Twinning 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🌊 👬 👯‍♀️

Midterm Update:  The election isn’t over yet.  Though Democrats have won significant majorities in both the House and the Senate, two Senate and 19 House races remain uncalled. At this point, Democrats have won 54 Senate seats, with Republicans holding on to 44.  Democrats have also won 254 of the 435 House races that have been called, with the Republican count at 162.  As of Friday night, the last time votes were counted before the weekend, Mississippi Democrat Scott Colom is leading the state’s Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by 2,574 votes. The expectation is that once the remaining provisional and absentee ballots are reviewed, received, and added to the results the Mississippi race will be called for Democrat Colom but it’s Mississippi where the process is slow and Republicans are freaking out so expect more noise. Adding to the Mississippi delay, the state used Experian, the company that frequently sends you meaningless alerts about changes in your credit score, to vet their voting rolls.  Using out of date, unverified address data, Experian improperly kicked a slew of Mississippi voters off the official voting roles, meaning that when voters showed up to vote they had to fill out provisional ballots.  Those are the provisional ballots that are now being individually reviewed by hand in each of Mississippi’s counties. In Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola is leading incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan by 637 votes.  It’s likely that like Mississippi, the Alaska race will ultimately be called for the Democrat, but that will take a while since with no candidate receiving 50% of the vote, the state’s ranked voting process will come into play. Complicating matters, Trump has announced that all the Alaska votes that went to the state’s two other candidates, including the other Dan Sullivan, should be added to Senator Dan’s total. That’s absurd and it’s not going to happen but with Trump’s DOJ stooge Todd Blanche on the case, the Attorney General who told CNN’s Dana Bush this weekend that he’s Trump’s lawyer and will go after anyone he’s told to prosecute, mucking up the waters, expect more turbulence before race is finally called. Why is it that Blanche is only concerned about “unfair and illegal“ targeting of politicians and their relatives when the targets are grifting, misbehaving Republicans, not so much when they’re Democrats?  The Kansas Governor race remains uncalled as well. It had been expected that termed out Democratic Governor Laura Kelly would be succeeded by a Republican since the Governorship tends to go back and forth between parties in Kansas however, it looks increasingly likely that, despite expectations otherwise, the state’s next Governor will be Democratic State Senator Cindy Holscher who with 99% of the vote counted is leading Ty Masterson, the Republican candidate who almost everyone expected would win, by 7,638 votes. Lastly, on the election front, one fun fact brought to light by Minnesota’s outgoing Senator soon to be Governor Amy Klobuchar is that once his victory is confirmed Mississippi’s Scott Colom who has an identical twin brother will be the fourth sitting Senator with an identical twin sibling, the others are Arizona’s Mark Kelly, Hawaii’s Brian Schatz, and Washington’s Patty Murray, all Democrats. 👬 👯‍♀️

Peeps:  On Friday, having concluded that the election went against him through no fault of his own, Trump dumped another woman, this time his target was Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, his scapegoat for Tuesday’s losses.  He then replaced Wiles, supposedly the last normie in the White House as if this White House had any normies,  with Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy/Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, who was responsible for many of those election killing decisions. So much for those delusional expectations that Trump would pivot to reasonable and rational after Tuesday’s drubbing.  Yesterday, during CBS’ much touted 60 Minutes interview, Trump acknowledged that his and Miller’s harsh treatment of lots of those immigrants that Miller hates with a Nazi like passion contributed to his party’s loss of lots of Hispanic votes but his promotion of Miller indicates that Trump intends to continue targeting and deporting undocumented immigrants who are otherwise law abiding. In addition to going after the undocumented, Miller says that he also plans to go after leakers, a process that he gleefully says could involve the jailing of the journalists who receive those leaks. Wife Katie, who once worked for and was even linked with Elon Musk, is quitting her low rated podcast so that she can better support her husband and maybe also because her podcast wasn’t doing well.  As to Elon, he’s still rich but he’s coming off of a bad week.  He spent almost $500 million supporting Republican candidates, wasting half of it on Texas loser Ken Paxton. With Paxton out and a slew of Democrats including Senator-elect James Talarico,  Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, Lt Governor-elect Vikki Goodwin, AG elect Nathan Johnson to name a few winning and the state’s House about to be in blue hands, Musk who had moved his base of operations to Texas in benefit from the state’s devil may care regulatory environment that facilitated his pollution generating Space X launches and the willy nilly building of data centers, is now about to learn the meaning of FAFO. By the way, if you’ve been saving up for a new Tesla truck, act fast because the frequently recalled ugly vehicle that Musk said would sell like hotcakes, didn’t and is now being discontinued.  Musk isn’t the only tech giant who had a bad week, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang’s had a bigly bad one.  His career is circling the drain taking Nvidia’s value with it, at least for now.  It turns out that Jensen Huang was involved in a long-term intimate relationship with a woman who went by the name of Alice Huang (no relation to Jensen) who’s allegedly a spy for China.  Secretary of State Rubio alerted Trump to the Huang problem earlier this year, but Trump shrugged 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️ off the warning even adding Jensen Huang back onto his China visit traveling squad because he likes Huang and didn’t want to upset his good friend China President Xi. It’s widely believed that during their intimate time Alice whispered sweet nothings about how Jensen should convince Trump to sell more high-end chips to China, Jensen complied as did Trump.  Jensen has admitted the affair, Nvidia’s board which says that it had “no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised,” is now conducting an “inquiry.” In other Nvidia news, the NY Times reports that the Commerce Department approved roughly two dozen Chinese firms, including some with empty offices and ties to US blacklisted entities or military contractors, to purchase or handle Nvidia AI chips. Lastly, keep an eye on Defense/War Secretary Pete Hegseth. Republican thorn Thomas Massie who is on his way out, plans to bring up a Hegseth impeachment resolution this week.  Lots of people on both sides of the aisle would love to see Hegseth ousted so there’s a chance that Trump might boot him to avoid the vote.  It doesn’t appear that Hegseth will get a soft landing in Tennessee as departing Senator Governor-elect Marsha Blackburn’s office says she has no plans to appoint him as her replacement.          

