I, Claudius: President Trump over the weekend called the governor of Georgia and asked him to appoint members of the Electoral College who would go against the popular vote and cast their ballots for Trump.

  Joe Biden won Georgia by just under 12,000 and the electors are supposed to vote for him. Georgia’s Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said yesterday on CNN  “We’re certainly not going to move the goal posts at this point in the election.”

  The President travelled to Georgia for a rally Saturday where he told the crowd, “You know we won Georgia, just so you understand.” He said “Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing.” 

  “They cheated and rigged our presidential election, but we’ll still win,” Trump said, attempting to sell the fiction that Democrats could be sufficiently organized and agreeable with each other to fix a national election.  The President claimed he actually won all of the swing states “And I have to say, if I lost I’d be a very gracious loser.”

  Trump was in Georgia to campaign for himself and the two Republican candidates for Senator, who, if they win, would maintain Republican control of the Senate. The voters are getting mixed messages. Lin Wood, a prominent pro-Trump trial lawyer, is telling Georgians not to bother voting because the Senate runoff is already rigged. “Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election?” Wood asked a cheering crowd. 

  Trump is in political and emotional death throes. Peter Baker writes for The NY Times that, “Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results.” Baker says Trump has  “fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News.”

Viral News: Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer and former mayor of New York has tested positive for the coronavirus and is in a Washington hospital. 

 The President announced on Twitter that, “By far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus.” The 76-year-old Giuliani has been spearheading Trump’s effort to overturn the election with fictitious claims of vote fraud.

  Dozens of Trump’s close advisers and associates have tested positive for the virus, as have the President and First Lady.

   Out West, an area of Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley where 27 million people live this morning is under a strict stay-at-home order that will last through Christmas. 

  The order was triggered after intensive care bed capacity fell below the 15 percent trigger point announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Just short of 20,000 Californians have died of Covid-19.

The Envelope Please: California’s Attorney Gen. Xavier Becerra has been named as Vice-President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services. The former congressman, whose experience is mostly in criminal justice, immigration, and tax policy, had been thought to be a candidate for attorney general. If confirmed to HHS, he would be prosecuting the case against the coronavirus.

  Dr. Vivek Murthy, who was surgeon general under President Barack Obama, will be back in that same job under Joe Biden.

Armed and Ignorant: Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had just put up Christmas lights on her home Saturday night and her 4-year-old son was about to watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” when about two dozen protesters carrying American flags and guns gathered outside chanting “stop the steal.”

  “She’s decided to completely ignore all of the credible, credible, fraudulent evidence that has been continually pointed out,” demonstrator Genevieve Peters said in a live stream of the protest on Facebook. The police were called, but no one was arrested.

The Home Office: One certain outcome of the pandemic and millions of Americans working from home is that businesses are learning that they can get by with less office space, or none at all. A lot of people are going to keep their jobs, but not their place to sit.

  The Hartford Courant newspaper in Connecticut announced that it is closing its newsroom “with no plan to find us a new one.” Reporters will have to work from home, or wherever they can get Wi-Fi. 

  The Courant has been in continuous publication since 1764. In an announcement that only a corporate boss could have issued, the Courant’s Publisher and Editor in Chief Andrew Julien said, “It won’t change the essence of what we do.” This is the first cousin of “We’re going to do more with less,” which is what news bosses say when they fire people to save money. 

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