Intergalactic Freak Show 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🌊 🍯 😇

Midterm Update: It’s still not over, but the end of the midterms is close.  Democrat Scott Colom has officially won the Mississippi Senate race, ousting Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.  Notably, for these Trumpy times, Hyde-Smith conceded, first by calling Colom and then with a gracious post.  If there is a heaven, the NAACP’s Medgar Evers who was assassinated outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963 and the three civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner who were brutally killed near Philadelphia, Mississippi one year later are there smiling 😇 🪽 .  The Alaska Senate race remains uncalled but overnight as the result of the latest ballot dump, Democrat Mary Peltola’s lead over Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan grew.  With 88% of the vote counted, Peltola has 49.4% of the vote to Sullivan’s 46.95%. Significantly, given Trump’s two Dan hissy fit, Peltola’s current lead is greater than the votes of both Dan’s combined.  In the Alaska Governor’s race, Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins now has more than 50% of the vote.  To the extent Kreiss-Tomkins’ vote count remains above the 50% threshold, unlike Peltola’s race, the Governor race won’t be subjected to the ranked voting calculation.  Elsewhere, the Kansas Governor race has been called for Democrat Cindy Holscher who with 98% of the vote counted leads her Republican competitor Ty Masterson by an insurmountable 7,285 votes. Holscher’s victory which benefited from wind from Senator-elect Adam Hamilton’s coattails means that the State’s Governorship will remain in Democratic hands.  On the House front, the AP has now called 255 races for Democrats and 169 for Republicans.  Of the rest, 10 seats remain uncalled and one, in Louisiana, is going to a runoff.  NBC continues to project that when all the dust settles, Democrats will have at least 259 seats.  As to Democratic leadership, with a little bit of grousing but no opponent Hakeem Jeffries will be the next Speaker.  On the Senate side last night Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen announced that he’s challenging New York’s Chuck Schumer for the majority leader position. To say Trump is unhappy about the outcome of the midterms, that he continues to insist had absolutely nothing to do with him, is an understatement. He’s got his Attorney General, Todd Blanche, whose only question when Trump makes an inappropriate, even illegal, demand for him to jump is how high, threatening Democratic Senators and Representatives like Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal and California’s Robert Garcia over their plans to subpoena and investigate the Trump team for grift and other misdeeds. Weird, how it was okay for Republicans including most notably the thoroughly obnoxious, shrewish new Republican minority leader Jim “Gym” Jordan to repeatedly harangue and otherwise torture then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not to mention the DOJ’s ongoing fascination with James Comey’s seashells and the attempt to indict Cassidy Hutchinson.        

Nvidia Affair(s):  It turns out that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang who, despite pleas from Trump to stay on, resigned yesterday wasn’t just playing footsie and exchanging sweet somethings with an alleged Chinese spy, he was also canoodling with at least two other women, both of whom worked at Nvidia. Though most of us are only learning about Huang’s extracurricular activities, others within and outside of the company knew, which explains why Huang hired the Heller crisis management firm last year.  The Heller firm is the go-to advisor for powerful men navigating personal controversies and sexual misconduct allegations. Affairs with subordinates is one of those corporate governance issues that leads to CEO firings; the hiring of Heller provides an indication that Huang knew he was about to face choppy waters, unfortunately for him, the markets, US intelligence, and Trump, Huang’s spy problem is some really thick icing on his already problematic kitchen sink cake. Despite evidence that he was told at least twice about Huang’s spy problem, Teflon Trump keeps insisting that he didn’t know, or that he wasn’t paying attention when he was told, or that when he was told he didn’t think it mattered much because Huang’s a cool guy who looks good in leather and also Nvidia’s been holding up the increasingly AI dependent stock market and under Huang they contributed $25 million to his hideous ballroom. While Trump will probably emerge from this scandal with his balls, east wing and cojones, intact, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick might not. Apparently Lutnick who was confronted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for failing to label Spy Alice’s Megaspeed company as a national security risk ran interference for Trump on all things Nvidia, accommodating girlfriend/spy Alice Huang’s appetite for the high-end chips that her Megaspeed “shell” company then passed on to what were supposed to be banned Chinese companies.  Adding to the intrigue, Singaporean officials knew that Spy Alice was up to something but couldn’t get American officials to help with their probe. Both Jensen Hwang and Lutnick are now scheduled to appear before the Senate, Spy Alice is unavailable, perhaps hiding in Beijing’s equivalent of a dacha with the man who was either her husband, her handler, or both.  Trump, Binky Natalie, and whomever else he plans to include on his traveling squad is scheduled to travel to Shenzhen, China, next week to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit where he is expected to meet with China’s President Xi who will assure him that Spy Alice was neither a spy nor a cutout. Louisiana’s Senator Kennedy, the master of colorful phrases is calling the Nvidia mess an intergalactic freak show.  Cue the🍿 🍿, who needs Netflix when there’s CNBC?