Crazy 💩:  Over the weekend Trump posted on Truth Social that he had invited UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship Company) President Dana White, to be his next Press Secretary. He added that White should bring his fighters along with him.  The backstory to the invite is even more insane than the invite itself.  It’s thought that Trump was given a list of Press Secretary candidates that included a woman named Dana White, a communications executive who served as the Chief Pentagon Spokesperson and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs from 2017 to 2018 under Jim Mattis. Mistaking communications Dana for fighting Dana he then offered the job to the UFC President, bragging about his ask on social media. Though he plans to stop by the White House this week, UFC Dana appears to have declined the offer, saying he’s kind of busy with a lot of other jobs.  Trump now says he was just joking.  As if.     

Blue Glow 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🌊

The House:  As of this morning, 249 House races have been called for Democrats, 176 for Republicans, and 29 races remain uncalled.  NBC projects that when the final count comes in Democrats will have won 259 seats, leaving 176 in Republican hands.  It appears that all but one of the seats that were flipped went from red to blue.  The one exception is the Maine seat previously held by retiring centrist Democrat Jared Golden who, reflecting the make-up of his conservative district, frequently voted with Republicans. In a close race, his seat was won former Maine Governor Paul LePage who when serving as governor was known for his incendiary language and for vetoing sane legislation.  LePage edged out too progressive for that district Democrat Matt Dunlap who, seeing the writing on the wall, conceded even before the completion of Maine’s ranked choice voting process. NYC Democrat Hakeem Jeffries who has got to be thrilled that because of the huge size of his majority he won’t be held hostage to the squad crowd will be the House’s next Speaker. Ousted Speaker Mike Johnson plans to remain in Congress but won’t be seeking a Republican leadership role.  Ohio’s Jim (Gym) Johnson and Louisiana’s Steve Scalise who at least once spoke at a KKK organization event both announced that they are running for the Minority Leader spot.  How Republican that one of the leading candidates for GOP leadership has been credibly accused of standing by as his college wrestlers were sexually assaulted and the other one is white supremacist adjacent. As to the winners and losers, there are so many great back stories.  A few of my favorites:  Democrat Sam Forstage who won in Montana is a smokejumper who lost his firefighting job due to DOGE cuts; Bobby Pulido who won in one of the Texas seats that was gerrymandered to remain red is a very popular Tejano music star; though her race hasn’t been called yet, it looks like Colorado’s Lauren Boebert who moved from a swingy district to a very red one has lost as has Ohio’s Max Miller, the Republican who was accused of beating his wife and breaking his baby’s collarbone.        

The Senate:  On the Senate side, 54 races have been called for Democrats, 44 for Republicans.  The Mississippi (!!) and Alaska races remain uncalled. In Mississippi, with 96% of the vote counted, Democratic challenger Scott Colom’s lead over incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith has grown to 1,813 votes. When all is said and done, Colom is likely to be Mississippi’s next Senator, but it could take days, litigation, and lots of Republican whining before that happens. Hyde-Smith might be, or at the very least, should be regretting her 2023 decision to withhold blue slip approval for Colom when he’d been nominated by Biden to serve as a federal judge for the Northern District of Mississippi. She should also regret her tone deaf, let them eat cake remark that those struggling with high beef prices "have so many proteins to choose from.”  Karma is a bitch. In Alaska, 205,314 votes amounting to 74% of the votes have been counted.  Mary Peltola (48.17%) is leading incumbent Dan Sullivan (47.88%) by 637 votes.  The remaining votes are split between Republican Heikes (2.27%) and the other Dan Sulivan (1.68%).  If neither of the leading candidates reaches 50%, Alaska’s ranked voting process will come into play. However, that tabulation won’t take place until November 18 because Alaska accepts ballots from overseas voters for up to fifteen days after an election. Based on publicly available information from the 200,000 votes that have already been counted, according to the NY Times Peltola is likely to emerge the winner because most of the voters who cast ballots for the other Dan had Peltola as their second choice. There will be more Republican whining over the two Dan thing because Republicans hate when they are out sleazed, especially by a wily Democrat and all reports are that Peltola is a tough cookie. At the end of the day, assuming Trump doesn’t declare martial law, something that shouldn’t be dismissed since he’s been surging military troops to Washington DC, the Democrats will likely have 56 Senate seats come January.  Republican John Thune is expected to be the Minority leader while, despite some progressive carping and pre-election shade throwing, NY’s Chuck Schumer will regain the Majority Leader spot in part because so few others really want the job and some of those whose names keep popping up as alternatives are likely running for president in 2028.  By the way, so far crickets from Connecticut’s Chris Murphy who is still in the hospital recovering from his stroke.      

