A Very Contagious Christmas
It’s the second-to-last CIB of 2020, and we’re all positively full of Christmas cheer—but only one of us is COVID-19-positive. We discuss the details of that diagnosis, what executive power might look like post-Trump, and a particularly silly small business highlighted on NPR last week. Enjoy!
I ended up seeing the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on Tuesday evening, and it was pretty cool. I highly recommend looking into the southwest sky for an hour after sunset in the next couple of nights.
Here’s the New York Times on a “raucous meeting” in the White House, in which Trump discussed installing Kraken-releaser Sidney Powell as a Special Counsel to investigate election fraud, and asked advisors about the feasibility of Michael Flynn’s suggestion that he declare martial law, seize voting machines, and possibly re-run the election. You know, just a normal Saturday in the Oval.
Tommy Tuberville apparently plans to object to the certification of the Electoral College results during January 6th’s joint session of Congress. This would trigger a debate in both the House and the Senate, and force Republicans—who definitely don’t want to—to go on the record supporting Trump or Biden as the true winner of the November vote.
Something that a lot of dumber conservatives are doing lately is pointing at known, objective facts and then expecting their intended audience to be astonished by their conclusions about them. Like this, from Charlie Kirk, a person widely understood to have a weird penis:
Here’s Mitt Romney on Meet the Press. He says he doesn’t really see a path back to a Republican party that he would recognize. CIB’s official prediction is that he’ll leave the Republican party before November of 2024.
Here’s NPR on Bill Barr’s enthusiasm for the death penalty, and how that might conflict with some of his professed Catholic beliefs, according to other Catholics.
Here’s the DOJ press release on the resumption of federal executions last year.
From CNN: “For the first time in US history, the government has executed more people than all of the 50 states, and the number of federal prisoners put to death this year -- 10 -- is the highest since President Grover Cleveland's second term in office, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.”
The Marketplace Morning Report, aired on NPR stations around the country, recently featured this story about a guy in Boston claiming to offer his services—for a price—as an official Racism Knower. Here’s an alleged example of him helping the Whites Do The Work:
The above is allegedly definitely not satire.
Finally, here’s the NYT piece about Apple’s Tim Cook killing a show about a fictionalized Gawker, which we talked about for 40 minutes but I decided to cut down to three minutes of key points during the outro, for your benefit. You’re welcome!
Merry Christmas, you filthy animals, and we’ll talk to you once more before 2021.