Other 💩:  Though he’s no relation to Louisiana’s Senator, RFK Jr should be on the chopping block for lots of reasons but especially for his vaccine stupidity and his mishandling of measles. As of November 5, according to the CDC there have been 5,182 confirmed measles cases in the US so far this year marking the highest number of annual cases since 1991 and those are just the reported cases. Ninety percent of cases are among unvaccinated individuals. There have been eleven measles related deaths and around 500 hospitalizations. The economic cost of this year’s measles case count is nearly $83 million, including $56 million in public health response costs, $25 million in lost productivity and more than $1.8 million in direct medical expenditures. On the war front, Trump announced that the US no longer needs a diplomatic deal with Iran and ordered Veep Vance, who really pissed him off with his post-election remarks about the Iran war being the reason for the Republican shellacking, stop leading peace negotiations and focus on domestic issues like fraud in Democratic parts of the country instead.  To be clear the only fraud that matters is the fraud by Democrats, because fraud elsewhere, especially in and around the White House is totally cool except for that really egregious contract that Alina Habba now Alina Mildon committed by entering into a $50 million pay for a Trump pardon deal with a Venezuelan company.  She’s now been fired by the company but don’t feel too sorry for her because she gets to keep $14.5 million so she’ll be just fine.      

               

Honeypot 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🌊 🍯

Midterm Update:  The election still isn’t over.  Depending on who’s counting two Senate races, thirteen House races, and two Governor races remain uncalled. According to NBC,  Democrats have won 254 House seats, an amount that NBC projects will grow to 259;  Republicans hold 168, an amount projected to grow to 176.  In Alaska, with 84% of the vote counted, Democrat Mary Peltola’s lead over incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan has grown to 4,350.  Currently standing at 48.95%, Peltola’s percentage of the vote remains below 50% making it likely that once all the votes are counted the Alaska Senate race will be decided through a ranked voting computation, the process that as of now appears to be surviving last week’s statewide referendum on whether or not it should be eliminated for future races.  In Mississippi, with 98% of votes counted, Democrat Scott Colom’s lead over incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith has grown to 2,990. Mississippi’s vote counting process has been slow, complicated by the arduous process of clearing what the state calls “affidavit” votes, but what increasingly looks to be an effort to disenfranchise younger and/or minority voters and maybe also by a mysterious visit by Attorney General Todd Blanche who just happened to be in Mississippi yesterday. Absent some last minute toddfoolery, Colom will be Mississippi’s next Senator.  Alaska Democrat Peltola is likely to emerge on top too, but her election isn’t as close to being complete. Keeping with the blue tsunami theme, the still uncalled Kansas Governor race where, with 99% of the vote counted, Democrat Cindy Holscher leads Republican Ty Masterson by 7,564 votes, is also expected to go blue.  Similarly, it looks like Alaska Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins who is leading his next closest opponent Republican Bernadette Wilson by more than 50,000 in Alaska’s gubernatorial race will emerge on top. Kreiss Tomkins’ vote share stands at 49.89%, if he can eke out another .11% of the vote, his race will not be subjected to a ranked voting calculation. It’s only a matter of time before Holscher and Kreiss-Tomkins join Iowa’s one time Prada runway model Rob Sands as one of the new Democratic Governors.  In other election news, Republican House members have chosen Jim “Gym” Jordan as their minority leader.  How fitting that in the wake of the Epstein scandal House Republicans will now be led by an “accused” molester-abettor who also is about as obnoxious and obstructionist as they come.  Senate Republicans have once again picked South Dakota’s John Thune as their leader.  Democrats haven’t voted yet on their leadership but despite some progressive and democratic socialist kvetching New York’s Hakeem Jeffries will be the next Speaker.  On the Senate side, a number of newbies and “progressives” including Bernie Sanders who isn’t a Democrat but plays one when it comes to making demands and committee assignments, have said that they won’t vote for New York’s Chuck Schumer but so far no one else has formally announced a run for the leadership position though reports are that Maryland’s Chris Van Holen is calling around. On the injured relief front, Connecticut’s Chris Murphy has been released from the hospital to a rehab facility. Last night, in a memo to constituents and supporters he confirmed that his absence is due to the “small” hemorrhagic stroke he suffered last week, he said that he and his doctors expect him to fully recover.  And just asking, is anyone surprised that Trump is back to questioning the honesty of the elections? Old dog, old tricks.   