The States:  It’s not just the House and the Senate that have gone blue.  Having flipped Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Texas, Democrats now hold 28 governorships, more than the Republican’s 20.  With races in Kansas and Alaska likely to be won by Democrats, the blue number is expected to grow to 30.  Also, as a result of the midterms, so far ten state chambers have flipped from Republican to Democrat with two more leaning in that direction.  Winning state control or at the very least eliminating Republican state house super majorities matters because it makes it makes it difficult if not impossible for Republican election deniers to pull the shtick some of them tried to pull with presidential results in 2020. Moreover, it returns some lost control over reproductive rights back to sane decision makers.  One sign of that is that Texas’ incoming Democratic Attorney General Nathan Johnson announced that he will stop suing out-of-state doctors who mail abortion medication to Texas patients, marking a major shift from his predecessor, soon to be former AG/Senate loser Ken Paxton’s enforcement strategy.

Trump 💩:  Trump’s reaction to the blue tsunami is that it’s not his fault, it’s the fault of that war he was forced into though if he had it to do all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing and anyway it’s Israel’s fault which is why he says he’ll be cutting their military aide, though he probably won’t right away because so much of that aid goes to buying American made military weaponry. There’s also lots of speculation that he’s about to chop Secretary of War/Defense Pete Hegseth if the beer guy isn’t impeached first.  Publicly Trump says he still loves Pete, but it’s reported that he’s been calling his buddies to see if they think Pete should be dumped.  VP Vance is going with the war was all Israel’s fault mantra too, part of his attempt to distance himself from this week’s election disaster as he positions himself for a presidential run and also because his friend Tucker Carlson has been whispering sweet hate into his shapeshifting ear.  There have been reports that Secretary of State and many other things Marco Rubio is considering jumping ship to distance himself too in order to prepare for a 2028 presidential run.  Rubio who probably figures that unlike Veep Vance he could lure back some of the Hispanic vote that went blue in the midterms insists he’s not going anywhere and that he fully supports the Veep but it’s only Friday and it’s not like any politicians, especially Republican ones, speak truth. The DOJ’s Harmeet Dhillon who as Assistant AG for Civil Rights spent the past two years eliminating civil rights is out. She either quit or was fired; whatever.  Unfortunately, Jeanine Pirro is still the US Attorney for Washington DC and is now launching an investigation into who leaked the Dodd abortion decision back in 2022.  It’s not clear that the leak was a crime, but when did technicalities ever stop either Trump, Jeanine, or AG Blanche? And because construction of tacky monstrosities is his passion, ensconced in the faux gold glue-gunned office that he’s declaring an unchangeable national monument, Trump spent yesterday focused on his building projects, trying to push ahead with the Arc d’Trump, something that a federal court put the temporary kibosh on right after Trump’s commission/echo chamber approved it.

MAHA Not:  Three more people, including an infant in Wisconsin and a baby in New York have died of measles and members of RFK’s Health Task Force will not longer be required to sell their stock in pharmaceutical and health care companies because what’s a little conflict of interest among friends?    

            

Wowie Kazowie 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🌊

🌊 🌪️ 🌀 🫨:  The BLUE wave was a tsunami combined with a tornado, cyclone, and earthquake thrown in.  The wave was so seismic that while blaming the outcome of the election on his absence from the ballot and the war he was forced into, at 10:30 last night Trump told the NY Times that he would accept the election results.  To be clear that’s not because he wants to but because the Democratic victory was too huge for him to blame on fictional waves of illegal voters, space lasers, or errant voting machines not that there weren’t a few hundred screwed up machines in the mostly blue part of NYS’s Westchester County.  As of now the Democrats have won 231 House seats, a number that NBC projects will grow to 258 once all the votes are counted.  In addition, Democrats have won 54 Senate seats, including all the seats they held going into the election including the much discussed one in Michigan plus seats currently held by Republicans in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina (!), and Texas where Paralympian Josh Turek, Minister Adam Hamilton, replacement candidate/logger Troy Jackson, former Governor Roy Cooper, former Senator Sherrod Brown, pediatrician Annie Andrews, and State Representative James Talarico each won their respective elections. That majority could grow since votes are still being counted in the very close Alaska election where with only 72% of the vote counted incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan has 100,751 vote and is leading challenger Mary Peltola by 1,677 votes; the other Dan Sullivan is in fourth place with 3,488 votes behind another Republican candidate named Gerald Heikes who is in third with 4,495 votes.  Given the size of Alaska and and the remoteness of some communities, votes there take a while to show up and once they do, the final outcome won’t be determined until the state’s ranked voting process is completed.  Lastly there is the still undecided race in Mississippi (!!), yes you read that right Mississippi, where with 96% of the vote counted, Democrat Scott Colom is currently leading Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by only 43 votes. Adding to the Republicans House and Senate woes, the GOP also lost control of Governor mansions in Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, and Nevada where former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Rob Sand, Gina Hinojosa, Dr Amy Acton. and Aaron Ford won their respective races. With 98% of the votes counted, the Kansas Governor seat being vacated by termed out Democratic Governor Laura Kelly remains uncalled, as of this morning Democrat Cindy Holscher is currently leading Republican Ty Masterson by 0.52%.  Notably where previously there had never been more than one Black governor serving at one time, there will now be five: current Maryland Governor Wes Moore in Maryland plus Democrats Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, State Auditor Aaron Ford in Nevada, County Executive David Crowley in Wisconsin, and Republican Representative Byron Daniels in who edged out Democrat David Jolly in Florida, the state that never fails to disappoint.  

