Democracy in Action?

Election Shenanigans:  Quoting an unknown source, Winston Churchill once said “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.”  He’s long gone but his observation, even if it didn’t anticipate vote count shenanigans, remains on point especially when you consider the election turmoil in Florida and Georgia where courts have already stepped in to try to insure that all eligible votes are included in final tallies, despite efforts by Trump, Florida’s Governor/Senate wannabee Rick Scott and Georgia’s former Secretary of State/Governor wannabee Brian Kemp to limit votes from Democratic strongholds.  Conflating media projections  with actual final election results, two things that have been known to be out of synch, Trump tweeted  “The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere.” Adding “and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!” Of course nothing in Trump’s tweet is accurate, there don’t appear to be any forged ballots, a much reported on “discovered” box of allegedly questionable Broward ballots turned out to contained only pens and paper and votes coming in from overseas, including votes from military personnel are, by law, subject to an extended deadline and absolutely should be included in final tallies.  A number of lawsuits have been filed in Florida by both sides; in an effort to maintain their fragile leads Republicans are trying to control the vote counting process and attempting to disqualify provisional ballots, Democrats want local officials to continue to control the count process and want to see as many votes as legally possible included in the final tallies.  Ironically, though overseas ballots from citizens living abroad tend to break Democrat, ballots from military postings tend to go disproportionately Republican so in addition to providing for bad optics, excluding military votes would actually hurt Trump’s favored candidates.  A judge in Broward County has weighed in, he said he's seen no evidence of wrongdoing in the vote-counting  and urged all sides to "ramp down the rhetoric." He went on to say that there is a need to reassure citizens that the integrity of the Florida recount is being protected so he encouraged the warring parties to agree on some minor additions in security, including the addition of three more law enforcement officers to keep an eye on things but rejected Governor Scott’s attempt to take control of the ballots. The first phase of the recount has already begun in Florida for the Senate, Governor and Agriculture elections. To the extent that results in any or all of the elections indicate a margin between candidates of less than .25%, and in all likelihood the Senate race will since it already does, hand recounts will follow.  A hand recount should help clarify why a disproportionate number of Broward County ballots are missing any vote for Senator, a real problem for Nelson because of Broward’s significant Democratic tilt. That omission could be the result of machine failure or ballot design.  If some of the Broward machines failed to scan the bottom of the page where the Senate section was located, a manual recount will significantly benefit Nelson.  If the failure was a result of poor ballot design, it will be tough noogies for Nelson, he’ll lose, and Scott will go to Washington and the brain trust who designed the Broward ballot will get a Trump medal of honor, perhaps sharing the podium with Sheldon Adelson’s wife Miriam who is soon to receive one because, duh, her husband is a big bucks Republican donor and an ardent Trump supporter. In Georgia, where Brian Kemp had led an effort to limit voter turnout in minority communities through a series of regulations that were intended to discourage and/or disqualify votes, a judge ordered election officials to review thousands of provisional ballots that haven’t been counted.  Democratic candidate Stacy Abrams continues to hope that as a result of the inclusion of additional qualifying votes, Kemp’s percentage will fall below 50%, mandating a runoff and giving her another, albeit small, chance to emerge victorious.  In one bright note, in Arizona, despite calls from Trump and the Republican National Committee for her to complain about non-existent voter irregularities Republican candidate Martha McSally took the high road, conceding defeat to her Democratic rival Kyrsten Sinema once it became clear to her that vote count updates made any chance of her overtaking Sinema statistically impossible.  However, McSally’s Senate ambitions aren’t over yet,  Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, John McCain’s interim replacement, only intends to serve through January at which point Arizona’s Governor Ducey will once again have to appoint someone to serve out the remainder of McCain’s term. By being gracious, McSally may be hoping to curry favor with Ducey who wasn’t all that interested in playing Trump’s “call it corrupt when you are losing” game.  It’s not clear that she’s even on Ducey’s shortlist but her decision to include her very adorable Golden Retriever in her taped concession speech, may be what it takes to get her back into his good graces.  

Mueller Time:  Late yesterday, in response to calls that the very questionably appointed and not so qualified Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation, the Justice Department released a press release saying that he will consult with Justice Department ethics officials about “matters that may warrant recusal.”  At this point, few, most notably House Judiciary Chairman in waiting  Jerry Nadler or Trump think that Whitaker would actually recuse himself, but the press release will provide a good talking point for Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway to help them push back on any assertions that Trump is trying to kneecap Mueller. For his part Mueller seems to be toiling on.  Yesterday, when most government workers were off for Veterans Day, including Trump who forgot to go to Arlington Cemetery to show some respect to fallen soldiers, it’s reported that Mueller’s team was hard at work in their bat cave.  Additionally, one time Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen was seen traveling to Washington, reportedly to meet with Mueller and/or to prep for testifying before one of his Grand Juries.  Separately, a Roger Stone conspiracy theorist crony, Jerome Corsi, announced that he expects to be indicted within the next few days.  Corsi, a former Infowars editor and a propagator of the Obama birther nonsense says that he was caught in one of those “perjury traps,” his way of saying that he got caught lying because Mueller actually had evidence that contradicted some if not all of what he said under oath.  Don’t you hate when that happens?  Separately, the State of Maryland took what is likely to be the first of many legal swipes at Whitaker’s appointment.  Maryland had filed suit against then Attorney General Sessions challenging his decision to not support certain Affordable Care Act provisions, notably the provision requiring affordable coverage of pre-existing conditions.  With Sessions gone, Maryland’s position is that Whitaker, since he was illegally appointed, has no authority to respond to their lawsuit.   

Other News:  Trump has backed down from his threat to stop aid to California, the Democratic stronghold that he wants to subject to Puerto Rico type treatment, possibly in recognition that failing to help the state out when, at last count, 44 people have been killed and thousands of homes  and buildings have been destroyed is a step too far even for him.  It turns out that Jamal Khashoggi isn’t the first person that Saudi Arabia considered assassinating.  Late Sunday the New York Times reported that last year Saudi Intelligence officials close to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman asked a small group of businessman about using private companies to assassinate enemies of the kingdom, focusing on Iranian and Iran friendly targets.  Some of that information probably comes from George Nader, the Lebanese-American character caught up in the Mueller investigation.   The possibility of that plan puts to rest assertions that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was just a rogue act.  As to Khashoggi’s murder, the killers were heard on one of those Turkish tapes talking about alerting their “boss” presumably but not definitively the Crown Prince to the success of their missions.  Though the Trump administration still refuses to lay the blame for Khashoggi’s murder on the Crown Prince,  they are pulling back some support for Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, by refusing to help with the in air refueling of Saudi bombers.  To be fair, the war began during Obama’s administration.  It had his tacit approval because he kind of thought but wasn’t sure that the targeted Yemen Houthi rebels were being supported by Iran and wanted to throw the Saudis, who were upset about his Iran nuclear agreement, a bone.  The war has turned into a humanitarian crisis of huger than huge proportions and has ironically pushed the rebels, who probably weren’t all that close to the Iranians in the first place, into their arms.  It’s far past time to extricate the US from the disaster and to start sending food and medical supplies instead of bombs.