Honeypot 🍯 Saga:  Nvidia’s President, CEO and founder Jensen Huang most definitely had an affair with a woman named Alice Huang. Judging by all the many social media posts including pictures of the two of them canoodling in various locations around the globe, the affair was an open secret so the fact that a rich guy was cheating on his wife isn’t what makes the affair a problem for anyone other than said spouse.  The problem is that girlfriend Alice isn’t just a run of the mill Singaporean business lady running a company with an outsized appetite for advanced chips, the problem is that she’s “allegedly” a Chinese spy and the huge quantity of chips that her Megaspeed company acquired through Nvidia with a lift from CEO Jensen are now in the hands of Chinese companies who were supposed to be prohibited from acquiring such advanced technology and that the US Commerce Department’s investigation into the transfer of those chips appears to have been squashed, at least until now. Nvidia has a big Huang problem, but the US national security problem is worse because despite his attempt to shrug off Huang’s honeypot situation, Trump knew about it.  He was told at least twice and yet still invited Huang on to his plane to join his China trip because quoting Trump, Huang being compromised “didn’t make much of an impact” on him. Afterall, men have affairs and anyway China’s Xi is one of his BFFs. In any other administration the Huang Honeypot would be a scandal so bigly bad that it would have impeachment level consequences but for Teflon Trump it’s just a day ending in D A Y or so he hopes. On the subject of impeachment the House, still dominated by Republicans, shelved the effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday not because of the impassioned, chock full of lies speech Hegseth delivered yesterday morning but because other than outgoing Republican Thomas Massie the Republicans all still walk to the beat of Trump’s drum. As to Hegseth’s twisted facts speech, it was for an audience of one, and that one, the orange king, says he still team Hegseth and at least for now, that’s all that matters.  Come January, assuming we make it through the January 3 swearing in process, Hegseth will be impeached by the House. The question is whether Trump wants to live through hearings that exhaustively detail his “crimes and misdemeanors” especially since the defense that Hegseth is going with is that he was only following orders from above.

More 💩:  Another high-level Department of Justice has resigned and/or been pushed out the door.  The newest departee is Brett Shumate the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division. Among other things Shumate oversaw the suing of universities that offered in-state tuition for undocumented citizens and defended Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting restrictions. Like a number of other recent departees including those in Miami who’d been tasked with going after the Biden and Obama people responsible for the non-existent “conspiracy” against Trump he wasn’t successful or horrible enough for Trump and Blanche. Also, Megan Bauer, the White House Cabinet secretary, the high-ranking official who serves as a liaison between the president and the Cabinet, is departing the administration, perhaps because she doesn’t want to deal with Stephen Miller?

 

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.