Cause and Effect:  Trump isn’t entirely wrong, the Iran war and its impact on inflation, particularly the cost of fuel, not to mention his corruption, grift, and excessive focus on his construction projects contributed to the blue tsunami but as to his absence from the ballot, he told people to vote as if he was on it and they did in droves, just not the way he wanted.  Also, a lot of the losing candidates were his choices. Had Texas Senator John Cornyn gotten his endorsement rather than the seriously flawed and corrupt state AG Ken Paxton, there’s a chance that James Talarico wouldn’t have cruised to victory. Similarly, South Carolinians didn’t buy that Trump’s pick Darline Graham was her brother Lindsey in drag especially after she said that she knew little about foreign policy and national security so at least for the next six years South Carolina will be represented by a Democratic pediatrician.  Also, apparently a lot of Ohioan’s preferred the frequently rumpled Sherrod Brown to Jon Husted and that great ass of his.  Moreover, Trump’s Supreme Court assisted war on the Voting Rights Act came back to bite him in that body part as Black voters showed up in large numbers and voted blue, not just for Black candidates but for lots of other Democrats.  They were helped by Hispanic voters who weren’t just upset about the tanking economy but by his how his harsh immigration policies which they had thought would only impact criminals was impacting their friends, relatives, and construction businesses.  As to all the gerrymandering that Trump instigated, it failed. Republicans lost four of the five seats they redrew in Texas; Democrats won or held Kathy Castor’s, Jared Moskowitz’ and Pia Dandiya’s seats in Florida as well as Don Davis’s seat in North Carolina.  They also held on to Shomari Figures’ seat in Alabama.  All in all, out of approximately 15 GOP-gerrymandered congressional districts Republican’s had a net gain of only 2 to 3 seats nationwide, far short of the 21 seats projected by overly optimistic GOP leaders or even the 9 to 10 that more realistic Republicans thought they’d gain.

More:  Noting that the case against them was about retribution, a federal judge dismissed criminal charges against the two former FBI officials who were accused of lying to Congress about the investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop. Before yesterday’s election, the Supreme Court declined to consider Trump’s California ballot case, meaning that the 20,000 allegedly but probably not really illegal ballots will be counted.  And though lots of votes in the Westchester portion of Republican Representative Mike Lawler’s district hadn’t yet been counted, the result of a machine SNAFU, seeing the writing on the wall he conceded his race to Democrat Cait Conley last night.  Similarly, Texas’ Greg Abbott and Maine’s Susan Collins conceded their races before they were called.  That’s the way grown-ups are supposed to act but haven’t because, well we all know why.  

 

 

The Longest Day 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🗳️

🗳️ 🗳️ 🗳️:  Tomorrow is finally Election Day, but it won’t be the end of the crazy because Trump only believes in election results when he wins.  If today’s NY Times is right about the Democrats being up in the Senate races for Michigan, Texas, Kansas, Maine, and Ohio, having an edge in Alaska and being tied in Iowa, not to mention whatever is going on in with Lindsey Graham’s sister in South Carolina it will be a very bad day for Trump and his MAGA acolytes.  Even if Republicans manage to hold on to the Senate, just about everyone expects the House to go blue, the only questions by how much and where a lot of us will move if it doesn’t. Federal officials have already sent conflicting signals about whether they’ll be sending “enforcement” agents to polling places.  The FBI has declined to rule out deploying agents, the Department of Homeland Security says it doesn’t plan to patrol polling places but has left open the possibility of responding to “threats“ or serving warrants nearby and the DOJ has said that it will “continue” sending federal personnel as part of its “monitoring efforts.”  If, as just about everyone expects, Trump loses control of the House but lucks out and holds the Senate, litigation will still be ramped up.  It’s sounds farfetched but it has been suggested that Trump might pressure Speaker Mike Johnson to replace the House Clerk with a Trump loyalist who he’d then order to refuse to seat the new Congress.  Trump has already spent the past few weeks, intimidating local election officials, sending out inaccurate lists of “non-citizen” voters, and litigating, not that the litigating is going well for him. Over the weekend a federal judge in Alaska dismissed an attempt to pre-emptively challenge the results of the state’s two Sullivans one Peltola Senate election and a federal appeals court panel denied a request to order California officials to set aside about 20,000 mail-in ballots that the administration claimed had been sent to possible noncitizens. That’s good news, but not the end of it, because Trump with an assist from his compliant DOJ will appeal up to the Supreme Court and if things don’t go well for him there, he can rely on his MAGA mob because experience tells us that he won’t think twice about spurring them on and why wouldn’t they comply because his call for action would come without any DOJ pushback and lots of pardons.  

Michigan Mishigas:  Yesterday, the simmering feud between Democratic Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed and his primary challenger Congresswoman Haley Stevens erupted into war ending with Stevens, who had reluctantly endorsed El-Sayed, taking the highly unusual step of flipping her endorsement to Republican candidate Mike Rogers. Stevens’ action was extreme, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum.  Relations between the two candidates, always strained, got worse after El-Sayed failed to fully push back at the anti-Israel/anti-Semitic ad promulgated by Cenk Uygur, who routinely purveys ugly rhetoric on social media. To be clear, this goes way beyond whether the US should be providing aid to Israel, it goes to whether or not Israel has a right to exist. Cenk clearly believes it doesn’t and while El-Sayed is more subtle, he is on record saying that he “struggles” with Israel’s right to exist, hardly a comforting thought to those who firmly believe that’s a question that shouldn’t even be posed, including Stevens.  Stevens and El-Sayed were supposed to appear together on CNN in a show of unity, but that plan went seriously awry. The whole situation is baffling.  El-Sayed could have made nice to Stevens; it wouldn’t have lost him votes and might actually have gained him a few. For her part, Stevens who like El-Sayed has a “strong personality” should have limited herself to snark rather than a cross-party endorsement because her political career, at least as a Democrat, is now shot and if Democrats miss taking the Senate by a Michigan loss, she’ll be held accountable. The last relevant Michigan poll taken before this weekend’s fireworks shows El-Sayed up by seven points over Republican Rogers, then again El-Sayed was expected to trounce Stevens in the Democratic primary but instead only eked out a victory. 🤷‍♀️

