I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed.”

  He also said, “The House and Senate have agreed to focus strongly on the very substantial voter fraud which took place in the November 3 presidential election,” a statement that appears to be pure fiction.

 The President had stalled signing claiming he wanted $2,000 individual checks, rather than $600, but he did nothing to make that happen before Congress passed the bill last week. He repeated his $2,000 demand last night. 

Golf and Grievance: The President played golf over the weekend while whining about how the Supreme Court, the FBI, and Justice Department have failed to support him as the Democrats do him in. He didn’t even say anything about the bombing in Nashville that shattered several blocks of the city.

  Demonstrating that he has no knowledge of how the law and Constitution work, Trump tweeted, “The U.S. Supreme Court has been totally incompetent and weak on the massive Election Fraud that took place in the 2020 Presidential Election. We have absolute PROOF, but they don’t want to see it – No ‘standing’, they say. If we have corrupt elections, we have no country!”

  He called on fellow Republicans to reverse the election outcome. “Time for Republican Senators to step up and fight for the Presidency, like the Democrats would do if they had actually won,” he wrote. “The proof is irrefutable! Massive late night mail-in ballot drops in swing states, stuffing the ballot boxes (on video), double voters, dead voters.” 

  Neither Trump nor his acolytes have offered up the proof of fraud.

  While millions of Americans go without a paycheck and food living on the brink of homelessness, Trump was also complaned that his wife, Melania, has never been featured on the cover of a fashion magazine while she’s been First Lady.

  The President retweeted a post by Breitbart News that, “The elitist snobs in the fashion press have kept the most elegant First Lady in American history off the covers of their magazines for 4 consecutive years.”

  The fashion magazines are elite by definition. Vogue is not the Walmart catalogue. The glossies generally require that a cover shoot goes with an interview, which means that the subject needs to have something to say. 

Man in Mar-a-Lago: President Trump has taken to re-tweeting conspiracy-theory videos produced by a man named Seth Holehouse, who calls his website “Man in America.”

  One of his videos is titled “The Plot to Steal America,” and another about Joe Biden, is “The Puppet Elect.”  Both claim that the Chinese Communist Party is taking over America. Holehouse says Trump is an anti-commie hero who is the victim of election fraud and Biden is the tool. Trump re-posted both videos and said they are “A Must See!”

  A Redditt thread  produced information that Holehouse is a follower of the Chinese spiritual cult Falun Gong, which was banned in 1999 by the Chinese government.

Nashville Bombing: Police have identified the man they believe is the Nashville bomber as Anthony Quinn Warner, 63, who lived in Antioch, outside the city. He had been a computer technician.

  Investigators say they believe it was a dramatic act of suicide and they have matched DNA found at the scene to DNA found at Warner’s home.

  The camper van obviously jammed with explosives, blew up about 6:30 Christmas morning. The blast destroyed trees and cars, blew out windows, and even caused the façade of one building to fall.

The Covid Corner: About two million Americans have already been vaccinated since the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine. It may be fall before business and social life return to anything resembling normal. 

  President Trump over the weekend was still railing over the measures Democratic run states have taken to fight the virus, “absolutely ruining the lives of so many people,” he tweeted. He said, “Cases in California have risen despite the lockdown, yet Florida & others are open & doing well.” 

  Actually, while New York is still the state hardest hit, Republican-run Texas and Florida are second and fourth for cases and deaths. California, which has a Democratic governor, is running third.

  This morning, 333,140 Americans are dead.

The Obit Page: Phil Niekro, baseball’s most famous knuckleballer, has died at age 81. He threw the ball for the Atlanta Braves and the Yankees for 24 seasons, retiring at age 48. He won 318 games, but never made it to a World Series.

  He didn’t actually hold the ball with his knuckles. Niekro gripped it with his thumb and third finger on the outsides, bending his first and second fingers so only the tips touched the ball. The result was a pitch that didn’t spin, the air hitting the laces of the ball so it kind of jumped around, making it very hard for the batter to judge its path.

Et Tu?: Today’s NY Post ran a screaming front page headline calling on President Trump to “STOP THE INSANITY.” The Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the same guy who owns Fox News.

  The accompanying editorial asks Trump to give up his effort to overturn the election. It says, “If you insist on spending your final days in office threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as a revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match.”

-30-