Things to Watch or Not:  Republicans won the House gerrymandering war, hoping to net ten additional House seats enough to temper the size of the usual midterm shift away from the president’s party.  Some of those redistricted seats will go red; however, some might remain blue because with voter sentiment having turned so negative on Trump over the war and the economy, even districts he won by over ten points or even more in 2024 are now considered in play and many of the newly created districts fall below that threshold. Florida, where polls close at 7 pm is mostly in the Eastern Time Zone.  Since Florida generally reports votes quickly, results there will provide an early indication of whether or not the Republican gerrymandering is working as planned.  With a number of the seats that Governor DeSantis redistricted to be Republican pick-ups now in the toss-up and/or lean blue category his efforts could turn out to be “dummymanders.” The results in the state’s close Governor’s race between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat/former Republican David Jolly will also be telling. Democrat Angie Nixon is not likely to win or even come all that close in her Florida Senate race against incumbent Rubio replacement Ashley Moody but if she does, the rest of the night will be tragic for Republicans. Texas, also in two time zones, has a few gerrymanders which could be dummymanders since Democrats are hoping Hispanic voters will shift back into their column, but Texas results won’t come until later. There’s also that hotly contested Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Attorney General Ken Paxton as well as the currently in a dead heat race between Republican incumbent Governor Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa. Closer to my home, New York State where polls don’t close until 9 pm has a few hot races worth watching. In NY 17, the north of NYC race between incumbent Republican Mike Lawler and his Democratic challenger Cait Conley is either a toss-up or leaning blue depending on the pollster.  Polls are also all over the place in the race upstate between Democrat Blake Gendebien and Republican Anthony Constantino for the NY 21 seat previously held by Republican one-time darling Elise Stefanik. Elsewhere, don’t expect to see a winner declared in Maine even though it’s an eastern time zone state.  Maine like Alaska which is so far away that Sarah Palin could see Russia from her window, uses ranked voting which complicates official results. California as usual will take forever to come in.  Lastly, if South Carolina flips hide your ketchup. 🍅🍅

More 💩:  Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy who is 53 years old had a stroke yesterday. He’s currently hospitalized but expected to fully recover.  Who had that on their BINGO card? Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the WSJ related to the article that included his birthday note and doodle to Jeffrey Epstein is now officially kaput; it was permanently dismissed by Miami US District Judge Darrin Gayles. Odds are that the Trump lawsuit against the BBC will eventually go up in smoke too. So maybe crypto isn’t all that safe an investment, at least that’s what those affected by the $6.3 billion heist of their crypto from Binance thought to be committed by North Korean hackers have got to be thinking. Binance has managed to freeze half the stolen crypto and says that it will be making up the rest so that its clients remain unaffected but still the heist happened and it’s not a good thing. 

       

Two Dans and Cheesecake 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢💩

Midterm Mishegas:  As we get closer to election day things are getting crazier.  Trump and Obama are sparring over cheesecake while the NY Times is all in on its assertion that Mary Peltola’s campaign team got the second Dan Sullivan on the Alaska Senate ballot to confuse voters. With king of grift and retribution Trump in the White House spouting hate and tearing away at democracy while a slew of his MAGA acolytes prepare to upend any election that doesn’t go his way, whether or not Mary Peltola’s team ginned up the second Dan doesn’t bother me; even if they did, finding spoiler candidates has been done before by both parties doing so is probably more scuzzy than illegal.  Sure, my dismissal of the Dan imbroglio is hypocritical but really, it bothers me more that the NY Times thought now was the time to turn the Sullivan to-do into the crime of the century, especially since it’s unlikely to matter once the state’s ranked votes are tallied.  It gives off “but her email vibes” and we know how that turned out.  By the way, I have no recollection of ever dining at a Cheesecake Factory and given what Obama who has said about the décor, that’s a good thing.  As we go into the last weekend before Election Day, Trump who has been traveling and delivering incoherent and nasty speeches like the madman he is, has cancelled his remaining mileage plus plans, and will instead be spending his weekend holding tele-rallies, whatever those are, while his DOJ ramps up their efforts attacking states, despite court pushback, for all the thousands of nonexistent illegal voters, only the ones, who if they existed, might vote blue because the red ones, no problemo, while also making hay out of the Dan Sullivan issue even if it was bought to light by what he calls the “failing” NY Times.  On the Senate front, too many of the races to watch remain in the margin of error.  One of those in the error zone is in South Carolina which according to recent polls may or may not be in a dead heat. South Carolina Democrat Annie Andrews beating Republican nepo candidate Darline Graham would be wild but in 2020, despite polls predicting a tight race between Democrat Jaime Harrison and Lindsey Graham, Darline’s brother Lindsey won by ten points.  Sure, that was Lindsey and now we’ve got Lindsey light, but those final results should temper expectations. On a more optimistic note, Fox’s respected polling gurus have shifted Ohio’s Senate race between Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Jon Husted and Governor race between Democrat Amy Acton and Republican despicable ad runner Vivek Ramaswamy to lean Democrat, remarkable given that until very recently Ohio was seen as a state that had become permanently red. Though he’s not on the ballot this cycle, Ohio’s other Senator Bernie Moreno who unseated Sherrod Brown in 2024 said yesterday during his speech at a pro-Husted rally that “anyone who does not believe Jesus died for their salvation is unfit to serve in the US Senate.”  He meant that as a slam against Michigan candidate El-Sayed but there are ten Jewish Senators, nine Democrats plus the Independent other Bernie who by Moreno’s definition wouldn’t qualify. So much for freedom of religion and separation of church state being a part of the Constitution that matters.           

Not Just Us 💩: Brazil’s election denier Flávio Bolsonaro is now in the US.  He still insists that he won the election that he just lost by 4.4 million (3.58%) and has declared himself the rightful winner, which goes far to explaining why the Trump administration helped him with his complicated travel “logistics” which included chartering him a jet for part of his escape. While Brazil’s election has a clear winner, the same can’t be said for Israel.  Turnout in the Israeli election was very high; overall 77.7% of Israelis, including 80% of the country’s Arab population voted. Bibi Netanyahu’s multi-party bloc won 53 seats, main competitor Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc won 48, and Arab parties won 19. However, as of now neither of the leading blocs have the 61 seats needed to form a governing coalition. The coalition forming problem is complicated by some bloc members refusing to participate in any unity government that includes Bibi and others, despite Arab party participation in a previous governing coalition, refusing to participate in a coalition that includes the Arab parties.  If no coalition can be formed another election will be held in the Spring.  To quote Winston Churchill: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”              

Other 💩:  Secretary of Defense and War Pete Hegseth fired Lt General Brett Sylvia, the Pentagon's top military strategist and head of strategy, plans, and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over allegations, real or imagined, that he leaked classified information regarding Iran and Ukraine to the media. When asked about what proof there was that Sylvia had leaked, Trump referred to the general as “that woman Sylvia,” an indication that he’s totally out of touch with reality and/or out of the loop during a war that he started.  There are also rumors that to avoid being impeached in January or just to further his presidential ambitions, Hegseth is pushing Tennessee’s Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn who is expected to win the Tennessee Governor race to appoint him to be her Senate replacement.  It’s unclear which is scarier, Hegseth in the Senate or Hegseth running or even thinking about running for president. Lastly, we keep hearing more about the rationale for raiding Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar’s Washington DC home.  First it was because she was allegedly 18 rather than 17 when she was naturalized by her father.  Now it’s also over allegations that her first of three legal marriages was to her brother to help him immigrate.  The brother/husband withdrew his green card application and never became a US citizen and currently lives in the UK. In any case, the marriage fraud offense falls outside of the statute of limitations. All of Omar’s citizenship transgressions, real or imagined, were previously investigated and no actions were taken but we know how Trump feels about Muslims, Somalis, Omar and distracting shiny objects especially during election season.      

 

 

Lotsa 💩     😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢💩

Midterm Madness:  The madness, with more than a touch of hate and a whole lot of Trump retribution, continues to be ratcheted up.  At his direction, Trump’s DOJ is going after his enemies and doing its best, or in this case the worst, to disrupt the midterms.  On top of going after numerous states for “failing” to rid their voter rolls of mostly imagined aliens and indicating plans to reject Alaska’s election result if Republican Incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan doesn’t win, the DOJ filed charges again against former FBI Director James Comey as well as a few other FBI agents they’ve accused of lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop as if any normal person gives a hoot about Hunter or his laptop, especially given the grift that Trump and his family continue to engage in.  The charges against Comey accuse him of mishandling national security information by leaking information to the NY Times back in October 2016.  Putting aside that an earlier investigation of the “leak” went nowhere, if there was something there, Trump, whose first election victory owes a lot to Comey and his fascination with Hillary Clinton’s emails, has had years address the alleged leak.  This new charge was rushed out via an information rather than a grand jury indictment to beat the clock on the applicable ten-year statute of limitations. My TV legal advisor, Andrew Weissmann, says that the process was far from kosher.  Similarly, the NY Times reports that the charges against the others are highly questionable as well, more about flooding the news cycle than anything legitimate.  It’s probably not a coincidence that the Comey charge was revealed just after Manhattan Federal District Court Judge Jesse Furman ruled that Former Director Comey’s daughter Maureen, a former federal prosecutor, was unlawfully fired last year and should be reinstated and given back pay.  The Maureen Comey ruling opens the door for a slew of similarly fired federal prosecutors to also pursue restitution.  Naturally, the DOJ says that it plans to appeal the Maureen ruling.  The DOJ also notched a failure with regard to its attempt to obtain an indictment against former Trump administration aide Cassidy Hutchinson after a Washington DC grand jury rejected assertions that she’d lied when she testified about Trump’s January 6 actions.  

Turning to Hate: The anti-Amy Acton ads which questioned the Ohio Democratic Governor candidate’s horrific treatment by her mother and rape by her stepfather, who had previously raped another one of his daughters, have been widely and rightfully attacked except of course by Trump and his pathetic echo chamber.  Unfortunately, the anti-Semitic ad run on behalf of Michigan candidate Abdul El-Sayed have received less attention, less condemnation and even a few yawns.  The ad in question which aired widely across Michigan and on social media blames inflation, the prices of eggs, and just about everything else including our lack of universal health care coverage on Israel and by not so hidden extension “those Jewish people.”  The ad was created and paid for by Cenk Uygur whose social media feed routinely contains lots of hateful anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric.  Not so coincidentally Uygur is controversial left-wing, equally anti-Semitic or as he prefers to be called anti-Zionist, commentator Hasan Piker’s uncle. It’s fair to assume that their Thanksgiving table conversations rival those of David Duke and his KKK crowd.  It’s hard to understand how this kind of hateful crap does anything to improve El-Sayed’s odds of winning in Michigan where he already has the anti-Israel vote locked up but needs to gain more support from those members of the Black community who haven’t forgiven him for his tepid support of Kamala Harris in 2024. If anything, the ad gives his Republican opponent Mike Rogers more fodder for his, Trump’s and Vance’s already over the top Islamophobia pitch. For his part, borrowing a page from Ohio Ramaswamy’s early but then rejected playbook, El-Sayed has distanced himself from the ad, but he hasn’t condemned its message. Regardless of the outcome of the Michigan election which at this point seems to be leaning in El-Sayed’s direction, Michigan will not be sending its best to Washington. In more pleasant Senate news, yesterday Fox shifted Ohio’s Senate race between Democratic candidate and Former Senator Sherrod Brown and current Republican candidate Senator Jon Husted, whose butt Trump endlessly admires, to lean Democratic and two South Carolina former governors, David Beasley and Jim Hodges, a Republican and Democrat respectively, have endorsed Democrat Annie Andrews rather than Lindsey Graham’s sister Darline’s Senate bid.  

International Politics:  Though his party has conceded, taking a page from Trump and his father Jair, Brazil’s losing candidate, Flavio Bolsonaro, has not. Instead, he’s fled the country to avoid answering questions related to an ongoing investigation into money laundering.  The US State Department announced yesterday that they granted him and his family entry visas.  It’s reported that they arrived in Miami last night. In all likelihood he’ll dine with Trump at Mar a Lago shortly because of course.  In other international news, the outcome of the Israel elections remains up in the air.  The good news is that Israel, unlike its neighbors is a real democracy, turnout was high with 77.7% of voters including 65% of Israel’s Arab population casting ballots, and the elections went off without a hitch. The bad news is that as expected the process is messy, Bibi could still manage a “win” and at least for the time being will head a caretaker government until the coalition forming process is completed, if it ever is.  As to that process, with around 75% of the vote counted it’s not clear who will get first dibs at trying to put together a governing coalition.    

 Mega 💩:  With all the election news, it would be easy to have missed that on Monday House Judiciary Democrats released a 50-page report alleging that the DOJ withheld key information from the Epstein files about Trump’s ties to Epstein.  Their report includes allegations by Beatrice Keul, a model and former Miss Switzerland, that she was raped by Trump in a Plaza Hotel suite in Manhattan when she was 24. Keul said that while attending the American Dream Pageant, which had a partnership with Trump, she met Trump at a press luncheon at the event, that he promised to arrange her visa in the US and ensure her acceptance into New York University through Paolo Zampolli, the Trump ally who was, until very recently part of his administration. Keul alleges Trump invited her to a hotel suite where he raped her. Following the incident, Keul alleges Trump made her promise she would keep quiet and repeated his promise for visa and college admission. She says that because her passport had been taken from her on her arrival for the pageant, she was unable to leave the contest following the incident.  Later when she was able to return to Switzerland, she declined to participate in an additional Trump-sponsored pageant. The Democrats’ report also includes allegations that it was Epstein, rather than Paolo Zampolli, who introduced Melania to Trump which might explain the odd, hastily scheduled press conference that Melania held in April where she denied rumors linking her to Epstein while explicitly “clarifying” that Epstein did not introduce her to Donald. No wonder Trump is freaking out about the likelihood that Democrats retake the House. Expect more 💩storms from Trump going forward.     

 

 

Eight Days 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

Midterm Madness:  November 3rd is only eight days away.  Trump who regularly disses both mail-in and early voting voted early in Florida before attending Fox’s Sean Hannity’s and Ainsley Earhardt’s wedding.  I voted too at my unusually crowded early cool voting location at the Metropolitan Museum.  If you are nervous about next week’s outcome and what’s likely to follow, you aren’t alone.  Clearly Trump is too.  We know that because in addition to having his Department of Justice and his in-his-pocket Attorney General Todd Blanche litigate to prevent 20,000 Californians from voting, he’s now got the DOJ going after Alaska saying that if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan doesn’t win his Senate race he’ll stop the certification of the state’s results.  The issue in California where all registered voters are sent mail-in ballots relates to Trump’s assertion that 20,000 of those who were sent ballots are non-citizens.  Trump and his minions have a habit of basing their claims on flawed databases.  Earlier this year they claimed that Nevada had 16,000 illegal voters, an assertion that shrunk to 185 before turning into zero.  The California ballots have already been mailed out, Trump wants the voters on his likely flawed list, to have their votes set aside and is trying to jump ahead to higher federal courts to make that happen,  California is suing to prevent both the preemptive disenfranchisement of those voters and the inappropriate court jumping.  The Alaska fight has to do with the two Dan Sullivan situation. Incumbent Republican Senator Dan S Sullivan is clearly listed on the ballot as the incumbent and as a Republican, the other Dan J Sullivan Jr, a retired teacher, is listed without a party affiliation.  The Alaska Supreme Court has already ruled that teacher Sullivan can remain on the ballot, but Trump wants him removed or else because voters are stupid so none of them “know what incumbent means” and it’s “unfair” for teacher Sullivan to be running. He and Blanche are also upset that Alaska uses what Trump calls “corrupt ranked choice” voting. Except for Blanche, most legal “know it all’s” believe that Trump’s attempt to upend the Alaska race will go nowhere in the courts but that doesn’t mean that the legal voodoo and nefarious kvetching won’t feed election distrust, which is the whole point of both the California and Alaska suits. Adding to the Alaska news, over the weekend Democratic candidate Mary Peltola and her family were in a car accident, something having to do with another car hitting theirs. Though she reports only minor injuries she did cancel and/or reschedule a few of her planned campaign stops to get checked out at a local hospital.  Oy.           

The Polls:  The Cook Political Report wrote on Friday that the “outstanding question is how large Democrats’ majority will be in 2027,” rather than whether or not they will retake the House.  The Cookies predict that Democrats will flip between 12 and 22 seats; the low end of their estimate is probably overly conservative.  On Friday, the Cookies moved 19 more districts towards Democrats, some going to likely blue, others from toss-up to lean blue, others from lean red to toss-up.  With many of the critical Senate races still polling within the margin of error, control of the all-important Senate remains uncertain. The Cook Political Report currently lists Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas as toss-ups. Last week they moved three races, one towards red, two towards blue. Those three include:  Minnesota where Democrat Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan is running against former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya for the seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Tina Smith from likely Democrat to lean Democrat; South Carolina where Dr. Annie Andrews is challenging Lindsey Graham’s obviously unqualified sister Darline Graham from likely Republican to lean Republican; and Mississippi where Democrat Scott Colom is challenging KKK Adjacent incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith from solid Republican to lean Republican.  Things would have to go really bad for Republicans for Mississippi or South Carolina to change hands so while it’s fun to watch Republicans have to pour defensive money into South Carolina and Mississippi, it’s unlikely that either one will deliver a Democrat to the Senate.  Hopefully, it’s also unlikely that Minnesota will deliver Republicans a victory, especially with the very popular Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar running for Governor on top of the ticket. Lastly, on the polling front, it’s unclear why Trump, Vance, and Vivek Ramaswamy think tripling down on Ohio Democrat Amy Acton, accusing her of lying about being raped by the creepy stepfather who also raped another woman’s child makes sense, but maybe they know something we don’t or more likely they’re all just awful.    

The World:  Over the weekend two of Trump’s preferred candidates lost their national elections. Serbia’s longtime nationalist strongman Aleksandar Vucic lost his general election, falling after two years of student-led street protests.  Vucic, the pro-Russian leader who’d been advised by Trump’s flunkies Chris LaCivita and James Blair conceded his loss early in the evening which sets him apart from Brazil’s Flavio Bolsonaro who is refusing to concede his unexpected runoff loss to Brazil President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”).  Flavio, not to be confused with his father Jair Bolsonaro who was convicted of planning a coup after his election loss, is asking the country’s Supreme Court to annul the election results, something about the Court allowing the polls to remain open for two extra hours at the request of both parties due to inclement weather and related transportation issues. Adding to the election stories, Israel’s election takes place tomorrow, October 27.  Don’t expect a quick outcome, as explained by one Twitter (X) pundit, Israelis vote for parties, not directly for prime minister.  The Knesset has 120 seats, so a governing coalition needs the support of at least 61 members. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party currently holds between 32 to 36 seats.  Bibi’s leading contender is Lt General Gadi Eisenkot whose more centrist political party, Yashar, which is expected to win around 22 to 26 seats is currently polling slightly ahead of Netanyahu's Likud, so the election outcome will be all about forming a controlling coalition, which takes some time. Once tomorrow’s results are in Israel’s President Herzog will then consult with elected parties to determine who has the best chance of forming a government.  That person who may or may not be the leader of the party that won the most seats will then have 28 days to negotiate a coalition.  If they fail, Herzog can then give another Knesset member 28 days to try. Assuming someone can assemble a government, they then must win a Knesset confidence vote. If this sounds confusing and time consuming, it’s because it is. On the war front, more ships downed in the Iran neighborhood and Ukraine’s Starlink access is back up but it was touch and go over the weekend.  Elon Musk is now claiming that it was his decision to turn it down in the first place because those Ukrainians, not the Russians, are the warmongers.  Apparently when you are a trillionaire you get to buy elections and make international policy.    

More 💩:  Britt McHenry, another Ivanka look alike, who’d previously been fired by ESPN for berating a towing company clerk was fired from the State Department press advisor position she’d served in for one day last week after she was caught on camera throwing beer at a basketball fan because only the best.  Chris LaCivita and James Blair, the two Trump advisors who’d also advised Serbian loser Vucic, “contributed” the money they earned working for the pro-Russian leader to Trump’s library fund because the orange one was bigly mad that they got caught advising Vucic when they were supposed to be helping him with the midterms. Saving the best or worst for last, on Thursday Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Matthew Cole’s newest book Princes and Thieves just published by Simon and Schuster.  The excerpt claims that the Netherlands Defense Intelligence and Security Service had evidence that a Russian spy/hacker had obtained access to Jared Kushner’s cell phone and that the hacked information revealed that son in law Kushner had access to hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars which he was using for clandestine operations in the Middle East. Dutch intelligence allegedly observed Kushner logging into a UAE bank account that had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan. The account was reportedly overseen by a senior Emirati royal.  There are also accusations that around $2 billion was placed into accounts for Kushner’s benefit including some money held at the Israeli Central Bank which the Bank denies. Worth noting Israel’s Central Bank does not hold, or at the very least isn’t supposed to hold accounts for individuals. Kushner is strongly denying all claims from the book excerpt, calling them "completely insane," "false and defamatory," and stating that the author provided no verifiable bank statements, transfer records, or documentation. His legal team has threatened legal action.  Vanity Fair published the excerpt relying on Simon and Schuster having vetted the book before publication and is probably indemnified.  This should prove interesting because someone, or lots of some ones are lying.  🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️